EDWARD
SNOWDEN AND Julian Assange are not heroes to anyone with the exception of the
West's enemies. They believe themselves to have served the interests of free
speech and of the right to know. By being in a position to wash the West's
dirty linen in public, they did so with alacrity. Their minds (or should I say
egos?), became quickly focused on themselves, and their place in history, as
defenders of liberty - they possibly hoped that future generations would look
as adoringly upon them as they rightly do Martin Luther King and Nelson Mandela
today.
Assange and Snowden are peculiar
individuals. Snowden dropped out of university (which should have told the CIA
something), and had been working in intelligence gathering for only a matter of
months on $200,000 a year… and was living with a pole dancer?
Assange, on the other hand, is
wanted by the Swedish authorities concerning charges of a sexual nature. He is
currently holed up in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, and makes periodic
visits to the embassy's balcony, where he stands like some South American
dictator blessing his Guardianistas who venerate the merest nod in their
direction as he brings them up to date with his current thinking.
It is not the poor that will inherit
the earth but the naive (especially in the West); after which they will have
helped destroy it by their callow forthrightness, guilelessness and
gullibility. Snowden today sits at an airport in Russia, probably preening
himself because of the embarrassment he
has caused to America and, less so, the UK.
But President Putin, as a onetime
member of the KGB (a body which Mr Snowden probably knows little of), is only
too glad to have a simpleton on his hands. At the very least Snowden's presence
embarrasses Obama- as it should.
JOURNALISTS
ARE FULL of guesses regarding Snowden' s ultimate destination. Some say Russia,
while others say Ecuador. But a late entry is Venezuela who have offered him
citizenship in this land of socialist milk and honey…but with one proviso -
bring your own toilet rolls.
Cuba is an outside possibility, and
may turn out to be more than a mere dropping off point to Ecuador. But Cuba is a long shot, even for a
short stay over. Cuba is in no position to further antagonise America. The
country knows that the Marxist game is up, for they have been kept frozen in
the 1950s, ever since the 1959 Communist revolution.
Snowden will be passed like a parcel
between those nations which have a varying degree of hostility to America to
keep the embarrassment flowing. Snowden, no doubt, (remember he worked in
intelligence) has chosen his travel plans accordingly.
THE WEST
NEEDS AN EFFECTIVE intelligence service; and to be effective it needs access to
people's lives. The cold war may be over; a war won by the West. But it will
turn out to be a pyrrhic victory if communism is replaced by Islamists intent
upon jihad against the West.
The awful events that took place in
New York on 9/11 were (like Pearl Harbour[1]) a declaration of war, not
only on America, but also (after the London Bombings in July 2005) on Western
world.
We are told that hundreds of young British
born Jihadists have taken themselves of to all four corners of the Muslim world
to train as terrorists whose aim is a caliphate that would cover Europe. To such idealists
Syria is their Spanish Civil War; and one day they will return back to this
country moulded by war and indoctrinated by Islamists like the Taliban and al-Qaeda.
The intelligence services are
worried; for these returnees will have a population of 2.7 million Muslims to hide among if they wish
this country ill. They have to be, indeed must
be, watched, as secretly and as unscrupulously as the law allows, and if it does
not permit any particular activity that MI5may wish to undertake, then the law
must change to accommodate it.
ASSANGE
AND SNOWDEN know not what they do. They have, of course, the hero worship of
much of the liberal press and media generally to encourage them. Is it little
wonder they used the Guardian, New York Times, and Washington Post, when they sought to release, what they consider to
be a devastating indictment of the West?
There is however a third individual who
made Assange what he is today, just as, no doubt, Assange has made Snowden what
he hopes to become today. This individual, physically speaking, is among the
most unlikely of recruits the American armed services have drawn to its breast.
Bradley Manning set the ball rolling.
It was Private First Class Manning who released intelligence emails to Assange's WikiLeaks, to the embarrassment (among others)
of the diplomatic American community. Some of it was tittle-tattle that
diplomats engage in among each other, but also contained title-tattle about
what the West's leaders thought of each other. Hundreds of thousands of
documents fell into the hands of WikiLeaks via Private (first class) Manning,
who now awaits trial for treason which could result, unless a deal is struck,
in the death penalty.
On the other hand, neither Snowden
or Assange will ever meet such an end. If the liberal classes seek a hero, then
surely, from their point of view it should be no less a figure than Private
Manning; a figure it seems, of only momentarily interest to the liberal
community: and it will not be the first time in history that a useful idiot has
served such a purpose only to be forgotten by history - a fate which both
Snowden and Assange have little intention of emulating.
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