One of the consequences of the NSA spying on Brazil has surfaced. Brazil was looking to replace its old Mirage fighter planes, with new planes. The order is worth $4.5 billion. The Brazilian government had been looking at Boeing…but has chosen SAAB.
Hope Obama is happy about this-a lot of people at Boeing will not!
Mmmaybe. Or, as this Businessweek article notes, it may be that they just chose the lower-cost Saab fighter, because they didn’t need the range or capabilities of the F/A-18, or the Dassault plane.
(Yes, they also chose the Saab over a French-made plane.)
Also, just how many fighter planes does $4.5 billion buy you?
How would the NSA’s spying have any influence at all on Brazil’s choice of airplane?
There’s probably about as much US content in the Gripen as in the Super Hornet, at least on a percentage basis. It’s a single-engine machine, smaller and lighter and cheaper, and the choice is defensible for a country that, like most, really doesn’t even need an air force anyway except as a national symbol.
So, of course, Brazil has made it publicly known that their reasoning was to spite the U.S., right? That would show Obama! Ha!
Otherwise…their reasoning might be left to speculation…and conspiracy theories…and mundane pocketbook notions.
If they really wanted to spite the US, they’d accept if Snowden requested asylum.
Wait, he did? And apparently they’re not that interested in investigating and therefore don’t want to deal with his baggage? Huh.
At one time it was argued by some that the U.S. should have chosen the Gripen :D. Competent minor upgrade on the F-16 ( they’re somewhat similar in performance and capability ) and you could afford more of them.
So you really think Obama originated these programs? This would almost be precious, if it weren’t so willfully ignorant.
I propose we build a statue of Edward Snowden in front of Boeing Field in honor of all the jobs he heroically cost this country.
Because Obama!!!
I notice that they didn’t go with MIGs. See? A ray of hope.
No! It’s Obama’s fault!
Everything’s Obama’s fault!
Floods … Volcanoes … Herpes … Obama’s fault!
Even if we take the premise at face value (and I don’t), Edward Snowden didn’t cost this country any jobs – the NSA’s overzealous spying did.
And whose fault is it that the Brazilians found out about our spying?
So shooting the messenger is a general policy for you, is it? Perhaps we should abolish the police and courts to get rid of crime.
The deal is for 36 fighters, so it seems a pretty decent number.
But, seriously… Regarding this “The NSA intercepted communications all over the world” thing, and the concomitant outrage… Does nobody remember (or has nobody heard of) the Martin and Mitchell 1960 defection?
William Martin and Bernon Mitchell were two NSA analysts who defected to the Soviet Union in September 1960 and, among other things, during a press conference in Moscow they said:
*"Our main dissatisfaction concerned some of the practices the United States uses in gathering intelligence information … deliberately violating the airspace of other nations … intercepting and deciphering the secret communications of its own allies …
Perhaps United States hostility towards Communism arises out of a feeling of insecurity engendered by Communist achievements in science, culture and industry.
As we know from our previous experience working at N.S.A., the United States successfully reads the secure communications of more than forty nations, including its own allies.*" (emphasis mine)
This was in 1960. 53 years ago. Rather longer than the time I have been alive.
The NSA has been doing this for ages, got exposed in 1960, and as it can be seen it didn’t really have any real effect, for it kept doing it. The countries that complain that the NSA has been listening to the communications of their leaders and diplomats would do the same to other countries (both friendly and hostile) in a heartbeat if they could (and possibly some of them can and do it).
My prediction/opinion/whatever is that the Snowden brouhaha will have exactly the same effect upon NSA and its activities as the Martin and Mitchell defection did in 1960: Exactly zilch. Time will pass, Snowden will little by little be forgotten, and business as usual will continue until somebody else defects/blows the whistle/whatever and we have the same circus again.
I may be a bit cynical about it, but really… I don’t think that it will change anything. The NSA (and the FSB, and the GuoAnBu, and the BND, and the GCHQ, and the DGSE, and many others) listens to everything they can get their hands on. Everybody, no matter what their “alignment”, will do it, and will keep doing it, make no mistake. From time to time there may be flares of indignation and calls for greater overseeing of these agencies, but they eventually die down and the agencies keep doing their thing, basically impervious to outside influence.
Because, also… EVERY government from ANY country, no matter what party they happen to be from, will always find those agencies and their work extremely useful to them. Even if, before achieving power, they had promised that they would curtail illegal activities on the part of those agencies, as soon as they take the reins of power and discover how frickin’ useful the agencies in question are, they quickly forget those promises and business goes on as usual.
That is how the world is.
My, my. You know, up to this minute I had actually never seen the memetastic “Thanks, Obama !” used in dead earnest.
They do have all of those in Hawaii, so it must be Obama’s fault.
Isn’t it more accurate to say that Obama is Hawaii’s fault? Or is it Kenya’s?