Dave Lindorff: "Is America Playing Its Last Card? Pissing Off Friends - a Doomed Strategy" @ This Can't Be Happening!

Like an obnoxious drunk harassing everyone and spilling drinks at a party, the US has continued to make itself both loathed and laughed at in the wake of the revelations about the National Security Agency’s global spying program as revealed by NSA leaker Edward Snowden.

The latest example of this was the report in Germany last week that the US had been massively spying on millions of German people based upon a tortured interpretation of a secret Cold War-era agreement foisted upon the then Bundesrepublik back in the early 1960s. That agreement gave the US and Britain the authority to surveil Soviet and East German spying activities inside what was commonly referred to as West Germany, and also to conduct spying operations to “protect” US troops based there. Obviously, spying on Soviet and East German spies is a far different thing from spying on Germans themselves, and clearly the Cold War is long gone. As for spying on Germans who might threaten the bases, that clearly could have been handled by police in Germany, and in any even would only involve a small and discrete program, not the monitoring of millions people’s electronic communications.

Angela Merkel, the conservative German Chancellor whose governing coalition is facing a critical national election in a few weeks, and who has been taking a lot of heat from Germans over disclosures that her government knew all along about the American spying program, has been trying to look proactive, and so the her government announced that it was canceling the spying agreement and ordering a halt to the NSA’s spying activities in the country.

The US response: nothing public, but unidentified “sources” in the US government made it clear that, agreement or no agreement, the NSA’s spying would continue (a German government official also stated that the supposed termination of the secret Cold War agreement would have “little effect” on continued spying by the US in Germany).

It’s another indication that the European countries are just puppets working under US authority. Much as an earlier demonstration this summer when the US induced French, Italian, Portuguese and Spanish authorities to deny their airspace to transit by a Bolivian presidential jet carrying President Evo Morales, who was en route from Russia back to Bolivia, forcing him to land in Austria, which itself was pressed by the US to have its authorities search the plane, thought by US sources to be carrying Snowden to asylum.

These heavy handed measures by the US are infuriating the people of Europe -- normally pro-American -- who are angry at both at the US and at their own servile governments...

For the rest of this article by DAVE LINDORFF in ThisCantBeHappening!, the new independent three-time Project Censored Award-winning online alternative newspaper, please go to: www.thiscantbehappening.net/node/1906

Please, IF YOU VALUE THIS PUBLICATION, PLEASE SUPPORT US! (AND CHECK OUT OUR NEW T-SHIRTS BY SCROLLING DOWN THE RIGHT SIDE OF THE HOME PAGE. BE THE FIRST ON YOUR BLOCK TO BECOME “A MAJOR DESTABILIZING INFLUENCE”!)

Hard to believe it, but this publication is, rather improbably, approaching the end of its third year of publication, and has just clocked in its 3.5 millionth reader, with readership up this year by 50% over a year ago! We did this all with almost no financial support--only what you, our readers, provided. Can you help us begin our fourth year a whole lot better, by giving use more financial support, so that we can devote more time to being reporters? If you believe as we do that we need more independent journalism, please put your money where your convictions are, and back ThisCantBeHappening! Use the Paypal button at the bottom of the home page, or send us a check at the address listed on the “Support Us” page. We’re not asking for much: just $5 a year from each person who reads and values us.

That’s our model. Make it work!