Sunday 30 June 2013

speaking with forked-tongue

Well, that escalated quickly. In the latest revelations to come out of the NSA scandal, it has been revealed that not only does the American intelligence service snoop on German communications to a much higher degree, the NSA has also utilized America's outposts, within and without, to spy in the old-fashioned sense on European Union institutions.
Not only were the diplomatic safeguards of EU business violated to conduct in the US subject to bugging but also back at home in Brussels by safe-houses within the neighbouring American controlled portions of the NATO Supreme Command. It would not be surprising if all such outposts, the lingering bases and consulates, were not retrofitted for the same purpose, since the attitudes of younger and older veterans remain, Cold War thinking and opinions that judge Germany's immigration policy as too liberal and too forgiving and made the country the locus of the 9/11 terror attacks in some minds. The spying on the EU and Germany cumulatively, however, suggests that America wants to head-off more than terror and anticipate policy and business changes, especially taking into account where such listening-posts are situated. Such a valuable upper-hand is not easily surrendered, despite the shrinking footprint of occupation and its public rationale for staying.