"Der Spiegel": Germany has been spying on its closest allies

Angela Merkel two years ago:

"We need trust among allies and partners," Merkel told reporters in Brussels. "Such trust now has to be built anew. This is what we have to think about."
"The United States of America and Europe face common challenges. We are allies," the German leader said. "But such an alliance can only be built on trust. That's why I repeat again: spying among friends, that cannot be."


Well, now it turns out the "honest" Germans have themselves carried out extensive spying on their closest allies:

The German newsmagazine "Spiegel Online" has reported that Germany's Federal Intelligence Service (BND) eavesdropped on communications of several of its allied countries until late 2013.
According to reports, these operations may not all have taken place under the guidance of the US National Security Agency (NSA) but also under the BND's own initiative. Earlier this year, it had been revealed that the NSA commissioned the BND for years to spy on German targets using so-called "selectors" - search criteria used to flag activity with vested interests for the NSA.. The NSA was reported to have supplied the technology involved in this method of intelligence gathering.
The latest disclosures, however, might imply that the BND added its own choice of selectors to the list - an act which would fall outside its constitutional mandate and qualify as illegal. The BND is already under scrutiny for the legalities of doing the groundwork for a foreign spy agency by collaborating with the NSA..
Further setbacks for the BND
According to the report, Germany used thousands of such selectors in total, which ended up flagging communications of allied states. France and the United States were reported to be among the nations affected by the intelligence breach.

France´s top meteorologist challenges the global warming establishment

Great news from France! The country´s top meteorologist challenges the global warming establishment:

Every night, France's chief weatherman has told the nation how much wind, sun or rain they can expect the following day.

Now Philippe Verdier, a household name for his nightly forecasts on France 2, has been taken off air after a more controversial announcement - criticising the world's top climate change experts.

Mr Verdier claims in the book Climat Investigation (Climate Investigation) that leading climatologists and political leaders have “taken the world hostage” with misleading data.

In a promotional video, Mr Verdier said: “Every night I address five million French people to talk to you about the wind, the clouds and the sun. And yet there is something important, very important that I haven’t been able to tell you, because it’s neither the time nor the place to do so.”

He added: “We are hostage to a planetary scandal over climate change – a war machine whose aim is to keep us in fear.”

His outspoken views led France 2 to take him off the air starting this Monday. "I received a letter telling me not to come. I'm in shock," he told RTL radio. "This is a direct extension of what I say in my book, namely that any contrary views must be eliminated."

Read the entire article here.

Finally som good news from the Norwegian Nobel Committee - They did not choose Merkel!

The Norwegian Nobel Committee is to be congratulated this year:

A senior Danish lawmaker is applauding that the Norwegian Nobel Committee didn't give the 2015 Peace Prize to German Chancellor Angela Merkel who had been viewed as a favorite for the prestigious award.

Soeren Espersen of the Danish People's Party, which supports Denmark's one-party, minority government, wrote Friday on Twitter: "Joy that Merkel didn't as predicted get the Peace Prize. She has thrown Europe into one of the largest migration disasters in modern times."

 

Russian journalist: Putin´s 15 years have been "a monumental moral catastrophe"

Kashin to Putin: "Whoever comes after you will have to create Russia
 all over again, from scratch."

Oleg Kashin, one of Russia´s most prominent independent journalists, who in 2010 was nearly killed in an attack, has written an open letter to Vladimir Putin and his puppet Dmitry Medvedev, which should be read by all the western leaders who are eager to co-operate with the Russian dictator:

But don’t flatter yourself: the last 15 years haven’t been a revival for Russia, and the country hasn’t risen from its knees. This time has been a monumental moral catastrophe for our generation. And both of you, Mr Putin and Mr Medvedev, are personally responsible for it.
In Russian society today, even obvious questions about good and evil have become impossible. Is it OK to steal? Is it OK to cheat? Is murder ethical? With each of these questions, it’s become customary in Russia now to answer that things aren’t so simple. All your good works have left the nation demoralised and disoriented.
But you carry on, managing your problems without even realising that you’re digging the hole yourselves. “Things aren’t so simple” is what the angry crowd will tell you in unison, when it comes time for you to run away. I suspect that you’re afraid of this crowd, but just remember that it was you who created it, and you’ve got nobody to blame but yourselves.

Having cut yourselves and your elites off from society, you’ve also cut yourselves off from reality. There’s a wall separating you from the rest of us, and everyone on our side shudders each time the next one of your goons decides to show what a thinker he is by stepping up to a podium and talking about how the population is being controlled by computer chips, about the “Euro-Atlantic conspiracy,” or about how the Americans are weaponising cellular research.

Whoever comes after you will have to create Russia all over again, from scratch. This is your only service to history– what you’ve spent 15 years achieving. Your favourite justification for all this (the only one, there are no others) are the troubles of the 1990s, but it’s important to understand that you preserved and strengthened everything about this period that we’ve come to hate today. You didn’t fix anything. You only made it all worse.

Janet Daley on why Viktor Orban is vilified in Europe

Hungary´s Viktor Orban has lately been vilified by the politically correct class of politicians and journalists. But are they right?  The Telegraph´s columnist Janet Daley gives her take:

The voters who put him in office, it seems, hugely approve of the Orban policy. Imagine that: a European leader who actually chooses to represent the views of his own electorate rather than please the unelected commissioners of the EU. The obvious implication on the broadcast news was that this rise in approval within his own country was somehow indecent: a crass populist stance targeted deliberately at a benighted population. Either Mr Orban was a nasty piece of work who was opportunistically appealing to his countrymen’s worst instincts, or the desires of the Hungarian people were beneath consideration – or both.

Let’s just hang on a minute. Before we are pulled into self-righteous judgments about other peoples and their leaders, we might consider what is at stake. Maybe we need to ask precisely what elected governments are for in modern Europe, and whether a population has to sign up to certain assumptions and attitudes before it is entitled to democratic government. There is an unspoken argument here that goes beyond the immediate refugee problem or that other threat to EU unity, the future of the eurozone. If democratically mandated national leaders can be condemned for being genuinely in tune with their own electorates, what does this amount to?

Read the entire column here.

In the wake of the VW scandal: Some facts about Germany

Next time you hear Angela Merkel, or some other German politician or opinion maker, lecture other governments or leaders, remember this:

It is a common misconception to believe Germany is a place for ‘whiter than white’ business practices. That is, of course, how Germany likes to see itself and how it likes to advertise itself to the world. Self-righteousness is a virtue invented in Germany. Just look at the ways the Germans have tried to teach other nations lessons on fiscal policy, energy policy and now refugee policy.

The problem is that there is a gulf between this self-image and the reality of German life. The Germans are probably not worse than everybody else. But they certainly aren’t better, either.

Until not so long ago, bribing foreign officials was regarded as a commonplace business practice in Germany. Only in the late 1990s did Germany change finally its laws. Until then, believe it or not, it was not just acceptable but in fact tax deductible to pay out kickbacks as long as it secured lucrative international contracts. German tax law recognised bribes as nützliche Aufwendungen (‘useful expenditure’).

A culture of corporate corruption rocked several large German companies in recent years. The most prominent case was probably Siemens and shook the company between 2006 and 2008. Dealing with it cost Siemens close to €3bn and led to an exchange of the company’s top management and supervisory board. Siemens has since recovered and installed a chief compliance officer but it was a painful process to get there. Deutsche Bank has also been shaken by its involvement in the LIBOR rigging scandal and is still dealing with the consequences.

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