Edward Snowden IS Now A Spy

      NSA, World Leaders, and Eavesdropping

The latest  releases of data  have caused me to revise my opinion of Edward Snowden.  It is clear that he is intending to do maximum damage to the U.S. and it's international standing.  While it could be argued that some of the information he released could be deemed to be of public interest,clearly continuing to make available reams of information which only facilitate the ability of hostile intelligence agencies worldwide to subvert the U.S. and it's allies, is so damaging that, by default or intent he is making it impossible to ever return home to the United States without very serious charges of espionage being applied, without leniency.   Firewalling world communications is exactly the scenario which will facilitate. for example, analytics networks in (or controlled by) China and Russia to replace the United States. Russia has, for a long time, been unhappy with the dominance of U.S. communication networks and their monopoly on information.   This has been assessed as one of the reasons the Russian Federation has been unable to compete globally with the United States. (In actual fact the real reason, as I said about a week ago to a Ukrainian national, is because Russia has nothing to offer developing countries in Africa and Asia-apart from oil and gas, subservience, neocolonialism and racist imperialism on a scale far worse than that provided in the last century by Western Europe and which most African, Asian and Caribbean nations will simply reject when they see it for what it is.) There are no more opaque intelligence services than those of countries such as Russia and China-both of which are continually spying on their own people 24/7 -and the rest of the world- without a modicum of checks nor balances.  I often say to educated African and Asian citizens who criticize American 'imperialism' that they should go to Moscow or St. Petersburg sometime in the near future, try to set up a business and see how many days it will exist before being firebombed-as Jewish and other ethnic and religious minority businesses were during centuries of pogroms throughout Europe.   They should then try to set up a business in the Unites States and compare how their rights and liberties are protected under State and Federal law-and vigorously proactively upheld by all U.S. law enforcement authorities (the Police,FBI, The National Guard, The Armed Forces (as high as the Office of The President itself) and contrast that with the absence of protection of rights, at every level, for minorities in the Russian Federation.   How Mr Snowden could be so naive in this regard almost defies belief.   The only beneficiaries are quite clearly intelligence services which have not a shred of democratic accountability and which even resort to murder of their own citizens-worldwide. I refer to the French Intelligence Services (DGSE) sinking of the Greenpeace Ship, Rainbow Warrior, and murder of it's crew member, Fernando Pereira, as just one example.   The poisoning of  Russian dissident Alexander Litvinenko - leaving a trail of polonium-210 across London-by persons (to date) unknown but suspected to be linked to Russia's Federal Security Service (FSS) was the first recorded case of an assassin(s) using a radioactive (nuclear) element to eliminate the enemy of a foreign State.   The world will most certainly become a more insecure place as China and Russia replace the U.S. as the chief monitoring agencies of global communications.   I would be very interested to know how China and Russia would react should Mr Snowden release such information about the working of their elaborate technological spy networks- satellite, electronic, digital and  'motherboard' short-circuits to fast-track intelligence routing.   I think that Mr Snowden already knows the answer to this question.  Having said the above, there must be avenues for internal disaffected individuals to take grievances on grounds of conscience to lawmakers without fear of punishment nor loss of income-other than reassignment to different roles and locations.   Until these matters can also be addressed, Mr Snowden  will not be the last to believe he can bring positive outcomes to world events through the release of divisive information which he had sworn to protect.

Patrick Emek