{"id":45321,"date":"2013-06-26T05:00:41","date_gmt":"2013-06-26T04:00:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/breaking-news\/snowden-vs-the-soyuz\/45321\/"},"modified":"2013-06-26T05:00:41","modified_gmt":"2013-06-26T04:00:41","slug":"snowden-vs-the-soyuz","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/breaking-news\/snowden-vs-the-soyuz\/","title":{"rendered":"Snowden vs. the Soyuz"},"content":{"rendered":"

by
\n William Norman Grigg<\/a><\/b><\/span><\/p>\n


\n Recently by William Norman Grigg: Joseph
\n Weekley: Self-Pitying Stormtrooper<\/a><\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\n \"\"<\/a>
\n <\/p>\n

If it hadn\u2019t
\n been for the subtle and cynical intervention of the imperial Russian
\n government, the American War for Independence might have failed.
\n George Washington and his colleagues would have been condemned as
\n traitors, and then dispatched to eternity with all of the horrors
\n devised by inventive sadists to deter similar impudence on the part
\n of those described as the Crown\u2019s subjects.<\/span><\/p>\n

This little-appreciated
\n fact should be pointed out to those who have claimed that there
\n was something inappropriate about Edward
\n Snowden receiving help from Russia<\/a> in his search for political
\n asylum<\/a> from the world\u2019s most powerful and most lawless regime.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

At the time
\n of the American revolt, the British Empire enjoyed incontestable
\n superiority at sea, but possessed a mediocre army. It could project
\n power anywhere on the face of the globe, but depended on foreign
\n mercenaries to do most of the hands-on work of killing and dying.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

As the rebellion
\n coalesced in the American colonies, George III made a formal request
\n to Empress Catherine to rent 20,000 battle-hardened Russian infantrymen,
\n and a flotilla of Russian naval vessels to supplement the task force
\n en route to chastise the colonists. Catherine politely declined
\n the offer while bidding her fellow monarch good luck. In private
\n conversations, however, the Empress was indulgently disdainful of
\n the British king, saying that he had bungled the management of the
\n American colonies and should be “taught a lesson.”<\/span><\/p>\n

Catherine\u2019s
\n refusal to intervene on behalf of King George was not the only favor
\n she did on behalf of the American patriot cause. As the War for
\n Independence unfolded, the Empress conducted a brisk business supplying
\n the navies of France and Spain, both of which gave material support
\n to the Patriot cause.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

When the British
\n government began to interdict neutral shipping to inspect for America-bound
\n “contraband,” Catherine sent communiques to Sweden, Denmark,
\n Holland, and Prussia proposing the creation of a “League
\n of Armed Neutralit<\/a>y” with the advertised aim of protecting
\n freedom of the seas. This had the effect of isolating Great Britain
\n diplomatically, thereby nullifying its naval advantage. France labored
\n under no similar restrictions. This is why the French fleet was
\n able to supply ninety percent of the weapons used by American rebels
\n in their War for Independence.<\/span><\/p>\n

Russia was
\n one of several countries to which the Continental Congress had deployed
\n envoys in search of aid. Francis Dana, a former secretary to John
\n Adams, endured a long, lonely, and apparently fruitless mission
\n to the Court of St. Petersburg. Harried by the imperial secret police
\n and immersed in the exhausting intrigue of court politics, Dana
\n was never given an audience by the Empress, whose decisions were
\n guided by calculated self-interest, rather than idealism. The dejected
\n American emissary must have been astonished on his return to hear
\n John Adams laud Catherine as a “friend” of liberty\u2019s cause,
\n and to hear Washington extol the virtues of the “great Potentate
\n of the North.”\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

In his book
\n The
\n Great Upheaval: America and the Birth of the Modern World 1788-1800<\/i><\/a>,
\n historian Jay Winik describes Empress Catherine \u2014 the authoritarian
\n ruler of a Russian police state \u2014 as the “midwife” of
\n American independence. The American revolt quite likely would not
\n have succeeded if Britain hadn\u2019t been “neutralized and isolated
\n by Catherine\u2019s Armed League”; by denying King George\u2019s request
\n for military aid, and using her influence to curtail Britain\u2019s naval
\n advantage, the Russian tyrant “helped bolster the hopes of
\n beleaguered American rebels fighting for their lives\u2026.”<\/span><\/p>\n

The Russian
\n government of Vladimir Putin has rendered similar aid to an American
\n whistle-blower who is fighting for his life \u2014 much to the dismay
\n and outrage of people who are Americans by birth, rather than conviction,
\n and who mistakenly believe that patriotism is measured by one\u2019s
\n willingness to abide the institutional criminality of the government
\n that insolently presumes to rule us. <\/span><\/p>\n

In 1995, when
\n he plagued the House of Representatives, the
\n execrable Senator Charles Schumer<\/a> of New York ardently defended
\n the Regime\u2019s annihilation of the Branch Davidians outside Waco,
\n and treated with unfiltered scorn anybody with sufficient temerity
\n to condemn that Soviet-caliber episode of state-inflicted mass murder.
\n As it happens, the
\n FBI\u2019s campaign to annihilate state enemies at Mt. Carmel received
\n material assistance from the Russian security services<\/a> in the
\n person of the late Dr. Igor Smirnov of the Moscow Institute of Psycho-Correction
\n \u2014 whose wife, Elena Rusalkina, has continued his work as a
\n “counter-terrorism” contractor for the Department of Homeland
\n Security<\/a>.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Commissar
\n Schumer, who lauded the joint U.S.-Russian production at Mt. Carmel,
\n is now distraught that the Russians aren\u2019t willing to help the Regime
\n in Washington apprehend a state enemy so he can be tortured and
\n put through a show trial. In a June 23 CNN interview, Schumer
\n fumed<\/a> that by “aiding and abetting Snowden\u2019s escape,”
\n Putin had “put a finger in the eye of the United States.”
\n Schumer much prefers it when the Russians are aiding and abetting
\n Washington\u2019s murderous crimes against the American people.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Like the rest
\n of his detestable cohort, Schumer believes that the world\u2019s inhabitants,
\n including foreign rulers, have a moral obligation to submit to Washington\u2019s
\n will. Assuming that Putin was involved in the decision to facilitate
\n Edward Snowden\u2019s flight from Hong Kong to Latin America, his actions
\n may well have been motivated by a desire to give a metaphorical
\n middle digit to Schumer and his ilk.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

In any case,
\n if Putin consciously aided Snowden, that choice \u2013 like those made
\n by the Empress Catherine \u2014 was based on calculations of political
\n advantage, rather than a principled devotion to individual liberty.
\n And Edward Snowden\u2019s willingness to accept help from Russia is akin
\n to the entreaties made on behalf of the American rebels by Francis
\n Dana.<\/span><\/p>\n

Commenting
\n about Snowden\u2019s flight to Russia en route to Latin America, a very
\n good friend (and former editor) of mine observed: “If Edward Snowden
\n is going to hopscotch around the word to locations where elections
\n are rigged and human rights ignored, that giant sucking sound is
\n sympathy evaporating for him.”<\/span><\/p>\n

A better way
\n of viewing Snowden\u2019s behavior is that he is hopscotching around
\n the world to countries not<\/i> ruled by governments that kill
\n people by remote control, and are strong enough to prevent him from
\n being seized and tortured by the only government that routinely
\n commits crimes of that kind. <\/span><\/p>\n

Yes, Vladimir
\n Putin and his clique are products of the Soviet system that murdered
\n tens of millions of people. At present, however, they are content
\n to contain their ambitions to the country they currently control.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Russian drones
\n aren\u2019t plying the skies above distant countries, raining death and
\n terror on helpless neighborhoods. Putin the ex-KGB chief doesn\u2019t
\n have Tuesday meetings to authorize summary executions on the basis
\n of a “Kill List” compiled by anonymous and unaccountable
\n functionaries. Russia\u2019s
\n FSB secret police, like its counterpart, the FBI, does stage false-flag
\n terrorist incidents<\/a>, but once again, those are carried out for
\n domestic political purposes. Moscow doesn\u2019t provide arms, training,
\n and support to terrorist groups in Syria, Iran, and elsewhere; that\u2019s
\n Washington\u2019s gig. And since September 2001 it has Washington, not
\n Moscow, that employs the services of KGB-trained secret police in
\n countries like Uzbekistan<\/a>
\n and Syria<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

During the
\n Brezhnev era, Soviet “journalists” routinely participated
\n in KGB-orchestrated denunciations of dissidents and human rights
\n activists. As the well-coiffed commissar David
\n Gregory<\/a> demonstrated during his June 24 interview with Glenn
\n Greenwald, behavior of that kind is not quite commonplace for members
\n of the American media elite. An even more repellent example was
\n provided by New
\n York Times<\/i> columnist Ross Sorkin, who said on CNBC<\/a> that
\n “I\u2019d almost arrest Glenn Greenwald [because] he wants to help
\n get him to Ecuador or whatever.”<\/span><\/p>\n

Russia is ruled
\n by a degenerate gangster regime, not a cunning Communist cabal pursuing
\n global hegemony and ideological domination. In many important ways,
\n that long-suffering country is less collectivist than the United
\n States has become<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

In Russia today,
\n “Solzhenitsyn’s Gulag
\n Archipelago<\/a> <\/i>is required reading in schools for 11th graders,”
\n notes Russian writer
\n Stanislav Mishin<\/a> (who could be described as the Russian equivalent
\n of a Pat Buchanan-style nationalist conservative). “All the brutality
\n of the Soviets and the crimes that were committed will be in the
\n minds of our children for generations. Where is any review [in American
\n schools] of the crimes that Wall Street committed when it sponsored
\n and set up those same Communist Marxists or Hitler’s Fascist Marxists?
\n Nowhere. Where is the admission of the massacres that the American
\n army committed in the independent nation of the Confederate States?
\n Nowhere, nor [is there] anything of the terror bombings of German
\n cities or anything else of that nature. You will never hear anything
\n on these from those NYC\/DC blabber heads who love their Wall Street
\n and think that genocidaires like Sherman were bully.”<\/span><\/p>\n

Mishin observes
\n that under the administration of former President Medvedev (a prot\u00c3\u00a9g\u00c3\u00a9
\n of Putin), Russia had a flat income tax \u2013 “and not the 30% or so
\n suggested by those American conservatives but at 13” \u2013 and a top
\n corporate tax rate of 24% “compared to the American Federal rate
\n of 36% and additional state rates.” There is also a far greater
\n diversity of opinion in the Russian media than one finds in the
\n American “free” press \u2014 a fact underscored quite memorably by the
\n way the American media eagerly joined in the Orwellian Two-Minutes
\n Hate of Edward Snowden.<\/span><\/p>\n

What about
\n foreign aggression and revolutionary subversion? Aren’t Putin and
\n his comrades to blame for promoting terrorism? One imagines Mishin
\n drawing a steadying breath before addressing that subject. <\/span><\/p>\n

“Who
\n invaded over 30 nations in less than 200 years?” Mishin quite reasonably
\n inquires. “Who has fought over 6 wars since 1991: Iraq followed
\n by 10 years of bombing them, Somalia, Bosnia, Yugoslavia, Iraq,
\n and Afghanistan, while engaging unofficially in Somalia, Kenya,
\n Yemen, Pakistan and the Philippines? Who waxes and screams for full
\n invasions of Iran, Yemen, Pakistan, Venezuela? Who threatened to
\n bomb our ships and come in and defend the Chechen Islamics? Who
\n sponsored revolutions in Serbia, Armenia, Georgia, Ukraine, Belarus
\n (failed), Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan (failed), Moldova (failed)?”<\/span><\/p>\n

Whatever we
\n learn about Snowden\u2019s motives and affiliations, questions of the
\n kind raised by Mishin should be honestly considered by those who
\n criticize the whistle-blower for “hopscotching” from country
\n to country to elude the long reach of the drone-murderers and dungeon
\n masters in Washington. Assuming that a gap separates post-Soviet
\n Russia from proto-Soviet Amerika, it’s one that can be crossed in
\n the kind of modest jump one performs in a hopscotch game.<\/span><\/p>\n

June
\n 26, 2013<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

William
\n Norman Grigg [send him mail<\/a>]
\n publishes the Pro
\n Libertate<\/a> blog and hosts the Pro
\n Libertate radio program<\/a>. <\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

Copyright
\n \u00a9 2013 William Norman Grigg<\/span><\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

The
\n Best of William Norman Grigg<\/a><\/b><\/span>
\n
\n <\/span> <\/b><\/span><\/p>\n

This article originally appeared on: Lew Rockwell<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by William Norman Grigg Recently by William Norman Grigg: Joseph Weekley: Self-Pitying Stormtrooper If it hadn\u2019t been for the subtle and cynical intervention of the imperial Russian government, the American War for Independence might have failed. George Washington and his colleagues would have been condemned as traitors, and then dispatched to eternity with all of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[487],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-45321","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-breaking-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45321","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=45321"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45321\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=45321"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=45321"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=45321"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}