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(Reuters) Brazil and the European Union agreed on Monday to lay an undersea communications cable from Lisbon to Fortaleza to reduce Brazil's reliance on the United States after Washington spied on Brasilia.
At a summit in Brussels, Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff said the $185 million cable project was central to "guarantee the neutrality" of the Internet, signaling her desire to shield Brazil's Internet traffic from U.S. surveillance. According to other sources, the construction is scheduled to begin in July.
A joint venture between Brazilian telecoms provider Telebras and Spain's IslaLink Submarine Cables would lay the communications link. Telebras would have a 35 percent stake, IslaLink would have a 45 percent interest and European and Brazilian pension funds could put up the remainder.
(Score: 5, Informative) by GreatAuntAnesthesia on Tuesday February 25 2014, @11:58AM
Translation for non-americans:
> What we're actually seeing here is part of a bigger move of Europe crawling out from under the US's wings.
Europe has been pissed off at the US for decades now, and only now is it finally able to begin freeing itself from US influence.
> The impression is growing that the US is becoming more and more isolationist. The US used to police the world, but now are refraining from doing so.
The US has bullied the world since WW2, and they continue to do so. With the rise of the internet, they aren't able to do it in secret any more.
> This is for instance visible in the lack of US's involvement in Syria. The jury's still out on why the US is making this move, but plausible explanations I've read so far are include financial issues (the financial crisis & US debt increases the burden), a weariness of the US people to attempt helping countries that don't want to be helped, and (I think an important one) domestic energy production through fracking making involvement in the middle east less necessary.
The US blew its last shreds of credibility and all the post-9/11 goodwill on two pointless, illegal, 10-year long middle eastern massacres designed to transfer trillions of dollars of wealth to politically-connected arms companies and the like. Some of them still wonder why they don't have the political capital to get involved in another war now.
> All of this makes that Europe notices that it's traditional ally is offering less support, and therefore Europe itself has to step up and start doing things themselves now.
Europe just wants the americans to get out of their way now. Thanks very much for helping us out after the war, but you've had 70 years of using your global military, financial and 'cultural' dominance to fuck up the world and get rich, and we consider that reward enough. The debt is paid. Time to return some balance to global politics.
> This link ( Carnegie Europe , especially the final paragraphs) is just one of the many articles that see this evolution for Europe as both a risk, and (if handled correctly) a tremendous new opportunity.
Condescending americans view Europe as some backwards little protectorate that needs to "evolve", rather than a financial/ industrial powerhouse larger than the US, which also happens to be the cradle of democracy, freedom and all those other neat things that americans pay lip-service to.
(Score: 5, Funny) by TheloniousToady on Tuesday February 25 2014, @01:08PM
Interesting. So which part of France are you from?
(Score: 1, Offtopic) by TheloniousToady on Tuesday February 25 2014, @01:36PM
Looks like this one got marked as "Flamebait". It was actually just a joke.
I sometimes used to run into moderator confusion like that on the old site, too. On Usenet, I used to put in a winks to clear up the confusion, but it doesn't seem to be common here (or on the old site) so I haven't been doing that. However, if it saves you folks from wasting your mod points, I can start. ;-)
(Score: 0, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 25 2014, @03:26PM
try ☺ should come like this: ☺
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Tuesday February 25 2014, @09:04PM
Like at the old site, jokes can be hazardous to your karma. My joke may be your flamebait, or you may simply think it's a stupid joke and mod it overrated.
One of the things I don't like about slashdot is folks are all too willing to mod stale, unfunny jokes up.
Heh, I just got mod points and can't use a single one, I've already commented in every thread today.
mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 25 2014, @02:12PM
Europe already had their chance to run the world. How did that end up? World War I, World War II, and the Holocaust. Please Europe, don't try and run things again, America will keep you guys safe.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by GreatAuntAnesthesia on Tuesday February 25 2014, @02:51PM
Europe is not looking to "run the world", we learned (the hard way) that conquering other countries and telling everyone what to do is pretty shitty. The world is quite happy running itself. We need co-operation, not authoritarianism. We learned that from WW2, and as a result we've enjoyed an unprecedented period of relative peace within Western Europe, a region that has a history of thousands of years of bitter bloodshed.
However the US is a young nation, and like all youngsters it refuses to learn from the mistakes of its elders. At this point I'm not even sure they are prepared to learn from their own mistakes. The US is intent on conquering the world, despite it being obvious to absolutely everyone else that it's a really bad idea.
(Score: 1) by xvan on Tuesday February 25 2014, @06:57PM
That doesn't hold...
American (as a continent) nations are, in many cases, older than some European countries. IE. Italy.
The fact that they had a previous 'history' to the foundation of the current country doesn't mean they didn't had (or have today) any issues developing their national identity.
The only reason Europe lost it's imperialist edge, was that after WW2 colonialism was exhausted and the US way of economic imperialism made good business opportunities.