Germans Learn Why Friends Spy on Friends

[Blue_Tires]

'It is hard not to write satire," the Roman poet Juvenal famously quipped, adding: "I get an itch to run off beyond the Sarmatians and the frozen sea every time those men, who pretend to be paragons of virtue and live an orgy, dare to spout about morals."

Fast forward to the land the Romans called Germania. Recall the furor unleashed by National Security Agency tattletale Edward Snowden. U.S. intelligence, he let it be known, had burrowed into Chancellor Angela Merkel's cellphone. Dubbed "Handygate" (Germans call mobile phones "handys&quot , the affair united the country in an uproar over American arrogance.

How can you spy on friends? bellowed the chorus of indignation. We don't do it to you, how dare you do it to us? Parliament formed an NSA committee. The CIA station chief in Berlin was sent packing.

Now, however, the chorus has fallen silent. It turns out that German intelligence services eavesdropped on then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in 2012, and thereafter at least once on John Kerry. As they say, pride goeth before the fall. Meanwhile, the Turks have declared diplomatic war on Berlin after learning that they have been, and surely will continue to be, the target of Germany's systematic, NSA-style digital snooping.

The startling twist: Contrary to what they had to say about Handygate, German politicos and commentators are reacting like . . . a great power. German spying on NATO ally Turkey wasn't verboten, the argument goes, but rather legitimate and salutary. Turkey is at war with the terror brigades of the Kurdish PKK inside that country, and it abuts Syria and Iraq. The country provides a land bridge for jihadists to join Islamic State fighters in Iraq and Syria—and for those coming in to plot attacks on European targets.

http://online.wsj.com/articles/germans-learn-why-friends-spy-on-friends-1408489938?tesla=y

Greenwald, Snowden and the rest of their circle are a bunch of fucking hypocrites...