
Why We Spy on Our Allies (2000) - techinsidr
http://cryptome.org/echelon-cia2.htm
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unreal37
Interesting attempt at an explanation, but pretty far off the mark.

Start with, everybody spies on everybody. Do you think Russia spies on the
United States?[1] You bet it does. Or tries to.

The US just has gotten very good at spying. Better than any other nation right
now. They have unlimited resources to spy with, while most European countries
don't spend their money on that.

Every few years (as this year 2000 article shows), the US gets caught spying
on its friends, and has to scale that back a bit and apologize. But almost
every country has a foreign intelligence unit, and they're not very good.

[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anna_Chapman](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anna_Chapman)

~~~
coldtea
> _Start with, everybody spies on everybody. Do you think Russia spies on the
> United States?[1] You bet it does. Or tries to._

Only it doesn't matter much. Back in the USSR days it mattered. Nowadays, what
would Russia, a not that powerful country do with it's spying? Not much.

Whereas the top dog, with the resources it has available, and the breadth of
it's spying, it uses it for tons of stuff (mostly grabbing resources for
cheap, ensuring friendly lackeys are in government everywhere it can, etc).

------
PavlovsCat
_It is because your economic patron saint is still Jean Baptiste Colbert,
whereas ours is Adam Smith. In spite of a few recent reforms, your governments
largely still dominate your economies, so you have much greater difficulty
than we in innovating, encouraging labor mobility, reducing costs, attracting
capital to fast-moving young businesses and adapting quickly to changing
economic circumstances. You 'd rather not go through the hassle of moving
toward less dirigisme._

vs.

 _" What has been created by this half century of massive corporate propaganda
is what's called "anti-politics". So that anything that goes wrong, you blame
the government. Well okay, there's plenty to blame the government about, but
the government is the one institution that people can change... the one
institution that you can affect without institutional change. That's exactly
why all the anger and fear has been directed at the government. The government
has a defect - it's potentially democratic. Corporations have _no* defect -
they're pure tyrannies. So therefore you want to keep corporations invisible,
and focus all anger on the government. So if you don't like something, you
know, your wages are going down, you blame the government. Not blame the guys
in the Fortune 500, because you don't _read_ the Fortune 500. You just read
what they tell you in the newspapers... so you don't read about the dazzling
profits and the stupendous dizz, and the wages going down and so on, all you
know is that the bad government is doing something, so let's get mad at the
government."* -- Noam Chomsky

= nice try, but no. That's not less dirigisme, that's more. Why, even you say
it yourself without knowing, when you talk about adapting to circumstances,
many of which exactly this rat race creates.

Even if someone has an otherwise good point - if this crap is mixed in, this
propaganda against government and by extension against the people having at
least a theoretical defense which might one day become a real one, I find it
hard to ignore that. Because a little sugar makes medicine go down, but also
rat poison. Democracy is not the problem, its subversion by _all sorts of_
groups including the people itself is. If we're not good enough to deserve it,
then let's be good enough, instead of just giving up and going along with
blind greed, and/or following people who have no idea where the fuck they're
even going.

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mtowle
>Why We Spy on Our Allies (2000)

>>your economic patron saint is still Jean Baptiste Colbert, whereas ours is
Adam Smith.

We Are All Mercantilists Now (2008)

[http://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2008/09/we_are_all_mercantili...](http://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2008/09/we_are_all_mercantilists_now.html)

------
bas
I am certain (seriously) that is supported by neither the German government
nor its people, but it's worth noting that German firms have illegally
(according to German law) supplied Iran's nuclear program with embargoed
technology. While this understandably gives little comfort to German citizens,
I am guessing (given the monetary, administrative, and foreign policy costs of
overreach) that the NSA is more interested in this kind of thing than
particular details of Green Party politics.

[http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/nuclear-
technology...](http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/nuclear-technology-
for-iran-german-investigators-uncover-illegal-exports-a-858893.html)

------
doe88
At least that doesn't justify the tapping of the fax machine at Brussels.

------
CleanedStar
This piece is so awful, no wonder it's a Wall Street Journal op-ed...the WSJ
is a good paper, but its editorial page was always screwy, even before Rupert
Murdoch bought the Journal.

Woolsey of course does what you'd expect - when caught in government/corporate
espionage, he throws up whatever dirt was found out to change the subject. His
examples are a laugh. Bribing Brazilian officials? Woolsey and his cronies had
been working to keep Brazil a dictatorship until 15 years before he wrote this
piece. Saudi corruption? Woolsey had worked it along with his companions so
that the US had its army occupying Saudi Arabia in 2000 against the will of
most Saudis, who lived and still live under a US-backed dictatorship. It took
a plane through the Pentagon and two through the WTC to get the US occupation
out of Saudi Arabia.

Then he has contempt for the "statist" Airbus. How is Airbus more statist than
Boeing, which is completely dependent on the government dole, to manufacture
aircraft which most strategic planners say are not of much use in the modern
type guerrilla wars the US is now working to counter?

Europe has always been a laboratory for innovative technology - Linux, MySQL,
SuSE, QT, Rovio, SAP, Siemens, CERN and the world wide web. Eastern Europe is
a treasure trove of technical talent, if not established technical companies.
It's possible the Bay Area is the ultimate destination for much tech
monetization - even US cities bemoan this. But plenty of technology gets
invented in Europe.

