Friday 28 June 2013

What’s cooking in The White House, Beijing & The Kremlin ?


By the grace of the almighty or by the grace of the Eastern powers, the NSA’s whistleblower Edward Snowden is still alive and very much safe in the Moscow. Although, it is the most widely discussed topic for the news aficionados these days, but the whistleblower himself is hiding from country to country just to ensure that his consistent extradition requests made by the United States cannot be executed by a country.

In a pre-planned move, he flew from the United States to the Hong Kong (on 20th May), in which he proclaims to have ‘a strong tradition of free speech’ and made some serious allegations against the PRISM project (that costs about $20 million/year) of the National Security Agency of the US. The revelations moved like oxygen in the atmosphere of the intelligence agencies of various rival as well as adherent countries of the United States. Print as well as broadcasting media went berserk over the allegations made by the whistleblower on the United States as well as on the ‘General Communications Headquarters of Britain’. Accordingly, the PRISM project has produced over 77,000 reports and accounts for 14.3% of the normal intelligence reports (1/7th of total intelligence reports). This project is also a major contributor to Mr. Obama’s daily briefing. Data from various tech giants such as Microsoft, Yahoo, Facebook, Skype etc were taken by the NSA officials by intruding straight into their servers, without the consent from these tech companies for incurring the private as well as professional information of the residents as well as non residents of the United States (as per Snowden’s reports). Even the telecom operator of the US - ‘Verizon’ was intruded to obtain the voice calls of the suspects as well as of the innocent peoples, compromising the privacy of the individuals on the name of security.

Let’s not get into the debate of who’s right or who’s wrong, or if it is satisfactory to compromise privacy in the name of security. But let’s take a brief look at what Snowden revealed in the Hong Kong (SAR). His reports were not confined to the United States intrusion in citizen’s privacy, but he also accused the NSA for hacking up the systems of China and other enemy countries of the US, possibly Russia. This gave China an excuse to fire bullet on Snowden’s shoulders and to proclaim that although China is accused of mass hacking or cyber intrusions but he himself is a prey of mass cyber hacking. Probably, Chinese Government Officials were consistently in touch with Mr. Snowden in the Hong Kong (SAR) after his arrival, that’s why even Hong Kong’s treaty with the United States for enemy extradition didn't help the US to arrest it’s so called ‘traitor’ when he flew from the Hong Kong to the Moscow on the Q.T.


‘The Kremlin’ is still considered to have a ‘Cold War’ with ‘The White House’ which is testified after some recent cold shoulder decisions by Russian President Vladimir Putin such as political and military support to Syrian President Bashar-al-Assad over “US & Company’s” support to Syrian rebels. In the case of Edward Snowden also, an official of Russian Human Rights Commission Mikhail Fedotov reported that,’ the case of asylum for Mr. Edward Snowden can be considered by the President if Mr. Snowden files such a request but only on human rights ground’. This came after Snowden’s repeated attempts to pacify countries like Iceland and Ecuador to consider his asylum request with the help of Jullian Assange (WikiLeaks founder). Ecuador had a trade pact with US that were to be renewed by the US Senate in the coming few months, but yesterday Ecuador broke the trade pact with US to thwart ‘blackmail’ over Snowden’s asylum. Iceland’s businessman and a supporter of WikiLeaks has offered an airplane to bring Snowden from the Moscow, but no official confirmation from Govt. of Iceland has been arrived yet. Therefore, it is upon ‘The Kremlin’ to take a decision, whether it wants to make a stand against the US by offering asylum to the whistleblower, which is nothing new for it since the Cuban missile crisis in 1961 or to be like China which is not keen to take a straight step against his long time enemy/newly found friend (after Xi Jinping & Obama’s positive meeting in the US).

The ball is in Russian court as Snowden is currently in Moscow. The coming few days will be crucial for Snowden as well as for the Eastern powers to dilute US hegemony in the current political scenario worldwide.

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