European Politics

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Tomorrow, with help of Glenn Greenwald, based on material provided by Snowden, an article is expected in the papers revealing that the US has been spying my country since 1946. It will be the start of a series of articles (new stuff) on NSA activities worldwide and of course also the Netherlands specifically.

As opposed to what happened in e.g. England, all done -as well as possible- in cooperation with General Intelligence and Security Service, because the papers in question do not want to endanger state security.

Thorough research has been going on for months, but it's a work in progress, so we can expect more pieces of the puzzle in the future.
 
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This entire Snowden affair only confirmed what I'd been suspecting ever since I heard of the existence of secret services.
 
I am especially interested. And yes, I didn't have an exact year in my head, so yeah I didn't know it was since 1946.
 
I always thought that the world's most powerful countries all spied on everyone. USA, Russia, UK and China are surely all up to it.
 
I would like to see how politics will deal with all this.

Don't know how people in the UK or North America think about this but it's quite an issue here in continental Europe. Our Minister wants -together with Germany- make clear to the Americans that spying on allies is unacceptable. Together they hope to make bigger impact. Let's see how that goes.
 
I hadn't doubted for a second that the most powerful countries spied on everyone. The US not only spies but also manipulates certain things, I think.
 
Forostar said:
Our Minister wants -together with Germany- make clear to the Americans that spying on allies is unacceptable. Together they hope to make bigger impact. Let's see how that goes.
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He'll need to find somebody from the German government who will have the balls to confront the Americans with it. There is nobody, however. The German government is sticking its collective head in the sand, while opposition politicians make strong and eloquent speeches.
 
I am not sure if there has not been any confrontation yet. But more is needed indeed. The picture becomes clearer and clearer and at some point some sort of action ought to be taken.
 
There has been. The German interior minister went to Washington. Then he came back and said, "the crisis is over." A couple of months later, Merkel's cellphone was found to be rigged. Ever since, the government has been sitting there and grinning inanely whenever somebody stepped up in parliament and demanded some information.

The Merkel administration will do nothing.
 
And the British ambassador, because the UK is still spying from a rooftop.... was “invitated” to answer questions, which is a step below a stern summoning.

Yep. I am afraid it's complicated. The relations with the USA are of vital importance, but one expects to trust an ally so much that you don't spy on him.
 
Diplomats are immune in the EU. Sometimes this can cause complex situations. A while back a Russian diplomat abused his kids, in a drunken state, in his own house, in The Hague. He was arrested but that's not allowed. So: angry Russians.

Another example: In the center of The Hague are lots of 'diplomat' cars who don't give a shit about parking rules. 'En masse' they break the rules. You can't do much about it, since they have this immunity.

Take the embassy of Angola. A 'diplomat' car parks 'illegally', and a journalist (I admit, one who keeps going and can be very annoying) asks questions about it. Result: a bloody beating:
Both the ambassador and the journalist went to the police to make a report.
 
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No big shock .... and I think it is wrong to spy (actual spying, not just collecting information) on countries like Holland. Germany, etc. In 1946, I could understand it given the war just ended and there were legit concerns about what governments would be in place. But much beyond that, it is just wrong, there is no defending it.

Spying on countries like the USSR/Russia, some of the Islamic states that have been openly hostile to us ... I have no problem spying on them big time .. and that is where our resources should be used.
 
Now here's something I wasn't expecting: A new study shows that the Pentagon has funded research projects in 22 German universities, most of which are dual use projects for both military and civilian purposes. This involves some universities that have legally declared to conduct purely civilian research only. What surprises me here is that this has actually been happening at all, and that this only becomes known now, despite the fact that all the contracts have been publicly available for 13 years. I'm not sure what to think of it in general, though.
 
Today the Scottish Government/SNP published their "Scottish Independence" White Paper (think it's officially called Scotland's Future). The BBC's coverage has actually been pretty wall-to-wall, as I think it should be. Less than a year to the referendum.
 
I started looking at the summary document yesterday but got bored. This morning I had a look at the front of the papers and they all seem pretty sceptical about the promises made in the white paper, suggesting that there are more questions than answers. One paper said that Westminster and the European Commission immediately countered the claims that an independent Scotland could share the pound and that it could automatically join the EU.
 
That sounds a lot like what Quebec wanted when they were pushing for separation in 1995. They wanted their own passports and didn't want to pay federal taxes, but they still wanted to use the Canadian dollar, to be protected by the Canadian military (and Canadian military alliances like NORAD and NATO), and they wanted to be added as a party to the NAFTA negotiations. They want the best of both worlds.
 
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