EU spying backlash threatens billions in US trade
Source: AP-Excite
By JUERGEN BAETZ
BRUSSELS (AP) - The backlash in Europe over U.S. spying is threatening an agreement that generates tens of billions of dollars in trans-Atlantic business every year - and negotiations on another pact worth many times more.
A growing number of European officials are calling for the suspension of the "Safe Harbor" agreement that lets U.S. companies process commercial and personal data - sales, emails, photos - from customers in Europe. This little-known but vital deal allows more than 4,200 American companies to do business in Europe, including Internet giants like Apple, Google, Facebook and Amazon.
Revelations of the extent of U.S. spying on its European allies is also threatening to undermine one of President Barack Obama's top trans-Atlantic goals: a sweeping free-trade agreement that would add an estimated $138 billion (100 billion euros) a year to each economy's gross domestic product.
Top EU officials say the trust needed for the negotiations has been shattered.
FULL story at link.
Read more: http://apnews.excite.com/article/20131030/DA9OPO901.html
This is a Friday, May 18, 2012 file photo of President Barack Obama, right, greets President of the European Commission Jose Manuel Barroso on Barroso's arrival for the G8 Summit at Camp David, Md. The backlash in Europe over U.S. spying is threatening an agreement that generates tens of billions of dollars in trans-Atlantic business every year _ and negotiations on another pact worth many times more. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak, File)
kelliekat44
(7,759 posts)starroute
(12,977 posts)whathehell
(29,082 posts)Lasher
(27,632 posts)Link to an informative discussion: http://www.democraticunderground.com/10023721279
pampango
(24,692 posts)Twenty-five years ago this month a general election was fought in this country over free trade with the United States. It was one of the few federal elections in recent memory where a policy question was central to the campaign.
Exactly 25 years after that pivotal election, Prime Minister Harper has all but concluded a free-trade pact with the European Union, which the government claims is even more significant than the Canada-U.S. Free Trade Agreement.
The Liberals and New Democrats broadly support free trade with Europe (although both have voiced criticisms over specific elements of the nascent agreement). Social and environmental groups, which fought trench warfare against the Canada-U.S. FTA for years, have little to say on this agreement. The mainstream media, which were also divided over free trade in the 1980s, see the prime ministers deal as a clear political winner. Free trade with Europe wont be much of an issue in the 2015 election.
... is it that Canadians are no more enthusiastic about free trade today than a generation ago, we are just more comfortable with the dance partner this time around? We feel less threatened by distant, soft, diplomatic Europe, than we did with on-our-doorstep, in-your-face, take-no-prisoners America. Why would we fear Europe, whose welfare state and environmental regulations, one of the central preoccupations of the anti-free trade crusaders a generation ago, are in fact more progressive than what Canada has on offer?
http://www.thestar.com/opinion/commentary/2013/10/30/are_canadians_free_traders_or_just_europhiles.html
Europe's "welfare state and environmental regulations" are "more progressive than what Canada has to offer". They are
light years ahead of what the US has to offer.
BadGimp
(4,017 posts)riverbendviewgal
(4,253 posts)..what can anyone trust the USA with?
DeSwiss
(27,137 posts)To commit acts of war.
Approve poisons as food and drugs.
Allow mentally disturbed people to buy guns and become members of Congress.
Pass vagina-use laws.
Pass ''Whoyoucan&can'tluvlaws.''
Pass Obamacare override bills incessantly knowing it won't go anywhere.
Allow obvious victims of PTSD to put on a police uniform and give them a gun and tell them to make people behave.
Insure corrupt government by ignoring the people and passing laws that enrich the rich further on the backs of everyone else.
- That's off the top of my head. I'm sure I'm leaving a few out......
You can't make a pie with rotten apples.....
riverbendviewgal
(4,253 posts)like veterans, seniors and children and the working poor.
What happened to the USA?
We shake our heads up here where I am from....
What happened to the country to have gone into such insanity?
DeSwiss
(27,137 posts)In our case, about 200 years.
The idea that the US was ever a paragon of virtue is the first, and worst lie of the bunch.
They never taught the truth in the classrooms, so everyone grew up believing the paragon bullshit line.
We've been kept divided by our own ignorance, fears and prejudices.
They are the perfect panic buttons to keep the whole society on edge, in fear and controllable.
And yet we know the truth.
But don't live the truth.
We're afraid to.
That's why everything's screwed up now.
- And it won't change until we own up to it.
riverbendviewgal
(4,253 posts)taught us that empires usually are in power 200 - 250 years. He said they usually implode from within due to corruption and greed.
USA your time is up.
DeSwiss
(27,137 posts)Here's some more. This is our ''real'' government now:
[center]
[font size=1]You'll note that the eagle is facing not towards the
arrows of war, but towards the chains of enslavement.[/font][/center]
- It didn't have to be this way, but it is now our reality. The longer we deny this, the less likely we'll be able to undo it.
riverbendviewgal
(4,253 posts)there is a lot of history there I DID NOT learn.....There is a lot of US history omitted or whitewashed.
It is sad but look at England...the sun never set in its Empire days.
The torch of leader moves on. The thing is that the MIC is clinging on to its power and riches at the price of our treasure..the people.
DeSwiss
(27,137 posts)It's always been about us. Slavery still exists. In fact it never went away.
It's form has been changed and it has been upgraded to a point now where we can no longer see the chains. And like the African slaves of colonial America who were born into slavery and had little inkling (at least at first) of how warped and unnatural their situation was, they acquiesced to their lot in life. Just as we have learned to do the same way now. Accepting propaganda and indoctrination (as if that were an education) and allowing our children to be brainwashed in their most crucial mind-forming years. No child left behind, indeed.
We later go on indebting ourselves, even with no means of demonstrable support in college, where we further this propaganda/indoctrination/education process. For a job that is now less likely to end up as a space engineer, and more likely end up with a cash register checker job at McDonalds. With cap and gown still not paid for, we find ourselves trudging down to the banker's shops to take out loans for things we can hardly repay. For the condos and house, and the cars and boats. All that plastic crap we've surrounded ourselves in. Plastic-reality on the installment plan. We bought-in, made our collective downpayments and this life is what we got for it. And still, somehow it doesn't seem strange to us. Even though we know not where the desire for all this, came from.
It's been this way from the start. But now the tattered signs of this cheesy play are showing around the edges. And we've been reminded here of late (although many still have their eyes tightly shut), what is really going-on. The cheating, the lying, the thievery and no jail for anyone -- but us. We see it all and remain quietly acquiescent to it all. Proving once again that no matter how atrocious a thing might be, we'd much prefer not to at look at TRUTH so directly. Our eyes and our minds can't handle that much of it at once.
The links in our chains of enslavement today, instead of being crafted from steel are now made from ''debt.'' The more debt you have, longer your chain. And the more entangled with it you'll become. Previously we'd been lead to believe that we could take off the chains at age 65. Then they said that wasn't enough. So it became age 65 and you have to eat cat food. Now they want age 70 and cat food. And less access medicine too, lest we live longer than the actuarial tables and their plans for us, allow.
- By the time they start to get rough with us, it'll be too late. And they're starting to. Already we've forgotten how to feed ourselves. Some don't even know what real food looks like. Most couldn't survive but a few days at most, without ''the system.'' It's now or never.
Nihil
(13,508 posts)riverbendviewgal
(4,253 posts)Wow! You are so right. I am fortunate to live in Canada where it is not deteriorating as fast as the usa.
I am retired and I am not eating cat food, nor are my other retired friends.
I think Monsanto seeds are a plot to control us or starve us. There seems to be a plan for one world order with a few elites and corporations in control. I refuse this way. It is not my path.
I am realizing I do not Need much. I have turned off the commercials of Get Me.
Now in my twight years I find myself boarding the boat of peaceful activism.
I have nothing to lose but I will gain my sou and freedom.
How many others are coming to this realization?
DeSwiss
(27,137 posts)I went there once as a small child. All I remember of it now was playing in mountains of leaves and the dazzling of golden leaves on the trees with the sun shining through! That's my memory of Canada at about 5, thanks to wonderful godparents and a crazy great-uncle who lived there at the time. And I too am retired, although it wasn't planned that way. Having been a workaholic for so many years I can hardly complain how I ended up here.
Monsanto is evil. Their corporate credo is totally anathema to the requirements for diversity in life. It should be given the corporate equivalent of the death penalty, executed and had its remains (except the poisons) plowed under.
While I discover the boundaries of my new career (taking care of myself for a change), I'm realizing just how little I require as well. My son has recently embarked upon building a greenhouse in the backyard based on an idea I had. I had sent him a link to a guy who was building greenhouse using cattle panels.
Since I can't run out to the backyard like I used to, he takes videos on his phone and brings them to me to see. Here's what ''we've'' done so far:
[center][/center]
He's working on building a rocket mass-heating system for it right now. All seems to be going well and I'm looking forward to eating fresh tomatoes this December.
- Live for the day -- it's all we've got.
IkeRepublican
(406 posts)Jeopardize billions due to phone taps? Come on. Sounds like some wingnut bullshit to me.
alfredo
(60,075 posts)The leak gave the EU leverage against us, and they are using it. We'd do the same to them if they got caught spying on us.
My military experience.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Army_Security_Agency
alfredo
(60,075 posts)quakerboy
(13,920 posts)Its a start at makeup, but not enough. We still need to kill this program hard. Even if it is slowing progress toward a new free trade agreement.