Spain expels two US spies for infiltrating secret service | Hacker News Reader

Spain expels two US spies for infiltrating secret service

english.elpais.com

232 pointshunglee2156 comments

Isn't this pretty much an open secret? Doesn't everyone spy on everyone else, even when they're nominally allies?

It's telling that Spain merely expelled these people, rather than locking them up and/or torturing them for information. I'm sure there's some sort of gentlemen's agreement that this is what you do when you catch an ally's spies.

No, and it isn't normal at all.

Notice that this has literally led to the expulsion of diplomats, or, I suppose, spies sent out under diplomatic cover.

That's extremely unusual between allies. Spying on allies, trying to bribe or blackmail their personnel etc., is not normal. It makes you a security threat, and making oneself a security threat isn't really compatible with being allies.

Presumably this is why there is now this very public declaring of diplomats persona non grata-- both to remove the people in question and to signal that what has been done isn't okay. Seen another way-- normally, the person who becomes persona non grata is a Russian.

It's 100% normal and it's an open secret that every country's embassy doubles as an intelligence headquarters. Every country spies on every other country. Allies spy on allies. What was unusual here is how clumsy they were and that they got caught doing something so dumb that Spain couldn't quietly sweep it under the rug.

No, it's not at all normal-- when directed at the government of the target country it can be a threat to the sovereignty of that country.

After all, the expulsions are happening for a reason. The Spanish clearly do not see it as you do.

It might be possible for the US to avoid many consequences of this kind of thing due to its clout, and I can see that as something which would make it feel normal from a US point of view, but from the other side I imagine that it feels like someone trying to infiltrate your government to do things against your interests and to harm you-- something warranting a very high level of concern, comparable to a planned coup.

Usually if/when you identify a spy from an allied country, you just try to keep really close tabs on them and otherwise let them go about their business. If they start crossing some boundaries, then you quietly and firmly let them know it's time to fuck off.

You don't publicly expel them unless you really want to weaken the alliance, and you certainly don't torture them like some of the commenters in this thread are suggesting. They watch too many movies.

> Usually if/when you identify a spy from an allied country, you just try to keep really close tabs on them and otherwise let them go about their business

LOL. I bet the US never does this.

As many are now informing you, yes, it is normal, as is PNG-ing spies whose diplomatic cover is blown.

It's so normal that the term "diplomatic cover" exists to describe non-clandestine spies who are given a position in their country's embassy.

More commonly, local intelligence agencies try to identify and follow the spying activity of spies with diplomatic cover, rather than PNG-ing them (or more rarely, as in this case, outing them) because that's easier than the unknown quantity that would replace them.

Yes, that part is indeed very normal.

But the fact that the country is a formal ally makes it, in my view at least, slightly different.

Of course, seeing as the US is in a defence pact with Turkey, I can understand that being ally can't mean absolute non-interference, but I feel that it gets problematic when we're talking about actual infiltration of a country's security services.

I think at least the Germans expected some restraint. I suppose if one thinks back, the Germans had a different view, being opposed to giving Turkey bad crypto; and I suppose that can be seen as them restraining their activities in an unreasonable way, at the same time, I can't accept that bribing/blackmail people on the other side is compatible with an alliance. Rather, with enough bribes/blackmail the result is a secret coup of the state whose personnel is being bribed or blackmailed, and I think if you view these things as 'normal' then you might even be blind to such a coup against yourself.

Normal is a descriptive word, so the way to settle this debate isn't to provide reasoning about why something couldn't be normal because it's so threatening.

> it can be a threat to the sovereignty of that country.

Those countries are already not souverane anymore. Notice how the external, and even internal politics of those countries are dictated by the US ?

I'm pretty sure the Australian and New Zealand governments don't try to do so against each other.

Does spying have to be “against” the target? Perhaps allies spy on each other to make sure they are still allies.

I highly doubt the opposite party would even want to be allies if their promises mean nothing and it takes the reports of moles to create trust in their sincerity.

It seems like a self-defeating exercise.

Alliance is not about love and trust. It’s about interests. Indeed, for an alliance to be possible, trust is needed, but only to a certain extent. Don’t mistake alliance for friendship. The former is between political entities, while the latter is between people.

A bonafide alliance must necessarily entail sometimes acting faithfully even to the detriment of one's interests.

If the 'allies' are only faithful and only believe each other until the moment that threshold is crossed then it's just regular diplomatic relations.

e.g. Nearly every country cooperates with nearly every other country on such terms in the areas where they share bonafide mutual interests.

Both are members of Five Eyes and one is in bed with China. It would make sense for Australia to be keeping an eye on things.

Spying on allies, and all that espionage entails—including bribery and blackmail—is done by every government in the world. It has always been done, and will continue to be forever. It is absolutely par for the course. Remember that ally does not mean friend, and that friend doesn't even really mean friend in the context of international relations and realpolitik.

I wanted to write something similar, but you did a much better job!

Snowden leaks showed it is normal and coordinated between countries to bypass their citizens' procedural rights. Among the Five Eyes countries, they each needed warrants to spy on their own domestic communications, but each could spy freely on foreign countries. They then mutually spied on each other and by agreement shared the intelligence, bypassing the warrant process.

Wrong, allies spy on each other constantly.

When did the US last expel a French, or Spanish or German diplomat? I'm pretty sure it's never happened during the NATO era.

So either these countries don't use diplomatic cover or they don't spy on the US.

The US doesn't expel allied diplomats, because they don't care if the French and Spanish and Germans are spying on us, _in general_. Most of the time countries get annoyed at allied spying, they'll make some quiet calls to their ally and have people quietly reassigned, rather than make a big deal about it. As long as the country knows who the allied spies are, that's good enough. What happened here is that the US spies were very clumsy and got caught committing crimes.

You're asking to prove a state secret. That the spanish were caught expelling allied spies is almost as much a faux pas as it is for your spies to get caught.

Also so t forget literally the entire Snowden era. Literally the biggest event geopolitical event between allies in the 2010s. I swear you guys choose to forget these things

'Caught expelling'?

The US tried to infiltrate Spanish state security. That's a direct threat to Spanish sovereignty. Imagine if they had succeeded and it led to a manipulation of Spanish policy, against the interests of the Spanish people.

It is really something incredibly bad.

What can Spain realistically do if the USA actually becomes hostile to it? The whole EU has already relinquished its full sovereignty a long time ago. The USA does as it wants and at most, the EU can expell some spies caught in the act as quietly as possible to not anger Big Uncle Sam.

A lot.

There are many countries to which the US is actually hostile, and which are much weaker than Spain. Venezuela, Cuba, etc. Places like Russia and China also of course exist.

Spain could start trying to compete with the US in South America, they could push some kind of EU South America expansion, some kind of EU analogue of BRICS-for-South-America-but-not-BRICS; and of course, if it truly became a problem they could decide to go much further than that and start being actually hostile themselves, joining with the whole RIC part of the thing.

> some kind of EU analogue of BRICS-for-South-America-but-not-BRICS;

I suppose you don't know this already exits (and has for decades), it's called Mercosul[1].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercosur

Spain is not involved in Mercosur. It's something South American.

Why would the US bother? Unless they propose not to engage in diplomacy, the replacement diplomat is going to spy on them too. It isn't like these are rogue actors, the spying is sponsored by their state.

The only reason to even talk about it would be if they want to roll a particular diplomat who is hard to work with or if it was convenient to gin up a diplomatic incident so that they could pretend to be unhappy.

The US does expel diplomats who engage in spying. For example, in 2022 they expelled twelve for spying in ways that threaten US national security.

Even if you try to keep an eye they will of course try make keeping an eye on them difficult. The US feels it can spy-- with people having been found with wigs and whatnot, so to imagine that others can't, even if they are allowed to do things very freely is a little bit strange.

When you say "in 2022" do you mean the ones listed on this page [0]? The "Diplomatic expulsions during the Russo-Ukrainian War" page? I'm sensing there might have been issues at play other than the espionage, which is routine and everyone does.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diplomatic_expulsions_during_t...

Notice though that the US specifically chose to give a reason for the explusions as espionage activities. Spain expelled those it expelled over 'Russia's terrible actions'.

I think we can take the reasons for the expulsions as correct.

The reasons are honest insofar as yes, the Russians expelled were involved in espionage. That part that has me tagging you as naive is you seem to believe that this was news in 2022.

It is the Russian embassy. The US spooks are monitoring it very closely. It is not a serious position to say that they suddenly discovered that espionage was afoot a few days after the invasion. I mean, it is completely plausible that the invasion made them say "we're about to hit the Russians hard, now is the time to disrupt their espionage activities". But the existence of those espionage activities has been a given since for the entire history of Russian diplomatic missions in the US.

The US is certainly not going to expel diplomats for spying under ordinary circumstances. We can see that because places like the Chinese, French and British and whatever other embassies are still allowed to exist. Maybe there are some African or Pacific Island embassies that are incompetent and just exist to chat, I dunno. But we know how the serious players use embassies this has been a thing for centuries.

It is completely normal. I once read an interview with a, I think french diplomat who commented on this that it is as important to know what your allies do and think as your enemies.

From the article: "The case is a very serious matter, since recruiting secret agents of a host state to betray their own country is considered an openly hostile act. Such actions may be taken with enemy or adversary governments, but never with friends and allies."

Completely normal, as is catching them, expelling them, etc.

What's news is that it's in the news. That's where the coded message is, not in the text itself.

Yup.

PNGs are common. The question is, why is this particular one being highlighted right now. It's really about what does Spain want the US to do?

Sorry, what does PNGs mean?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persona_non_grata

It's mostly US spying on everyone else, especially their "allies" ...

To be fair, the French are spying on the US just as much (disclaimer: I'm French).

GP is right and I'm not sure how'd that work for France... The US had more than 50% the GDP per capita France has and the US has 5x the population.

That's kinda the whole point: the US is still the world's 1st power (a place France lost after losing the Waterloo battle, basically) and nobody has as much spying power as the US do (China probably come close).

A country with 1/10th the GDP of another country cannot be spying "just as much".

P.S: and let's not forget that France is exactly nowhere when it comes to tech, with the biggest players like Dassault and Thales being irrelevant tiny players compared to the american behemots. In the top 100 companies by market cap in the world the four french ones are... Hermes, Dior, LVMH, etc. I don't think these exactly help spying.

P.P.S: I can see I'm downvoted by french "cocorico" readers ; )

This is simply ignorant. The French were the #1 world leaders in industrial espionage in particular for decades, into the 2000s

https://www.france24.com/en/20110104-france-industrial-espio...

https://foreignpolicy.com/2013/07/02/espionage-moi/

Correlating espionage to GDP/economy is probably the most uneducated take on the matter.

Smaller countries tend to have massively outsided foreign espionage apparatus - see Japanese industrial espionage in the 1980’s, the French playing silly buggers globally, the Chinese basically boosting their entire economy off the back of intelligence collection, etc.

I mean you seem to be simply reducing spying to the GPD, when it varies very much with the policies of a country. Israel is 27th by GDP but is a world leader in espionage, and especially in surveillance tools. Similarly France is good enough at spying that it got offered to join the 5 eyes (it did not work out because France asked the mutual non-spying clause to be applied, which the US refused).

So while it is probable that the US has a bigger spying industry, it's also hasty to dismiss another player by saying "lol 10% of GDP"

> Hermes, Dior, LVMH, etc. I don't think these exactly help spying

Well France carried spying activities in Syria through Lafarge. Sometimes all you need is a foothold into the good places (Syria, or, for L'Oréal, rich circles)

And US has military bases in EU which is super convenient for listening stations and spy centers. Back in the Cold War the US held even a heavier hand in EU.

Yes everyone spies on each other. It's why embassies largely exist these days.

The only reason you would expel someone is if it was overly egregious.

Not sure what it is particularly special about this event.

> The only reason you would expel someone is if it was overly egregious.

Or if the two parties are in a tit-for-tat situation of some sort. There might be some diplomatic sabre-rattling going on, on some other topic.

Also, more often than not you don't expel anyone because 1) it reveals the reach of your intel skills, and 2) it removes the capability to feed misinformation to the other party.

Sending the spies back instead of keeping and torturing them generally makes the most sense because you can get more in return for sending them back than torturing them. If you torture them what do you get? Sadistic satisfaction and maybe some useless information about their intentions and some of their colleagues, etc. You also get even worse relations with the US government which might escalate in a generally destructive way. Your own spies in the US might be tortured in retribution, or the US might release some dirt on the Spanish government to punish them, might tell the world that Spain tortures spies to harm the global perception of Spain, etc.

But if you send them back unharmed, you instead get the cooperation of the US government in the investigation, a public apology from them which is good for public sentiment, and maybe various other concessions behind the scenes.

What if Spain quietly disposes of them and tries to leave hints to anybody who comes later to investigate that Russia or a similar country responsible. Anybody who comes to replace or investigate after wards is very suspicious and should be monitored.

For this round, you lose out on concessions, but if pulled off successfully you gain control over the situation, in addition you can get future concessions by an outing/capture whenever needed.

Espionage between civilised countries has fairly civilised almost customary rules since the end of WW2 tbh.

Spies with diplomatic cover simply get expelled/PNG’d, illegals get detained, put on trial and kept for potential horse trading, and local agents (traitors) get dealt with as the country sees fit. Usually by imprisonment, these days.

The status quo of these “rules of the game” being upheld has been the case for ages, it’s in nobodies interest to start breaking those “rules”.

Probably the Americans would find out and it’s not an enemy you want. There would be retribution.

When was the last time US expelled Spain spy? I couldn't find any obvious news about it.

They would if they could. Spain is a weak little country that depends on the US for defense. The US is the most powerful country in history. There is no symmetry.

So if Spain can't do it to the US that would negate the claim that "everyone does it to everyone else," no?

If the US are so powerful why were their spies expelled?

Seems like Spain doesn't feat any consequences.

Yes, that's correct. Everybody does it, but typically/historically allies, or even just non-enemies, prefer not to wildly escalate things.

It would seem Spain lacks the political spine to even be outraged. Very telling indeed, but of much deeper problems here in the EU.

I'm positive every single individual in this thread that is justifying these actions, would have the opposite opinion if the roles were reversed. It's a shamefully ignorant position to have.

If you let rage drive you, your enemies will notice and use it to manipulate you.

Are you suggesting submissiveness to be an expression of strength and independence?

No.

I'm saying the one time I got in a fight at school, the target of my rage wasn't the person whose actions made me snap.

I'm saying Saddam Hussein didn't cause the 9/11 attacks and didn't have WMDs.

I'm saying you're choosing to make yourself vulnerable to false flag attacks.

(I wasn't saying that expelling diplomats is an appropriate response, but that's also true).

European countries are basically just US vassals. The spies are there to make sure they keep following the US lead. What will happen if they complain? They'll get ignored and it will just make it more obvious how powerless they are to do anything about it.

And that's why the nations of Europe are mostly interested in the EU and what it does/aims for.

Much harder to push around.

There must be IMHO. For these things what you usually have is an arrest as a minimum yet they let them go.

On top of that it was made public.

Spain is turning at this moment, btw, in a dictatorship and I am not exaggerating. I am spanish.

I am figuring out what to do and whether to leave or not. I have my family here so that's what keeps me here. Otherwise I would have left already.

Spanish here. You're overtly exaggerating, Spain is not becoming a dictatorship. This is the right and far-right having a tantrum because they've not been able to secure a government. Go spread your propaganda elsewhere.

It is very sad that the US Government cannot be trusted but this is not the first time this has happened, the German Chancellor's phone was tapped.

On the other hand Spain started a revolutionary process of a constituent nature, the government of President Sanchez is already of a clearly totalitarian type.

As a Spaniard I see a dark future.

I agree with you. They say we exaggerate.

No, we do not. The degradation of institutions in these five years is aggraviating.

Spanish here also. Tell me any of this is propaganda, along the last 5 years.

No, this is not what I am talking about. I am talking about putting all people from a single party in absolutely all powers and institutions, making a law for 7 votes to govern and claim an illegal amnistey and after that, the plan is to pass it through, to say the Constitution is dead (which requires, in theory 2/3 or 3/5 of the chamber support to be changed) and do it on an illegal backdoor.

Of course, those changes are going to be what less than half of the people want and in the electoral program none of that was announced (I mean for the amnesty, there are things there that are pre-amnesty, past government, but they already started to move).

There is a person negotiating how to put himself out of jail because our president needed 7 votes. I mean, it is as if I was negotiating to not enter the jail because I commit a crime because the authority on the other side needs something from me.

Institutions where he already put his people:

- Fiscal General del Estado (Dolores Delgado, was a minister of socialist party) Responsible for pushing forward or not criminal causes against depending who.

- Correos (important for the mail vote) a very good friend of his.

- Supreme court (Conde-Pumpido), a socialist.

- Indra, company counting the votes, there were moves to put a majority of the board from the socialist party.

- Agencia EFE (a few days ago): for news, public agency. A socialist friend of his, well-known for flattering the party since ever and working in the pro-socialist media groups El Pais and Cadena Ser (Grupo Prisa) and Cuatro when it was Grupo Prisa (not anymore, now it is Media Set)

- CIS, the national organism for surveys... who publishes the surveys for many topics, they manipulate the sentences to torture them to say what they want (in the question there is the trick) and publish national surveys for elections vote intention.

- TVE (spanish television): they had for over a year (two?) a "unique administrator" which is a total abnormality, Rosa María Mateos, during the pandemic. Socialist, of course.

- During the pandemic: a person filtering, in our faces, what topics and questions were asked in the "press conferences" if you can call it like that. For me it smelled more to discretional selection and censorship. They usually took questions from tiny regional media with priority to the national ones that everyone reads... Yes, a filter: I tell you who and what can be asked.

- During the pandemic: 6 months the parlament closed. 2 illegal lockdowns (declared by the court), no consequences.

- Now they are trying to put a socialist majority in the CGPJ (Consejo General del Poder Judicial) so that the illegal amnesty gets through.

- Law for "freedom of speech" for influencers, so that they can be prosecuted more easily depending on what they say... promoted by the unions that support them (UGT, Comisiones obreras).

- There is a bunch of "institutional advertisement" by which newspapers get a bunch of money per year directly from the government. Do you think they are independent after this? Do not make me laugh... 554 millions... https://www.vozpopuli.com/espana/maquinaria-sanchez-dispara-...

And there is plenty, plenty more.

There was even a scandal where Delcy Rodriguez, with forbidden entry to Europe for narcotrafic, from Venezuela, came with 40 suitcases that god knows what they contained, entered without a passport stamp (obviously) and those suitcases we do not have even an explanation yet... what happened? Nothing. They lied about it. Nothing happened, to noone: https://www.vozpopuli.com/espana/politica/embajada-venezuela...

Believe me, they are building a dictatorship. It is not about minorities governing, it is about controlling absolutely all information flow, all opinion, and workarounding any "balance and check".

I do not want to start an argument. Go to the facts. This all has happened.

That's a bit of an over-simplification of what actually happened these weeks. Or a tremendous over-simplification, rather.

Not that I really care about the outcome (two parties could've won, and they are both progressive, so I will be unhappy either way), but the methods have crossed a few red lines.

might be an over-simplification but is right. Every year there are "indultos" (pardons?) happening, the famous Aznar's ones[1], and Rajoy's infamous "aministia fiscal"[2] but I guess is only now when it's convenient to push that narrative, no protests whatsoever for the other cases.

Amnistia for tax evaders, it is democracy.

Amnistia for those protesting making a performance-like referedum (everyone knew it would not actual effect), that's not democracy.

It's a logic that I can not comprehend, I only can explain it if you consume so much mass media that you actually believe everything that is thrown at you.

[1] https://www.eldiario.es/catalunya/gobierno-aznar-indulto-dia....

[2] https://www.eldiario.es/economia/rato-franco-narco-100-benef...

I am a close relative of a judge. I have asked plenty of non-media questions to get an idea of how our system works, should work and what does not work and did not for a long time (and now we have problems because the situation changed).

By the way, I am not against independence FWIW. It is just the way things have been conducted are very aggraviating.

It's not the same when you do it because you need it to be the president.

I don't agree with pardons; it's something that simply shouldn't exist in this day and age. It doesn't matter to me what brand of progressivism does it.

> Spain is turning at this moment, btw, in a dictatorship

Seems a bit of a hyperbole for "Spain is under a fragile minority government".

By that metric, the UK is a dictatorship in most years.

If this is a dictatorship then is a very peculiar one, with the power more split than never in the entire democracy. Literally tens of political parties sharing power in the government. Any of them could let fall the "dictator" at any time.

Either this is the opposite to dictatorship, or maybe we will need to redefine a lot of classical democracies with most power concentrated in one party at a time.

About the right, they only can blame themselves. Is very ironic that they are blaming everybody for the same own situation what they, and only they, could have been stopped at any time. They didn't even tried to play. Choose to stop breathing instead.

And don't make me start talking about the Doñana's national park fiasco. Probably one of the most stupid right party plots to assure to lose voters weeks before an election.

I think you only look at the chamber.

You know there are three powers in a state right? Pedro Sánchez has more power now than the old socialist party or PP with qualified majority (mayoría absoluta) ever had because he made all institutions his particular home at his very service. Violating the most basic ethic rules.

> Pedro Sánchez has more power now than the old socialist party or PP with qualified majority (mayoría absoluta) ever had because he made all institutions his particular home at his very service

These arguments are empty. The GP was claiming "Pedro Sánchez" has extremely little power as it is on a minority government and seemingly one of the smallest ones in the history of his party, all verifiable facts. You counterargue by claiming that he is making all institutions dance at his tune. This is a circular argument. How does he exactly get the power to make "institutions his particular home at his very service" if he has the least power to do so, _even less power_ than on his previous term?

I find it ridiculous that from all angles this looks like an absolutely powerless and extremely fragile do-nothing coalition (as some of the self-determination parties are as right-wing as they get, and therefore unlike to allow him to do anything even remotely left-wing), which looks to be disintegrating as we speak (if the news from my country are to believed), and yet at the same time I read claims of a "dictatorship". What is it that you see that apparently no one else in the world does?

It has little power to legislate but he has colonized all institutions with people of his own. I think you are not really understanding what is going on. It is not purely as chamber representation the problem.

It is about colonizing every corner by finger-naming positions from government.

The state has never been as partial in so many of its institutions as it is now...

No, it is not ridiculoua. There's been a massive wave of protests like never in 40 years. Socialist positions get insulted in the street, they cannot go anywhere, with words such as betrayor and others, anywhere randomly. This is totally abnormal in Spain.

I can tell you, as a spanish, that for this to happen a lot of red lines must be crossed. Even in a new survey 46% of socialist voters are against amnesty. And that is the socialist: all right wing is against it also... they are doing an illegal law to get a government against more than 70% of the population.

This amnesty hides the first step for a change of regime. I hope they are not successful.

Wait and see if you do not believe me. I hope I am wrong and things get broken on the way. But what this guy is trying is obvious to kany of us for years. Now it got worse.

About being fragile the government: you underestimate what this president is capable of doing to maintain the power: he just put 15 billions of debt from Cataluña into the rest of spanish besides the amnesty. Probably there is more to come.

Also, if you are not spanisj, the lists and representatives do not work per district as in England. The power is accumulated here by the head of each party and once you vote you are in the hands of the party no matter what they do (this was always like that).

> It has little power to legislate but he has colonized all institutions with people of his own. I think you are not really understanding what is going on. It is not purely as chamber representation the problem.

This is still the same circular reasoning. How is it that he can "finger-name" positions now that they are in a minority government, and he could not before that when he actually was in a majority one? What exactly is that gives him the power to be the autocrat that you claim he is? "he is an autocrat because he is an autocrat" is not really a valid argument.

> This amnesty hides the first step for a change of regime. I hope they are not successful.

So the problem is with a political amnesty? That certainly looks like an unquestionable mark of a dictatorship (/s).

This is just yet more evidence of a minority government that has to make concessions everywhere. They are going to be a ridiculously weak government, like every other such government in the history of the world. Amnesties are not the mark of a strong dictatorship; I believe they prefer the part where they get to put people in prison.

Also, I am going to bet that to do that he requires support from the chambre. Which means that, yet again, this _is_ about chambre representation: a majority of the chambre must be in favor of this amnesty.

> About being fragile the government: you underestimate what this president is capable of doing to maintain the power

This again keeps assuming that for some reason being minority is going to bring him more power to maintain his power, and not significantly less.

> he just put 15 billions of debt from Cataluña into the rest of spanish besides the amnesty. Probably there is more to come.

OK it seems you do not understand what it means to keep Cataluña as a region of Spain. You _have to take care of their debts_. The idea that Cataluña can have "billions of debt" separate from Spain's one is an optical illusion. Whichever amount you claim it is it must _already_ be part of the Spanish large debt and therefore it already comes out of your pocket _no matter what_. To assume otherwise is to have your cake and eat it too, _both_ for Spain and Cataluña, as Spain reaps the profits but allow Cataluña to go bankrupt on its own, which is nonsense possible only in politician's dreams (I have seen that very frequently here).

In another comment here I was saying that France has let some regions do self-determination referenda, making it appear to me as more progressive than Spain. I also admitted this was an over-simplification because a lot of people want to get rid of these regions, while I was assuming that Cataluña is a core province (sorry for the EUIV lingo) of Spain and therefore no one wants to get rid of it.

Do you want to know why France wants to get rid of these regions? Because they cost friggin' money ! Patriotism is nice and all but it brings you exactly zero tax savings.

If you claim that Cataluña is costing you money, let them do their auto-determination and go away !

(I really doubt Cataluña is costing Spanish' tax payers any money whatsoever: my goal here is not to encourage to vote for independence, but to point out an argument that does not appear to be coherent).

> The power is accumulated here by the head of each party and once you vote you are in the hands of the party no matter what they do (this was always like that).

I really do not understand the point that you are trying to make here. I am quite sure that "the head of the party" has exactly the same power over a member of the chambres as in any other democracy of the world.

EDIT: I was googling around and most definitely representatives in the Spanish Congreso can vote against the party and cross the floor, same as representatives in the UK parliament, and frankly, same as in every other representative democracy of the world.

The Spanish right wing establishment isn't comfortable when not confidently in power, either by directly being in power, or by being sure whoever is in power wouldn't dare to change course on certain policies. This has been an issue for a long long time. The only new development is the emergence of a strong far right wing party, which seems to have driven the moderate right wing party away from the center, emboldening their statements to the point of hyperbole or further.

The current Spanish government is a very fragile minority, but it was voted by 7 out of 9 party groups in Congress (that is everyone except the right wing and far right parties), and the executive power has people from five different parties. Quite exotic for a dictatorship indeed.

You are obviating the "Ley d'Honnt" which basically overrepresents minorities. They have disproportionate representation.

A regional party can have like 6-8 times more representation than a national one with the same amount of votes nominally speaking.

It is legal, but makes no sense, more so taking into account that independentist parties are forbidden in Portugal or France and that here they not only are allowed (I can agree with that), on top of that they can oresent themselves to the national parlament and do national politics when their interest is to break the system (I do not agree with that).

The law for overrepresentation was done to not smash minorities. However, what is happening is the exact opposite: minorities are driving the majority of people instead. Which is even worse and a privilege of a few over most.

Taking stats from the past elections, the most voted party got 39% of the seats with 33% of the votes, and the second party got 34.5% of the seats with 31.7% of the votes. The third and fourth most voted parties got 9.4% and 8.8% of seats with a similar 12.4% and 12.3% of votes. These are all national parties, and it's well known that D'Hondt seat assignment reinforces the most voted parties and punishes everyone else, because the amount of seats in contention on most voting districts is too small. Regional parties have it easier because all their votes are in a small amount of regions, but this doesn't mean they are overrepresented: the percentages of votes and seats match quite well, with some parties being a bit above and others being a bit below. This is because within their regions, these parties are not minorities, so D'Hondt doesn't punish them. The one concession the Spanish system gives to regional parties is a better chance to form their own parliamentary group (important for debate time when discussing laws).

Anyway, I agree that having 50 general election districts (one per province) results in skewed votes. This was done by design as an attempt to have an easier-to-control two party system, and enshrined in the Spanish constitution, so it's not easy to change. It's probably easier to change provinces themselves than the constitution in the current political climate. For instance, merging all provinces in each region together would solve most issues with the voting system, as it would increase the amount of seats in contention.

Regarding the argument about this being a government by a minority of people: the parties that voted for the current government represent roughly 50.5% of the total votes. The current opposition parties represent 45.6% of total votes.

I agree with you in everything here except in one: putting infinitely heterogeneous groups with different interests from Teruel to Canary islands and left and right wing independentists from all areas with different interests and forgiving crimes for the ambition of governing does not look to me like the best formula for peace and stability.

Any midly-responsible governor would have, no matter how much some people dislike it, fone a deal between PSOE-PP.

I do not vote myself BUT this is what looks more sensible, political tendencies apart, for stability: only two homogeneous groups that represent a big amount of the population. Even if I do not feel represented myself.

That sort of arrangement tends to favour anti-mainstream extremists in the long run. Then you'd really be in trouble. Study Weimar.

D'Hondt, I guess you mean, is not a method to introduce distortion of representation, but precisely a method _to reduce distortion_ in parliamentary systems with imperfect representation to begin with (i.e. with circumscriptions). The distortion is primarily coming from something else other than d'Hondt, e.g. electoral circumscriptions being too large or too small.

> taking into account that independentist parties are forbidden in Portugal or France and that here they not only are allowed

This is not true at all. Search for corsican auto-determination. France actually has even allowed auto-determination referenda for DOMs in the very recent past. Certainly it's not exactly the same and I'm oversimplifying (many simply want to get rid of these regions), but please stop pointing fingers to France; you may realize we are not as different from Spain as you think.

> on top of that they can oresent themselves to the national parlament and do national politics when their interest is to break the system (I do not agree with that).

It is a far better outcome to seperate through political means than by uprising.

>The Spanish right wing establishment isn't comfortable when not confidently in power, either by directly being in power, or by being sure whoever is in power wouldn't dare to change course on certain policies.

Could say exactly the same about the socialist party. Or any other party, really.

Also: the party that you call right wing is as progressive as the socialist party. They have never done and will never do any change that is not progressive. Last time they were in power they raised taxes, did nothing to the homosexual marriage, abortion, and domestic violence laws, etc etc.

And to add to this: the "far right" party is just plain right wing conservatives. Not far right. I am amazed nowadays how, not only in Spain, but in Dpain more so, they call almost everything "far right".

If a party is the one most conservative and most authoritarian in parliament, it is completely fair to describe it as "far right". What else could it be? In order to be "plain right" you would need a party further to the right in parliament.

They may not seem extreme to some people, but that only says something about the political leaning of those people.

> If a party is the one most conservative and most authoritarian in parliament, it is completely fair to describe it as "far right"

This is a matter of perception. Far right is isually (literature) described as right, violent and collectivist (facist) wing. Which by the way is quite similar to communism, just with a couple principles changed if you analyze it seriously from individual vs collective rights. How "far right" is used in Spain and a lot of media is not like that at all. Far right is España 2000 and Democracia Nacional.

> They may not seem extreme to some people, but that only says something about the political leaning of those people.

Again, that is your perception. Your perception comes from the status quo, and seems reasonable from a social point of view. However, when the media uses a term incorrectly and politically so often, then it loses its meaning.

That is why it is a good thing to know what we have in front of us and call it by its name. Otherwise all words end up losing their meaning. Far right is often not what most media calls far right by standard literature terms. Maybe by propaganda terms. But even Popular Party or Ciudadanos was tagged as far right sometimes. That's just the political tagging game.

I'd rather see what parties propose rather than qualifying them as something. I think it is more useful for everyone.

Funnily enough, that word has been used to describe the UK system in particular.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elective_dictatorship

Of course, those changes are going to be what less than half of the people want and in the electoral program none of that was announced.

There is a person negotiating how to put himself out of jail because our president needed 7 votes. I mean, it is as if I was negotiating to not enter the jail because I commit a crime.

Institutions where he already put his people:

- Fiscal General del Estado (Dolores Delgado, was a minister of socialist party) Responsible for pushing forward or not criminal causes against depending who.

- Correos (important for the mail vote) a very good friend of his.

- Supreme court (Conde-Pumpido), a socialist.

- Indra, company counting the votes, there were moves to put a majority of the board from the socialist party.

- TVE (spanish television): they had for over a year a "unique administrator" which is a total abnormality, Rosa María Mateos, during the pandemic.

- During the pandemic: 6 months the parlament closed. 2 illegal lockdowns, no consequences.

- Now they are trying to put a socialist majority in the CGPJ (Consejo General del Poder Judicial) so that the illegal amnesty gets through.

- Law for "freedom of speech" for influencers, so that they can be prosecuted more easily depending on what they say... promoted by the unions that support them (UGT, Comisiones obreras).

And there is plenty, plenty more.

Believe me, they are building a dictatorship. It is not about minorities governing, it is about controlling absolutely all information flow, all opinion, and workarounding any "balance and check".

> [into] a dictatorship

how? forming a coalition seems to be the opposite of dictatorship, no?

Not sure if you are spanish. I know how my representation system works very well but it is not even about that. It is about workarounding and putting all friends in the whole apparatus. See one of my comments above to see how many people from the socialist party have been put by government decision to manage highest position related to propaganda, justice system, etc. when socialist party had hardly representation compared to any other government and the story repeats again. The amount of abuse they did is really, really bad IMHO.

The problem is the system also, yes. But it is more than that only. They think institutions are their private property or something like no other national party so far IMHO.

Hungarian. We have seen it from VIP seats how the populist ideological blob ate everything, and how uncompromising uncooperativeness from weak opposition prevented them from even achieving an effective minority status. (So the blob has absolute majority in the legislature again, yeey.)

Is it sarcasm? you should tag it.

if it's not, and you are talking about recent "amnistia" events, it's hilarious, because some people in Catalunya were prosecuted for crating a referendum, I guess for you that's not democratic and on the other hand exonerating those with charges related to it, turns the country into a dictatorship.

What an irony.

Btw, I'm not Catalan nor want Catalunya to part ways, far right wing narratives like the one you present only create more and more "independentistas".

I support independentist or non-independentist thinking and rights.

What I cannot support is to violate the law in every other neighborhood at convenience. If we all did what Cataluña does in Spain (the Constitution forbids this kind of referendums and it was supported by 88% of the population.

You cannot come and suddenly start to do these things when not even in Cataluña and after 40 years of institution colonization you do not have even 50% of support.

That is just playing stupid games that can create civil conflicts.

As I said, I am not against independence. But we have laws. If they say through law they cannot, maybe they are not doing a good enough job for their cause or people just do not wish it as much. That is why after doing a lot of things, I won't give details here but believe me, MANY, they did not reach even 50%.

This separation according to the law should be voted by all spanish.

Even more: if they won by 51%, independent forever? Will they let people do a referendum to join back to Spain?

No, it makes no sense how they are doing things. They just do not have enough support. I am spanish, I am the son of people from Cataluña.

Careful with what you believe from what you hear around.

Inside the law, ok. Outside of the law, not ok. Otherwise many people will have lots of reasons to workaround laws they do not like, right?

Promote changes in the law, ok. But not this cheating that will only create bigger problems, in Cataluña itself even more than in the rest of Spain. Half of the people or more are not supporting this.

> some people in Catalunya were prosecuted for crating a referendum, I guess for you that's not democratic

The "referendum" was obviously not democratic.

You seem to have doubts still about that, so let me kindly illustrate you, about how real democracies work.

There is not a single democracy, not a single one, where common people can replace unilaterally the powers of the state.

Democracy does not mean that my friends and me can "vote" if we take your house and properties and chase you off, or don't do it (This is exactly what they were trying with the majority of the population in Catalonia).

I can't create my own taxes, or decide that I am too beautiful to pay the taxes that I dislike.

I can't replace the police and start driving like a mad in the highway while shooting people.

I can't build my own army, or trial somebody unilaterally acting as prosecutor and judge.

And of course I can't start an election, specially one that requires people to vote in a f*g cardboard urn, placed in the headquarters or a f*g political party.

The power to start elections lies in the elected president. Period. The state has the monopoly of a lot of things. If you start elections by yourself is, first, a farce, and second, not democratic.

> And of course I can't start an election, specially one that requires people to vote in a f*g cardboard urn, placed in the headquarters or a f*g political party

You weaken your argument tremendously by using slurs like these.

The "democracy must allow scam referendums" fallacy has been discussed "ad nauseam" before. Here and on many other places. The term has been heavily weaponized by separatists and some of us are really upset to hear that BS again. Is like groundhog day.

In any case is time to shut my mouth with apologies by the rambling. Lets better return to the real theme here.

> You seem to have doubts still about that, so let me kindly illustrate you, about how real democracies work.

oh well... thank you, but I'd rather go other places to illustrate myself than reading someone angry on the internet.

> The power to start elections lies in the elected president. Period. The state has the monopoly of a lot of things. If you start elections by yourself is, first, a farce, and second, not democratic.

I'm sure you know the difference between referendum and election, so I won't kindly illustrate you.

ITT: people saying this is and isn’t normal with the basis of their evidence being “feels”. None of you apparently have any relevant expertise, yet have very strong opinions.

Your statement also describes yourself and the irony drips from your comment.

You don’t need expertise to have a moral compass.

Just like all of the data the US took from Petrobras and claimed they needed it “just in case” and that they weren’t using it to benefit US oil companies.

“Trust me bro” is US policy at this point and it and the people that support it are an embarrassment.

US infiltration is ubiqiotous in the EU, so there has to be more to this. Which lines were crossed?

It was rape but it looked like consented sex.

Building up your intelligence capability in a country is much more easily done while they’re an ally than waiting for them to elect an insane, unfriendly government, and doing it then

> than waiting for them to elect an insane, unfriendly government

Why would an "unfriendly government" be insane ?

Two adjectives next to each other doesn't imply a causal relationship between them

Majority of spying by nation states is industrial or corporate, its not much to do with sexy international politics. It's uninteresting and you will not see a movie about the subject. It's likely they were getting details from a Spanish company, alternatively it may be something like details about a trade deal.

You could probably find out which area the area chief was working on and look back from there.

Why werent they executed?

I thought it was interesting how close the law maps to CIA [0]:

Confidentiality - disclose (procure - intent to disclose)

Integrity - falsify

Availability - disable

> Article 584 of the Penal Code, which punishes “a Spaniard who, with the purpose of helping a foreign power, association or international organization, procures, falsifies, disables or discloses information classified as reserved or secret, that is likely to harm national security or national defense.”

Not super surprising maybe, information has always been important, but it makes me wonder what the oldest written equivalent of the CIA triad is.

I found some references to Caesar using it [1], but no actual quotes.

Edit: It seems like some of the downvoters think I made up some words that I associate with the CIA (Central Intelligence Agency) but I'm referring to the CIA acronym in information security [0]. I can understand the confusion in this context, sorry!

0: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_security#Key_con...

1: https://security.stackexchange.com/a/47700

Probably something by Aristotle on what constitutes "trustworthiness". (Just a guess)

What? You just made that up. It doesn't "map" to anything

Haha possibly! It doesn't seem so far-fetched to me but I suppose we have different perspectives.

@lupusreal I've added a comment that might clarify what I meant. Thanks for explaining what didn't make sense to you, despite getting downvoted.

The most astounding statement is this: “What do Americans have to pay for if we give them everything they ask for?” they noted. These sources insist that Spain openly collaborates with the United States, and always exchanges information. According to these sources, the number of times in which Spain has refused to share information of interest to Washington is “between one and zero.”

Either this is a lie, the USA and Spain have zero competing interests, Spain absolutely ignores it's own laws and regulations or Spain gave up on being an independent country. I can't imagine a world where the USA shares everything with Spain, so I can't image why would Spain share everything with the USA.

Why do you think that? Germany didn't even protest when it was revealed that the USA spied on the phone of chancellor Merkel, the BND sent siphoned german internet traffic to the NSA in an act of treason, and flight passenger data is sent to the USA without receiving such data in return. And again and again the EU enables data transfer programs into the USA, even though it is known the USA does not protect that data from access and that thus all such agreements are illegal.

In such questions, European states repeatedly bow completely to the USA. I don't see why it would be different with Spain.

Countries spy on each other constantly, it's just that articles about the US doing so receive far more clicks. Europe does a similar amount of spying on the US, here's a couple articles where it's revealed or they admit it:

France admits they spied on the US: (https://www.france24.com/en/20131024-nsa-france-spying-squar...)

Germany was found to be spying on the US: (https://www.dw.com/en/german-intelligence-spied-on-white-hou...)

How do you mean protest? Do you mean people in the streets? No, that didn't happen.

Do you mean inter-governmental protest in the form of summoning an ambassador and dressing them down? In the form of sternly worded demarches asking for clarification? In diplomatic discussions that frankly announced our relationship was injured? Yes that very much happened. A relationship was impaired and Germany was quite diplomatically clear about it.

Diplomatic protest does not need to be public to be effective.

You are correct. I indeed remembered that not even the ambassador was summoned, but according to https://www.dw.com/de/nsa-sp%C3%A4hangriff-us-botschafter-ei... at least that did happen.

USA is supporting Morocco and Morocco has had a long problem with Sahara and claims for Ceuta and Melilla, spanish cities. Also they want to take over at some point Canary Islands.

Americans are playing two faces here: Spain is our friend and at the same time they are supporting Morocco.

It is not nice IMHO. Last year after more than four decades of Shara conflict between Morocco and saharauis the soanish government suddenly changed position for this topic with zero explanation. Something government knows most citizens are against. I think americans forced Spain to do it.

On the way we had a conflict with Algeria, which is who provided us with cheap gas. It is a stupid movement forced from outside.

At the same time, Israel normalized relations with Morocco, putting an embassy there. And now they are in Sahara mining...

Is this all by chance? I doubt it. It is all planned. Against our own interests.

Pure geopolitics.

It's because of immigrants. Look on a map. Morocco is promising to stop African migrants and take back their own. Has nothing to do with America.

Yes, our american friends just forced that move for Sahara and just did this: https://www.elespanol.com/mundo/africa/20231208/marruecos-co...

Who do you think sold that to our neighbours? No, they are playing two decks and harming us on the way.

I do not have anything against americans per se, but they have a big responsibility on what happened in Europe lately and they are also playing two decks there for many reasons I won't explain here now, but Nordstream/Germany's russian gas is one of the topics, if not the topic.

Anyway, I prefer to leave it here and comment more about other news, particularly technology, which is what I enjoy the most.

Feel free to reply, I just do not want to start a long thread about this since it is inside HN policies to talk about these topics the less the better :)

Thanks for your exchange.

Have you ever traveled in Western Sahara, on both sides of the berm? Especially over a span of time that would allow you to witness the changes that have occurred in the region’s demography? The indigenous Saharawi population is so small now it could hardly form a viable state, especially one able to resist migrant flows from further south. As the other poster said, European states’ foreign policy now is strongly driven by migration concerns. Yes, the marginalization of the Saharawi from their own region is a result of Morocco’s occupation, and that can be lamented, but the damage is already done.

Spain is largely a vassal state of the US but also of Germany. As such, it depends on these countries for most of its intelligence. It would be counter productive for Spain to refuse cooperation given its membership of EU and NATO. Spain is on the firing line of NATO's "enemies" because of its relatively weak state, so it would be very audacious of Spain to betray its masters. Spain's political class certainly wouldn't have the appetite for it

> Spain is largely a vassal state of the US but also of Germany

Wow, such a claim? Germany, really? Do you have evidence?

The 2009 Euro debt crisis made it clear that Spain has little economic autonomy even when Germany's demands are, economically speaking, insane.

So (for example) Portugal was able to choose a non-austerity strategy to get out of the GFC while Spain was coerced by Germany to follow an austerity strategy? If that is what you mean, could you please provide any kind of evidence for that coercion? What makes Spain special in that regard (e. g. compared to Portugal)?

The main reason I think it played out differently is that Portugal is considered more united in its other political views than Spain. Even in Portugal the 2015 election that ended (sort of) the austerity policies was highly contentious/fractious. Madrid could not tolerate that kind of clusterfuck without also risking e.g. Catalonian independence. Related to that Portugal also does not have the other half Spain does, the US political backing which works in tandem with the German economic power.

That said, if you listen to German politicians they still don't believe Portugal is out of the GFC and would reinstitute austerity there in a heartbeat given the chance.

I am still missing any evidence Germany exerted any pressure in that regard. It would be different for Greece, obviously.

> That said, if you listen to German politicians they still don't believe Portugal is out of the GFC and would reinstitute austerity there in a heartbeat given the chance.

If you listen to the larger parties of the current German government they would like to "modify" the "Schuldenbremse" (self-inflicted limitation on debt, fixed on constitutional level) to be able to raise more debt. And even in the conservative party the respect for austerity is declining along with the financial well-being of the German federal states.

I guess there's a huge difference between raising funds (selling bonds) to fund domestic projects and sending it to other EU states as "aid", no?

I am not quite sure what you are hinting at. Could you please clarify?

The only large-scale aid Germany is providing to other EU countries I am aware of are their (internally not disputed) EU contributions. But if I remember correctly Spain is not a large net receiver from those contributions either (barely a net receiver). Also, Germany could not change that without leaving the EU, so I am not sure how that would be any leverage.

I mean the realpolitik of increasing the EU budget, currently for the aid for Ukraine. (If I'm not mistaken.)

Back after 2009 the whole discourse was about bailing out the southern banks, of course not via direct aid, but via ECB operations, standing up various credit/emergency facilities, basically anything that leads to more gross EU credit risk (or risk sharing).

Nothing. Spain had a real-estate bubble, and it collapsed.

It's cheap propaganda for internal purposes. Everyone spies on everyone. Like there are, IDK, Czech Republic spies in the US. Discovery of "friendly" spies is handled gracefully - no one gets killed, no one gets jumped in a back alley by unidentified perpetrators, and no one even goes to prison. That is assuming you don't turn the spies around to work for you.

I don't get it why this is on HN, it is not particularly significant and it is definitely not related to tech.

I mostly agree with your comment.

However, HN isn’t only about tech. HN is about fascination for the world from a scientific angle. Most on HN are techies, so that explains its tech bias.

“anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.” [1]

“Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, or celebrities, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon.”

^ This does not justify the current topic that strongly. It does justify the fascination for the world from a science perspective angle. It also corroborates your part about stating it’s not particularly significant.

For me, the good faith view of all of this IMO is that having a discussion about friendly states spying on each other with this crowd is interesting enough.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

But there is nothing new or intellectual about this.

Expelling diplomats is about as minor and inconsequential event as you can get.

It's clear for many spaniards that the US is playing against us. The whole deal with Algeria, Morocco and Israel is pretty shady to say the least.

I don't have our secret services in high regard, but I expect them to at least do something to defend our interests.

> Either this is a lie, the USA and Spain have zero competing interests, Spain absolutely ignores it's own laws and regulations or Spain gave up on being an independent country.

Or the spy chiefs in the USA know exactly what they can ask from their Spanish counterparts and how so they avoid asking things the Spanish cannot legally fulfill.

For example the USA can ask for Spanish defense information, which the Spanish agencies share with them since they see themselves playing on the same team. The USA can ask for information on criminals and terrorist and non-affiliated spies operating in Spain, which Spain shares with them since they are playing in the same team. And presumably the USA is wise enough to not ask for compromat on Spanish leaders or things which undermine legitimate Spanish business interests.

> or Spain gave up on being an independent country

If you want to put it that bluntly. Have you heard the term Pax Americana? This is how it looks like from the ground up. Countries have the choice of being aligned with America (in which case they receive various boons) or not (in which case they receive pain and suffering in all kind of diffuse ways). Countries (and individuals in the countries) then make the rational choice. If you want to be crass about it you can describe it as giving up on being an independent country. In reality it is more like they accept to colour inside certain lines to achieve a greater prosperity for themselves.

Things like they can build regular weapons, but they can’t aim those weapons at the USA, or they can’t sell those weapons to unaligned countries.

> Spain absolutely ignores it's own laws and regulations.

Which regulation would those be? The GDPR and similar laws explicitly exclude state intelligence agencies and the like.

> I can't imagine a world where the USA shares everything with Spain, so I can't image why would Spain share everything with the USA.

Spain can assume the US has sufficient resources to know anything it cares to anyway, and Spain doesn't have an empire spanning the globe. The US does. One party has a lot more to lose by revealing everything.

> and Spain doesn't have an empire spanning the globe

Anymore :)

I mean it's important to realise that once they did have just that and that mindset might carry on today.

It certainly does carry on. Same in France.

>I can't imagine a world where the USA shares everything with Spain, so I can't image why would Spain share everything with the USA.

I'm sure it's not everything, but it's certainly asymmetric given that Spain (like any NATO country) outsources much of its security to the United States.

> why would Spain share everything with the USA.

Wishful (respectively forceful) thinking :)

How would the USA know that Spain is sharing everything unless they checked?

> or Spain gave up on being an independent country.

This doesn't seem all that unlikely, for certain contexts at least.

> Either this is a lie (...)

It don't think there is any doubt that it was a bald-faced lie. The comment reads like a puerile feign of ignorance.

Desperate Russian divide and conquer stuff?

This has Hunter’s fingerprints all over it. I’m a fan by the way.

Another possibility is that the Spanish officials were bribed to sell information to people pretending to be the United States, but not actually representing the United States.

“It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal.”

― Henry Kissinger, Nobel peace prize laureate, War criminal.

Use the full quote, don't be misleading.

"Word should be gotten to Nixon that if Thieu meets the same fate as Diem, the word will go out to the nations of the world that it may be dangerous to be America’s enemy, but to be America’s friend is fatal.”

It was obviously a hypothetical, "if we let this happen, countries will lose trust in being a friend."

That (taken out of context quote) was true during the Cold War because of the cynical realpolitik that Kissinger himself was a proponent of. For example he was against the US supporting Israel in the 1973 Yom Kippur war. That would likely have led to Israel being wiped out but not before launching nuclear missiles at Arab states and the Eastern European Soviet/Warsaw pact states that were supporting and arming the Arab states. Knowing Kissinger that was most likely his goal; lose Israel but turn every major industrial center in the Soviet Union and Warsaw pact into nuclear wasteland.

Will you update your comment to include the full quote? This is very misleading. Is that on purpose?

As always, there will be a 10 minute outcry from public officials "so choking" and then nothing. Business as usual. No consequence so it can go on.

  According to these sources, the number of times in which Spain has refused to share information of interest to Washington is “between one and zero.”

That is interesting how ball sucking is this country when you consider that it is sure that the opposite is not true (us accepting to share everything that they have)

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