I agree, this is appalling.

Of course I mean Merkel not Merket, I think I may have been getting her confused with a meerkat which I can contain from countless telephone conversations she is not.

We shouln't be spying on our allies. Maybe there's a shadow of a justification here because the 9/11 hijackers did have a Hamburg connection, but there's still no reason to be snooping on Mutti.

Wave goodbye to the EU-US free trade pact...

"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. "

http://ronpaulinstitute.org/archives/featured-articles/2013/october/26/stasi-meets-steve-jobs.aspx

Intelligence agencies should be clear about what they do. They should reserve to them the right to gather intelligence from anywhere in the world and use as they see fit to protect or advance their nation's interest. Once they have this blanket statement out I the open, they can never be embarrasses again.

Everyone else can then choose how they wish to communicate, knowing that they may be spied on.

Don't tell me the UK or France or Germany doesn't collect intelligence from friendly countries. America got caught, but they all do it.

I also think there's a difference between doing it, and industrializing it.

What concerns me most about this is the German failure to protect their leadership's communications. If the Yanks could get sensitive data from Mutti's phone, then so could the Russians and the Chinese. The Yanks may have been shown to be arrogant bastards, but Europe has been shown to be weak and careless.

I doubt it will do much to the free trade pact, by the way. Europe needs it even more than the Yanks

The US is becoming a cowardish nation; afraid to tackle problems such as Syria, despite drawing meaningless red lines all over the place, but with the courage of bugging its best friends. May your country soon be alleviated of one of the worst administrations it has seen since its inception.

And let's never again give Nobel Prizes to such non-persons as Barack Obama again.

And perhaps this would be a nice moment for the Kanzlerin to announce she's going to pass a law to give permanent political asylum to Edward Snowden.

Indeed. When the world enters the biggest economic crisis in generations one would have traditionally expected the US to show leadership and browbeat certain European nations into getting their act together. Instead we find European eyes looking to the US to see if they are going to bugger things up with idiotic arguments over debt ceilings.

It is astonishing how feeble the US has looked in the last few years. Failing to keep national secrets. Failing to provide anything like the economic leadership expected of the world's largest economy. Failing to achieve anything with Syria. Failing to shut it's own military prison.

Can Obama turn the world's greatest nation into a laughing stock? Yes he can.

But let's all keep a good stock of popcorn ready to see them export democracy and teach the world about the wonders of a hostile congress. ;-)

I guess no one ever taught children like redhouse that having a government of the people, by the people, and for the people is the most fragile type of government, and the most difficult to maintain. Where did readhouse get the idea that democracy was easy, made us all get along, and solve everyone's problems. Grow up kid.

Merkel is not undergoing the same spying that she experienced in East Germany. I stayed in a Stasi prison for a night in the winter. She's not going through that. Nothing like that exists here.

Well, of course having her phone tapped isn't the same as being in prison. Who would think so?

She does, however, have every right to be mad about this, as do all Germans. Just because this isn't literally at the same level as the Stasi programs in East Germany doesn't mean us bugging her phone (and God knows what else) is OK.

"I guess no one ever taught children like redhouse that having a government of the people, by the people, and for the people is the most fragile type of government, and the most difficult to maintain. Where did readhouse get the idea that democracy was easy, made us all get along, and solve everyone's problems. Grow up kid."

He doesn't claim any of that. The funny part is that America acts like they have a democracy, like they have freedom and act like they have any moral authority over anyone, including 'terrorists'.

For the record, that's why America isn't exactly fragile: it's not exactly a real democracy.

And I don't claim to know of any democracies, before you start using that trick. In fact, that's the point: I don't pretend things exist that simply don't exist.

"I stayed in a Stasi prison for a night in the winter."

You what? Pray do tell, must be an interesting story.

I'm surprised (well, no I'm not) that the U. S. media seems to have forgotten Brazil now that France and Germany are up in arms.

France and Germany are close allies, Brazil isn't. That's the simple, straight-forward reason.

If this is what she had to 'endure' in East Germany then East Germany wasn't the hellhole she constantly portrays it to be, now was it?

Cue Putin33's defense of a communist dictatorship.

Me and most of the residents of that former republic. Know-nothings like you can content themselves with their privatized government run by bankers & insurance companies.

"If this is what she had to 'endure' in East Germany then East Germany wasn't the hellhole she constantly portrays it to be, now was it?"

bert_reading_ernie_laughing.gif

"Me and most of the residents of that former republic."

-I have actually been in that former republic recently and it seems to be doing alright. The thing with them being allowed to see their German brothers and sisters on the other side of the fence really seems to work out pretty smoothly.

"this isn't literally at the same level as the Stasi programs in East Germany"

No, it isn't. It's far more invasive:

“You know, for us, this would have been a dream come true,” he said, recalling the days when he was a lieutenant colonel in the defunct communist country’s secret police, the Stasi.

In those days, his department was limited to tapping 40 phones at a time, he recalled. Decide to spy on a new victim and an old one had to be dropped, because of a lack of equipment. He finds breathtaking the idea that the U.S. government receives daily reports on the cellphone usage of millions of Americans and can monitor the Internet traffic of millions more.

“So much information, on so many people,” he said.

Read more here: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2013/06/26/195045/memories-of-stasi-color-germans.html#storylink=cpy

See also http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-07-11/stasi-vs-nsa-compare-and-contrast for a representation of the relative amounts of data being collected.

More invasive, sure. But the United States government isn't using that info in the way the Stasi would have. There's the difference.

Again, I'm flatly against this spying. You just shouldn't equate it to what the Stasi was up to, which was of a different character entirely.

"the United States government isn't using that info in the way the Stasi would have."

Gimme a break. You really think they draw a line at spying on their personal love interests?

Are we talking about the NSA's action in Germany or generally?

Whichever it is, it isn't the Stasi. Not yet. To keep it from becoming so I favor as much rollback and regulation of this enterprise as possible. But we can't honestly say the NSA has reached those levels yet. To do so betrays ignorance of what the Stasi did, the NSA does, or both.

I have to agree with Invictus, that the Stasi is much worse than the NSA. Also, the organizations are incomparable. I believe the Stasi was a much broader organization (including what the US would call CIA and FBI if I'm not mistaken) and a much smaller one.

But now that the US has been caught red-handed, if it wants to maintain good relationships with the rest of the world, it has to start acting as a country caught red-handed.