Pages

Tuesday, February 25, 2014

Not-Random-At-All News Generator- Brazil

Okay. Olympics over. Back to regular programming around here. I say we fire up the Random News Generator.

(puff)

Come on, I know I haven't used you in a while, but you can do it. Come on! Randomize!

(clunk)

Don't you rust at me when I'm talking to you! Now MOVE!

(PANNNGG) (fwip)

Well, technically that was movement, yes, but now you've gone and embedded a crucial part in my eardrum. That was mean of you. Well, fine, I'll pick the country myself. We'll just go ahead and pick the next Olympic stop, Brazil, and cut out any Olympics-related news so we can see what else is going on there right now.

...oh Christ the Redeemer, why is this plaguing my news feed. Sigh. Fine. So as you all know, Adolf Hitler died by shooting himself in his bunker in Berlin shortly before Soviet forces got there. This is basic knowledge about World War 2. What you also know about World War 2 is that a number of Nazis managed to flee Europe and there are still to this day people trying to hunt down the last couple that haven't died of old age yet so they can ship them back to Germany to face trial for thousands and thousands of murders each. A popular hiding location was Argentina; that was where Josef Mengele and Adolf Eichmann wound up. So of course there's a guy conspiracy-theorying that Hitler somehow got himself to Brazil and that's already more attention than I ought to be giving this.

A far more credible conspiracy theory is the one regarding spying by the NSA. Foreign governments have gotten understandably skittish recently about the potential for the United States government to look in on affairs that don't involve the United States, and as such, they're looking for solutions. Brazil and Europe have come up with one way to move forward: an undersea cable linking Fortaleza to Lisbon, Portugal. A lot of undersea cables link to the United States, and because they do, the United States- and the United States government- have access to them. Brazil's Internet access currently relies almost totally on cables linked to the United States. Get a cable down that the United States isn't connected to, and there's a way to secure Brazilian Internet access from American eyes. Europe, meanwhile, has better connections but a lot of the same concerns. However, there has to be some agreement they have to come to yet on who's putting up how much money to pay for it before they can lay it down; Brazil has more to gain here than Europe does, so they'll probably have to foot more of the bill.

It's certainly a better investment than looking for Hitler.

No comments: