October 26, 2013
“Gentlemen do not read other gentlemen’s mail” sniffed US Secretary of State Henry Stimson in 1929 when told that American cryptographers had broken Japan’s naval and diplomatic codes.
Stimson, who later headed the War Department, ordered code-breaking shut down.
Alas, there are not any old-school gentlemen left in Washington these days. Revelations of US electronic spying by whistleblower Edward Snowden have ignited a furor across Latin America and now Europe.
This week’s uproar was intensified by claims that the US National Security Agency (NSA) had tapped into the cell phone of German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Europe’s most important and influential leader. Further outrage erupted in France after reports that its leaders and diplomats had been tapped by NSA’s big ears.
To no surprise, President Obama officially denied listening in to Merkel’s calls. A US source sought to lessen the damage by claiming NSA had only tapped her office phone, not her cell phone. German anger was not assuaged.
Back in the day, French Interior Ministers – notably Nicholas Sarkozy – used to stay up late poring over wire taps of fellow officials’ peccadillos. That was good fun. Today, by contrast, the NSA and CIA are sweeping up all communications of supposed allies as part of the runaway US national security state. Call it the Stasi meets Apple’s late Steve Jobs.
Last month alone, NSA reportedly sifted through 70 million French phone calls, text and email under the lame pretext of fighting terrorism. What NSA was really finding were the phone numbers of prominent Frenchmen’s mistresses or boyfriends – very useful for CIA blackmail ops – and important commercial information. Terrorism is a red herring. NSA’s run amok spying, allegedly to combat “terrorism,” is making a lot of Americans wonder again about the events of 9/11 that triggered the explosion of America’s spy state, restrictive laws, and foreign wars.
Still, one wonders if President Obama knew what his spies were doing. He has little control over the Pentagon and probably even less over America’s mammoth, ever-growing spy state built by former President George W. Bush that costs over $80 billion per annum. Some 4.8 million Americans now have secret security clearance and work for the octopod national security state.
Obama would not be the first president not to know what his spooks were up to. But he should have been this time. Bugging the leaders of America’s closest European and Latin American allies was an incredibly stupid act. Nothing thereby learned could have been worth the damage caused.
US Elint (electronic spying) has humiliated European and Latin leaders and made them and NATO look like American vassals to be dismissed or disdained.
How can Europe’s leaders face their own voters after this shameful episode? Revelations by Snowdon and Army private Bradley Manning show that Washington treats its NATO allies in the same imperious manner the old Soviet Union bossed around the Warsaw Pact.
Europe’s leaders are under mounting pressure to demonstrate their independence of Uncle Sam by taking some stern retaliatory action against US interests.
A starting point would be building a brand-new electronic communications architecture for Western Europe that resists US penetration, and creating a truly independent Europe military capability. Time for Europe to stop being foot soldiers to America’s nuclear knights.
US reputation in Europe and Latin America is now at an all-time low. The next NSA spying scandals will likely come from the Mideast, India and Pakistan, Canada, South Korea and Japan. Obama may be remembered as having gotten the world even angrier at the US than predecessor George W. Bush – quite an accomplishment.
Washington claims “everyone does spying.” True enough, but no one is anywhere close to NSA’s giant vacuum cleaner and all-hearing bugs. What the US has been doing is far more than information gathering against a handful of anti-American militants. It’s heavy-duty intimidation. A reminder that Big Brother is watching and listening.
The deeply corrupt US Congress won’t do much to curtail NSA’s information theft. Too many of its members profit from market trades made on the basis of NSA snooping.
The question remains: how come US foreign policy is such a mess considering that Uncle Sam is listening to everyone’s phone and reading their mail?
30 MARGOLIS
This post is in: Europe, France, Latin America, USA, World Leaders
Here is a link to an atrocity, one of many that get committed every day 24/7:
http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2013/10/29-3
Why are these videos not on the front page of the msm? Afraid maybe, that the revolt against the government starts earlier rather than later?
Here is a family traumatized for life, one of countless others. Rep. Grayson gets badmouthed in the msm, but in my book he is a hero. for trying to draw the attention to the gruesome war crimes being committed supposedly in the name of the American people. Why are the facts and these pictures kept from the public and see their democratic complicity of this barbarism. after all, the people are supposed to have elected their representatives, who agree to this in their name. Anybody not agreeing with these crimes had better speak out publicly, so as to keep that innocent blood off of their hands, because silence is agreement.
The innkeeper`s trustworthiness is directly proportional to the trust he has in his guests is a saying I heard once. It seems, that judging by that proverb, the trustworthiness of the US is just about zilch. Of course we don`t need proverbs to prove that point. I would sooner have them come clean on their questionable reasons to fight terrorism and the excuses they use in government to justify taking away the freedoms and liberties of its citizens.
We all know, or at least should know, if we are interested in more than who won what match in whatever sport, the pacifier of the masses, what the real motivations are for all these wars. The internet is full of stories and statistics about that 9/11 event, the official story of which is so full of holes, that it makes the Swiss cheesemakers jealous. 9/11 did not trigger the explosion of the spystate, but the spystate and other nefarious plans needed an event like 9/11 to make the salespitch plausible.
The CIA trained Osama bin Laden, whose family was in New York on business on 9/11, gets blamed for that attack and all the alleged ‘terrorists’ were all Saudis, whose royal house has the best of relations with the US government. Why not bomb the hell out of Saudi Arabia instead of Afghanistan? Look at all the oil they have. And why is the liar in chief not held accountable for starting that illegal war and mass murder in Iraq? I have trouble respecting that kind of double standard. The only redeeming factor in the president`s favor is, that he also gets directions from higher up.
If the European Union wants to take retaliatory measures, they could do that very effectively by cutting their umbilical cord to NATO. But the EU seems to be under the same control as the US. Yes ‘big brother’ is giving the marching orders and uses the American military might to attain his goals.
And you still doubt that 9-11 was staged?
No Ben, there can be no doubt. To say otherwise would indicate imbecility in an advanced state. Too many events in the years since that fateful day do not leave room for doubt. Many of the most reputed architects and engineers have come to the conclusion, that the laws of physics and nature do not allow for the official story to have any value. After all the uproar one would think, that the government would create another commission, to check off all the criticisms of the official story. By refusing to do so, they show to be afraid of the outcome. The uppercrust is hoping, that all those prickly questions will eventually fade away, but they will not, because the magnitude of the event does not allow that. Lately there are a lot of questions again about the Kennedy assassination. After a half century, it has not been forgotten. Now people are trying to find a common denominator between the two events and a plausible one is not that hard to find, except in official mendacious statements. If we want the truth, we have to keep these issues alive, because the wellbeing of mankind could very well hang in the balance.
“The question remains: how come US foreign policy is such a mess….?” Your question, Eric, must be rhetorical, since most people would take the implied answer for granted, namely, US foreign policy is misguided and incoherent or a ‘mess’. If true, as I think it is, then this would imply that the American ruling elite is simply incompetent.
However this conclusion implies that incompetent people can rise to positions of power and privilege which seems counterintuitive, not withstanding Peter’s Principle. A much more disturbing alternative view would be that American foreign policy is designed by rational and competent people to be just as we find it today, however counter intuitive that may seem. If this is true then we can conclude these people are morally defective because of the harm they cause not only to other nations but also to their own. So perhaps, the American policy ‘mess’ is due to the high incidence of sociopaths among the American ruling class and this conclusion, alas, is not counterintuitive!