Closing Embassies in Middle East - Page 5

gg,
If Snowden was a traitor he would still be at his job selling secrets to the highest bidder.
That's not what he was doing, it's not what he did, is it.

(It's sad that the average citizen is so limited in what we can do.)
Do about what?
Not sure what you mean.

I wonder about Snowden, how he got where he was in the first place.
We could use more whistle blowers in my opinion, if that's what we're talking about here.


Hot off the press, now there is an American connection in the terror plot, sorta maybe, sketchy details.

Always fun reading your banter bee..........

Putting aside what I personally think of US's policy towards other countries, If Snowden leaked info concerning what US government does to its own people he is no traitor, on the contrary he's a hero.
But if Snowden leaked info and data concerning what the US is doings towards other countries then he's a 100% traitor and should be looked at and treated so.
If he cooperates with Russia by providing sensitive data that will affect the national security then he's a defector and punishing him is justified even by assassinating him. Just my honest opinion, that does not mean I am pro hostile American actions against other states.

Ibrahim

Why is Russia so interested in Snowden?!!!!

This is a good article by  Colin S. Cavell
http://www.globalresearch.ca/america-s-dependency-on-middle-east-oil/30177

Here's a very interesting part of the article
 

The Fateful 1945 Deal Struck by FDR & Ibn Saud

In the closing days of World War II, U.S. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt met Saudi King Abdulaziz Ibn Saud on board the USS Quincy in the Great Bitter Lake in Egypt, north of the Suez Canal and the Red Sea, on February 14, 1945.  For Ibn Saud, the founder of Saudi Arabia, the meeting was an opportunity to secure military and technical support in order to consolidate his rule over the Arabian Peninsula.  For the tiring Roosevelt, who would soon die two months later and who had guided the nation through the tough battles and harsh lessons of WWII, it was a chance to strike a long-term deal for secure oil resources with an inferior and fledgling state.  As Saudi Ambassador to the U.S., Prince Turki Al-Faisal, remarked of the famous meeting in a lecture in 2007:  “Oil had been discovered two decades before in our neighboring countries of Bahrain and Kuwait [10].  Soon after, Saudi Arabia was inundated with various British and French interests, seeking concessions in the Kingdom.  Ibn Saud, however, chose to deal with the Americans.  He knew the United States did not have a history of colonial exploitation [11].  Also, Ibn Saud was familiar with the United States’ constitution, with its guarantees of individual liberties.  This appealed to his love of freedom.  So he concluded an agreement of exploration for oil with Standard Oil of California, in 1933.  He also wanted to get Roosevelt involved in de-colonizing the Arab States, including Palestine, that were still under European colonial rule” (January 26, 2007).

The deal established what was referred to as a “special relationship” between Saudi Arabia and America.  ‘Special’ indeed, as the soon-to-be co-victor of the second world war was establishing a position of predominance in the Middle East with access to cheap oil in perpetuity in exchange for a guarantee to maintain the rule of a single family while locking its populations into a straightjacket of undemocratic and dictatorial rule.  This equation of maintaining a single family in power in exchange for cheap access to oil would become the model for a subsequent post-WWII U.S. foreign policy in dealing with countries which were naturally blessed with this crucial resource.   Former bureau chief for The Washington Post and current scholar at the Washington, DC-based Middle East Institute, Thomas W. Lippman, writes that Ibn Saud received from FDR a promise that the U.S. president would “do nothing to assist the Jews against the Arabs and would make no move hostile to the Arab people” (2005, p. 29). 

Subsequent U.S. actions have clearly aided and abetted Israeli expansion and aggression in the region, though not normally to the detriment of Arab rulers, who from Ibn Saud’s perspective constituted “the Arab people.”  The masses, from Ibn Saud’s point of view, as well as that of his fellow autocratic rulers in the region, are not considered autonomous agents with free will and self-determination but rather a dangerous rabble to be ruled over with an iron fist and dictated to.  FDR and subsequent U.S. administrations have concluded that when it comes to dealing with oil-rich countries, it is not only easier to placate one ruling family, as opposed to a democratic mass, but, as well, it is politically viable—at least for a certain period of time—as negative blowback [12] from dictatorial rule will primarily fall upon the indigenous ruler and not his external military backers.  As John Perkins, author of Confessions of an Economic Hitman (2004), describes the process:  “If we don’t like what a democratically-elected leader of another country is doing, for example opposing the exploitation of oil in his country, someone who looks like me will walk into that president’s office–I had the job at one time–walks into the office and says:  “And now I just want to remind you that I can make you and your family very, very rich if you play my game, our game. 

Or I can see to it that you’re thrown out of office or assassinated if you decide to fulfill your campaign promises.  And usually it’s still a little more subtly than that, because there may be a tape recorder listening.  But they get the message, because every one of those presidents knows what happened to Arbenz of Guatemala and Allende of Chile and Roldós of Equador and Lumumba of The Congo and Torrijos and on and on.  The list is very long of presidents that we have had thrown out or assassinated.  There’s no question about that.  And they all know this.  So we perpetuate the system that way.  Here you are:  From this pocket, you offer a few hundred million dollars of corruption.  Or from this pocket, you offer subversives, jackals, to go in and overthrow the government or assassinate the president.  And this has happened time and time and time again.  Usually, the economic hitmen are successful, so we don’t need to send in the jackals.  But on those occasions when we’re not successful—as for me, I failed with Omar Torrijos in Panama and Jaime Roldós in Equador—and, so, the jackals were sent in and assassinated these men” (Diaz, 2009).

 

Though each of these post-WWII interventions, coup d’états, and assassinations were motivated by various determinants, it has been the centrality of oil that has consistently informed U.S. foreign policy since 1945.  This is because WWII highlighted to all sides the centrality of oil to modern economic and military supremacy.  Dr. Keith Miller, a speaker with the Organization of American Historians Distinguished Lectureship Series since 1999, provides the following vignette about an incident involving the famous American Army General George S. Patton as he was directing a frontal tank assault across Europe in WWII:  “Let me begin with a short story.  The great tank commander—George S. Patton—found out the hard way how important oil was (in the form of gasoline) to the war effort.  His tanks were moving so fast as they approached the Seigfried Line of Germany, they all ran out of gasoline.  To get more fuel to the fiery general, as quickly as possible, it had to be airlifted from Normandy.”

Miller continues:  “But, many more stories of a similar kind could be told.  The truth is—oil was the indispensable product, in all its forms, to the Allied campaigns around the world.  Without it World War Two could never have been won.  For oil, once processed or refined in various ways, became the source or indispensable material for laying runways, making toluene (the chief component of TNT) for bombs, the manufacturing of synthetic rubber for tires, and the distilling into gasoline (particularly at 100-octane levels) for use in trucks, tanks, jeeps, and airplanes.  And, that is not to mention the need for oil as a lubricant for guns and machinery” (2002).

 

Ready access to oil on an inexpensive and dependable basis would become the lens through which nearly all major U.S. subsequent foreign policy actions would be assessed.  And neither Christian morality nor American democratic values would hinder this quest.   Hence, the Faustian bargain between FDR and Ibn Saud in 1945 was truly a pact with the devil from which the U.S. may never be able to extricate itself from.

Russia,
I don't think they wanted him either officially, it's a political nightmare for them to deal with.
If he goes public with information it's whistle blowing and everyone gets the same information at the same time.
 

Ibrahim, just an observation: Your posts seem to be taking on an anti-Jewish sentiment. You have said recently that the unrest in your region is political and social. If that is truly the case, it becomes difficult to explain the animosity over a tiny piece of real estate. I would think there would be plenty of room for everyone over there, no?

Yes Carlin you are spot on regarding plenty room for all. I am not anti-Jewish at all. Moons got right the message I wanted to convey regarding what the US does in our region. I am also not Ant-America,I am not against any state in absolute stand, I am against policies. The US might be the most hated state outside its territory, yet it is the Idol for most nations and individuals, amazing isn't it?

Ibrahim

yet it is the Idol for most nations and individuals, amazing isn't it?

Ibrahim, there is a certain dichotomy to the US, as it stands.  The original idea was a good one, but it has been perverted over time by insatiable greed and power.  Still, what remains of the ideas of liberty and self-sovereignty in the world will probably live and die with us.  If we are universally guilty of anything, it may be that our individuality has given way to a destructive individualism, where the average American concerns himself with little more than the latest Apple product, reality tv show, or the particular eating establishment at which they will stuff their face on any given night.  It is a good thing to realize and enjoy the fruit of your labor, it is another to become defined by it.  The result, as long as you leave us to our cell phones, suv's and our enlarging waistlines, we're typically content enough to let government run away with their domestically subversive, and sometimes internationally destructive policies.

How do we know for sure whether or not Snowden sold information?  If he did neither he nor the country he sold it to would make that public knowledge.   If he is just a whistle blower, then I support him.

When I said the average citizen is limited I meant we can do so little to change policies.  We can vote for leaders and hope they will support our views but that does not usually work out the way we want it to.