The Newly Powerful and The Meek

Russia and Vladimir Putin are making waves. Mr. Putin has overtaken U.S. President Barack Obama as Forbes's candidate for top spot of the world's most influential individual. Perhaps Mr. Obama might consider trading in his Nobel Peace prize for a bare-chested photograph of himself to wow the world. He most certainly has not fulfilled the world's expectations of that fresh new face with his fresh new ideas of hope and audacity.

ALEXEY NIKOLSKY / RIA NOVOSTI / KREMLIN POOL/EPA 

Mr. Putin, on the other hand, the autocratic ruler of a renascent, oil-rich Russia, has restored pride in the country's Communist past, charging and incarcerating his political opponents, imposing a rigid law-and-order schedule, growing personally immensely wealthy and building sumptuous mansions for himself, while America groans under dysfunctional government closing down in a grudge match between political parties each opposing the aspirations of the other.

While the United States of America reels over revelations of spying both internal and external by their National Security Agency, Moscow welcomed Edward Snowden with open arms, offering him the clemency of their forgiveness and giving him haven from extradition to the U.S. to stand before a court of law charged with disloyalty to his country. The charged emotions of betrayal emanate from furious European allies of the United States, disappointed that the NSA has snooped on them.

But last month at the St. Petersburg Group of 20 summit meeting foreign delegations were given lovely gifts from the Kremlin. USB pen drives capable of downloading sensitive data from laptops, cellphone rechargers capable of tapping into emails, text messages and cellphone calls. President of the European Council, Herman Van Rompuy is reputed to have been the first to raise suspicions about Russia spying on foreign powers, but where's the outrage, pray tell?

President Putin prevailed upon President Obama to pedal back from his 'red line' intention to march on Syria to rescue the millions of Syrian civilians who have become refugees, and restore their country to them, wrenching it from the bloody control of the tyrant who bombs and strafes his population but who cannot any longer commit atrocities with chemical weapons. That's the smilin' work of clever President Putin, and the accompanying loss of prestige for President Obama.

Is the Kremlin in any measure responsible for President Obama's administration playing nicey-nice with the Islamic Republic of Iran, or has President Obama decided that he might just as well make a full sweep of the Middle East, having alienated America's long-time allies there by dumping former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak in favour of the Muslim Brotherhood's Mohammad Morsi, then damning the Egyptian military, and abandoning its alliance with Israel and Saudi Arabia in favour of scowling Ayatollah Khamenei?

In 2008, researchers at the Citizen Lab of Toronto's Munk School of Global Affairs discovered that the Chinese version of Skype had been coded with a special surveillance system. That special coding sent data to China's security services in response to certain keyboarded key words. The server where the messages were stored was not password protected, giving access to millions of personal chats, credit card numbers, business transactions and a multitude of other private goodies.

Whatever happened to unique American enterprise?