[kimlelly]

Europe is no longer an independent entity, it's more and more becoming the colonies of the US. We have very real facts that make this obvious:

1. the President's plane incident

2. the absence of honest outrage on the part of EU politicians regarding all the recent news

3. the direct surveillance collaboration with the NSA

4. the fact that the NSA is allowed to build multi-billion surveillance centers in Germany

5. refusal of help to Edward Snowden

Please add your observations to this list.

[Kurtz79]

Europe has not been an independent entity since the end of WW2 and the beginning of the cold war.

Unless you think that is normal for a country to have permanent military bases of a foreign power in its own territory.

I'm not judging or complaining, it's just the way it is. At some point in history, decisions were made about Europe's own place in the world that put it under US sphere of influence, and these decisions have important consequences to this day.

It can be argued that European countries traded part of their own sovereignity in exchange for security, protection and economic progress.

[epsylon]

Europe is merely a free trade agreement between various independent country, and a common currency between a subset of these countries.

> Unless you think that is normal for a country to have permanent military bases of a foreign power in its own territory.

These bases are negociated not through the European Union, but through NATO agreements (AFAIK), and on a bilateral basis.

For example, there are no American bases in France since the 60's.

> I'm not judging or complaining, it's just the way it is. At some point in history, decisions were made about Europe's own place in the world that put it under US sphere of influence, and these decisions have important consequences to this day.

Western European countries, maybe, but please remember that Eastern Europe has been under Russian influence since the cold war (and many of them still are).

> It can be argued that European countries traded part of their own sovereignity in exchange for security, protection and economic progress.

Some of them traded a bit of their military sovereignty (the first and foremost being Germany), but as far as I know most of these countries are politically sovereign.

[kimlelly]

> Unless you think that is normal for a country to have permanent military bases of a foreign power in its own territory.

Correct, that and the NSA infrastructure on European soil has to vanish.

[Zaytes]

> Correct, that and the NSA infrastructure on European soil has to vanish.

The odds of either of those things occurring are perilously near zero

[kimlelly]

Don't take this personally (you're in good company...):

We need to STOP saying:

1. "I'm so not surprised"

2. "That has zero chance of happening"

What we NEED to do is:

1. Think about things we CAN do

2. Find others to EXECUTE these things

3. TALK about this action

Anything else is just demotivating people. And that will only make things worse.

EDIT: To the downvoters - that's exactly what I'm talking about.

[Zaytes]

OK, we can widely adopt encryption and use alternets whenever possible, and attempt to affect technological activism. That is feasible and should be done as swiftly and as widely as possible. Evangelize these measures to the less technically inclined people in your life.

But as far as "removing" US military and intelligence presence from Europe - that will literally never happen, as all of Europe is entirely complicit in our presence and information gathering activities.

[weland]

As an European resident, I definitely agree to your assessment. By intuition, I'd say an important role is played by the fact that some European countries, members of EU even, are also NATO members, but I find it somewhat difficult to structure my arguments right now.

[dnautics]

Your list 2-5 is accurate, but the President's plane incident is bunk. Apparently Morales didn't have any fuel so he put on a little show play to get some attention. He didn't even take off from the same airport as snowden. While the US intelligence service is incompetent, I don't think they are that stupid.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/07/05/edward-snow...

[hedonist]

Apparently Morales didn't have any fuel so he put on a little show play to get some attention.

Apparently you need to do some basic research into the circumstances regarding the harassment of the Bolivian presidential flight.

[kimlelly]

:-) I just read this article - nothing personal, but I can't call that "journalism"; I find it really hard to take it seriously.

[dnautics]

do you prefer this?

http://www.theatlanticwire.com/global/2013/07/tale-re-routed...

[contingencies]

6. The hosting of SWIFT in Belgium, and SIX Interbank Clearing in Switzerland, who are both pinnacles of the inefficient, rent-seeking, environmentally and socially irresponsible, protectionist financial establishment and its surveillance abuses. The former's main guilt is in centralizing data on all global interbank transfers and passing it off to allied governments (particularly the US, even after rage against matters surfaced in the EU parliament, a 'SWIFT2' was designed, and new regulation nominally put in place... in response, the very structure of the EU conveniently changed - creating the Directorate of Home Affairs (sound like "Homeland Security" to anyone else?), which rubber-stamped their surveillance requests, and actively sidelined the European Data Protect Supervisor, who were tasked with protecting citizens against such abuses). [Note: The above was volunteered on official letterheard in response to FOIA, straight from the agency in question]. Longtime aspiring to be perceived as politically non-partisan (self-described as an "international cooperative"), they shred any pretensions recently to ban Iran outright from the entire network in a move even the incoming director shockingly described as "unprecedented" (reading between the lines, I believe he perhaps personally honestly didn't support it and his hand was forced). The second operates as a deniable financial NGO on the part of the global financial establishment for petty protectionism with minimal transparency.

7. The illegal rendition of The Pirate Bay's anakata from Cambodia to Swedish solitary confinement (himself a Swedish citizen) - without charge or process - for a term said to constitute torture even under UN definition.