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.