Brazil ditches Boeing’s F/A-18 in favor of SAAB’s JAS 39 Gripen over the NSA’s rogue behavior. In a press conference tonight, Brazil’s defense department announces that Brazil will buy the Swedish fighter jet, according to multiple Brazilian sources. The direct reason for rejecting Boeing’s F/A-18 was the United States’ hostile and unacceptable spying behavior against Brazil and the rest of the world.
With the F/A-18 rejected, which had been Brazil’s favorite up until Snowden’s revelations started to unravel, Brazil will buy 12 JAS 39 Gripen-NG fighters initially at a cost of 4 billion USD, intending to buy a total of 36 aircraft.
President Dilma Rousseff personally rejected the F/A-18 in favor of the JAS 39 Gripen-NG, according to Brazilian sources. The only drawback is said to be that the -NG [Next Generation] version of the Gripen is not yet in serial production, but only at the prototype stage.
Wow. How does our foreign minister Carl Bildt respond to that.
Carl Bildt will probably be spanked at next Bilderberg meeting…. but then again the jetcraft order stays within the family.
My guess is Carl Bildt will avoid mentioning anything about NSA, since that means he will have to talk about the FRA connection as well..
So, when will Snowden get his sales commission? 🙂
Ha Ha America thinks they so smart they spy on friends, do secret evil, choose leaders for countries or assassinate those they oppose us US. Tell countries how to believe or ELSE. Yet we are Trillions of dollars in debt while at same time bribe with Billions to countries like Israel! America does not even get in top 20% of people tested in 140 countries for reading, math, and science. An agency funded by the govt refuses to release info on JFK Coup by still receive their funding. Who rules America? A bunch of selfish, idiots stealing America blind. We trusted as our system is supposed to be governed by the Constitution and Bill of Rights. Those rights taken daily by police and the justice system (which believes affluent people are disadvantaged so they not subject to laws as regular folk.) And we wonder why we have enemies abroad and at home for the govts. behavior! 9/11 didn’t just happen. We pissed someone off enough to do this to us. Maybe we should think why we hated so much. Not hated for success as fools state. No we planted hate in populations of small people world wide by trying to convert to Christianity and Democracy. Democracy is failure. America sucks hind tit. Filled with ignorant, apathetic, selfish people.
Wow, Deep, so Amaze
Knowledge, so much.
Gagnon, freedom fighter
Learn 2 encrypt noob
Freedom or else
Friendz to israel GAWSH
Top Schewls, harvard, princeton, MIT Yale, Newbz
Agenda’s, gross
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Ammendments, no way. LAWFULLY ILLEGALL AMIRIGHT
Police sew rude, wow
9/11, gg, no re
Erryone hate lyke me
CHristianz rude,
democry qq
Everyone are dumber than me
I’m so tired of Doge.
And yet I laughed.
I enjoy Doge, and I didn’t laugh at all. This poster needs to go study their memes. Less is more.
Contrary to what you’re probably thinking, that was neither clever or funny.
I was with you until you said “9/11 didn’t just happen. We pissed someone off enough to do this to us.” Anyone with an open mind that is willing to question authority can tell you there’s no way the planes that were crashed in to WTC 1, & 2 are what caused WTC buildings 1, 2, & 7 to collapse at the same speed as a controlled demolition. Jet fuel does not burn at high enough temperatures to damage the integrity of the steel used in the towers either..
So, you were right with a lot of it….Just not the part about 9/11…
Jet fuel might not burn hot enough to damage steel, but what about the stuff they use to make the chemtrails? Who KNOWS what’s in that stuff?
Merging conspiracy theories? Nice.
U kidding…
You’re an idiot
Before you post next time try using a word processor. We might actually be able to read that. There are so many grammatical issues and missing words in your post, it hurts to even attempt to read it.
Correction, America is no longer a “Democracy” US is dictated by a bunch of plutoc-rats.
Maybe Brazil should rethink this also, Sweden is now the
corrupt bitch and partner in crime of the United States of
Corrupt Corporate Fascism
those who are not corrupt bitches are getting “some” from them. bitches get screwed but johns pay for it… and also get screwed. i don’t think anyone, anywhere escapes from this.
Brazil’s got the attitude (like when they imposed visas on the USA), but they lack the muscle to actually pull through.
europe’s divided, latam is, well, a bitch too for the most part, and asia doesn’t seem to like playing with the rest of the world. Africa will get a choice when they grow up. i think it’s a long, long way ’til the real revolution comes (then back to square one under new management).
Huh, so Brazil punishes the USA for spying, and rewards Sweden for spying for the USA. Well, Sweden probably hasn’t been spying much on Brazil specifically, so I guess it sort of makes sense from a Brazilian point of view.
No one except Russia gives a shit if anyone is spying on the Russians, that’s why.
In a parallel development, cisco commits to a series of tech hubs in Canada, starting in Toronto, after a successful trial in Ottawa area.
Can anyone say “Not Made in America”? (The software, that is: the chips are arguably Chinese)
–dave
Hey, I work for Cisco in the US, they still have engineers here. Some. Fewer every year.
Of course I’ve spent the last 3 or 4 years training engineers from other countries to do my job so that they can outsource more to less expensive workers, so more and more of our software is not made in America, but I’m sure that was for financial reasons, not marketing.
Pretty sure.
Hasn’t seemed to help the stock price though, why don’t the analysts understand that outsourcing to really inexpensive developers (generally with little relevant experience) is a great idea?
I don’t understand how anyone buys defence equipment from foreign producers, considering that a) producers of advanced defence materiel are always deeply involved with their respective governments, and b) we now know that NSA sabotages commercial American-made chips in order to make them less secure. If they are doing it to crypto chips, why wouldn’t other branches of the US military do it to airplanes? And if the US are doing it, why wouldn’t Sweden do it? Why don’t the Brazilians assume that their planes are going to fall out of the sky the minute they try to use them for something that the producing country does not approve of?
Thats a risk they have to take. Getting the aircraft runs the risk of sabotage, not getting them runs the risk of looking weak and being incapable of defending it’s borders. Its a potential lose-lose.
Because they don’t have a choice? It’s not exactly easy to maintain the high tech industry and capital investment required to build fighter craft. Plus it’s unlikely they’d bother to sabotage them because a few F-18s would not make anyone a threat to the US anyways. Either way the US, Britain, Australia, Canada, Japan, etc are all extremely extremely close allys and in on the whole thing together they probably all knew and shared most of the intelligence. Germany is an ally but less tightly aligned than those partners, and China, Russia, Brazil, India are like currently demi-friendly competitors who have been aligned to counter ballance the US-Euro sphere of influence.
This. I feel like the other commenters are ignoring the global landscape.
I’ll be up and clear that I’m not jet fighter expert, but just how much of those gigantic high-tech bunch of twisted metal, filled with computers, and the code to make them do their job can possibly be manufactured by corporations from a single country? What I mean is: even if Brazil had a company with the assets to design a fighter, just how much could brazilians trust their contractors(and the contractors’ contractors and so on)? Not that it wouldn’t help but it’s still only one corporation out of probably dozens with their hands on the aircraft that you (assume you) can trust.
It’s been a while since I last read about the fighter issue, but IIRC one of the selling points for the swedes was that their proposal featured the biggest technology transfer deal(the american proposal was the one with least tech transfer btw), according to the article Rick linked all aircrafts will be manufactured in Brazil itself. Now I’m not sure what those technology transfer deals say, but it at least sounds like one extra guarantee that the planes won’t self-destruct the moment Brazil declares war on Sweden.
Glad to hear it. Seems like the only thing that will ever stop the NSA is the US losing money as a result. Human people may not matter, but corporate people can get things changed.
But of course it will all just be blamed on Snowden, not the practices that led to Snowden’s big reveal…
Yup. Shooting the messenger always worked out nicely before, so why change good practice?
I don’t condone the US spying. And I don’t share any patriotic enthusiasm just because I happen to be born on this particular patch of dirt. However, I wonder are we getting so caught up on the NSA spying that we fail to see the bottom line of this story. In black and white it’s saying that Brazzil is spending four billion dollars on flying war machines… And what do we do with flying war machines??? Blow things up! Is this a lesser evil? At what point will we start pooling or efforts, recources and intellect for the greater good of mankind.
So true. Plus the sad truth – national security is an ugly business, and generally speaking the less we know about the what that entails… the better. Not giving them a pass, going too far is going too far, but this world is a screwed up place and I’d rather my government is just as aggressive as any enemy of the state may be than pandering to a populace incapable of dealing with simple things like sports playoffs without riots let alone actual national security threats. There is a lot of theater out there, but what goes on backstage should really stay there.
They pass on an economical combat proven airframe for a system that has proved itself where? Seems like a waste of money
The Swedish craft has more than proven its worth. Even if it hasnt explicitly seen much combat, preliminary tests are very positive.
I guess, then, that we here in Canada should just buy more CF-18s instead of sinking millions into the abysmal pit of despair that is the US fighter development program. Oh wait, thats exactly what we should do. Or build a domsetic aircraft (which we are more than capable of doing).
Not knocking our friendly neighbors to the North, but they would be entering the game with a 20 to 30 year disadvantage. It would take a long time for them to catch up. USA builds fighter jets that are so advanced (F-22) that they can’t find enough legitimate threats to warrant the expenditure.
Here’s to hoping that extraterrestrial alien invasion occurs, so that we can see those F-22s in action!
I know this is hard to understand for most people but ALL governments spy on their friends and enemies alike. Its been like this since the dark ages, get over it, its going to happen regardless of country and spy agency to think otherwise is complete naivety.
No, they do not. As a Finnish person I can say that our government does not spy on anyone. It is illegal here and would be extremely bad regarding that Russia is right next to us and some people are still afraid of war.
We don’t have such an agency nor we should.
Illegal in Finland? So is it in Sweden and USA too.
I can’t prove you wrong, but I can’t prove you right either. Either way, as a Finnish citizen you will most likely get caught in the Swedish nets, even if Finland doesn’t have anything.
The spying on citizens needs to end soon, world wide, or there will be no democracy left.
So were paying the NSA to shut USA down. Sounds legit.
Sad but a few hundred of the “elite” are gonna drag the billions of us into extinction. We’re all the same species, every country on earth has equal parts cool and douche. Anyone stereotyping an entire country is pathetically ignorant.
Sounds like a pretty solid plan dude.
http://www.PrivaWeb.tk
anything that hurts the USA economy, is ok by me. however, i just read where Karel de Gucht is deeply involved in the deal under ‘negotiation’ (and i use that term extremely loosely!), TAFTA/TTIP. in it, there are clauses that will give companies the right to sue governments for fictional lost profits. the European Commission has just fined two companies for using delaying tactics by buying companies that produced generic drugs, thereby forcing people to pay far, far higher amounts for the ‘genuine article’. this caused undo suffering to patients. you can bet that anything that can be done to prevent this sort of thing happening in future, will be done. if however, it is a ‘non-USA’ company, the USA will be suing for all it’s worth. every dea’ is negotiated to give maximum to the USA but minimum to everyone else. when everyone else tries to fight back, the USA threatens them. any country that gets involved in any deal with the USA wants heads examining! to see that Brazil is going contra USA, is the best thing i have read for ages. i just hope that the EU gets out of all deals with the USA before we find ourselves not only totally screwed, with no way back, but having the USA control everything and everyone, everywhere!
Someone is lying, or not telling the entire truth.
You write the NSA scandal is the reason, the news in Sweden reports every thinkable reason except that one.
Does anyone have any sources indicating one way or another?
Well it could be a NSA “thanks Sweden for the help we got from FRA, here, have yourself some aircraft business going the right way, don’t worry we’ll make it look as they did it because they’re angry at us snooping”.
It’s not like the NSA and FRA weren’t created by the defence departments / industries or, hmmm… wait… they were…
Like it or not, believe it or not – All countries are attempting to spy on each other. The US happens to be the best when it comes to offense.
If Snowden were ever to leak all of the information that he has gained access to, the results would be absolutely disastrous and all of you arm chair foreign policy experts and human rights activists on here would be shitting your pants and moving to Canada. So chill out and enjoy the freedoms that have been and are being provided to you or pack your shit and move elsewhere.
People on the other side of the planet have more disdain for this country because of the lazy cowards that spend their time comfortably philosophizing on Reddit while they sit in the house they couldn’t afford typing on one of the three ipads they just had to have than they do for our country attempting to surveille citizens both foreign in domestic in an effort to keep us from being obliterated.
Typical defeatist pot calling the kettle black.
Defeatist: “demonstrating expectation or acceptance of failure.”
I’d submit I’m the antithesis of a “defeatist”. I’m accepting of a system that has by and large been hugely successful in regards to it’s mission.
A “defeatist” would be somebody who is currently content living in North Korea.
I do have to give you credit though for a tremendously insightful and well written response.
“A “defeatist” would be somebody who is currently content living in North Korea. ”
I think that was his point, just switch “North Korea” for “USA”.
Did you know 15% of all prisoners in the world are, located in the US? Freedom my ass.
It’s a wonder no one has called them what they are – working camps… Arbeit macht frei…
Surprize! The spying isn’t done to keep you from being obliterated. It is done to keep you from taking away the power from the people who has it.
Did you know that your elections has been tampered with? There was vote flipping in the election, flipping votes from Ron Paul amongst others, to Mitt Romney. Google (or preferably DuckDuckGo) it. Someones wanted the final election to be between Obama and Romney.
With “the ones who have the power” I do not mean presidents, candidates or anything like that, but the ones who ordered the tampering with the voting machines.
If the spying by NSA is anywhere near as big as Snowden claims, that’s probably where the real people “in power” are…
“Did you know 15% of all prisoners in the world are, located in the US? Freedom my ass.”
Not sure if you’ve ever taken a statistics course or not, but one of the reasons that we may have exponentially higher numbers is that, unlike in Africa and Mexico, we actually document the number of people in prison — I suppose just slaughtering them on the spot would preclude them from ever being placed in a jail cell — could be a solid way to get our numbers down?
“Surprize! The spying isn’t done to keep you from being obliterated. It is done to keep you from taking away the power from the people who has it.”
Grab yourself a couple ESL classes. I’m also curious, do you get better TV reception when you’re wearing a tin foil hat?
It’s rather ironic that the Swedes (FRA) spy widely and provide the information to the US :-).