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Germany Investigates Journalists For Treason
Submitted by Pater Tenebrarum via Acting-Man.com,
Germany the Vassal State
Earlier this year, Germany’s attorney-general Harald Range has suspended the investigation into the NSA phone tapping affair. Due to Edward Snowden’s revelations, it had emerged that the NSA had wire-tapped even chancellor Merkel’s mobile phone. The reason for suspending the investigation? “We can’t prove it, and the Americans won’t tell us anything”.
You’re not alone, Angela!
Cartoon by Steve Bell
Of course documented proof does exist, and US officials have even admitted to tapping Ms. Merkel’s phone. Former CIA and NSA chief Michael Hayden brazenly declared in an interview with German news magazine “Der Spiegel” that he wasn’t prepared to apologize for tapping Merkel’s phone – he was only prepared to apologize for the fact that the activity had become public knowledge!
He couldn’t have made it any clearer that Germany is essentially a US vassal state.
Former NSA chief Hayden: Yo, vassals! This is how much power you have!
Photo credit: Luis M. Alvarez / AP Photo
Since then, a plethora of NSA and BND-related scandals (BND = Germany’s spook agency “Bundesnachrichtendienst”) has emerged. First it turned out that the BND has been given a list of so-called “selectors” by the NSA, which the agency used to spy extensively on European politicians and industries on behalf of the NSA. In other words, it is alleged that Germany’s BND has apparently carried out political and industrial espionage across Europe on a vast scale on behalf of the US. Let us just say to this that it seems extremely unlikely that any Islamic terrorists are hiding out at the board of directors of Airbus or in Francois Hollande’s or Angela Merkel’s cabinet.
Assurances….
Cartoon by Stuart Carlson
A parliamentary investigation committee in Germany hasn’t been able to unearth any tangible evidence for this either. According to the testimony of witnesses, millions of such selectors have accumulated over the years. Of those received by the BND since August 2013 alone, at least 13,000 were clearly directed against German interests, and several thousand had to be considered “legally problematic”. Alas, as the BND employee (a “Mr. T.”) charged with examining the selector list told the parliamentary committee:
“Of the entire process, neither written nor electronic proof exists. The original database of the selectors has been “erased”. The printout with the 2000 legally problematic search terms? Only one copy was made. There is no written report, no copies of the data, no back-up, nothing.
Mr. T.’s computer cannot be looked at either. According to T.’s statements, he used a computer on loan for his special mission. A laptop that wasn’t connected to the BND’s intra-net. Why? “The amount of data was too large”, T. explains. The computer he borrowed has moved to some other department a few months ago. Also, he never asked what had happened to his explosive findings.
How extremely convenient. Meanwhile, between the lines, Germany’s attorney-general sounded downright relieved when he announced he couldn’t pursue any of the NSA related investigations further.
Germany’s attorney-general Harald Range – he probably has never given as many interviews as last week.
Photo credit: picture alliance / dpa
“Netzpolitik” Journalists Investigated for Treason after Revealing the Machinations of the Spook Agency
A week ago, Hans-Georg Maassen, the president of Germany’s “Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution” (another spook agency) brought criminal charges against journalists working for the online publication “Netzpolitik”. Allegedly, the journalists are guilty of treason. Their offense? They reported on the spook bureaucracy’s plans to vastly expand internet surveillance of Germany’s citizens.
Hans-Georg Maassen, spotting treasonous activities in the distance.
Photo credit: John MacDougall / AFP
As Christian Stoecker writes in Der Spiegel:
“It sounds as if someone had made it up. Data from the innermost circles of power are flowing abroad, documents about secrets are becoming public. The chancellor can read her own telephone protocols on the internet. The secret service, which is supposed to engage in counter-espionage domestically, is evidently powerless. The attorney-general declares himself unable to investigate the perpetrators. He doesn’t have sufficient evidence.
This is the reality of the Federal Republic in 2015. Ministries and the chancellor herself have been wire-tapped, the Office for the Protection of the Constitution has utterly failed. The other large secret service, the BND, even cooperates with the likely perpetrators. Attorney-general Harald Range declares himself as unable to investigate.
But there is a different topic in connection with which the Office for the Protection of the Constitution and the attorney-general have proved to be considerably more agile: when it comes to intimidating journalists.
The attorney-general is now investigating two journalists of the blog Netzpolitik.org, which is specialized in the machinations of secret services, for suspected treason. The investigation is based on criminal charges brought by the Office for the Protection of the Constitution.
Based on confidential documents, Netzpolitik.org has twice reported on plans by the secret service to expand internet surveillance in Germany. This was undoubtedly embarrassing for the Office for the Protection of the Constitution, if probably not as embarrassing as the fact that while it wants to listen in on people itself, it cannot even protect members of the government against wire-tapping by others.”
The situation in short is this: When spook agencies themselves break the law, or are helping their spook friends from across the pond to break it, no investigations are possible. When journalists uncover a plot by the spooks to transform Germany into yet another Orwellian surveillance state, there suddenly seems to be plenty of willingness to investigate said journalists quite thoroughly and charge them with having committed a major offense.
Constitutional protection in action…
Cartoon by
Never mind that it wouldn’t be possible to have even the tiniest shred of a democratic debate over the unbridled over-zealousness of the spook agencies if not for whistleblowers occasionally dragging some of their plans into the sunlight. Evidently, the spooks are not interested in democratic debate over their activities. They seem not to have realized yet that these days, “just trust us” is no longer enough.
“Traitor!”
Cartoon by Kostas Koufogiorgos
Scoring a Giant Own Goal
Luckily, this clumsy attempt at intimidating whistleblowers and journalists appears to backfiring mightily. German politicians, always acutely aware of the mood of voters, want to be reelected after all. So they were forced to react to the uproar these events have created over the past week or so. First Germany’s justice minister Heiko Maas informed attorney-general Rangel that he thought that the “Netzpolitik” reports didn’t represent treason. Now chancellor Merkel has also distanced herself from Mr Range, by announcing that Mr. Maas has her full support with respect to the issue.
Unfortunately for both of them, Mr. Range has decided that he doesn’t want to end up as the scape-goat. While deciding to put the investigation on ice for the time being, he let it be known that the justice minister’s intervention represented an “unbearable attack by politicians on the independence of the judiciary”. The above mentioned Mr. Maassen of the Office for the Protection of the Constitution is also back-pedaling, by pointing out that his criminal charges weren’t explicitly aimed at the Netzpolitik journalists, but against “persons unknown” (namely the whistleblowers inside the agency who conveyed the explosive documents to Netzpolitik).
Justice minister Heiko Maas: “Let me look….no, not good for re-election.”
Photo credit: Peter Rigaud
It seems that the people involved were all aware of how delicate and tricky the proceedings were and so tried to cover their behinds early on. However, someone has to be the fall guy, and Range seems to have been picked for this role. It remains to be seen if he actually falls. As he explains the situation, he was simply unable to act differently – after all, he couldn’t simply ignore a charge brought by the Office for the Protection of the Constitution. And so he ordered an independent expert assessment that was supposed to clear up whether the documents concerned did in fact represent state secrets (apparently, the verdict was yes). Range was put in a bind, because he received conflicting orders from his assorted masters.
Regardless though of how it all shakes out in the end on the scape-goat level, Germany’s citizens should be relieved to learn that this attempt to intimidate whistleblowers has failed rather spectacularly. After all, even if Mr. Range’s actions were driven by necessity rather than by choice, one mustn’t loose sight of the fact that the charges attempted to do just that: they were meant to set an example, so as to get people to keep quiet about what the spooks are up to.
Conclusion
Obviously, a secret service has a lot of secrets, and many of them cannot be just revealed willy-nilly. While we personally believe that the statist system that produces such agencies is highly questionable by itself, we are trying to be realistic about this. For now, it is what it is. However, it should be blindingly obvious by now that the “Deep State” has abused the irrational terrorism paranoia that suffuses the Western world in order to expand its powers and reach well beyond its purported tasks.
Some worthless junk gets caught up in the nets …
Cartoon by Mike Thompson
The potential dangers of ubiquitous surveillance are far greater than the alleged benefits – in fact, as far as we can tell, the benefits have so far added up to a big fat zero. Putting in place an apparatus so obviously prone to abuse is dangerous for a number of reasons.
Firstly, one cannot rely on the political dispensation remaining benign. Secondly, when politicians themselves are routinely wiretapped, who’s to say they aren’t already blackmailed? This is precisely what former NSA employee Russell Tice has for instance alleged (and since Tice was the person breaking the original Bush wiretapping scandal, he seems a credible witness). Thirdly, when people feel they are under surveillance, they begin to exercise self-censorship. This a danger for civilization itself, as the free flow of ideas is an essential pillar on which it rests.
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Germany is America's vassal. Would not be surprising if the Nobel Prize Winner instigated this investigation.
Truth is treason in an empire of lies
BND helped NSA spy on German, European interestsA German media report has implicated Germany's foreign intelligence agency in helping the NSA target European interests.
http://www.dw.com/en/bnd-helped-nsa-spy-on-german-european-interests/a-1...
Your own intelligence agency spying on your own country for a foreign country? How fucked up is that? But Obama did the same thing for the US, handing over NSA intelligence on Americans over to Israel, without any legal restrictions, since March 2009 as Snowden revealed.
NSA feeds raw intelligence data to Israelhttps://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2013/09/13/surv-s13.html
Goebbels to Hitler: “Holy shit! If we would’ve come up with this, the whole world would’ve been speaking German now, including the Americans, Arabs, and Africans!” ;-)
Looney
Germanic peoples are famously resistant to powerful central governments trampling on the individual. How could this be?
Germany just can't help itself. It has to keep repeating the same mistakes it has always made.
Nope, different line of command this time! :)
nato.int/docu/speech/2001/s011004b.htm
Policy coup
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/08/04/snowden_latest_nsa_helps_israel_...
According to the latest drop of leaks from NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, the US spy agency provides financial assistance, weapons and signals intelligence to Israel.
The Intercept reports that Canadian, British and Jordanian signals intelligence is also shared with Israel.
America is Israel's vassal. See any Americans in high political office in Israel?
"...understanding between the NSA and its Israeli counterpart that shows the US government handed over intercepted communications likely to contain phone calls and emails of American citizens. The agreement places no legally binding limits on the use of the data by the Israelis. The disclosure that the NSA agreed to provide raw intelligence data to a foreign country contrasts with assurances from the Obama administration that there are rigorous safeguards to protect the privacy of US citizens caught in the dragnet.
Or is this Opposite Day? "Helping you terribly" "As they stab you, they cry out in pain."
if Citizens United had gone the other way, we would have been well on our way to this.
We're on our way anyway - but striking down a law that allowed the government to selectively fine and jail people for making a movie film was a bump in the road
Hillary Clinton’s Supreme Court Litmus Test: Overturn the Case That Legalized Anti-Hillary Documentaries
http://reason.com/blog/2015/05/15/hillary-clintons-supreme-court-litmus-te
You Are Now Free to Speak About Politics
Why do some people fear a less restricted debate?
http://reason.com/archives/2010/11/09/you-are-now-free-to-speak-abou
Damnit! Never put "tapping" and "Merkel" together! You did it, like several times!!!
(Gag, snort, huuuuurl!)
The Israeli "art student" Salon
(From Article)
"In January 2001, According to the reports, young Israelis claiming to be art students and offering artwork for sale had been attempting to penetrate DEA offices for over a year....After the Sept. 11 attacks, many more young Israelis — 60, according to one AP dispatch and other reports — were detained and deported. The “art students” followed a predictable modus operandi. They generally worked in teams, typically consisting of a driver, who was the team leader, and three or four subordinates....
"Theory No. 2 is that they were all engaged in espionage. This scenario has the virtue of simplicity — if it smells like a spy, walks like a spy, and talks like a spy, it probably is a spy — but doesn’t make much sense, either. Why would the Mossad — or any spy outfit with a lick of good sense — use kids without papers as spies? And, just as our incredulous DEA agent noted, what intelligence useful to Israel could be gathered from DEA offices, anyway?
CIA: “I’ll make a recommendation to you: Don’t write a story. This whole thing has been blown way out of proportion. As far as we’re concerned, we reported it, yes, but subsequently it’s nothing of interest to us. And we’ve just closed the book on it. And I really recommend you do the same. Let it go. There’s nothing here.” Not everyone else in law enforcement is so sure. “There’s a lot of concern among the agents,” said the DEA source. “We’re investigators. We’re not satisfied when we don’t have answers. This is a mystery that has an answer and it has to be resolved.”
http://www.salon.com/2002/05/07/students/
‘Last week, news broke that an explosion at a federal research facility was caused by a secret meth lab,’ Smith said. ‘Now we learn that these weren’t the actions of some low-ranking employee, but the former acting chief of police in charge of NIST security,’ he added.
‘Even Hollywood couldn’t have imagined this plot twist,’ Smith added. ‘As the science committee expands its investigation, it is becoming clear we must better monitor those with access to our nation’s high-tech research facilities.
http://www.rsc.org/chemistryworld/2015/07/government-science-institute-n...
Drugging people until they are mental captives for a day or until they finally over dose...it's crazy but crazy is the game in case no one has noticed. Perfected the Mind Fuck, the confidence and funds to keep it going, flexibility to retreat and pause until the weather clears.
Clever but oh so cruel.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=egqI84zsnYw Morphine - In spite of me (Cure for pain)
Sheesh Tyler, you need to upgrade your algorithms posting articles. They aren't moving quite as fast as Wall Street's.
Yep. I read all about this in the WSJ print version yesterday.
HEIL HITLER
- Frau Merkle
"However, it should be blindingly obvious by now that the “Deep State” has abused the irrational terrorism paranoia that suffuses the Western world in order to expand its powers and reach well beyond its purported tasks."
They created the irrational paranoia. "Oops" don't cut it any longer.
Office Depot to Accelerate Store Closings - 400 by end of 2016
Definition
Treason- Is the act of pointing out treason. BTFATHs
This just in...........its gonna be a bloodbath........But Obama Care has that covered
Yes, the Fall guy German procecutor Harald Range just got sacked!
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-33772316
Germany didn't just reunify with East Germany, they adopted whatever worked.
Der Fuhrer is most pleased.
Heil!!!
Germany’s attorney-general Harald Range was promptly fired by the German Department of Justice.
Treason doth never prosper, what's the reason?
For if it prosper, none dare call it Treason.
John Harington (1561-1612)
Muslim populations require police state monitoring, whether you are in a Muslim country or not
The prosecutor in question was sent into early retirement because of this.