It’s become a daily event

While getting intensely worked up about transatlantic passenger data, Europeans persist in monitoring ISPs, telephone calls, and emails for no clear reason. When they impose even more sever measures with less oversight, there is a refusal to admit to the outrage they reserved for American authorities monitoring the communications of people with hostile intent to Europeans and Americans alike.

It makes no difference – the goal is to find an authority figure to hate. Since Europeans feel foolish doing this with other Europeans, the US comes in quite handy. It’s petty and hateful, and causes many to persistently raise the meaningless to the level of “news”:

(Reuters) - Mayan leaders will spiritually "cleanse" ancient ruins in Guatemala after a visit by U.S. President George W. Bush, unpopular here because of foreign policies going back to Central America's civil wars.

The leaders said they would hold a spiritual ceremony to restore "peace and harmony" at the Mayan ruins of Iximche after Bush tours the site on Monday.

"No, Mr. Bush, you cannot trample and degrade the memory of our ancestors," said indigenous leader Rodolfo Pocop during a press conference. "This is not your ranch in Texas."

How his memories of his ancestors is degraded is unclear. Despite the fact that they were decimated by Spaniards, some flunky panders to the ideologically predictable world press, and the press can’t but wait to dish it up to an eager European public to eat it up.

Reuters also seems to forget how the word “new” figures into the word “news”:

Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez, Washington's principal antagonist in Latin America, has called Bush "the devil" and at a United Nations debate last year said the U.S. leader left a smell of sulfur lingering in the room behind him.

But it doesn’t matter. It’s reporting without purpose, but does a nice job of tacitly describing the real story: people whining about America need to get over themselves, stop dwelling on an imaginary enemy they’ve created, and get out of the tight little shells they built around themselves.