Scrambling His Vassal States

 

  
Scrambling His Vassal States

Posted July, 2013  by Richard Hill
 
   Edward Snowden, holed up in Moscow International Airport has applied for asylum in over twenty countries. As of July 5th, his requests have been refused. His whistle blowing has put a spotlight on America’s carefully maintained image as the beacon of freedom and democracy. Barack Obama shrugged it off with the glib comment that he wouldn’t be scrambling any jets to apprehend him but when it was rumored that Snowden was on the Bolivian presidential plane returning from a meeting of oil producing countries in Moscow, he revealed how furious and desperate he is by scrambling his vassal states. These obsequious Spanish, French, Italian and Portuguese governments snapped to the will of the United States government with immediate, lock step acquiescence and blocked their airspace to a sovereign nation’s presidential jet, an unprecedented move.
   A photo of President Morales sitting alone on a couch in an airport lounge in Austria, his exhausted pilots asleep in chairs nearby after enduring a flight back and forth across Europe that culminated in a three hour circling of Vienna highlights the gravity of this incident and begs the question, how could the leaders of these four seemingly independent nations not see the blatant hypocrisy of their actions in lieu of their self righteous indignation to Snowden’s revelations that Washington has been spying on their embassies, their corporations, and millions of their citizens?   
   Le Monde, Der Spiegel, and The Daily Mail have each reported that three NSA equivalents, the French DGSE, the German BND and the British GCHQ have been spying on their own people for years. The Austerity imposed misery that European governments have subjected their populations to resulted in Ireland and the Southern Periphery nations selling their national assets to banks and multinational corporations at fire sale prices. Unemployment in Greece and Spain is at 27%. Families are abandoning their children. Suicide rates have increased by 52% in Italy, 24% in Greece and 16% in Ireland.
   What kind of leaders could destroy their citizen’s way of life and secretly spy on them at the same time? A corporate banker comes to mind, a banker like the man appointed prime minister of Italy, one Mario Monti, a member of Goldman Sachs Board of International Advisors, or a banker like the head of the International Monetary Fund in France, Antonio Borges, former director of Goldman Sachs International. The Secretary of the Treasury who bailed out the banks in the United States when the nation cried for their nationalization was Henry Paulson, former CEO of Goldman Sachs. The new chief of the Bank of England, Mark Carney is a former executive of Goldman Sachs. The head of the European Central Bank, Mario Draghi is former managing director of Goldman Sachs International. Lucas Papademos, the appointed prime minister of Greece is a former executive at Goldman Sachs and the former head of the Central Bank of Greece who, with Goldman Sachs loaned then hid billions of dollars to Greece that it could never repay all the while betting against the Greek government in order to make a killing.
   On June 9th, Edward Snowden gave the people of the World proof that everything about them is being spied on illegally and in secret. As of July 6th, his quest for asylum has shown us that though Goldman Sachs, the rest of Wall Street and multinational corporations may own Washington and Western Europe, they do not own Latin America. Nicaragua, Venezuela and Bolivia have offered Edward Snowden asylum.

Copyright Richard Hill