Slashdot Mirror
German Vice Chancellor: the US Threatened Us Over Snowden
siddesu sends this report from The Intercept:
German Vice Chancellor Sigmar Gabriel said this week in Homburg that the U.S. government threatened to cease sharing intelligence with Germany if Berlin offered asylum to NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden or otherwise arranged for him to travel to that country. 'They told us they would stop notifying us of plots and other intelligence matters,' Gabriel said.
Without getting into the moral implications of such a threat by the US, this is the cost Germany et. al. pay when letting the US foot the defense bill. The US defense budget pays for a large portion of the defense of the first world. If they don't want to be beholden to the whims of the US, don't depend on the US for defense.
Anyway, Snowden would be stupid to trust Germany. Only sovereign on paper, Germany is America's lapdog.
Umm, Germany has the eighth largest military in the world. Or were you unaware of that?
Japan has the ninth, in case you were interested.
Aside from the Big Three (US, Russia, China), Germany is behind India, UK, France, and South Korea. Which puts them about where they were in 1939 (what, you didn't know that the Wehrmacht in 1939 was smaller than the French Army, much less the combined Anglo-French forces they faced in 1940?).
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
Why do you assume it was the US intelligence agencies that made the decision to make this threat?
From whom? Ask those who lived next to the GDR & saw people shot running to freedom in the recent past or more recently people living in eastern Ukraine. Perhaps you would prefer to converse with Boris Nemtsov?
Democracy is a sheep and two wolves deciding what to have for lunch. Freedom is a well armed sheep contesting the issue
This subscribes to a cynical one sided view of the world. In regards to Snowden, we only have assumptions on Putin's behavior toward him, while we do have evidence on Obama's behavior towards him. What you do here, is condemn someone based on assumptions, in order to try to protect or justify actions of someone else, who's already done harm. As for the second set of assumptions, we've had a reverse case like that which you advocate with a country similar to Germany, the UK. So there is actual evidence that this is not a preferred scenario for the concerned party.
I wish, Sir, you stopped living in a fantasy world of conclusions reached based on assumptions and joined us in evidence based reality.
If programs would be read like poetry, most programmers would be Vogons.
The only reason Germany ran wild twice was because we (the victors of WWI) botched the unholy shit out of things the first time, basically wrecking Germany and creating a power vacuum.
I'd say it was a bit more complicated than that. The issues were not Germany's alone, nor that of the losers, nor even the occurance of the Great Depression. The entire 20's and 30's was a three way battle between the idealogies and factions of Democracy, Fascism, and Communism. Italy, Spain, Austria, and Germany fell to fasicsm before WW2 even started.Before they did, there was a see-saw battle in the streets. The foundations of the Nazi party gained prestige when they helped overthrown a communist coup in Bavaria. There was even debate in the US along those idealogical lines.
It's easy to blame the US but we didn't create most of the problems facing the world. Europe did with colonialism. Though the US is responsible for the rise of ISIS, the political boundaries that aided the creation and much of the problems of the middle east are related to the divvying up of the middle east by Europe after WWI and the subsequent colonization that took place later. The problems Europe created will haunt us for a long time to come, probably several hundred years.
Up until WWII the US was neutral and outside the fucking around in the western hemisphere pretty well minded their business. We didn't create the problems, we've just been dealing with them. And you should fear greatly the day people like me get our way and turn this country back neutral and start looking out after our own and stop caring about everyone else. Europe, Canada and many others will be in for a shitstorm when they have to start paying for their own defense.