France summons U.S. ambassador over spying report

Re:France summons U.S. ambassador over spying report by criley2 on Monday October 21, 2013 @10:17AM (#6585671)

Don't count Germany out. Merkel has preserved German strength at the cost of South Europe's pain. The Euro is managed to protect Northern economies, not mitigate the Southern pains. "Bailouts" and rescue plans are heavily biased towards preserving the North's separation from the fallout. All of this strengthens Germany and the northern countries at the expense of the EU as a whole.

As the worldwide balance of power continues to shift over the next decade or two, I believe Merkel's Germany is poised to be extremely relevant, even if it is so at the cost of the cohesion of the EU.

It also reaffirms to me why the UK seems to have very little interest joining the party like their neighbors. Why compete for first fiddle against a self-serving Merkel?

It'll be interesting times but I don't think it's as simple as Europe being relegated to America's extended states.

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Re:France summons U.S. ambassador over spying report by anologwintermut on Monday October 21, 2013 @10:33AM (#6585788)

I counted Germany out the moment the boundless informant information revealed the number of NSA intercepts in Germany was on the order of the number in China (despite the massive population difference and presumable difference in the number of linguists NSA employees for each country). One of the few plausible explanations for this is that the NSA was doing this surveillance minimally with the cooperation of the German government and likely at the behest of the BND/German government.

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