{"id":14,"date":"2005-04-29T02:31:43","date_gmt":"2005-04-29T07:31:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ucog.org\/blog\/?p=11"},"modified":"2005-04-29T02:31:43","modified_gmt":"2005-04-29T07:31:43","slug":"does-the-cia-spy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ucog.org\/blog\/index.php\/2005\/04\/29\/does-the-cia-spy\/","title":{"rendered":"Does the CIA spy?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Since the CIA is an intelligence gathering institution, that seems like asking "Is Queen Elizabeth British?" or "Is baseball America’s summer pastime?". The CIA doesn’t just spy, though – it also researches public information. Maybe mine, too? \ud83d\ude42 <\/p>\n

While doing some research for an article in "Gute Nachrichten", I came across this statement on the CIA fact sheet about the future of the European Union: "Failure by member states to ratify the constitution or the inability of newcomer countries to meet euro currency standards might force a loosening of some EU agreements and perhaps lead to several levels of EU participation. These ‘tiers’ might eventually range from an ‘inner’ core of politically integrated countries to a looser ‘outer’ economic association of members."<\/p>\n

Wow, that sounds a lot like what I wrote in the conclusion of my article Democratic Dictatorship?<\/a>. <\/p>\n

According to the CIA fact sheet, its comments about the future of the EU are based on "information available as of 1 January, 2004". My article was written in May 2000. <\/p>\n

No need for the bighead, though. We have a saying in German: "Eigenlob stinkt!", which translates literally as "Self-praise stinks".<\/p>\n

An interesting coincidence, nevertheless.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Since the CIA is an intelligence gathering institution, that seems like asking "Is Queen Elizabeth British?" or "Is baseball America’s summer pastime?". The CIA doesn’t just spy, though – it also researches public information. Maybe mine, too? \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ucg-germany"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ucog.org\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ucog.org\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ucog.org\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ucog.org\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ucog.org\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ucog.org\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ucog.org\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ucog.org\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ucog.org\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}