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US threatened Germany over Snowden, Vice Chancellor says


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Source: https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2015/03/19/us-threatened-germany-snowden-vice-chancellor-says

Excerpt:

The vice chancellor delivered a speech in which he praised the journalists who worked on the Snowden archive, and then lamented the fact that Snowden was forced to seek refuge in “Vladimir Putin’s autocratic Russia” because no other nation was willing and able to protect him from threats of imprisonment by the U.S. government (I was present at the event to receive an award). That prompted an audience member to interrupt his speech and yell out: “Why don’t you bring him to Germany, then?”

There has been a sustained debate in Germany over whether to grant asylum to Snowden, and a major controversy arose last year when a Parliamentary Committee investigating NSA spying divided as to whether to bring Snowden to testify in person, and then narrowly refused at the behest of the Merkel government. In response to the audience interruption, Gabriel claimed that Germany would be legally obligated to extradite Snowden to the U.S. if he were on German soil.
Afterward, however, when I pressed the vice chancellor (who is also head of the Social Democratic Party, as well as the country’s economy and energy minister) as to why the German government could not and would not offer Snowden asylum — which, under international law, negates the asylee’s status as a fugitive — he told me that the U.S. government had aggressively threatened the Germans that if they did so, they would be “cut off” from all intelligence sharing. That would mean, if the threat were carried out, that the Americans would literally allow the German population to remain vulnerable to a brewing attack discovered by the Americans by withholding that information from their government.

The extent that the US government bullies nations should be no surprise to Canadians, as this has happened to our own country. Here is further proof that it is attempting to do the same to other nations. Germany could stand up to the US government and seek further proof that the US operates on a double-standard with many nations, as it seeks to control, manipulate and refuses to, simply put, play nice with others. My personal opinion is that this style of 'influence' is sometimes disguised as 'Americanisation', which occurred in Japan and in Latin American countries.

Of course, there is also proof that the US has treated Latin America like their backyard, but this was approached with scepticism in the English-speaking world, due to corruption in these countries (which, incidentally, the US promotes). For proof of this, refer to The Republic of Nicaragua v. The United States of America and the 1954 Guatemalan coup d’état (specifically the propaganda and disinformation brought on by the CIA), where the US's actions were interpreted, rightly in my opinion, as a modern form of economic colonialism.

Welcome to America.

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The United States is desperate to maintain its weakening stranglehold on world politics. The country is falsely propped up by debt and keeps it's own population in the dark.

Agreed..

They sure like to sugarcoat a lot of things...and hide things from their people.

Their public debt to GDP ratio is at 101%..

http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/GFDEGDQ188S

Japan apparently has the highest debt to GDP at over 200%

http://www.forbes.com/sites/mikepatton/2014/09/18/the-u-s-debt-why-it-will-continue-to-rise/

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Maybe Germany can protect themselves and doesn't need america to be it's dad?

German and US intelligence never got along historically anyways. The US doesn't share intel with Germany the way it does with Canada and the UK, which always annoyed the Germans and is why the 2 countries gather intel rather independently from one another to begin with.

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German and US intelligence never got along historically anyways. The US doesn't share intel with Germany the way it does with Canada and the UK, which always annoyed the Germans and is why the 2 countries gather intel rather independently from one another to begin with.

They aren't part of the anglo friendship sphere..

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