Sunday, March 9, 2014

THE PUSHBACK CONTINUES: BRAZIL AND EU DISCUSS INDEPENDENT CABLE INTERNET TO BYPASS US SPYING

Over the course of following the blowback from the NSA electronic espionage on everyone and everything, a.k.a. the Ed Snowden affair, one of the things that I have been stressing is that the surveillance isn’t as much as it is about terrorism or national security, though it certainly is that, but about much more, and specifically, about the ultimate insider trading mechanism: it’s about finance and economic advantage, and even, if one perhaps wishes to extend that hypothesis, about market manipulation and monitoring of international clearing. I predicted early on that the Snowden revelations would have an inevitable crippling effect both on America’s image and on its ability to conduct international business and trade, as more and more “trading partners” would become increasingly and justifiably mistrustful of the USA’s bona fides and trustworthiness. IN that respect, it should be recalled that Brazil and Argentina not only both announced their intention to build “US free internets” but that Brazil cancelled a contract with the US firm Boeing for fighter jets, and awarded the contract to Sweden’s Saab company.
The reason? Brazil simply no longer trusted the US not to put “back doors” and other cyber-security traps in the hardware it was intending to purchase. Sweden, on the other hand (as far as anyone knows), is not eavesdropping on anyone.
Then came the much more serious announcement from Paris and Berlin that Germany and France were intending to cooperate to create a US-free European internet. Now, if anyone for a moment thinks the French BRGE(Brigade de renseignement et guerre electronique) or German BND (Bundesnachrichtendienst) are for a moment not going to engage in their own electronic snooping, think again. As I have said, this is not about security or terrorism, it’s about finance and the growing mistrust of American unipolarism and aggressiveness.

Now comes this announcement that Brazil and the EU want to team up to create this US-free internet:
Brazil and EU discuss cable to avoid US Electronic Espionage
Now, rest assured, this isn’t just so Ms. Rouseff, M. Hollande, and Frau Merkel can have private cellphone conversations and exchange baby pictures in privacy.
It’s about something else, and something I predicted months ago would begin to happen as the pushback continues: the BRICSA nations, I indicated, would first establish their own central regional development banks (which has already been done), and then they would establish their own independent, parallel mechanisms of international clearing, bypassing SWIFT and CHIPS and therefore the USA and Europe. I strongly suspect, therefore, that what we are looking at here are the first steps toward the establishment of that mechanism for international clearing. If so, then Europe’s willingness to participate in such a move is an intriguing one, for one cannot expect that the EU(i.e., France and Germany) will simply shut down SWIFT, based, like the EU itself, in Brussels. Rather, I suspect Europe is positioning itself in exquisite Peronist fashion to be the “Third Force” between the BRICSA nations and the Anglosphere clearing represented by SWIFT.
But regardless of whether these speculations are true or not, the move cannot be welcome news to the oligarchs of North America, for it’s but one more indicator, a significant one, that while they seek to tighten their grip in one part of Europe, their grip is so tight in other areas that things are beginning to seep through the cracks.

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