Uit het boek van Ben Rhodes, de belangrijkste nationale veiligheidsadviseur onder Obama, blijkt dat men keihard heeft gelogen over het verblijf van klokkenluider Edward Snowden in Rusland, waarbij men hem zelfs afschilderde als spion van Moskou en als verrader.
Ben Rhodes is er trots op dat hij de weg van Snowden, via Moskou en Havanna naar Ecuador of Bolivia heeft kunnen blokkeren. Als eerste heeft hij het paspoort van Snowden ingetrokken toen deze op weg was van Hongkong naar Moskou, zodat Snowden niet kon doorreizen en vast kwam te zitten op het vliegveld van Moskou.....
Ten tweede heeft Rhodes Cuba onder druk gezet Snowden de toegang tot het land te ontzeggen, met de dreiging dat de VS de besprekingen over een betere relatie met Cuba zou afbreken, mocht men Snowden doorgang bieden..... Cuba dat maar al te graag van de VS sancties af wilde, sancties die door Kennedy administratie werden genomen in februari 1962, dus ruim na de machtsovername van Fidel Castro en zijn kameraden, het land bukt onder deze illegale sancties van de VS, illegaal daar hiervoor geen VN resolutie bestond noch bestaat....*) De sancties werden verzwaard onder Trump en Biden weigert zelfs deze verzwaring terug te draaien......
Rhodes en anderen hebben sindsdien Snowden zoals gezegd beschuldigd van spionage en verraad daar hij zijn toevlucht tot Rusland zou hebben gezocht.....
Terecht stelt Glenn Greenwald in het hieronder opgenomen artikel dat ook gezien deze zaak de sociopathie van de VS geen grenzen kent (waar ik liever het woord psychopathie zou willen gebruiken)
Lees het artikel van Greenwald en zegt het voort, je kan er op wachten dat de reguliere westerse media, die volop hebben meegewerkt aan de demonisering van Snowden, geen aandacht aan de bewuste passage in het boek van Rhodes zullen besteden, daarmee ze hiermee zichzelf te kijk zullen zetten als onkundig en partijdig...... Onkundig daar men niet heeft gezocht naar de redenen waarom Snowden in Rusland is gebleven en partijdig daar men hem inderdaad heeft beticht van spionage en verraad en ook dat zonder enig onderzoek.......
Rhodes is nogal trots op wat hij heeft bereikt in zijn leven, echter met zijn handelen heeft hij voorkomen dat Snowden al vast zou zitten in de VS, daar Ecuador hem op zeker zou hebben uitgeleverd en dat geldt ook voor Bolivia, waar de hysterische reli-fascistische juntaleider Jeanine Añez**, die door ingrijpen van de CIA en de Organisatie van Amerikaanse Staten (OAS) aan de macht kwam in dat land, Snowden ook zou hebben uitgeleverd......
It
is hard to overstate the sociopathy of US national security officials:
their casual willingness to blatantly lie about the gravest matters is
limitless.
Ben
Rhodes, then-Deputy National Security Advisor to US President Barack
Obama, speaks about the President's upcoming trip to Cuba during a daily
press briefing at the White House February 18, 2016 in Washington, DC.
(Photo: BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AFP via Getty Images)
Ever since Edward Snowden received asylum from
Russia in 2013, Obama officials have repeatedly maligned his motives
and patriotism by citing his "choice” to take up residence there. It has
long been clear that this narrative was a lie: Snowden, after meeting
with journalists in Hong Kong, intended only to transit through Moscow
and then Havana on his way to seek asylum in Latin America. He was
purposely prevented from leaving Russia — trapped in the Moscow airport —
by the very Obama officials who then cynically weaponized his presence
there to imply he was a civil-liberties hypocrite for “choosing” to live
in such a repressive country or, even worse, a Kremlin agent or Russian
spy.
But
now we have absolute, definitive proof that Snowden never intended to
stay in Russia but was deliberately prevented from leaving by the same
Obama officials who exploited the predicament which they created.
The proof was supplied unintentionally in the memoir of one of Obama's
senior national security advisers, Ben Rhodes, entitled The World as It Is: A Memoir of the Obama White House. It is hard to overstate how dispositively Rhodes’ own book proves that Obama officials generally, and Rhodes specifically,
lied blatantly and cavalierly to the public about what happened: a
level of sustained and conscious lying that can be explained only by
sociopathy.
The
memoir of Rhodes, now appropriately an MSNBC contributor, is an
incredibly self-serving homage to himself that repeatedly attempts to
demonstrate his own importance and accomplishments. The passage about
Rhodes’ conduct regarding Snowden is very much aligned with those goals.
While repeatedly emphasizing how traumatic the Snowden revelations were
for the Obama administrations, Rhodes boasts of the crucial role he played in preventing Snowden from leaving Russia as the NSA whistleblower was desperately attempting to do so — exactly the opposite of what people like Rhodes and Hillary Clinton were telling the public about Snowden.
It
is really beyond words how willing these people are to lie. One chapter
of Rhodes’ book is devoted to the Obama administration's efforts to
normalize relations with Cuba. Rhodes explains that the deep distrust
between the countries that had endured for decades began to subside due
to two events which he helped engineer. The first was the two countries’
agreement to improve the prison conditions for two prisoners: an
American imprisoned by Cuba, the other a Cuban imprisoned by the U.S.
The second even "more important signal” sent by Cuba showing its genuine
desire to improve relations was their capitulation to Rhodes’ threats
that they had better withdraw the permission they had granted Snowden to
allow him to pass through Havana once he left the Moscow airport as
planned, on his way to Latin America where he intended to seek asylum.
In
other words, Rhodes — who has spent years insinuating that Snowden is a
Russian spy and traitor given his "choice” to flee to Russia — knew in
real time that Snowden never planned to stay even one day in Russia. He
had only flown to Moscow from Hong Kong with the intent to immediately
fly from Moscow to Havana, and then on to either Ecuador or Bolivia to
obtain asylum. Prior to landing in Moscow, Snowden and his
representatives had secured a commitment from the Cuban government to
allow him safe passage through Havana on his way to South America.
The only reason
Snowden is in Russia is because of the actions of Rhodes and his fellow
Obama officials to deliberately trap him there: first by invalidating his passport
so that he could not board any international flights, and then by
threatening the Cuban government that any chance for normalization with
the U.S. would be permanently destroyed unless they withdrew their
guarantee to Snowden of safe passage through Havana, which they then
did. Here's Rhodes in his own words, boasting about what he regards as
his success:
There was one other, more important signal. Around the time of our second meeting, Edward Snowden was stuck in the Moscow airport, trying to find someone who would take him in.
Reportedly, he wanted to go to Venezuela, transiting through Havana,
but I knew that if the Cubans aided Snowden, any rapprochement between
our countries would prove impossible. I pulled Alejandro Castro
aside and said I had a message that came from President Obama. I
reminded him that the Cubans had said they wanted to give Obama
“political space” so that he could take steps to improve relations. “If
you take in Snowden,” I said, “that political space will be gone.” I
never spoke to the Cubans about this issue again. A few days later,
back in Washington, I woke up to a news report: “Former U.S. spy agency
contractor Edward Snowden got stuck in the transit zone of a
Moscow airport because Havana said it would not let him fly from Russia
to Cuba, a Russian newspaper reported.” I took it as a message: The Cubans were serious about improving relations.
Could this admission be any clearer? From the very beginning, Obama officials including Rhodes knew
that Snowden had not traveled to Russia with the intention of staying
there, but instead was — in Rhodes’ own words — "stuck in the Moscow
airport” and was “trying to find someone who would take him in.” (Leave
aside Rhodes’ other lie that Snowden intended to "go to Venezuela”; the
NSA whistleblower's plan was to travel from Moscow through Havana to
Bolivia or Ecuador, but Rhodes, knowing how Americans view Caracas,
purposely replaced Venezuela as the intended destination to further
impugn Snowden's motives). Rhodes then tells us how proud he is of
himself for having successfully bullied Cuba out of allowing Snowden to
fly through Havana as he intended, thus — in Rhodes’ own words — causing
"Snowden [to] get stuck in the transit zone of a Moscow airport."
And
yet, countless Obama officials — including, most amazingly, Rhodes
himself — have spent years lying to the public by claiming exactly the
opposite. Over and over, they impugned Snowden's patriotism and strongly
implied he was a Russian spy and a traitor as evidenced by his "choice”
to go to Russia. As but one example, listen to the player embedded
below to hear what Rhodes told his fellow former Obama national security
official Tommy Vietor in February of 2017, on Vietor's Pod Save America
program (where Rhodes is now also a co-host). For a full hour, Rhodes
impugned Snowden's patriotism and motives, repeatedly citing his choice
to flee to Russia as his primary proof (along with the fact that Snowden
went to meet with journalists in "China” — by which Rhodes means Hong
Kong):
Cause
again like, a whistleblower doesn't conspicuously pass through China to
Russia, you know, reporters are always saying 'Are you telling me that
you know that he was working for the Russians?', or what have you, I'm
like, I'm not, I'm telling you what I see, which is this guy
went to China and Russia, the two most adversarial intelligence
competitors to the United States; he could've gone to some very liberal
European country that probably would've taken him in, or he could have faced the music here; the choice of those destinations speaks volumes.
Does
lying get any more flagrant or deliberate than this? Rhodes knows for
certain that what he's saying here about Snowden is an absolute lie. He
knows that Snowden did not "choose” Russia as his "destination.” He
knows that Snowden did exactly what Rhodes said he should have done:
sought refuge in other countries. He knows that the only reason Snowden
is in Russia is because Rhodes himself trapped him there by preventing him from leaving.
We know that Rhodes knows all of this because he boasted about all of
it in his book, in the above-quoted passage. And yet, over and over,
Rhodes told the public the exact opposite of what he knew to be the
truth.
As
indicated, Rhodes was far from alone in knowingly disseminating this
lie to the American public. In 2014, Hillary Clinton, in a Guardian interview,
condemned Snowden by falsely claiming that he flew from Hong Kong to
Russia with the intention of seeking asylum from Putin. Listen to her
flagrantly lie:
![]()
From
the perspective of the twenty-four-hour news cycle, this may not be the
timeliest revelation. But it is only within the last several days that I
read Rhodes’ book and could barely believe how clearly he laid out his
own lies and those of his Obama administration colleagues. This level of
conscious lying — spending years implying that Snowden was a traitor or
Russian spy because he fled to Russia when you know that he wanted to
leave and did everything possible to do so but it was your actions that
trapped him there against his wishes — requires an unlimited willingness
to lie the moment one's interests are served by doing so.
We
do not usually have a case where the evidence of lying is this
conclusive — where it is offered by the liars in the first place — but
this behavior is far from uncommon. This is what the National Security
State of the U.S. breeds, and it is vital always to remember that when
listening to these people speak.
(Our
request to Rhodes for comment and an attempt to reconcile with public
claims with this passage in his book was not answered at the time of
publication; it will be added if one is supplied.)
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* Nu
wordt er vooral in de massamedia in de VS en de politiek daar, een
anti-Cubaanse campagne gevoerd als zou de socialistsche regering van
Cuba verantwoordelijk zijn voor de deplorabele economische situatie
in het land, terwijl deze één op één is te danken aan de illegale
sancties van de VS, de smerige brutaliteit!! (zeker als je bedenkt dat deze sancties aan heel veel Cubanen het leven moet hebben gekost.....)
** De arrestatie van Jeanine Añez, die zwaar geweld liet gebruiken tegen de oorspronkelijke bevolking van Boliva, heeft in het westen verontwaardiging gewekt en men deed net alsof het grootste deel van het land achter deze waanzinnige psychopaat zou staan, met berichten als zouden vele duizenden hebben geprotesteerd tegen haar arrestatie (RTL Nieuws sprak zelfs van tienduizenden demonstranten.....).... De grote meerderheid van de bevolking behoort tot de oorspronkelijke bewoners van Bolivia, die voor het eerst sinds de katholieke kolonisatie van het land werd bestuurd door een president die tot hun bevolkingsgroep behoorde, t.w. Evo Morales en dat stak het andere deel van het volk, plus de VS daar Morales een socialist is....... Uiteraard staat de oorspronkelijke bevolking achter Morales en Luis Arce diens opvolger ook behorend tot MAS, de partij van Morales, de partij die na de verbanning van Morales de verkiezingen in 2020 won. Zie wat dat betreft ook: 'Bolivia: een jaar na de coup wint de socialistische partij alsnog de verkiezingen' (en zie de links in dat bericht!!)
-----------------------------------
Zie ook: 'Dag van de Klokkenluiders, niet bekend in Nederland en geen aandacht in de reguliere pers' (en zie de links in dat bericht)
'Zaak van VS tegen Assange gestrand op de belangrijkste getuige, westerse media aandacht: nul komma nada'
'Snowden vindt het ongelofelijk dat de media VS politici niet aanspreken op totaal verschillende reacties n.a.v. 'klokkenluiden'' (en zie de links in dat bericht, veel ook over Julian Assange die de openbaringen van Snowden opnam in Wikileaks)
'Edward Snowden over Silicon Valley censuur en andere zaken die de persvrijheid en de vrijheid in het algemeen in gevaar brengen' (en zie de links in dat bericht)
'Deep State stuurt VS presidenten bij >> uitleg van Edward Snowden'
'Obama wist van bewapenen en ondersteunen terroristen in Syrië.......' (ook het trainen en bewapenen van ISIS, ook hierover heeft Rhodes e.e.a. toegegeven.....) (de video's in dat bericht zijn intussen gecensureerd......)
![A demonstrator holds a poster that reads 'State of Climate Emergency' behind Indigenous people during a protest in Paris, France, on December 12, 2015 [Etienne Laurent/EPA]](https://www.aljazeera.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/f5a88139e52e4aab836cfa7a5a2ecd63_18.jpeg?resize=270%2C180)
