Tag Archives: Germany

Civil Liberties, Featured, Health, International, Podcast

BREAKING: German Lawsuit Against “Fact-Checkers” Would Force Them To Prove Legitimacy of C0VID Tests

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A German lawsuit against “Fact Checkers” would force them to prove the legitimacy of Covid tests.

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Featured, Hot, Podcast

“Masks Make Us Slaves” Massive Protests in Germany Over C0VlD Lockdown

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Massive protests in Berlin, Germany over the weekend as reports of 10’s of thousands up to possibly a million or more people took to the streets to protests C0VlD lock-downs. What are the people truly asking for? Some say, a return to Democracy.

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Activism, Featured, Government Accountability, Videos

VIDEO: Activist Group Uses Drone to Drop Anti-Spying Flyers on NSA Facility

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Members of Peng!, a tactical media group, published a video online earlier this month in which a drone from the group’s anti-spying campaign is seen dropping flyers, calling on agents to quit their jobs, on the National Security Agency’s Dagger Complex facility in Darmstadt, Germany.

The description panel on the above-embedded YouTube video notes, “The Dagger Complex in Darmstadt, Germany acts as a central point of the NSA’s surveillance and espionage activity in Europe. On Friday Intelexit supporters, the initiative helping people break free from the secret services, dropped information flyers to the 1100 employees working there.”

Vice’s Joshua Kopstein wrote, “Dagger Complex has a special significance in surveillance-wary Germany and has long been seen as a slice of the American surveillance state on German soil. The base has been the site of countless protests, including ‘spy spotting’ nature walks organized by activists following the Snowden revelations.”

Peng!’s anti-spying campaign, Intelexit, is an initiative launched by privacy advocates seeking to encourage agents working for the National Security Agency and Britain’s Government Communications Headquarters to quit their jobs and become whistleblowers. Prior to launching the aerial flyering campaign, the group also posted a billboard next to Dagger Complex which reportedly says,“Listen to your heart, not to private phone calls.” The group has also placed billboards at NSA’s Fort Meade, Md. facility and at GCHQ’s Cheltenham headquarters in England.

An Intelexit spokesperson who goes by the pseudonym Ariel Fischer said, “We know for a fact that there are many, many people working there who are conflicted, anxious and ultimately completely against what these agencies are doing… We make a clear difference between individuals and the structures they are part of. We want to meet our surveillers eye to eye, and say ‘We can help you.’”

[RELATED: Democratic Debate: Clinton, Sanders Clash On NSA Spying]

She added, “We have seen a shift in the last years of people leaving, people blowing the whistle, even in the face of great repression and we wanted to support that. If there is a backdoor and people start leaving, and people start talking, and the public starts reacting, they will be forced to change.”

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Foreign Policy, International

Russia Warns of Retaliation If US Sends New Nukes to Germany

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by Jason Ditz

Tensions between the US and Russia are already at a near-term high in recent weeks, and look to be getting even worse amid new reports from Germany’s ZDF that the US intends to deploy new nuclear weapons to Germany and upgrade its nuclear infrastructure across Europe.

Russian government spokesman Dmitry Peskov called the move a “very serious step toward exacerbating tensions on the European continent,” and warned that if the US follows through on these plans Russia would carry out retaliatory countermeasures, adding more ballistic missiles to its exclave of Kaliningrad.

Kaliningrad’s location, adjacent to NATO members Lithuania and Poland, has made it a popular place for Russia to threaten retaliatory deployments, because such moves would starkly change the balance of power in Eastern Europe. During the dispute over US missile shield deployments along the Russian frontier, Russia similarly threatened to place Iskander missiles in Kaliningrad.

That’s the same thing they’re talking up today, and while they’re not going into details about numbers of variations, the fact that the current US deployment is itself nuclear in nature probably means Iskander-M ballistic missiles, capable of carrying 50 kT nuclear warheads, would be part of the deployment.

The ZDF report came simply out of publicly available US budgetary information, and publicized some deployments the administration clearly did not intend to make a matter of serious discourse. The deployments are likely to also rankle Germany itself, because the deployment of Cold War-era nuclear arms was already highly controversial, and many Germans simply want the weapons of mass destruction removed, not upgraded.

Editor’s Pick, Featured, International, Politics

Greece Rejects Further Austerity Measures

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In a landmark referendum, Greek voters rejected a bailout deal on Sunday that was proposed by the European Union and International Monetary Fund and would have required greater austerity measures in exchange for emergency funds.

The vote signals a victory for Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras who promised to reject further austerity when he came to power in January. Although there were rumors from opposition parties that Greece was voting on whether to remain a part of Europe’s joint currency, Tsipras said that the vote was not requiring a “rupture” with Europe.

Following the vote in which over 61 percent of voters favored rejecting a bailout that would lead to greater austerity in the country, Tsipras called the results a “victory of democracy,” and said the country has “proved even in the most difficult circumstances that democracy won’t be blackmailed.”

The New York Times noted that despite several stories from the country’s media- which is “dominated by Greek oligarchs”- about citizens not having access to deposits and losing gasoline and medicine after the European Central Bank severely limited financial assistance to Greek banks a week before the referendum, many voters were “tired of more than five years of soaring unemployment and a collapsing economy,” and did not want to accept the EU’s bailout offer because it would impose even more “pension cuts and tax increases, without debt relief.”

Despite the country’s vote to reject the EU’s bailout, Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis resigned on Monday under pressure from European leaders after he infuriated them when he “compared Greece’s creditors to terrorists,” according to The Guardian.

Varoufakis announced his resignation in a blog post, writing that he will considers it his duty to “help Alexis Tsipras exploit, as he sees fit, the capital that the Greek people granted us through yesterday’s referendum,” and that he will “wear the creditors’ loathing with pride.”

“Soon after the announcement of the referendum results, I was made aware of a certain preference by some Eurogroup participants, and assorted ‘partners’, for my… ‘absence’ from its meetings,” Varoufakis wrote. “An idea that the prime minister judged to be potentially helpful to him in reaching an agreement. For this reason I am leaving the Ministry of Finance today.”

Varoufakis, who said that Tsipras thought his absence from Eurogroup meetings could be helpful in “reaching an agreement,” will be replaced by Euclid Tsakalotos, Greece’s deputy foreign minister for international economic affairs.

The Guardian reported that in speculating a further deal, “European leaders are calling on Athens to make the first move,” and while French finance minister Michel Sapin said it was up to the Greek government, Finland’s finance minister Alexander Stubb said talks could only restart when Greece agrees to “necessary reforms,” German chancellor, Angela Merkel, will begin talks with French president François Hollande on Monday evening.

All 19 Eurozone leaders are expected to gather on Tuesday for an emergency summit to discuss possible reform proposals from the Greek authorities.

Business, International

French Prosecutor: Germanwings Co-Pilot Deliberately Destroyed Flight 4U 9525

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On Thursday, Marseilles prosecutor Brice Robin, who is investigating the crash of Germanwings flight 4U 9525, which crashed into the French Alps and killed all 150 people on board on Tuesday morning, said that first pilot Andreas Lubitz “deliberately destroyed” the plane.

The plane, an Airbus A320, was flying from Barcelona, Spain, to Düsseldorf, Germany, when it crashed and killed all 144 passengers and six crew members instantly. Aside from the names of the pilots, the airline has announced that it will not release the names of the passengers who were on board, “not only due to data protection but above all to honor their privacy.”

The Telegraph noted that the flight, which crashed near Digne-les-Bains in the French Alps, was one of France’s worst aviation disasters.

During a press conference on Thursday, Robin said that after investigating the plane’s black box recorder, he determined that the crash was “not an accident,” and that Lubitz seemed to have deliberately destroyed the plane.

Robin explained that prior to the crash, Lubitz was alone at the controls, after the captain of the flight, Patrick Sondenheimer, left to use the restroom. Robin said that Lubitz “voluntarily refused to open the door of the cockpit to the pilot and voluntarily began the descent of the plane.”

“For the last 20 minutes the conversation was normal, courteous, nothing abnormal,” Robin said. He explained that it was not until the captain left to of to the restroom and Lubitz was alone, that he began to manipulate the flight monitoring system, and put the plane into descent mode.

“The action of this selection of altitude can only be deliberate,” said Robin, who went on to say that in the minutes before the crash, there was “absolute silence in the cockpit,” and that while Lubitz’s breathing was detected on the recording from the black box, he sent no distress signal.

Robin said that there is no evidence to suggest Lubitz had links to terrorist groups, or that this was a terrorist act.

The Guardian reported that Lubitz, a 28-year-old from Germany, clocked a total of 630 flying hours, and had been flying for Germanwings since September 2013, after receiving training from the airline’s parent company Lufthansa.

The Independent reported that the flight’s captain, Patrick Sondenheimer, was a married father of two, who had completed more than 6,000 flying hours, and had been flying with Germanwings since May 2014, after working with both Lufthansa and Condor. The black box recording indicated that after attempting to return to the cockpit, and finding that the door was locked, Sondenheimer knocked, received no response from Lubitz, and then tried to break down the door before the plan crashed.

Economy, Politics, US

Former Nazis receive Social Security payments from US government

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After WWII, many Nazis made an exodus out of Germany, and found themselves embedded in countries all over the world, including the US.  Now, an investigation has found Nazis who came to America have been collecting Social Security payments, even after they have left the US for other countries.

The Associated Press found that through a legal loophole, the US Justice Department would allow the former Nazis to continue to collect their Social Security payments if they agreed to leave the US or fled before they were deported.  According to the investigation, about $1.5 million had been paid out to former Nazis through this loophole by the turn of the century.

Out of at least 38 Nazis who came to the US after 1979 and began collecting social security payments, about four remain alive, and they all are rumored to live in Europe.

Jakob Denzinger is one of these former Nazis collecting payments while living in Croatia.  Denzinger was a guard at the notorious prison camp Auschwitz, and moved to Ohio after the war where, according to RT, he started his own plastic company.

Denzinger reportedly collects about $18,000 a year from Social Security, but he would not comment on these new developments.  Thomas, Denzinger’s son who lives in the US, did say his father would not give up his benefits because he “paid into the system.”

The Social Security Administration would not disclose information regarding the use of benefits to try and drive the former Nazis out of the country.

Agency spokesman Peter Carr said, “The matter of Social Security benefits eligibility was raised by defense counsel, not by the department, and the department neither used retirement benefits as an inducement to leave the country and renounce citizenship nor threatened that failure to depart and renounce would jeopardize continued receipt of benefits.”

However, even though the SSA denies paying former Nazis to leave the US, a piece of legislation in 1999 was meant to stop all benefits from reaching former Nazis, whether they were American citizens or not.  This legislation failed to pass at the time, but these new developments might raise the issue again.

International, Politics, Technology, US

Germany asks US official to leave, while media likens US to “North Korea or Iran”

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After German Chancellor Angela Merkel accused the NSA of wiretapping hers and millions of other German’s digital communication, the German government has asked the top CIA representative in the country to leave at once.

According to the Guardian, the CIA representative was responsible for coordinating secret service activities in Germany, and this representative was also the contact for two German officials recently arrested on charges of spying for the U.S.

“The representative of the U.S. intelligence services at the Embassy of the United States of America,” says German government spokesman Steffen Seibert according to the Washington Post, “has been requested to leave Germany.”

This all comes a year after whistleblower Edward Snowden leaked the evidence showing the NSA was wiretapping foreign citizen’s communications.

The German government has been frustrated, according to the New York Times, with the U.S. for not explaining their actions concerning the wiretapping as well as over assurances from President Obama that the government will no longer spy on German citizens despite the two arrested German officials.

The White House, earlier this week, said the relationship between the U.S. and German governments is one built on respect, but the German media has likened the actions taken by the U.S. government to those of “pariah states like North Korea or Iran.”

White House spokesman Josh Earnest would not comment on the state of U.S. intelligence.  “Any sort of comment on any reported intelligence acts,” Earnest says according to the LA Times, “would put at risk U.S. assets, U.S. personnel and the United States national security.”

Catlin Hayden, a spokeswoman for the NSA, said, “Our security and intelligence relationship with Germany is a very important one, and it keeps Germans and Americans safe… and we will continue to be in touch with the German government in appropriate channels.”