In the situation concerning Greenwald, and the documents he
attained from the National Security Agency through Edward Snowden, an
"infrastructure analyst" who worked for the NSA and Booz Allen
Hamilton (a military contractor for cyber-space), I remain skeptical. I remain
skeptical of Greenwald and Snowden for a few reasons.
What are Greenwald's connections to the Koch Brothers, and
the Cato Institute if any? We have a general understanding that Pierre Omidyar,
the owner of PayPal, and eBay, is libertarian in his economic and political
philosophies. Libertarians generally believe in non-interventionism in the
Middle East. Ron Paul, for example, is one of the leading figures advocating
this position that the United States should take in regards to Washington's
policy with Middle Eastern countries. Libertarians are also proponents of “the
free market,” “smaller government,” and “fiscal spending.” Libertarians
actually are Republicans, but they supposedly don’t believe in an ever
expanding military industrial complex along the lines of what President
Eisenhower warned Americans of.
The philosophical ideologies of politics are essential to
know about in regard to anyone involved to any degree in politics, as these are
the broad swaths that seem to define the general left and the right spectrums
of thought, even though both of Washington’s parties engage in outright
hypocrisy without a blink on a regular basis. Greenwald has a track record of
taking left and right pundits to task on their hypocrisies. For example, when
G. W. Bush was in office, almost all Democrats and liberals were crying bloody
murder in the streets in reaction to Bush's foreign and domestic policies. From
the invasion of Iraq based on fabrications of WMDs and ties to Al Qaeda, to the
anti-Constitutional Patriot Act, Democrats and liberals were very vocal about
their opposition to Bush and these policies. Several years later, Obama
effortlessly exponentiates these policies ranging from draconian laws, such as
the National Defense Authorization Act which allows him to peck off any
American he deems questionable upon his own whims, to his lawless policy of
drones flying freely over supposed allied countries, such as Pakistan, killing
innocent women and children. Greenwald commendably commands outrage concerning
both parties with the above points.
Greenwald's philosophy of left and right skepticism makes a
lot of sense, since it is also very apparent that Washington's brutality,
aggressiveness, and terror wrought in the Middle East is essentially designed
to cause terrorism, not prevent it. It's common knowledge that if you kill
someone’s wife, and children, they will more than likely seek some kind of
revenge on you. Many religions teach about the basic principle of doing to
others as you would have them do to you. It is apparent that Greenwald agrees
with much of this philosophy, considering the numerous articles he's written in
criticism of Obama's international and illegal drone policy and its hideous
further trashing of the Geneva Conventions initiated by the Bush II regime, not
to mention Washington's standard disregard of other treaties implemented to
prevent aggression of one country upon another signed right after world war
two.
I had read a couple of articles that spurred some thoughts
about Greenwald's possible ties to the libertarian network. These ties can be
found through the doorway he's been able to miraculously open up to a
$250,000,000 deal provided for by his sudden business relationship with the
billionaire of PayPal, Pierre Omidyar. One of those articles is written by
Yoichi Shimatsu, titled: Saving Agent Snowden From His Handlers Greenwald And
Omidyar. I learned in that article that Omidyar, himself, is actually Iranian,
thus further strengthening his libertarian philosophy of a Washington/Middle
East non-interventionist policy. In his article, Shimatsu writes:
From: Saving Agent Snowden From His Handlers Greenwald And
Omidyar, by Yoichi Shimatsu
"In stark contrast to his
libertarian posturing, Omidyar is connected at the hip to the very same
intelligence nexus that he publicly condemns, particularly Booz Allen Hamilton,
the NSA security contractor that employed Snowden in Hawaii and Japan. One of
the major investment partners with Omidyar Network, Salvadore ”Sal” Gambianco,
sits on the board of directors of Booz Allen Hamilton Holdings.
As head of Omidyar Network’s human
capital operations, Giambanco vets trainees and assesses employee performance
for promotion or termination. For more than a decade, Omidyar Network has had a
revolving door for its employees with Booz Allen, shuttling staffers and
interns for intelligence-related postings. Just a few of these individuals who
worked for both Omidyar Network and Booz Allen include:
- Dhaya Lakshminarayan who was sent
to Cuba to research development programs;
- Pranay Chulet hired to head
Omidyar-backed Quikr in India;
- Patricia Sosrodjojo, Indonesian
venture capital expert in Jakarta; and
- Michael Kent, a Booz Allen
counter-terrorism specialist who served as a research associate at the Omidyar
campus in Redwood City, California.
The relationship, simply put, is
corporate collusion, and if businesses could be married, Booz Allen and Omidyar
Network are husband and wife."
After engaging in a sobering back and forth debate with
@danstew13, or Dan Stewart, a derivatives trader on Twitter who joined Twitter
four days after the NSA leaks broke the headlines on June 5th, 2013, I found a
link on his profile from back in June linking to @shoq, another independent
political opinionist who unfortunately defends the trail of tears left by Obama.
Though I was irritated by Dan's invasive questions posed to me in regards to my
critical questions about Greenwald, I found that his questions were very
competently asked. He sounds like he could be a professional lawyer. So instead
of trying to block him out, I followed him so that I can see how he neutralizes
anyone who is critical of Greenwald. After all, a majority of his profile is
dedicated to defending Greenwald.
One point he makes relentlessly is the question of evidence.
He wants direct evidence of Greenwald's suspected back-door dealings between
Omidyar and Snowden. While it is laughable to try to convince someone in
another part of the nation on Twitter of "evidence," it still stands
as a challenging wall to be climbed. It is a challenge because I, and probably
all of Greenwald's other critics, don't have any direct evidence, like email
communications, or video recordings of Greenwald and Snowden interacting with
each other and planning a conspiracy. All we have are the inconsistencies in
how many documents Greenwald obtained from Snowden, the bizarre lucky twists of
fate Greenwald has encountered since leaving the Guardian, and whether if it
was Greenwald who received the documents directly to begin with. Greenwald, by
the way, has previously stated that he kept on pushing off emails by Snowden to
him as disingenuous, so the theory that unidentified flying objects floating
around the Guardian and submitting Snowden's NSA documents to them after
abducting him for a blacked out period of time is questionable at best... at
least for flat earthers.
@Shoq has been a critic of Greenwald and Snowden since their
leaked NSA documents story broke. Perhaps @shoq has been a critic of Greenwald
even before the hit debut of his NSA story. I have not investigated that
however. The article that I found insightful, though still biased, by @shoq, is
titled Why Libertarian Organizations Like The Cato Institute Love The NSA
Outrage. Remember, the Cato Institute is on record for also supporting the
Trans-Pacific Partnership, a partnership negotiated in secrecy, until leaked by
Wikileaks, that allows governments to be lobbied by special interests in order
to fix prices to those special interest's desires, which would snuff out other
generic competitors, of, say, pharmaceuticals in Asian countries for example.
@Shoq brings to our attention the superficial beliefs of libertarianism, and
some of their promoter's ties to the Koch Brothers who are famous for their
right-wing policies as industrialists. The Koch Brothers fund politician's
careers that support their every fascist effort, such as Governor Scott Walker
of Wisconsin, and his controversial demolishing of unions' rights to collectively bargain.
Scott Walker, by the way, may be running for president in 2016.
Because the US government is so hypocritical and criminal in
its own policies of domestic and foreign affairs, the fact that Jay Carney, for
example, reiterates the White House's steadfast narration, "Mr. Snowden
has been accused of leaking classified information, and he faces felony charges
here in the United States," only makes Washington's hardline stance
against Snowden an international joke. It looks to me like charges against
Snowden are microscopic insignificances compared to the unquestionable
bloodbaths Washington engages in every day. Washington is just a case of an ethics
committee so thoroughly corrupt that it needs an ethics committee. That ethics
committee cannot be founded in another governmental agency in my opinion, but
can only be found in the solidarity of the American people, less Washington DC,
and its cesspool of greed, irresponsibility, and corruption.
In the wake of all the disheartenment of Americans being led
by liars on both sides of America's traditional two-party system, many younger
Americans are looking for some sort of leadership to hold on to. I believe
Greenwald, and his "news" venture will attempt to fill some of that
void in much the same way the usual "privatized," but really
centralized, news organizations attempt to do, e.g., Fox News, and MSNBC. Yet,
there are many things that make me question Greenwald's character with respect
to his past as a lawyer for one of the most criminal banks ever to exist,
Goldman Sachs, as a lawyer for a gay pornography business, and having a
tendency to take people to court on the pettiest of claims while using his
abilities as a lawyer to screw peoples' financial lives up significantly. I'm
not against homosexuality, nor even their right to marry, but I do point out
that the pornography business isn't necessarily filled with fine, upstanding
citizens. I'm also not against the pornography business per se, as I believe
it's anyone's right to engage in any field the want to engage in
professionally. I am merely pointing out the inconsistencies of Greenwald's
supposed stance of standing up for the weak and the poor, while, at times,
fully engaging in risky and purely “profits over people” motivated ventures.
Then we encounter the current inconsistencies that come with
the walking propaganda machine Greenwald has accumulated thus far, such as: why
are there no articles implicating PayPal's devotion to the NSA's unconstitutional
invasion of privacy? I'm sure someone can have their own personal beliefs, and
superficially report on them with a news organization funded by a company who
is against those beliefs, but this only indicates a conflict of interests.
Conflicts of interest, nevertheless, can be found throughout politics. The
number one interest that most people have, however, can clearly be defined as
the obtaining of money in exchange for straight or crooked efforts.
And this common underlying theme found in almost all
scandalous activities is unsurprisingly found in Greenwald's coop flying from
the Guardian to a new future coop with Omidyar and the $250,000,000 deal he
made while, at the same time, hanging on to perhaps ninety to ninety-five
percent of the classified NSA documents Edward Snowden "gave" to him.
Perhaps Snowden actually sold the documents to Greenwald. Again, none of us
have the proof for this. It can only be speculated. I do find it interesting
that someone like Julian Assange has been locked down in an Ecuadorian Embassy
in the United Kingdom for leaking classified United States documents for four
Christmases now, but Greenwald is able to fly freely on first class jet planes
around the planet with classified information in his possession, with hardly a
problem encountered.
Another oddity I encountered with respect to Snowden is
recently when he wrote a letter to the government of Brazil--the country where
Greenwald coincidently lives--which ostensibly seems to be bargaining his
special knowledge gained as an employee of the NSA in exchange for asylum
there. So while Greenwald continues to withhold untold amounts of documents
Snowden gave him, making lucrative deals writing books, and signing contracts
for the creation of 21st century James Bond technocrat movies, Snowden attempts
to get closer to the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow over off in Brazil.
Maybe he can get Omidyar to send a private stealth jet to Russia without
rousing the Russian air force out of bed at night, and fly him off to the land
of freedom where anti-corruption protests abound in the country of Brazil.
December 24th, 2013
Recent update: Snowden broadcasted his own New Year's message after the Queen of England's message on Britain's Channel 4 station on Wednesday, December 25th, 2013. If Snowden is so accepted by the Western world as to be right next to the Queen of England's slot on TV on Christmas day, then this only adds more to my suspicion of inside corruption not factually seen and documented by anyone. Whistleblowers have been condemned as an expected standard throughout history. I don't personally wish harm upon Snowden in order to rectify this standard, but on the other pinna, I find it a very peculiar twist of events that Snowden gets to deliver a message to the world from the center of the West's propaganda machine. All the sudden, Snowden comes from out of the non-existent shadows of "no such agency" (NSA), and gets to sit next to the Western world's throne to speak about the West's totalitarian tyrranny, invoking the writer George Orwell. Please don't count me on the bandwagon of worshiping this hyped up hero, because, just next door, Assange remains shackled to the Ecuadorian embassy in London. I've entertained the possibility that Assange may by tied into the Greenwald, PayPal, and Snowden conspiracy, but Wikileaks seems to be less focused on Greenwald for the time being as far as I can tell in reviewing the tweets Wikileaks tweets out referencing Greenwald, Snowden, PayPal, or their blockading friend, Omidyar.
Evan Travnicek,
December 27th, 2013
