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The Empire Against The World
With its unprecedented and totally overarching spying the U.S. has thoroughly pissed off its allies in Europe:
In the pages the German tabloid Bild, President Barack Obama on Tuesday had been renamed OHRbama (Ohr is the German word for ear). He was pictured leaning over to listen to German Chancellor Angela Merkel with a grossly oversized ear.
Bild is the most pro-transatlantic paper one can think of here and it is extremely influential. Such anti-U.S. writing by Bild is unprecedented. Maybe the people in the U.S. do not understand the mood behind this as there was only little written about in U.S. media over the size of the spying:
According to the reports, first detailed by the German news magazine Der Spiegel, the U.S. National Security Agency is monitoring 500 million German communications each month and has classified Germany as a target on a level with China and Saudi Arabia. The United States also allegedly is bugging European Union offices, monitoring EU communications, and scooping up the emails and phone calls of EU nations’ citizens.
Why, do Germans and others ask, does the U.S. need to collect 6 billion(!) German communications each year? What is going on here? Even the Stasi would have settled for 600,000.
I believe there will be major serious consequences over this in the relations between Germany, other European countries and the United States.
But having pissed off major European partners is not enough for Obama. This is unprecedented:
The plane carrying Bolivian President Evo Morales was rerouted to Austria after various European countries refused to let it cross their airspace because of suspicions that NSA leaker Edward Snowden was on board, Bolivian officials said Tuesday.
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A furious Bolivian Foreign Minister David Choquehuanca said France and Portugal would have to explain why they canceled authorization for the plane, claiming that the decision had put the president's life at risk.
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In a midnight press conference, Bolivian Vice President Alvaro Garcia said that not only France and Portugal, but also Italy and Spain were denying the plane permission to fly through their airspace.
He described Morales as being "kidnapped by imperialism" in Europe.
The countries who denied overflight certainly did so because they were pressured by Washington. All of South America's countries will blame the U.S. before they will blame those why denied their airspace.
This absurd behavior, and the willingness of some European leaders to support it, will cost the U.S. not only the proposed trade treaty with Europe but will also reflect on the puppets chance to get reelected. The people in France will see this as an affront and an insult to their sovereignty – bye, bye Hollande.
Being anti-U.S. was so far somewhat derided in European countries. It will now become chic and a major new political trend.
The sole purpose of going after Snowden is vengeance. Determent does not work with whistle-blowers. Snowden came forward not despite but also because of what is happening to Bradley Manning.
The secrets Snowden carried are out of his hand anyway. Insulting the world carries a high price. Why then is U.S. willing to risk the bit of goodwill that is left towards it over so little potential gain?
This is interesting from RT:
What Edward Snowden revealed concerns intelligence sharing between the European Union and America, the American and European intelligence agencies work “hand in glove,” John Laughland, from the Institute of Democracy and Cooperation in Paris, told RT.
RT: Let’s just start with this very fiery rhetoric from the EU about America’s surveillance. Just how honest is it?
John Laughland: I don’t take it seriously at all; I think it’s for show. It’s very revealing and symbolic that President Morales’ plane should have been forced to land in a European Union country after the withdrawal of overflight rights by other European Union countries, because this, of course, shows how the European puddle jumps the American circus master’s command. The European governments are very obviously under the thumb of the Americans, they have shown this very blatantly, and the reason why I say it’s symbolic is that the abuses which Snowden has revealed, the explosion of espionage activity against US citizens and against the people around the world by the US government is only one side of the coin. The other side of the coin is that there has been massive increase in co-operation in intelligent sharing between the United States and its European Union allies in the last ten years and certainly since 9\11. So it’s entirely appropriate, if you like, that the whistleblower should have been attempted to be caught by European Union countries, because the problem that he has revealed concerns intelligence sharing between the European Union and America as well as the increase of espionage by the American security forces.
RT: But Latin America has really come together with this expressing unilateral support for Bolivia. Aren’t Europe and America only drumming up opposition to their actions?
JL: Definitely, we have to see, of course, how the Latin American leaders react now after this extraordinary violation of aviation law and of diplomatic immunity. I mean the idea, Like some gangster or a pirate a country can simply order a presidential plane to land, because they suspect they’ve heard a rumor that someone might be on that plane, is absolutely shocking, it should shock anybody who is interested in human right and the rule of law. Edward Snowden is not in the Interpol “Wanted” list, there is no justification for this kind of gangster activity. If he is to be extradited to the United States, then that must, of course, happen according to legal procedures. That is to say, according to the extradition treaties where they exist, and if the Americans and their European allies are going to say that these well-established rules and principles no longer matter, then they are showing themselves up to be, what in fat they are, which is to say, completely hypocritical on human right issues, and, of course, yes that will ring about untold opposition from Latin America, from China and, probably from Russia.
RT: Looks like the US is willing to act on Snowden’s leaks, but will do nothing to protect him. What do you think?
JL: I think that’s right. I’ve just made the point about how the Americans and the Europeans are hand in glove, but this isn’t the first time that we’ve known about this. Let’s not forget, when the CIA rendition scandal broke several years ago, that’s to say the scandal of people being kidnapped by American officials, by American soldiers, and then taken to secret centers for interrogation, those secret centers, as we know, were in Poland and Romania. They were in EU and NATO states. So we know that the American and the European intelligence agencies operate extremely closely together. We know that the European treaties, the Lisbon treaty, for example, commit the European Union to working hand in glove with NATO. So this in a sent should not really come as a surprise to anybody
Posted by: bevin | Jul 4 2013 14:26 utc | 68
JFL@67 – Nicolás Maduro, speaking in the comemorations of Venezuela national day has just stated his decision to provide asylum to Snowden. Live on Telesur
b@23 – Overwhelming indeed. Should we take the comments box as a representative sample we could say that 90% of the french and portuguese are outraged at their government. The most asked question is – who ordered it? I don’t recall any other ocasion when so many people declared to feel ashamed of their nationality due to the actions of their government. In Spanish language media sites the numbers aren’t so high, I guess Miami expats have a lot of free time…
jawbone@73 – Lots of halvtruths and misinformation. Any google news search prooves that journalists nowadays have become experts in copy paste. The only real editorial choice they deal with is what spin to choose, which title best fits their ideological alignment.
The Snowden Morales plane story originated in La Paz, Bolivia, on tuesday night, when a very angry Foreign Minister called a press conference to denounce French and Portuguese withdrawal of overflight permission. But that was not the whole truth. In fact the story was one day older. Acording to this statement of the Portuguese Foreign Ministry they had notified Bolivia on monday that due to “technical considerations” they were cancelling the refuelling authorisation previously granted in June 28. The plane had previously refuelled in Lisbon on it’s way to Moscow, in June 30. What happens in the next 24 hours can so far only be guessed. The Portuguese FM tries to blame the Bolivians for insisting on requesting permission for refuelling acording to the original flight plan. What seems clear is that they never specified to Bolivia the nature of the “technical considerations”, not to Bolivia nor to anyone else, to find that out We must wait untill next tuesday when the FM must explain himself in Parliament on request of the Portuguese Comunist Party, and see if they can press it out of him. Keeping on guessing, when the Bolivians realized that there was something very wrong, and changed the flight plan to refuell in Las Palmas instead, after getting permission from Spain, and thought all is clear now, and the plane was flying over Austria, then first France and next Italy denied them overflight permission, forcing the plane to land in Wien. There the story gets murky again in what concerns the search of the airplane. What seems to be quite clear is the action of the Spanish Ambassador in Austria who repeatedly sugested to Morales to invite him for a cofee inside the plane, infuriating him, leading to Spain delaying permissions for a few hours next morning, surprising even the Austrian Sec. for foreign affairs. Spain did not deny airspace on tuesday, it was only on wednesday following the Ambassador’s incident, that they delayed Morales departure for a few hours.
What also seems absolutely probable, namely from Hollande’s reaction, is that the french decision to deny air space was taken at a rather low level, probably civil aviation authority, possibly also on unspecified “technicall considerations” and aparently not at a polithical level. From the Italian nothing is known, so far I haven’t found any oficial reaction. If someone knows of one pls post a link.
The Portuguese FM Paulo Portas, is a former journalist, leader of the minority party in the ruling neoliberal coalition, was Defence minister on a previous rightwing coalition with Durão Barroso – EU’s president and, acording to Pepe Escobar, the force behind the EU US free trade treaty, and pre Iraq invasion Azores summit host – and was then involved on a few controversial deals, one of them concerning 2 submarines from Germany’s Ferrostaal led to the conviction, in Germany, for corruption, of two german executives and a portuguese Consul, on a Plea bargain, so we will never know where the money went. Besides, Portas is also, as wikipedia describes it, “a lifelong bachelor who has never publicly assumed a relationship with a woman”. After his stunt as Defence minister he also became (in)famous for being awarded the Department of Defense A HREF=”http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Department_of_Defense_Medal_for_Distinguished_Public_Service#Eligibility”>Medal for Distinguished Public Service by Rumsfeldt.
Following last week’s resignation of Finance minister Vitor Gaspar, on tuesday 2d of July half an hour before the swearing in of the new minister, Portas presented his resignation to the premier, provoking a massive market fall, thw weakening of the Euro, a political crisis and the intervention of Mario Monti. Not bad…
It was undoubtly with Portas that the Snowden Morales plane plot started.
I think it is also undoubtable that the plot had no other purpose then, as rightly assumed by the Unasur meeting in Cochabamba yesterday, to embarass and punish Evo Morales for his policy towards the US. The Snowden on the plane meme is there just to provide presstitutes with punchlines. We just happen to be in Snowden histeria, so, what better?
What really don’t know is, if it’s resignation is out of political calculation, why starting the row with Bolivia?
Or is he being pressed, and the documents that “disapeared” from the Defence ministry are safely stored in Langley or Fort Meade and can find their way to a journalist nearby, or to that overworked prossecutor that still has the case, maybe flavoured with some explicit photos, therefore making the resignation an atractive move away from the spotlight.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jul/03/edward-snowden-asylum-live
Posted by: estouxim | Jul 6 2013 4:51 utc | 75
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