The U.K. and Spying. (379 hits)
Category: NoneRating: 0.33 on 6 reviews (Rate this item) (V)
Submitted by <copeland.michael.at.sbcglobal.net> (View user info) at 2004-02-26 13:56:24 EST
What happened to you guys, you used to be cool!
My mental image of the U.K was always based on no-nonsense
folks like Churchill and Thatcher. But now your whole country has gone mad!
About the recent spying allegations, here is some context:
1. The U.K., U.S., Australia and Canada have an agreement not to spy on each other, but everyone else is fair game. Not just our enemies, but our allies too. Look, France spies on us, we spy on them, it's well known, not debated or controversial. Not to long ago we sent a guy to prison for spying for Israel. It just the nature of international diplomacy. As Spain's U.N. ambassador Innocencio Arias shrugged and said: "Everybody spies on everybody" http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A8803-2004Feb26_2.html . Indeed, believe it or not, Spain has spies in your country and the U.N., just as they do ours and you do theirs. It's just the way the real world works.
2. It's also well known that the U.N. is bugged by everyone, and many of the people who work there are intelligence agents. In fact, all U.K. missions and embassies have spy's in them, and all missions and embassies from other countries you have in London have foreign spies gathering intelligence on you. So don't be naïve and think that this is the first time you've spied on friendly countries or the U.N. We have all done it for years, and other countries have done it to us for years. Often, we even know who the spies are. If Clare Short truly believed it was wrong to spy on the U.N., she should have said something about it long ago, rather than pretending to be shocked and outraged that this sort of thing went on. Instead she sits there, crowing from the top of her dung heap as if this sort of thing was new and out of the ordinary.
3. This is the 3rd time in a year that someone has leaked classified information and you've made them a hero. The first one, Kelly, was an internal matter so if you want to play politics with that, it's up to you. But these last two regard the long standing intelligence relationship between the U.S. and U.K. If you are going to allow the classified information we exchange with you to go public, it's going to make it hard for us to trust you, and damage the kind of cooperation we have had in the past. Just because you disagree with the Prime Minister's decision to go to war, that doesn't make it ok to leak classified material to the public. It won't be good for us or you if your politicians start trying to make political points by disclosing the intelligence activities we are jointly engaged in, because both countries need to work together to meet the challenges ahead. There is a serious question now that the U.K. can't be trusted to keep a secret.
Well, I could go on and on, but for good or bad my point has been made. Something has happened in the U.K. in the past few years that's turned your society upside down. I hope things will get back to normal soon.
User Reviews
Submitted by Biloba (user info) at 2004-02-26 16:46:19 EST (#)
Ranking: 0
Here was part of Short's interview about syping at the UN:
"Yes, absolutely. These things are done, and in the case of Kofi's
office it's been done for some time," she said, adding that she had
even seen transcripts of Annan's conversations.
http://www.channelnewsasia.com/stories/afp_world/view/72914/1/.html
Dear god, she should be shot. Your all mad, I tell you, mad!
Submitted by William_Q_Percy (user info) at 2004-02-26 14:12:09 EST (#)
Ranking: 0
It's ever since a Bond girl got a bit of the power....
tragic
Submitted by Biloba (user info) at 2004-02-26 14:08:18 EST (#)
Ranking: 0
Exactly Potatoman, we asked the U.K. to help us spy on the U.N. because the CIA can't
spy on American soil. So just as in Canada, we help them on their soil, they help us on ours.
Submitted by potatomanjack (user info) at 2004-02-26 14:04:26 EST (#)
Ranking: 1
Well, what's kind of funny is that Actually the US does a lot of spying for Canada and Canada does the same for the US. Now, it's not governmental spying, but the US has Canada spy on certain groups or citizens in the USA because if they did it it would be a rights violation, but they have *no* say over what Canada does. Canada has the same problem, and so the two nations spy on each other and then give each other the information.
Kinda messed up huh?
Submitted by Biloba (user info) at 2004-02-26 14:03:21 EST (#)
Ranking: 0
Well, appearently it is shocking news in the U.K., according to today's BBC article.http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/3490924.stm
Submitted by Caulaincourt (user info) at 2004-02-26 13:58:53 EST (#)
Ranking: 0
Wow, big shocking news there buddy.
We all heard of Project Echelon and suchs.
Move on...