The UK’s austerity policy is ideologically driven and is aimed at diverting finance from the poor to the rich under the pretext of the economic crisis, writer John Wight told RT.

Britain's Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne is announcing billions more in the government spending cuts while austerity measures are already biting for many people across the UK.
Osborne claimed that British economy is “out of intensive care.” RT asked Wight if he thinks that is really the case.

John Wight: Only in a fine world of the Tory party would that be the case. The country’s seen 1.1 percent growth in the last three years – the worst level of growth in this country’s economy over the last 100 years. That can by no means be considered a success. 

RT: Who's going to be the most affected by these latest cuts?

JW: Clearly the poor are going to be hit harder as a continuation of the mass experiment in human despair, which this coalition government has cheated to describe as an economic policy. It is ideologically driven and we see economics of the madhouse. And it is done with the objective of affecting the transference of wealth from the poor to the rich under the pretext of an economic crisis – not reason, it’s a pre-text. The economic crisis which hit this country in 2007 was their economic 9/11.

RT: Official figures show the deficit has been growing last year, despite previous cuts. So is there any point to them?

JW: Well, that’s what I’ve just said: this is ideologically driven. If you are considering these policies on the basis of economics, then clearly it is completely irrational. The US economist Paul Krugman lately described it as “a medieval doctor draining a patient’s blood,” and when that doesn’t work, draining more blood from the patient. This is entirely appropriate to describe this economic policy, this austerity. Austerity historically has been discredited. It doesn’t work in times of recession. At a time of recession the government needs to spend more to reintroduce the man which is contracted as profits stumble. And you must place this along the fact that the Office of Financial Statistics, the government’s own body set up to monitor these things, came up with a figure in April which stated that in the final quarter of last year UK businesses, excluding banks, were sitting on 318 billion pounds of surplus. And that money is money we need in the economy. They are not investing, they spend all the inducements from the government by the way of tax subsidies and tax cuts for the rich that the government has given to the rich over the last three years. 

RT: What do you think is the best way that the government can fight the deficit?

JW: It has to start investing in the real economy. It has to start directing banks to lend rather than pleading with banks, especially banks in which we own a majority share, such as RBS. The government should take over RBS’s operations and start lending in the interest of the real economy. The economy needs it. We have a housing crisis in the country, it’s the worst in the world, it’s a scandal. And we need to start investing in affordable homes. Rather than punishing the poor for being poor we should start actually diverting money from the rich to the poor, as befitting a civilized society. 

RT: Osborne announced cuts to the police budget. Do you think that will affect the crime rate?

JW: Well, not really, because based on what we know now a lot of criminals are actually in the police. They are also sitting in the boardrooms and in the House of Lords. It may have an effect. But I think they’ve consolidated the police and taken away the regional power from the police. It is yet to be seen. But as I say the cuts in the police budget are minimal compared to the cuts for the poor in terms of benefit cuts and so on.

This time the name of the game is not “Syria”, but “Snowden”. Moreover, the Snowden story is already evolving into a global debate on what are the do’s and don’t of a decent partnership and the ABC of personal freedoms and genuine democracy.

The detective story of the 30-year old NSA leaker, who landed in Moscow after leaving Hong Kong, added to the growing frustration which has plagued US-Russian relations in recent months.

Unwrapping the riddle of Snowden’s whereabouts President Putin confirmed he is still at the transit area of Moscow’s Sheremetyevo Airport. Denying any accusations against Russia as “nonsense and rubbish” as Snowden “has not crossed” the Russian border, Putin called on the US to turn down anti-Russian rhetoric and finally tried to draw a line under the whole story in his trademark colorful language: “In any case, I would like not to deal with such issues because it is like shearing a pig: there's lots of squealing and little fleece”.

However, as the Snowden saga is far from being over, the scandal has a potential to pave the way for a lengthy period of even more chilled relations between Moscow and Washington; its ups and downs at present can be described not as a “cold war”, but a “cold peace”.

While the Obama administration refrains from further rocking the boat, it is done by US congressmen, who are exercising fresh attacks on President Putin and making thinly-veiled warnings about US retaliation.

“The bottom line is very simple. Allies are supposed to treat each other decently, and Putin always seems almost eager to put a finger in the eye of the United States, whether it is Syria, Iran and now, of course, with Snowden. That’s not how allies should treat one another, and I think it will have serious consequences for the United States-Russia relationship”, -- explains Sen. Charles E.Schumer.

The dominant mood on the large part of the American political elite is seemingly this: the Edward Snowden case comes as another defining moment for US relations with the rest of the world, including Russia. So, by not lending the US a helping hand at this critical point, both Russia and China placed themselves on the other side of global barricades – in a camp of old US adversaries, like Cuba and Venezuela.

Neocons would stick to the point which long before the Snowden saga was articulated by some leading Republicans, including presidential hopeful Mitt Romney during the 2012 presidential race. Mr.Romney repeatedly spoke of an informal global alliance of non-democratic regimes, which is trying to hinder the interests of the US and their Western allies world-wide, whenever the situation allows, at every possible point (the policy of “putting a finger in the eye”).

Following this way of understanding things, the Snowden scandal is seen by some as another lively episode of a grand battle “democracies” versus “autocracies”. The list of the countries which has adopted non-cooperative approach on the Snowden case is becoming highly symbolic: China, Russia, Venezuela, Cuba, Ecuador (either regular autocracies, like China or Cuba, or troubled democracies sliding to autocratic rule, like Russia). So, it looks as if the whole story illustrates the slogan of the day once coined by Andrew Kuchins ” Autocracies of the world, unite!  

Truly, in the Snowden case democracy is a core divisive issue, but things are not that simple. Ironically, it is Edward Snowden who is waging the battle for democracy on his own, posing as another “warrior of truth” – but not a traitor. He explained that what made him become a whistleblower was the credibility gap between the state and civil society. So, on his part it was not an act of national betrayal, but a decent protest move to expose US crimes and human rights violations both at home and abroad.  In a way, he hinted he wanted to help President Obama who is more and more often described as “George Obama” (but not a reincarnation of President Kennedy).

The Snowden case pinpoints a certain tendency. After Bradley Manning, the 25-year old US soldier, accused of passing classified files to WikiLeaks, we have another story of a young American citizen, who is behind an important leak of classified information. While some in Washington tend to describe it as a global plot against the US, with Russia siding with US adversaries, the cases of both Manning and Snowden have a lot in common. Both cases spilt America into those, who consider whistleblowers traitors, putting US national security at risk and those who describe them as a brave citizens, who were not scared to expose the US government wrongdoing in the interests of Americans themselves.

No surprise, that the story of Snowden has already triggered a global debate on what is the delicate balancing act between democracy and security, which make uneasy bedfellows. In his recent interview to RT President Putin hinted that surveillance "is becoming a global phenomenon in the context of combating international terrorism", and that "such methods are generally practicable". However, "the question is how well those security agencies are controlled by the public."

"I can tell you that, at least in Russia, you cannot just go and tap into someone’s phone conversation without a warrant issued by a court. That’s more or less the way a civilized society should go about fighting terrorism with modern-day technology. As long as it is exercised within the boundaries of the law that regulates intelligence activities, it’s alright. But if it’s unlawful, then it’s bad”, said Putin.

So, it is probably high time for President Obama to answer a tough question about what went wrong in the US to produce the phenomena of Manning-Snowden. It is not President Putin who is “putting finger in the eye of the United States”, but a growing army of disenchanted Americans, who are not buying President Obama’s notion that “you can’t have 100 per cent security and 100 per cent privacy”.

The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RT.

The US government pulls out all stops to prosecute, hound, and capture those who reveal classified data. This plus constant control and surveillance makes it impossible to keep anything private or secret, Pulitzer-winning journalist Chris Hedges told RT.

RT: The US is focused on chasing Snowden, which seems to have distracted from his revelations - is anyone in the States asking whether the surveillance system prism was constitutional?

Chris Hedges: Some people are, but not many, which is quite distressing. You have Glenn Greenwald, the journalist from The Guardian who broke the story. You have lawyers Michael Ratner from the Center of the Constitutional Rights asking those kinds of questions, but I think that for those of us who care about freedom of information, about protecting sources, about stopping wholesale government surveillance, I think it’s been a very lonely time. And I think one of the things that’s been so distressing is that the serious questions that should be asked are not being asked.

RT: Does that play into the hands of the government and what Washington would like to keep secret?

CH: Well they can’t keep it a secret anymore, it’s exposed. But I think what they have done is divert attention to that kind of a mini-soap opera that is now taking place, as Snowden leaps from Hong Kong to Moscow, to ostensibly Cuba, Ecuador. They knew we saw the same thing happening to Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, to Bradley Manning, who exposed war crimes and is now on trial in military court in Maryland. It’s a very similar and oppressing kind of scenario, where the state propaganda machine has quite effectively diverted attention away from where it should be, which is the effect that there is no more privacy anymore left in the United States, and focused attention on character, on activities of Snowden. Through their lens, it’s not a dispassionate view of either Snowden or what he’s done.

 RT: When do you think Snowden might reveal his whereabouts and where do you think he will go?

CH: He doesn’t have many options: Cuba, Ecuador, maybe Venezuela, that’s about it. He has of course asked for political asylum as [Assange did], although the British government isn’t allowing him to leave the Ecuadorian embassy in London. I mean these kinds of questions, again, for me are not the paramount questions as a journalist. The fact that the government sees virtually all the communications, electronic communications of American citizens, means that I can’t work. I think one of the reasons that Snowden went public with his disclosure is that he knew quite well that the US government has all the communications that Glenn Greenwald has made, and there was no way to hide those kind of contacts between himself as a traditional whistleblower and the journalist who wrote up this story of the wholesale spying on most American citizens by the National Security Agency. And that means that in essence you’re shutting down any capacity to shine a light on the internal workings of power. It becomes impossible to challenge the official narrative - and let’s not forget that the government quite selectively leaks classified information all the time to make themselves look good. But once information is exposed, that tarnishes them, and I think it’s quite clearly unconstitutional. Then the security and surveillance state pulls out all stops to prosecute, hound and capture those person or persons who made those revelations, and that’s precisely what we’re seeing, it’s not an uncommon scenario judging by what we’ve seen happening to Julian Assange and given of course what’s been happening to Bradley Manning.

RT: The authorities say surveillance is essential to counter terrorism. But does it justify daily spying on people, including on heads of state?

CH: I covered Al-Qaeda for the New York Times and spent seven years in the Middle East with a variety of Jihadist groups. These people are well aware, acutely aware of the fact that all of their communications is closely monitored by American security and intelligence officials. So there’s nothing new in these revelations to them. What is new is that we as Americans essentially have no privacy left, no capacity to communicate without the eye of the government upon every form of communications that we make – that’s what’s new. And that has nothing to do with terrorism, that has nothing to do with national security, that has to do with control of the population, as we see greater and greater effects - catastrophic effects - from climate change as the very fragile global economy again teeters on the brink of collapse, the security in surveillance state wants the capacity to shut down any form of dissent, and this mechanism of the wholesale surveillance gives them precisely that.

NSA programs revealed by Edward Snowden will continue as they are “lawful, appropriate, and effective” and the US people’s representatives voted in favor of them, former NSA and CIA director Michael Hayden said on RT's SophieCo.

RT: In your opinion, is Snowden a hero or a traitor?

Michael Hayden: Well, he certainly is not a hero. I don’t think he meets the legal definition of being a ‘traitor’ according to our Constitution. But he certainly has done a very, very bad thing and I think he is also a very troubled young man. So perhaps the truth lies somewhere in between the two extremes you’ve pointed out.

RT: Do you think he could be a Chinese spy agent? Dick Cheney seems to think so?

MH: I don’t have evidence of it. It’s a curious thing. Why would he go to Hong Kong for his refuge while other places are available that he could have chosen, and given the state of the Sino-American relations, particularly when it comes to things about the cyber domain, it’s really was a curious choice. But again, no evidence to date. I tell you how I would handle it while still in government. I would make this one of my working hypotheses - one, not all of my working hypotheses - and then try to seek out evidence that proves or disproves the hypothesis.

RT: You were the head of NSA and CIA. What happens when a young colleague of yours, a talented good guy, walks into your office and tells you “Boss, I think we have the problem with PRISM.” What do you say to that?

MH: Actually, that is a great question. What makes all of this so troubling is that Mr. Snowden didn’t do that. If he wants to be a true whistleblower, you need to go to a supervisor, the supervisor’s boss or the General Counsel inside the organization or the Inspector General or even to members of Congress to express his complaints. There is a clear structure within the US Government to do that. Now look. I’ll be the first to admit that requires great courage and human beings being human beings - there might be some of them who would attempt to take retribution against an officer who attempted to do that. But that’s the right way to do these things. When somebody comes to you with a concern, certainly, it’s the truth for me. You’ve got to take those concerns very seriously. This is somebody acting out of conscience and you need to sit down and talk with that individual and if necessary follow up to see if the concerns actually have real merit.

RT: I remember back in 2007 there were also cases of whistleblowing when you were the head of NSA. Did these men address you with their concerns before they went public with their information?

MH: I had actually left NSA by 2005 and so those events of 2007 and 2008 came after I’d left. I’ve no knowledge of that other than complaining about some technological decisions that were made inside NSA, I’ve no knowledge that anything akin to an appropriate whistleblower process had begun at the agency.

RT: General Hayden, with a secrecy breach like this, a disaster basically, what’s going on inside the NSA and CIA right now? You should know as somebody who’s being responsible for this. What are you going to do when the major crisis exposes you?

MH: What you’re looking for is responsibility, not necessarily guilt. You want people to be open to you, you want a clear description with regard to what has happened until you’ve got the individuals to learn, to create lessons that allow you to prevent or at least reduce the possibilities that these kinds of things could happen in the future. And so you’re doing a lot of forensics to the system, you’re talking to people who knew this young man. What kind of things did his action suggest about him? You’re talking to a supervisor. What did you suspect about him? Did this surprise you? Did you see any kind of indicators? And then you are also doing a damage assessment. Let me list for you three different lanes in which damages almost certainly occurred. Number one - it tells our adversaries our capabilities. It tells them what we can do and also tells them what we won’t do - and that can be very damaging. Secondly, this will punish American firms who have cooperated with NSA. Punish them, even though all they have ever done is simply obey American law and help defend the United States. Then finally, if there is anyone else out there in the world, another government or potential source who might want to have cooperated with the United States, why would they trust us when we promise that we can keep a secret. So all those things are damaging.

RT: You brought up firms. From your own experience have social media companies any choice other than to obey NSA orders?

MH: Again, I’m not a part of NSA for a long time now. But my understanding of the program is that these companies, these private concerns were responding to specific court orders and under US law they can fight those orders in court, some have done that. I don’t know the results of any of these contentious cases, but my suspicion is they won some and they lose some.

RT: But if they’re doing everything that is legal, why are you saying they’ll be punished? 

MH: Because these are international firms. And although acting very consistently with the American law, there’ll be others in the world who’ll look at them with suspicion. And certainly, from my point of view, unwanted suspicion. That’s what’s going to happen.

RT: What’s happening to the programs like the ones Snowden made public, this PRISM data collecting tool? Are they being wrapped up right now or is the NSA going to go ahead with it, in your opinion?

MH: I would see no reason why either of the programs that he revealed, the metadata program or the PRISM program, why they would be stopped. They’re lawful, they’re appropriate, they’re effective. But the effectiveness may be the element that is most harmed by these revelations. Again, adversaries now know what we can do and also know what we won’t do - the boundaries of American law and policy. And that gives them a higher probability that they’ll be able to protect their communications from United States agencies trying to intercept them. 

RT: Though the PRISM is huge and it has turned America into a database platform for all its access to Facebook, Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, I mean it missed Tsarnaevs’ [the brothers who allegedly organized two explosions at the Boston Marathon] online activity prior to the Boston bombing. Are you maybe casting a net too wide?

MH: Actually the Tsarnaevs were not detected by any program like this because PRISM isn’t suitable for detecting the kind of communication that Tsarnaev brothers had prior to the Boston bombing. I mean PRISM is about foreigners. It requires a belief on the part of the National Security Agency that those people we want to monitor are foreigners and have foreign intelligence value. We’ve got to prove in broad terms to an American court before we can insist that one of these companies assist us in their effort. 

RT: President Obama has claimed surveillance programs have stopped 50 attacks. But since these programs began operating shortly after 9/11 how many terrorist attacks were prevented solely by information gathered from these PRISM-like programs that could not be gained through any other source? 

MH: Right. That’s a great question and I don’t want to be indirect with my answer, but I’m going to be indirect. I don’t know whether it is a correct answer to your question how many have been prevented only to the efforts of these two programs. In actuality, I cannot point to any program very often that is the sole reason that we have the intelligence success. One of the great achievements of the American intelligence in the past dozen years is that we’ve been able to blend multiple streams of information with a little bit sub-data here and a little bit sub-data there. That we’ve been able to combine into a meaningful picture. In other words we’ve been able to pick up shards of glass that individually have no meaning, but because we have a collectively large number of shards, we can actually combine them into a very meaningful mosaic. 

RT: I’ve got another quote from Snowden: “The consent of the governed is not consent if it’s not informed.” I think it’s frank to say that a lot of people feel uncomfortable after these leaks, because it’s seems like you break into my home, you listen to my phone calls, you intercept  my emails, my private SMSs without telling me you’re doing it. And you’re labeling all that as “war on terror”. I mean, can you really not fight war on terror and protect privacy, my privacy? 

MH: Well, I think the president was right when he said the responsible government has to make choices. You can’t have absolute privacy and absolute security, there always has to be a balance between the two. The balance, frankly, is based upon the totality of its circumstances: what is the nature of the threat? How real is that threat? How imminent is that threat? How effective is this tool in detecting that threat? I think I agree with the president. This is the suitable balance. Now I should point out that some of the things you’ve said Americans are saying, are simply errors of fact. We aren’t doing many of those things. Unfortunately, here in the US, when these kinds of stories get out into the public domain, I am fond of saying, they are rushed into the darkest corner of the room as rapidly as possible. So what is the important thing is to make sure that the American people exactly understand what we’re doing. Now to go back to Snowden’s quote about the concern of the governed - this is not ancient Athens. This isn’t a direct democracy where we allow the entire population to vote on every proposition. We are representative democracy. The people’s representatives were informed of these programs and they voted in favor of them. They’ve been approved by two presidents, they’ve been approved by the American court system. In the American system, at the executive branch, the legislative branch and the judicial branch lying out, it doesn’t get any better than that in terms of concern of the governed. 

RT: I mean, the security is not really state religion that cannot be questioned, and if you question it, than you’re not loyal. Now you’re saying that that the PRISM hasn’t spied on Americans? It hasn’t gone into private emails?

MH: No. The predicate for PRISM is that the target of the surveillance is a foreigner and what’s happened is that story has been confused with the metadata story, which is indeed about Americans, but it’s about American phone records, not American conversations or communications. 
RT: What exactly does it tell you about your system when your own people blow the whistle on you? Because it’s not the first time.

MH: No, it’s not. I mentioned before that I believe Mr. Snowden was not a hero, he had committed a crime. But he was also a troubled young man, let me phrase it for you this way: What kind of moral arrogance is required to believe your personal moral judgment trumps that of two presidents, two houses of our Congress, the American courts and over 30,000 of your coworkers. I would admit in American society, as in Russian society, we have a generation of young folks whose kind of absolute commitment to transparency which is well beyond anything of my generation and even my children’s generation. We’re now, like the Russian security services or any security service throughout the world, recruiting from populations whose views toward secrecy and openness are a bit different than those that have been traditionally held by the people we have recruited in a former age. So you’ve got Mr. Snowden, you’ve got Private Manning, both of whom have an almost romantic attachment to revealing secrets. But in both cases this commitment to absolute transparency has created great harm to the security of people around the world.

RT: If not whistleblowers, who else can stop you in case you push it too far? There must be checks and balances everywhere, right? 

MH: You’re right. There is a tactical point for you. A whistleblower has to point out unlawful activity. Even Snowden admits this wasn’t unlawful. He claims that it was unwise, it was inconsistent with his personal value system, but no one claims it was unlawful, it was consistent with law. It was done under the record order with the knowledge of the Congress. And it’s hard for me to imagine that anyone would afford him whistleblower status, at least in the technical, legal definition of the term. Now, where do you get debate? You get debate in our Representative Government. You get debate from a judge who pushes back saying he is uncomfortable with the outlines of the court order we want him to sign. You get debate in the American Congress, where members, particularly at the intelligence oversight committees, get a chance to look at these programs and to pass on their merits of the as to whether or not they would authorized them or appropriate funds for them. 

RT: Are you really saying that giving all the details of my private life to a government agency is the new normal, a new patriotic norm? 

MH: No, no, not at all. And again what you’re saying, that’s a reflection as to how badly-reported this story has been. The details of your private life are not being shared with the government. These two programs that the government gets is a macro database of phone calls that just fact of call, nothing more. With regard to the PRISM program, as I’ve already said, it focuses on foreign communications of intelligence value to the United States. That’s what the National Security Agency might add, what the FSB [Russia’s security agency] is all about. 

RT: The whole thing is that may be if the Security State was a little more transparent - like Obama promised before he was elected president, then maybe the American public and the foreigners would be more comfortable with programs like PRISM.

MH: You bring up a wonderful point. Somebody with my background, coming from the security services - we’re reluctant to say much about anything. We actually think we’re more operationally effective the less our adversaries know about what it is we’re doing. But we also realize we work in a democracy. I’m now fond of saying that in the American democracy the president probably gets to do anything one-off, one time based upon his presidential authority and a narrow definition that it’s simply lawful. But in our system the president doesn’t get to do anything over a long period of time without generalized popular support, and you’re right, you don’t get generalized popular support unless the American people, and especially their representatives, have some sense of broad knowledge, maybe not detailed, but broad knowledge about what their government is doing on their behalf. I now have to admit, even as a security professional, that we may have to make these things more public – things that actually might make us a little less effective, so that we can make the American population more comfortable about what it is we’re doing. Otherwise the American population, the American democracy, will tell us to stop doing all of what we’re doing. We’re going to have to have these tradeoffs – transparency, popular acceptance and operational effectiveness.

RT: General Hayden, you’ve brought up your security background, but you’ve also come from a long line of Republicans. What is the Republican point of view on all of this, I mean, how does the ‘less government’ idea sit in with all of this?

MH: I think your view is very interesting and dynamic here in the United States. I mean, let me first of all challenge the assessment that I was Republican and I was selected to be the head of the CIA by a Republican President, but I was selected to be the head of NSA by a Democratic President [Bill] Clinton. But your question is about the Republican Party. It’s quite interesting here in the American political system that the extreme right of the Republican Party and the extreme left of the Democrat Party seem to be coming together with regard to the coming concern about some of the things that the center is doing to keep Americans safe and free. So you do actually have some Republicans criticizing this program on civil liberties “less government is better government” grounds, rather than addressing the program on what is frankly more traditional Republican ground on the grounds of national security. 

RT: At the end of the day the fact is that the PRISM-gate has damaged Obama’s reputation personally. He has also undermined the reputation of his office, of the American presidency in the eyes of the world. We saw how he was in front of [German Chancellor Angela] Merkel in Germany and he had to justify himself, he had to justify PRISM for the whole world. Do you think this scandal, these leaks, will actually make him push to security state back even if he doesn’t want to do that? Do you think he can challenge the whole thing? 

MH: I think there is a bit of fear going on in this, with all due respect to the leading figures in Germany or the United States, alright? Let’s all admit very candidly that all nations conduct espionage. All of them do. We’ve focused on the US now because we actually are more transparent about espionage than any other country on Earth. That’s really what the issue is here. That’s why this is a publicly discussable item. But it’s not because what America’s doing is unique.

RT: How can ranking officials be an exception? Because leaks say foreign officials were bagged more than once, for example at the G20 summit in London. How does spying over then-Russian President Dmitry Medvedev’s calls help fight the War on Terror?

MH: I have no views on any actual operation activity of American intelligence services and I would also in view that all nations on this planet have legitimate foreign intelligence concerns beyond the War on Terror. This is just not about terrorism, it’s about foreign intelligence. I repeat, all nations conduct foreign intelligence.

RT: Just to wrap it up, given what we’ve discussed, do you for see a rollback on the surveillance state in general, a cut back on it, or is it going to go with the same pace?

MH: What I foresee is these two programs, the very light touch on the American privacy created by the metadata phone program and the PRISM program, my personal judgment – they both go forward. They’ve already had wide bipartisan support. They will continue. But what we’ve been talking about here today, what my country [and] many people around the world have been talking about for the past two weeks, that will generate a global discussion about what is the meaning of privacy in the internet era, what are the true rules, what are the legitimate expectations of privacy in the world in which everyone is connected. I had an advisory board at CIA and I would give them tough problems. One of the tough problems I gave them was this question of security and transparency. Here I frame the question, I said “will the US be able to conduct espionage in the future inside a broader political culture, but every day demand more transparency and more public accountability from every aspect of the national life?” They studied the problem and came back to me and their final answer was “We’re not sure.”

The release of data about US hack attacks on China has deprived the West of the moral high ground in the cyber-war, Hong Kong City University Professor Joseph Cheng told RT. This could give China diplomatic ammo in future negotiations with the US.

RT: Nations have been spying on each other for as long as we can remember. Do you think there is any surprise here on China’s part?

Joseph Cheng: I don’t think it is a surprise for the Chinese authorities. Basically, China and all major powers in the world understand that internet capabilities and capabilities in outer space will be crucial in future warfare. It is very likely that the major powers would like to test their own capabilities, as well as those of their opponents and competitors. So China is probably a bit relieved at this stage that the Western governments and the Western public opinion no longer enjoy the moral high ground to criticize China.

RT: There's the opinion that goodwill between the US and many nations worldwide may have been degraded. But there is the argument to be made that China needs the US as much as it is vice-versa. What do you think?

JC: I agree with that. The recent summit between [President] Xi Jinping and President Barack Obama was a very important symbol, demonstrating that both leaders want to reduce mutual distrust and that they certainly would not like to see a deterioration in bilateral relations. In the handling of this incident it was obvious that the Chinese authorities did not want to further publicly embarrass the Obama administration. The Chinese authorities chose to allow Mr. Snowden to leave. And of course domestically the commentaries were very critical, but they were not the official position of the Chinese government. The Chinese government also did not make any attempt to exploit the presence of Mr. Snowden to extract information from him. So I think that the Chinese authorities would like to demonstrate that they value good relations with the US.

RT: Do you think China will play this to its advantage in the future armed with sympathy and confirmation that it is being spied upon by the US? How do you think China will use this going into the future?

JC: China will probably let it die down. But when Western governments pick up the issue again, China will feel it has a strong case for criticizing the double standards of Western governments. Ideally, it can be hoped that various governments throughout world will come together eventually to establish a set of norms governing surveillance of the internet. But this is of course a very idealistic view.

Along with exposing widespread international surveillance, Edward Snowden has revealed how exactly the US is financing its military ambitions, according to Max Keiser.

RT: Surely not even you can make any kind of link between the Snowden saga and the US economy?

Max Keiser: The American economy runs on the confidence, confidence that the world accepts the US dollar as world reserve currency, confidence that the US bond market will remain the standard. And what we are seeing is a sell-off in a bond market and a sell-off in the stock market, because confidence in the US and its ability to maintain a global empire through interest rates and the Central Bank policy is crumbling before the world’s very eyes. What’s interesting is that Edward Snowden worked for Booz Allen. Booz Allen allegedly along with a few other companies are the masterminds behind LIBOR market rigging, energy market rigging, FOREX market rigging. And this is really the fuel that keeps the American military empire going, because the American economy itself cannot support its military ambitions so they’ve resorted to market manipulation and the kind of intelligence that Edward Snowden is able to aggregate is key to manipulating markets in ways that make Booz Allen, allegedly, the channel for billions and billions of dollars into America’s military campaigns. And this is really about money, markets and manipulations. It’s not about security.  It’s not to do with anything that the White House says. Remember, the White House is a puppet of Wall Street, Booz Allen, the hedge funds and the financial interests of the corrupt bankers.        

RT: Can you also give us an idea of how some of those big companies like Google, or Facebook could actually benefit from this surveillance program PRISM? Is there financial a financial gain from them? 

MK: Absolutely, because all of the manipulation involves rigging the indexes. And the indexes are all data-sensitive. So, if you can manipulate the data, you can manipulate the indexes and you manipulate the markets. And if you have advanced knowledge of that inside information you can make billions of dollars of front-running, high-frequency trading, algorithmic trading. And, of course, all the banks on the Wall Street are in on this and all the banks in the UK. It’s very telling that the foreign minister of Ecuador said that, look “you are talking about us extraditing Edward Snowden, what about bringing back those bankers we asked you to bring back to Ecuador who we caught rigging and terrorizing our market?” What about the Icelandic bankers that have been asked by the government of Iceland to be extradited back to Iceland that are being held in the UK? What about these other instances where banking terrorists are being sheltered in the US and the UK? They’re not responding to extradition agreements. So this’s all about financial legerdemain, unfortunately, Americans don’t have enough money to fight their wars anymore so they have to resort to snooping, data-gathering, and market manipulation. 

RT: What about the diplomatic fallout? We’ve seen tensions between China and Washington but that of course leads to economic tension. Could that impact trade between the two? 

MK: I hope Russia, China, and Ecuador stand up to the financial terrorists in America and Britain. Stay the course. Don’t give in and don’t appease the financial terrorists on Wall Street. 

RT: But how could a small country like Ecuador stand up to a giant like America, where there is indeed trade between the two? 

MK: What Edward Snowden has proved is that if you live a principled life and stay true to your convictions then you can change the world. 

RT: Are we going to see financial fallout between China and the US? 

MK: Well China has got a fantastic card to play, one trillion US dollars that they can dump on the market anytime and jack interest rates up five or six points, which would throw the real estate market back into collapse. China is pulling the strings here and China has all the cards to play. America is the biggest debtor nation in the world. Look at the bond market today, it’s selling off spectacularly all over the world because confidence in the American hologram of finance is collapsing. They flipped the switch. They see that the emperor has clothes. They see that there’s no underlying economic activity to support the military and financial occupations emanating from the US. It’s game over!

 The financial markets were convulsed last week at mere hints the Fed is seeking to kick its $85 billion per month intervention addiction...

If somebody in your household believes in the tooth fairy myth of buying used molars for cash, then you either have a toddler or you’re living with a banker. For many members of the financial firmament who equate the ‘real economy’ with paying their au pair, the past week brought a whole new word to the lexicon which has struck fear into investors’ hearts.

“Tapering” was part of a whispered Fed message that sometime, maybe in the fall, they will start reducing the $85 billion they “Quantitatively Ease” into the US financial system monthly. Given that this money tends to be used to help bankers profit from trading and rarely reaches the real economy, the average citizen yawned. However this 'sotto voce' hint that the crazy fantasy world of easy money could end induced panic amongst dealers. Grown men wept at 10 year Treasury notes yielding a giddy 2.34%. World Markets turned ugly.

Bankers have become so addicted to this tooth fairy-style stimulus that even hinting the party punch bowls might be refilled more slowly provoked an instant attack of trader 'delirium tremens'. Admittedly to explain the situation, the Fed had to relax their grip pushing the bankers’ heads into said punch bowls for just long enough to let the message sink: this isn’t the end...but last orders could be coming...next summer!

Nobody has actually called last orders, nor has the music stopped at this mammoth party but the markets felt the same terror as children threatened with confiscation of their security blanket. Every month Ben Bernanke buys 85 billion dollars worth of mortgages/bonds/IOUs/old heavy metal albums from banks to grease the wheels of the economy. Instead it just lubricates the banks. Entrepreneurs and small businesses rarely get helped: hence the real economy is moving towards peer to peer lending and crowd funding.

Bankers have grown complacent as the Fed nonchalantly concludes the equivalent of several Eurozone bailouts weekly. The “Bernanke put” as this reckless spending spree has been termed has skewed markets. 

 Right now all the Fed is threatening to do is, maybe, MAYBE, buy less financial bric-a-brac come the fall. Even then they will still be buying multi-billions of assorted IOUs until summer 2014. The widespread terror in financial markets this week suggests this is tantamount to the Mayan apocalypse. Incidentally nobody has yet actually suggested the Fed will endeavour to sell the trillions of ‘pick & mix’ quality/questionable IOUs it has accrued in years of binge buying...that really would provoke a meltdown.

So the Fed-fuelled Bond bubble is about to pop sparking global repercussions. When the Fed gave its charges de facto ‘money for nothing’ traders scoured the world for enhanced yields, with a lot of cash inflating mini-bubbles in Asian assets. The Fed whisperings have provoked an emerging markets exodus which will be exacerbated by the Chinese simultaneously reining in their credit bubble. This Sino-US credit contraction pincer movement hurts financial assets. More acutely, lack of credit can severely impact the real economy as lending further dries up. The US may be able to muddle through the storm but Europe is already deep in crisis and Asia is further threatened by the China slowdown. With the Fed cash flood eventually tapering to a few isolated drops, interest rates are likely to head upwards.

The actual rise in interest rates is not the only worrying issue: the competence of traders is a worry here too. A generation of financial markets professionals with anywhere up to 15 years’ experience have never encountered an environment of rising interest rates. That’s why this word “tapering” has led so many traders to suffer a belief-system meltdown as they realised the security of the quantitative easing fairy was just a childish myth.

Meanwhile taxpayers have been left holding a multi-trillion dollar baby (plus ca change...!). The greatest concern is that these trillions of dollars may only have prolonged the economic agony and an inevitable bond market meltdown awaits. Once the punch bowl is finally taken away, markets could be left with a hangover of epic proportions, creating shock waves for global growth. Of course Ben Bernanke will be retired by then earning a crust on the lecture circuit...

The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RT.

The documents about provocateurs, organizers and managers of the Turkish protests will be published soon, said Prime Ministerial advisor Mustafa Şentop, the person in charge of drafting the new Turkish Constitution, told RT.

Sentop is a law professor, and Deputy Chairman of the Justice and Development Party, member of the Constitution drafting committee, and MP for Istanbul. He told RT how the ‘interest-rate lobby’ had been preparing the coup since 2009, why the main street cannot change power in Turkey, and why exactly the media are to blame. 

Q: What is the new Constitution all about? Do you have any agreement with the US on revamping it?

A: Let me first say that Turkey does not tolerate any foreign interference whatsoever, including the US, into these matters. Under no circumstances can the draft Constitution be discussed with the United States or the European Union.
The new Constitution is a need that the JDP has recognized since it came to power in 2002. On May 27, 1960, Turkey saw a military coup, which ushered in a new constitutional order. In this order, most decisions were taken by the military and bureaucracy rather than politicians. They would do what they wanted behind the back of the elected politicians, who were, in fact, figureheads. The politicians themselves raised little objection.
Ever since the JDP came to power in 2002, it has been working hard to turn the tide. If national sovereignty rests with the people, and the people vest the powers to exercise this sovereignty to politicians by electing them, these politicians must stand for these powers, whatever happens.

Q: Is it true that Erdogan referred to Turkey's constitution as a document written by “two drunks”?

A: He was not talking about the Constitution. The Parliament had passed a law to limit alcohol sales at certain times of the day – a restriction that is in fact far more lenient than in Europe, let alone several American states. What we wanted is stop people from buying and selling spirits at night, as well as outside mosques and schools. When we put forward a bill, you speak against it, but when some MPs suggest discussing other laws on free sales of alcohol, you adopt them – that’s what the Prime Minister was saying. He used the popular expression ‘the two drunks’ here.

Q: Let’s go back to the Constitution that will make the President electable by a popular vote…. 

A: The JDP is an unyielding advocate of national sovereignty. This is why we came up with a new draft Constitution. Since 2002, we have initiated a whole number of political reforms to transform the system founded back in 1960, after the coup. 
Another important step was marked by the 2010 referendum, which adopted quite a few constitutional amendments.
The new draft is supposed to be an upgraded and updated version of the Constitution. It will draw a legislative line under what we have achieved so far.
The new Constitution draws from the premise that if the sovereignty belongs to the people, everyone in power has to lean on it. No constitutional powers can be….
Those who are appointed to their offices must be accountable to those who are elected. Our goal is to give politicians control over bureaucrats, not vice versa. We believe this is what true democracy looks like.  

Q: Do the events at Taksim have anything to do with the new Constitution? 

A: About three or four months ago we started receiving reports that something like that was under way. There are foreign governments directly engaged into this – we can tell that by the media coverage. For instance, on June 16 Kazlıçeşme Square saw a rally of around 1.5 million JDP supporters – one of the biggest rallies in human history. They had gathered to back the ruling party and the Prime Minister. Meanwhile, CNN covered the event, calling it an anti-government protest in Turkey. Just like the BBC, Reuters, the German media, they spread false rumors about our country. We are free to call most of these media the Israeli lobby, because they are funded by Israel. They all offer a rather one-sided, negative coverage of the events in Turkey. When 52 people were killed in Reyhanlı, the CNN only briefly mentioned it in its news ticker. But when the initially peaceful events at Taksim started unfolding, the CNN gave non-stop live broadcasts from the place. It was a clearly an orchestrated scheme. 

Q: Is this scenario aimed at distracting Turkey’s attention from Syria or involving it even more? Or, perhaps, there is another objective? 

A: I think there is another objective. Turkey became stronger throughout the rule of the JDP under the leadership of Recep Tayyip Erdogan. The GDP growth of Turkey is 3 per cent, and this is the result of the year’s first quarter only. For instance, the average growth rate across Europe is negative.  So Turkey has a stable economy against the background of economic decline in a number of countries. Another issue is that Turkey has become a strong regional player in international relations. That is why I believe that by causing turmoil and instability inside the country they were trying to make Turkey focus on its domestic affairs so that it wouldn’t be able to participate in the settlement of the Syrian crisis. Turkey is concerned about a successful resolution of the problems in Syria, which is obvious – it is our neighbor we share our longest common border with, and in some places this border cuts across villages. Yesterday I got a phone call from my former student who had gone to the wedding of his relatives that took place in Mardin. Part of the relatives live on the Turkish territory and they were detained by the military police while crossing the border with Syria for they didn’t have their passports with them. I called their boss, told him about the wedding and explained the situation asking him to help. I hope they finally made it to the wedding. So the relations between Turkey and Syria are extremely different from relations with the USA, Russia or Germany. The long frontier implies security problems. Turkey is a country that is directly affected by the Syrian problems, so we are more than others looking forward to their soonest settlement. If there is an international conference to be held on the issue – Turkey must be granted the greatest voting power.  The clashes take place right before the Geneva talks between the envoys of the UN, Russia and the USA, so they are aimed at weakening the positions of Turkey. 

Q: In this case, since you know Russia participates in the talks and has a different viewpoint on the Syrian problem as compared to the West, do you consider it as one of the instigators?

A: No, we don’t think Russia has a hand in the Taksim unrest. 

Q: Then who are the instigators in your opinion? 

A: External forces have their branches inside Turkey. The growth and stabilization of the Turkish economy had a negative impact on those groups that had raised money on high interest rates on the national debt. Financial speculators are no longer able to make mega-profits. In 2002 they gave us loans at 63 per cent. Since then, we’ve pulled down interest rates to 4.6 per cent in May 2013. If we had continued taking money at those high rates, we would have paid this “interest-rate lobby” some 642 extra billion dollars. Thanks to Recep Tayyip Erdogan, that money was invested and not given away for paying the interest rates. Surely, there are some groups that can’t earn as much as they used to, so they are dissatisfied with the JDP’s and Erdogan’s course. 

Q: Why did this “interest-rate lobby” – as Erdogan put it – decide to take action now?  

A: We know that the first preparations for the Taksim events cropped up in 2009. How can you overthrow the JDP? The JDP came to power after the election in November 2002 with 34 per cent of the votes. In 2003 the Ergenekon organization made its first attempts to overturn Turkey. In April 2007 the parliament was to elect Abdullah Gül president, but the military interfered and posted an “E-memorandum” on their website, after which the Constitutional Court scrapped the results of the election. The JDP responded with a statement as well, in which it said that the army should obey the government and the president elected by the people. It was an unprecedented case in Turkish history – as the government used to resign after such statements before. That was a positively stubborn policy of the JDP, which was not typical for the established political relations in the country. Moreover, we carried out two reforms back then. First, we introduced amendments to the Constitution, according to which the president was elected by the people – not by the parliament. Second, we decided to hold snap elections in July this year, which is four months earlier than usual. Many people in media, business, military, and banks believed that the JDP won just by chance, and expected it to lose in the next election. However in summer 2007 the JDP won 47 percent of the vote; and then the president was elected. In 2008, the Constitutional Court attempted to close the JDP. Six people voted for, and five people, against. They were just one vote short of overthrowing the legitimately elected party. 

 By telling this I just want to demonstrate that the struggle against our party never stopped since its very first victory. In 2010 our party continued working on democratizing Turkey, and proposed the constitutional reforms to the referendum. The main thing that changed was that from then on, the army and the bureaucracy would be headed by those popularly elected. Another amendment was that four out of 17 Constitutional Court members are now elected by the Grand National Assembly, whereas in the past, they had been appointed by the president. Consequently, today’s Taksim events are an attempt of overthrowing the JDP’s authority by those who had been trying to disrupt it all these years. In 2011, the party won almost 50 percent of the vote. Its opponents cannot win by supporting other political parties in the elections. Powers within the state such as army and bureaucracy have also lost their positions so they no longer can compete with us. So the decision was made to use revolutionary technologies. They put forward the groups not supported by any political parties so that they would cause unrest, make an appearance of instability, and disrupt the JDP. I recently read a study that described an experiment on group management. In a group of 20 strangers, there are 3 people who know each other and how they were given a particular task by the organizers. They end up easily leading all the others in just 10 minutes. In campaigns like that, people with good, naïve intentions don’t even notice that they are easily managed by organized individuals who have clear political objectives. In this country, they decided to try out the Arab spring scenario of the Middle East, or the Velvet revolution scenario of the post-Soviet space. But it will not work in Turkey; we will not let it happen.  

 Q: What’s the difference between the situation of Turkey and that of the Arab countries?

A: Unlike Turkey, those countries never had democracy, and their people could never change the authorities by elections. So they went out into the streets and used those methods because they had no other means. But Turkey is a democracy. We have free elections, and since 1950 there haven’t been any doubts in their fairness. Those unhappy with authorities can change them by elections. It is absolutely wrong to see any relationship to the events in Egypt or Tunisia. The Gezi Park rally can be compared to environment activists campaigns in Western countries. Arguably, the environment was the pretext to start it. At the same time, our situation is different from such countries as Spain or Greece where people protest because of the economic recession and unemployment. We don’t have such problems in our country. There are no common or individual problems which would make people feel the need to go out in the streets of Turkey. Essentially, the announced rally objectives and their real implementation strongly contradict each other. For the sake of six trees, they already caused $100 mln worth of damage, and ruined plants, flowers, and landscaped areas. They burned municipal buses, destroyed banks, broke windows, and so on. This is no longer a peaceful protest when people throw stones, balls studded with nails, and Molotov cocktails at police. For instance, last week there were protests against the G8 summit in London where police also used force and detained 52 people even though demonstrators carried neither stones nor Molotov cocktails. This way we can see that campaigns have been organized by those domestic and international circles that aren’t happy with the JDP policies and with the fact that Turkey’s growing stronger. We have the corresponding documents which will be presented in court. 

Q: What documents do you have?

A: We have information about those who provoked and organized these protests, and provided logistics, funds and other resources. As an example, New York Times published an ad on protests. A campaign was organized to pay for it, and $40.000 out of $100.000 was covered by Rafagen, a US pharmaceutical company of Israeli origin. This information was found in open sources. The documents we have will be made public in the near future. In conclusion I want to say that Turkey has already survived military coup attempts, the “E-memorandum”, presidential election deadlock, and the JDP closure cases. The same way, we will survive this phase as well. Turkey is strong enough to make it.

Q: President Morsi terminated Egypt’s diplomatic relations with Syria. Many consider it a declaration of war. How does Turkey view it?

A: Egypt is an important actor in this region, along with Turkey and Iran. Egypt could’ve been more strongly involved in the Syrian conflict had it not been so busy with its own domestic issues. We believe Egypt has taken the right position which would be able to impact on the situation. The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RT.

Though the US says that any flight carrying Snowden should not be allowed to pass, they are hardly able to do anything, aviation expert Chris Yates told RT, adding that it is unlikely that the whistleblower is now on the flight from Moscow to Havana.

RT: First, no one has seen Snowden on this plane. Is it possible to secretly get someone aboard and hide them on a passenger jet?

Chris Yates: Well, quite frankly probably not. We’ve got that plane stuffed with journalists and other people who obviously attempted to keep an eye out for Mr. Snowden. It’s unlikely that he will be on that plane, in fact nobody has actually seen him. The fact of the matter is that he still might be in that transit lounge, he may be held for some reason in that transit lounge because of the media scrum. Whatever the case might be it certainly appears that he is not actually on the flight at the moment. 

RT:  If he is on this plane, is there a legal way to intercept it?

CY: Yesterday the American government put out a warning to all nations in the Western hemisphere not to let Mr. Snowden pass through except en route to the US. It could mean that any plane he is travelling on other nations might prevent from entering their airspace, because they don’t want to be caught up in this particular spat.  It is unlikely that would happen.  The bottom line in the aviation world is that if the flight is operating legally, it filed all the proper flight forms and done the rest of appropriate measures then that plane should be given free access straight cross any bit of airspace it is flying through. Could the US intercept the aircraft if it were to enter US airspace? Possibly they could instruct it to land somewhere in the US, but I would think that would be unlikely. Of course the pilot himself has the possibility to divert so he does not actually need to enter US airspace to actually fly down to Havana. And that will be another possibility as well.

RT: Who makes the decision to divert? Who does the pilot respond to: a legal authority or his corporate superiors?

CY: Once the plane takes off it’s entirely down to the pilot to choose the best route depending upon all of the prevailing conditions at the time and that could be weather and a whole other variety of things as well. So if the pilot were to choose to fly the route just outside of US airspace close to it then he would be entitled to do that of his own volition provided that it didn’t have any impact upon the safety of the flight and everybody else on board it. 

RT: This is an Airbus 330 - does it have enough fuel to divert?

CY: Yes is the short answer to that question. All flights operating all over the world are required to carry enough fuel in case of diversion whatever that diversion might be. The bottom line is that – yes, the airplane will be carrying enough fuel. Now the US says that any flight carrying Mr. Snowden should not be allowed to pass, but on the other hand they are powerless to do anything provided that the airplane does not enter US airspace.  

RT: Reports say Snowden's passport was revoked by the US If so, how can he move around the world?

CY: I’ve had personal experience of losing a passport, for example, and there are methods and mechanisms in place for people to be able to travel back to their home country without a passport. That is a legal document which is usually produced by some official authority, the police for example, in my case it issued a document that let we travel across Europe to get back to the UK. The fact that the US government revoked his passport does not necessarily mean that he cannot get on a flight which is pre-booked, and particularly if he is the transit lounge of an airport because effectively he is in no man’s land. If he used a legal passport it would seem to me at his point of departure and while he is in transit then it would seem that it doesn’t really matter whether he has got that passport in his hand and it’s actually a legal document at that time. 

The US has revoked Edward Snowden’s passport without a hearing and is threatening dire consequences if he is not sent back, even though the country routinely accepts dissidents without passports, historian Gerald Horne told RT.

“If you listen to the congress person appearing on Sunday’s chat shows, they are breathing fire threatening measures just short of a nuclear war if Mr Snowden is not speedily dispatched back to New York or Washington,” Horne said.

RT: Just how easy is it for the US to revoke a passport?

GH: One would hope that there would be notice to Mr Snowden and a hearing before something as important as a passport is revoked. But if you examine the State Department’s statement they basically said that that was not necessary from their point of view if you are accused of a felony then your passport can be revoked. Its well known that particularly during the Cold War period the US routinely revoked the passports of political dissidents.

RT: So , the US has done this so he cannot travel anywhere else. He can’t travel any further without that valid passport?

GH: Not necessarily. The US routinely excepts on its territories citizens fleeing Cuba without passports. I would also say that the US routinely receives on its soil those it deems to be political dissidents who might or not have passports. I don’t feel that Moscow’s hands are tied with regard to Mr Snowden not having a passport. And in any case if we assume that his eventual destination is Ecuador if you look at the extradition treaty between the US and Ecuador there is a revision that says that extradition does not have to be adhered to if a so called political crime is at play. And what Snowden is accused of is in essence a political crime.

RT:Will there be diplomatic spat and  fallout if Moscow let's him fly?

GH: If you listen to the congress person appearing on Sunday’s chat shows, they are breathing fire threatening measures just short of a nuclear war if Mr Snowden is not speedily dispatched back to New York or Washington. However they’ll get over it. I think that they recognize that Moscow has the opportunity if not a responsibility to make sure that Mr Snowden is not persecuted for what is in essence a political crime.

RT: Could they intercept the aircraft and force it land where they could apprehend him?

GH: You can’t rule that out when you are talking about the US, which sees itself as a police officer of the world . However I would caution the US authorities to tread carefully in a situation like this because it is well known as Mr. Obama has said himself that Washington would like to reset relations with Moscow so that it can pivot towards China. It would be difficult for the US to apply pressure against China when it simultaneously has difficult relations with Moscow. I think that operative principle will basically be in play as the scenario unfolds.

RT: We have got a man on the run, he is in a Moscow airport. Do you think he will be a free man and get to where he wants to and be out of the grip of the US?

GH: I would bet that Mr Snowden will be sleeping in Ecuador sooner rather than later. Keep in mind that Ecuador has difficult diplomatic relations with Washington. A major US oil company has polluted the environment in Ecuador, poisoned and killed a number of citizens. And the US refuses to be forthcoming with regard to bringing this company to justice. Supposedly Mr Snowden will be transiting through Havana and we all know the difficult relations between Cuba and the US. So I should say Mr Snowden should sleep soundly tonight.