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Re: Obama knew about NSA spying on Merkel
A new report has revealed that US President Barack Obama was personally aware of the National Security Agency’s eavesdropping on German Chancellor Angela Merkel.
NSA director Keith Alexander had briefed President Obama on the mobile phone tapping against Merkel in 2010, German newspaper Bild am Sonntag reported on Sunday.
"Obama did not halt the operation but rather let it continue," according to the paper citing a high-ranking NSA official.
The newspaper also said the US spying agency eavesdropped on Merkel's predecessor, Gerhard Schroder, after former US president George W. Bush launched the spying program in 2002, adding that Schroder's refusal to support the Iraq war was a key reason behind the operation.
The new revelation comes one day after German magazine Der Spiegel said that the NSA's Special Collection Service (SCS) had listed Merkel's mobile telephone since 2002.
Washington’s ally has demanded explanations from the White House after disclosures about the huge and broad American electronic spying.
On Thursday, Germany summoned US ambassador John Emerson to discuss the tapping allegations.
"For us, spying on close friends and partners is totally unacceptable. This undermines trust and this can harm our friendship," German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle said. "We need the truth now."
In a phone call with Obama on Wednesday, Merkel said that she "unequivocally disapproves of such practices and sees them as completely unacceptable. There should be no such monitoring of the communication of a head of government. That would be a grave breach of trust."
The White House, however, rejected the allegations, saying “the United States is not monitoring and will not monitor the communications of Chancellor Merkel."
The global outrage over US government surveillance further spiked after The Guardian -- citing a confidential memo obtained from American whistleblower Edward Snowden - revealed that the NSA is illegally eavesdropping on phone conversations of 35 world leaders.
The revelations have prompted Brazil and Germany to begin drafting a UN General Assembly resolution to restrain the NSA’s surveillance programs against other nations.
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Evo has always had a lot of Euro fans. What's the general reaction on that side of the pond regarding U.S. surveillance on pretty much every major power?
Re: Obama knew about NSA spying on Merkel
At this point? People are about as surprised as to find the sun rising yet another morning. A state of corrupt overload. It's not like our leaders are any better. Every fucking day there's some outrageous shit being uncovered. It's gone way past caring.
That's one hell of an avatar btw. You haven't been watching "The greatest story never told" by any chance?
Re: Obama knew about NSA spying on Merkel
That's one hell of an avatar btw. You haven't been watching "The greatest story never told" by any chance?
Doing surveillance on my computer? 
I've always been interested in the rise and fall of Hitler and the complexities of the Holocaust. I'll dig in, go a few years without reading any books/documentaries, then dive in again. The past few months I've read a few books and watched many docs on youtube. I'm about an hour and 20 minutes into "The greatest story never told". Its about six hours long. I'm hoping it goes into more detail regarding the "polish corridor" and how giving Germany that MIGHT have prevented WWII. Well, not really preventing it but minimizing the amount of countries involved and by proxy fewer casualties. Most books skim over that incident.
Re: Obama knew about NSA spying on Merkel
Takes one to know one 
It's a fantastic documentary. Possibly the best I've ever seen. Goes to show how twisted our perceptions can become in this world. That whole affair in the 30s and 40s will be looked at a lot different in the not so far future. Recommend you to look into some stuff about Gaddafi too. That's another interesting story.
Re: Obama knew about NSA spying on Merkel
At this point? People are about as surprised as to find the sun rising yet another morning. A state of corrupt overload. It's not like our leaders are any better. Every fucking day there's some outrageous shit being uncovered. It's gone way past caring.
That's one hell of an avatar btw. You haven't been watching "The greatest story never told" by any chance?
Exactly. I personally would have assumed this was the case anyway. Merkel is probably spying on 30 countries herself
Re: Obama knew about NSA spying on Merkel
Merkel is probably spying on 30 countries herself
While I have no doubt the EU is knee deep in corruption, considering the fact that the US is so far advanced I doubt that any country(including Russia) has the capability to literally spy on the entire planet.
That whole affair in the 30s and 40s will be looked at a lot different in the not so far future.
I agree that it should, but I highly doubt that historians will change the "official" story. I blame that on Hitler. The Holocaust was the most horrifying event in world history and to change the official story in textbooks would be close to giving him a free pass on that. Don't wish to offend by saying this and hopefully any Jewish members close their eyes, but I sympathize with Hitler in his first few years. He was just reunifying Germany and shoving the Versailles treaty up the world's ass(where it belonged) and bringing the economy out from the abyss. As one historian said, if Hitler had died in 37 or 38 he would be considered one of the greatest leaders in Euro history. Even IF he was provoked into WWII(that's questionable), any sympathy I may have had for him ends the nanosecond the einsatzgruppen massacres started.
While Hitler was obviously a dictator, he was Chancellor for 12 years and strangely it can easily be divided into two terms based on his actions. First term(1933-39) had amazing feats(yeah, murder too) and in his "second term"(1939-45) he was mentally deranged with massive drug use taking him off the rails on a crazy train. I don't know if you've read The Last Battle, but according to Nazi members who saw him in the bunker that final year, he was essentially a zombie that had to be carried around, and was mute until getting his injections and then would sit in a chair shaking like crazy and rambling about nothing. Clearly not lucid and was in desperate need of a shotgun blast to the head before he took Germany to hell with him and an early demise might have saved lives although something like 80% of Holocaust victims were already dead by 1943. Clearly would have saved thousands of American, British, and Russian lives.
While Hitler must take the blame as he was the head honcho, even with his obsession with Jews and constant rants, should Himmler take more of the blame for "The Final Solution"? It's safe to say Hitler approved it but Himmler actually got enjoyment out of it.
Re: Obama knew about NSA spying on Merkel
It's a fantastic documentary. Possibly the best I've ever seen. Goes to show how twisted our perceptions can become in this world. That whole affair in the 30s and 40s will be looked at a lot different in the not so far future. Recommend you to look into some stuff about Gaddafi too. That's another interesting story.
Oh, I agree. Given its apparent nul-budget, there's bound to be some rough ends, but the audio is crisp and the visualization through footage of the times is compelling. Not only that, but the story, as it unfolds (literally) on all fronts, is pretty astounding. Some big stuff like Japan's motives and US reactions to them are into the (annoying) text crawl, but I'm glad it's there - they serve to set up a larger framework, and when's there's literally a world at war, it's needed. All those people affected by the war at the time had no idea we'd be looking into it this way after so much time, but I'd like to think they'd appreciate the future generations' effort to understand what to them was undoubtedly incomprehensible as a mass effect.
Re: Obama knew about NSA spying on Merkel
At this point? People are about as surprised as to find the sun rising yet another morning. A state of corrupt overload. It's not like our leaders are any better. Every fucking day there's some outrageous shit being uncovered. It's gone way past caring.
That's one hell of an avatar btw. You haven't been watching "The greatest story never told" by any chance?
I think this pretty much sums it all up. Even if you look into the psychology of people, as well as social psychology, you will find that about 99% of people just shut down the more "truth" is thrown into their accepted truth, and whatever the collective is believing at any given second. The truth is history is a constantly changing, constantly roving and rotating entity, almost like AI on a computer. Learning and correcting, learning and correcting.
But human beings aren't. We pick a reality, we pick a solution, and by fucking God we stick to that and only that. If anything threatens that, then the human mind goes into overload, shuts down, or takes memory remedies to correct itself, to go back to protecting "their truth" at all costs. Not even thinking that everyone of us is conditioned.
I think all of that sums up why I pretty much feel the same way. The U.S. government's trust is in the toilet, yet we... re-elect almost everyone last election?
That says it all folks. And that's just the U.S. That ain't counting the world where some public officials spend lifetimes running countries.
People have done exactly that, just shut down. It pisses me off, because we could demand more, and change and rectify things so it doesn't happen again. We actually, and proudly, have some members here at Evo that have that "constantly correcting, constantly changing" with hard evidence mindset, like poll, Lofton, myself (sorry if i'm forgetting the others who got involved in all those political or universe debates), but it takes a mind like that to even give a shit when you're lied to.
We live in such a world full of little liars, that when the big lies come down... it's just like drinking water to them.
Re: Obama knew about NSA spying on Merkel
In my oppinion/experience everything you meet in private/small circles you'll find in the "big picture" as well... So you'll watch when your neighbor is going to work or coming home or we trying to "spy" some news about GNR, all the same. Why should the politicians or the powerful people do anything else???
People having fights during a night out about nothing and why should it be different between countries/religions or any other "communities"???
Oh, and the human rasse is just really dumb, stubborn and not able to learn from it's own past!!!
What a dark picture.....:haha:
Re: Obama knew about NSA spying on Merkel
We're gullible gits to read the word privacy anywhere and to believe it. As if the world leaders were any more (or less) human than the rest of us; my opinion is that they are just as bickering and rowdy sort as their underlings. If we'd know the whole of the truth as to how things are ran, there'd be revolts and revulsion all over. Meanwhile, we keep feeding them a surplus of info they'll never be able to wade through; they just store it for safekeeping like squirrels.
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