Heinrich von Kleist was a prolific German writer of the late eighteenth century whose work often focussed on the consequences of rhetorical confusion, the serious problems and personal suffering caused by writing or speaking incorrectly. In 1811, at the age of thirty-four, he formed a suicide pact with a close friend, Henriette Vogel, and shot her before turning the gun on himself. On the hundredth anniversary of his suicide, the district of Schöneberg in Berlin gave Kleist’s name to a small, charming park outside the Kammergericht (Chamber Court), the highest court in the state.

Germany is a place of dark irony.

The Chamber Court occupies a huge Neo-Baroque building that takes up an entire city block, bordered on three sides by the aforementioned park and facing a quiet cobble-stoned street. I’m standing outside on a crisp blue-sky morning in September, waiting for a thought criminal named CJ Hopkins.

CJ Hopkins is an American writer, an old-school lefty liberal with “an aversion to totalitarians, fascists, and other such authoritarian control freaks who get their rocks off intimidating, and dominating, and preying on the weak.” In 2004, he emigrated “because of the fascistic atmosphere that had taken hold of the USA at that time,” believing “that Germany, given its history, would be the last place on earth to ever have anything to do with any form of totalitarianism again.”

For thirty-odd years, twenty of which he has spent in Berlin, CJ has cranked out award-winning theatre, satire, dystopian fiction, and acid-sharp commentary on political and social issues. It’s the latter which has earned him, at the age of sixty-three, a sizeable international following, mostly centred on his Substack which has thousands of paid subscribers. He’s been called “a forbidden wit” and “an expert forecaster” by Matt Taibbi. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. once referred to him as “our modern Jeremiah.”

He arrives at the courthouse in a brown trenchcoat, black beret, and sunglasses. He gives me a nod.

“Welcome to New Normal Berlin, Mike,” he says as he walks past me.

We’ve met twice before. I interviewed him remotely for my podcast, and I attended his first trial, in January 2024, at the Tiergarten District Court in Moabit, next to the infamous prison where the Nazis incarcerated and executed political prisoners.

The Crime

In May 2022, Hopkins published a book called The Rise of the New Normal Reich, the cover of which features a medical mask through which a swastika is faintly visible. In August 2022, he posted that image twice on Twitter (now X), accompanied by text.

In the first tweet, Hopkins wrote:

The #masks are symbols of ideological conformity. That's all they are. They always were. Stop pretending they're ever something else or get used to wearing them.

#Masks are not a mild remedy

In the second tweet, he quoted Karl Lauterbach, the Health Minister at the time, who had declared that “The mask always sends a signal”.

That’s it. That’s the crime.

In response, the public prosecutor’s office filed a criminal charge against CJ for “disseminating propaganda, the contents of which are intended to further the aims of a former National Socialist organization.”

Thus began what CJ has referred to as a “Kafkaesque mockery of justice.”

The Law

When people hear about how CJ ended up in court, they’re usually surprised to find out that using a Nazi symbol such as the swastika is not absolutely banned in Germany. It actually depends on context and intent, and there are significant protections for creative, editorial, and educational purposes.

Clivia von Dewitz, a German judge who wrote her doctoral thesis on the ban of Nazi symbols, explained the law under which the charge was brought in an article for Berliner Zeitung:

According to the ban on [Nazi] insignia (§ 86 Para. 1 No. 4, 86a Para. 1 No. 1 StGB), only those who distribute or publicly display Nazi symbols “which, based on their content, are intended to reflect the efforts of a former National Socialist organization” are liable to prosecution. This means that not every use of a Nazi symbol falls under the ban. On the contrary, the law confirms that only material, the content of which is directed against the free democratic basic order or the concept of understanding among nations, is considered [criminal] propaganda media (Section 86 Para. 3 StGB).

And, according to the criminal statute (Section 86 Para. 4 StGB), criminal liability is also excluded if the material serves the purposes of civic education, defense against unconstitutional efforts, art or science, research or teaching, or reporting on current events or history, or similar purposes (the so-called social adequacy clause).

It was in the 1970s that Nazi symbols were first used in a critical or ironic way. In these cases, jurisprudence failed to establish criminal liability, either at the level of the offense or by virtue of the application of the social adequacy clause, because a critical and distanced use of Nazi symbols is not punishable, especially in view of Article 5 of the Grundgesetz [i.e., the German constitution, literally “Basic Law”]. The fundamental right of freedom of expression and freedom of art enshrined therein is constitutive of a democracy.

The law is also recognised by the courts as having a “protective purpose”, a raison d’etre that comes into play when examining whether the use of a proscribed symbol falls within or outside of what is permitted. The general understanding is that the protective purpose of the ban on Nazi symbols in Germany is to prevent the minimisation or, as the Germans call it, “normalisation” of the horrors of the Nazi era and the Holocaust, and to prevent a situation in which it becomes socially acceptable for Nazis or Nazi sympathisers to begin using those symbols more widely.

“You can’t use it, for example, for fun, and CJ agrees with that,” says Friedemann Däblitz, the fresh-faced attorney defending him. “If you write a book about history you can use the symbol. If it is clear that you are using it in a ‘distant’ manner, if everyone can see that this guy doesn’t support Nazism, in those situations, the risk of normalisation is not that big.”

So how normal is the use of the swastika in German media?

Normalisation For Me, Not For Thee

In May 2024, the cover of the German magazine Der Spiegel featured a flag draped over a swastika to illustrate its lead story, an essay by Dirk Kurbjuweit titled 75 Years of the Federal Republic — and nothing learned?

Here are the covers of Der Spiegel and CJ’s book, side by side:

Both CJ and Der Spiegel used the swastika to imply that something is amiss in the world of German politics, with a subtle but crucial difference.

Der Spiegel used the swastika to suggest that the increasingly popular political party Alternative für Deutschland (AfD), “a party with extreme right-wing tendencies,” represents a nascent form of Nazism.

CJ, however, riffed on the cover of William L. Shirer’s famous 1960 book The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich to criticise the German government’s pandemic policies as “a nascent form of totalitarianism.”

The German magazine Stern has also featured the swastika and the Nazi salute on its cover.
May 2024

August 2017

Der Spiegel and Stern were not directly criticising the current German government, nor were they pressing on the sore spot of controversial pandemic policies. CJ did both. Those magazines have had no legal repercussions for their use of the swastika. Only CJ has been prosecuted.

“[M]y personal impression is this law is used completely arbitrarily against dissidents,” Däblitz tells me in an interview. “For me, everything got much worse with the beginning of the pandemic.”

The Pandemic

Pandemic restrictions in Germany were harsh. Citing advice from the Robert Koch Institute (Germany’s equivalent of the CDC), the Merkel and Scholz governments put stringent limits on the rights of the unvaccinated, in addition to lockdowns and mask mandates.

Critics at the time drew comparisons with the Nazi era, often by likening the treatment of the Jews by the Nazis to the government and media discrimination and rhetoric against the unvaccinated. In 2021, BBC News reported on the use by German Covid protestors of the infamous yellow Star of David armband with the word ‘Jew’ replaced by ‘Unvaccinated’.

While perhaps distasteful or inappropriate depending on one’s perception, it remains the case that the social repercussions of the German government’s pandemic policies are still being felt. In Germany, the loss of faith in government and the corrosion of the perception of the legitimacy of authority has been real and widespread, regardless of whether one believes the pandemic policies were well-intentioned or reasonable. The public’s (and CJ’s) suspicion regarding those policies also may not have been entirely spurious.

In late July 2024, the freelance journalist Aya Velásquez received unredacted copies of internal documents from a whistleblower at the Robert Koch Institute and published them. Sebastian Lucenti and Dr. Meyer-Hesselbarth, respectively a lawyer and a former judge writing for Cicero, claim that “the RKI protocols that were released and leaked show that a large proportion of the freedom-restricting norms created between 2020 and 2023 were tainted by the stigma of unconstitutionality from the outset.” Judge von Dewitz, in her article for Berliner Zeitung, wrote that the leaked documents “suggest that the government ordered significant parts of the measures restricting fundamental rights from 2020 to 2022 not on the basis of scientific findings, but out of political calculation, such that a new assessment of the government's actions from 2020 to 2022 is necessary.”

The First Trial

At his first trial, in Room 500 of the Tiergarten District Court, the prosecutor asked CJ if he understood the law in Germany with regards to the use of Nazi symbols. If he had played dumb and pretended to be an ignorant foreigner unaware of the rules of his host nation, the charges would probably have been dropped. Instead, he was honest. He said that he knew full well the history and weight of Nazi symbolism in Germany, and he knew the law as well, including the prohibited and permitted uses of the swastika.

“I don't want Nazis, neo-Nazis parading around in Germany with swastikas either,” CJ told me in an interview before the trial. “And I have to say, although I'm generally a free speech absolutist, I understand that law and I actually agree with it.”

When asked by the judge to give his intentions in posting the image, he stated that it was “to warn people about the emergence of a new form of totalitarianism that is hidden behind the official corona narrative just as the swastika is hidden behind the mask in my artwork.” This drew an involuntary derisory guffaw from the judge. He continued: “I absolutely compared a new form of totalitarianism to Nazi Germany, a twentieth century form of totalitarianism.”

In his opening argument, the prosecutor suggested that CJ was “relativising the Holocaust,” “relativising the Nazi tyranny which is also the aim of supporters of this ideology in a different form,” and equating the Nazi regime to “civic management of 2020 to 2022 which came about within constitutional procedures and was enacted through democratically legitimised institutions...and thus contributes, regardless of his intention, to the normalisation of National Socialist ideas.”

Permitted to respond, CJ pointed out that the well-documented rise of the Nazis likewise took place “within constitutional procedures” and “through democratically legitimised institutions,” closing by saying “I think I'm allowed to compare these [pandemic] measures with measures which took place in the twentieth century.”

He went on to describe instances where public figures had compared current events to the Nazis without subsequent charges from the German authorities, to which the judge responded by saying “We're talking about symbols, not words.”

Speaking of symbols, in that particular courtroom, the ornate ceiling featured two plaster rosettes with fasces in-set, and there were two more examples of the fasces at the entrance to the building. The name of the fasces symbol, a bundle of sticks bound together with an axe head attached, is the root from which the word ‘fascism’ is derived. If you squint, you’ll also see the fasces on either side of the Speaker of the House’s dais in the US Congress.

At the end of the proceedings, CJ read a prepared statement to the court, his voice occasionally betraying his emotions.

“The German authorities have had my speech censored on the Internet, and have damaged my reputation and income as an author,” he said. “One of my books has been banned by Amazon in Germany. All this because I criticized the German authorities, because I mocked one of their decrees, because I pointed out one of their lies. This turn of events would be absurdly comical if it were not so infuriating. I cannot adequately express how insulting it is to be forced to sit here and affirm my opposition to fascism.”

At the end of his statement, the thirty-seven members of the audience in the gallery broke out in applause and calls of “Bravo!” The judge shouted for order and threatened to clear the courtroom. Everyone was ordered to stand up. The judge delivered a stern chiding and, after a moment of suitable silent contrition, the room was allowed to be seated and the door was closed.

She then pronounced her verdict: “Freispruch”. Not guilty.

The judge dedicated half the time spent in delivering the verdict to ensuring CJ was made aware of how little she thought of him. She considered him to be arrogant, ideologically-driven, and incorrect in his views on the pandemic. He was wrong to claim that mask mandates and similar policies were driven by the government's desire to force compliance, and to equate safety measures with brainwashing. She told him that his was a “subjective emotional position” but that “objectively, the German public doesn't agree with you.” By acquitting him, she said, she was proving him wrong in his assessment of Germany as a nascent totalitarian state.

Upon delivering the verdict and ending the proceedings, the judge put on a medical mask and exited the courtroom. You couldn’t make it up.

In the written verdict published after the trial, the judge made it clear that, "when taking into account the text associated with the use of the mask, it can easily be seen that the connection to National Socialism is made in an emphatically negative sense."

Within the seven-day period allowed by law, the public prosecutor’s office applied to the Chamber Court for a “revision” of the verdict using a line of reasoning that Däblitz found highly questionable.

“The prosecutor…decided that if you use the symbol to bring a criticism, this criticism has to be against Nazism,” he explained. “It’s not okay if this criticism is directed against, for example, the government, because in this case it is not clear enough that you are also opposing Nazism.”

The prosecution had pivoted from arguing that CJ was disseminating Nazi propaganda to claiming that he was breaking the law by not specifically criticising Nazis.

“[T]he prosecutor in Germany is not free, it's part of the executive,” Däblitz told me during a podcast recording with him and CJ several months later. “It's part of the government, and they execute what the government wants.”

“The prosecutor is trying to rewrite the law in a much narrower way than it is written,” CJ added. “I believe that the prosecutor just wants to punish me. And so they're pulling arguments out of their ass. And this was really the only argument that they could try to make to continue this prosecution.”

The Second Trial

I join around two dozen familiar faces from the first trial in January, as well as journalists from Berliner Zeitung, Tagesspiegel, Der Spiegel, The Epoch Times, and Legal Tribune Online, in shuffling through airport-style security during which we are emptied, searched, patted, and prodded. A maximum of thirty observers are allowed into Room 145a of the Chamber Court, and no personal items are permitted. We are issued with a blue biro and a handful of blank looseleaf paper on request. The cause of the heightened security is described by Lisa Jani, the court’s press liaison, as being due to an ongoing espionage trial of a German intelligence agent who is accused of colluding with a Russian businessman on behalf of the FSB, Russia’s security service. To prevent anyone placing listening devices in the courtroom, we all have to submit to special measures.

“It would only make sense if this is really the only room available and it's not possible to get another room,” Däblitz tells me in an interview. “So I numerous times had some contact with the people working there and found out there are actually other rooms at least of the same size.”

“It's absolutely unnecessary,” CJ adds. “I see it as just a bald, a blatant attempt to discourage public attendance and to discourage press coverage.”

Once inside, the first thing that catches the eye is a wall of bulletproof glass about fifteen feet high separating the gallery from the area where the proceedings will be held. CJ, Däblitz, and a translator sit at the defendant’s table, set at the foot of a raised dais from which three judges and a new prosecutor frown down.

The ceiling is cross-hatched with a grid of clouded glass through which diffuse light falls. The carpet is a hotel-style mash-up of turquoise, puce, and duck egg, clashing with the wooden benches that we shuffle along to take our seats.

The prosecutor trying the case, which involves the use and interpretation of a symbol, is named Jung. The universe is not without a sense of humour.

In a British or American courtroom, the judge is seated in front of and above both the defendant and the plaintiff. Both parties come before the court as supplicants, pleading for justice, and the judge sits apart, emphasising their (hopeful) impartiality.

A German courtroom makes a strikingly different impression. The judges and the prosecutor sit on the same level, above the defendant, separated only by several metres of wooden panelling. It lands immediately: The prosecutor and the judges are on one side, the defendant on the other. Something about the layout makes me wonder if the fix is in.

Kathrin Jung, the prosecutor, opens with a desultory run-through of her side’s revised argument, which has already been submitted to the judges in writing, along with Däblitz’s defence. It is a scant few minutes before it is over.

Däblitz makes the argument that the prosecutor is attempting “a blurring of the law” and that “[t]he protective purpose of the law is, above all, to preserve the constitutional order” which “is therefore also to preserve the freedom of expression.” The purpose of CJ’s tweets was “to ward off unconstitutional efforts,” he adds. “Those who are determined to support the values ​​of the free democratic basic order should not have to face the risk of prosecution.”

At the end, CJ is given the opportunity to make a statement. Reading from a printout in German, he once again presents his position to the court.

“[H]ere I am, on trial in criminal court for the second time. The German authorities had my Tweets censored. They reported me to the Federal Criminal Police Office. They reported me to The Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, the German domestic Intelligence agency. My book is banned in Germany. The German authorities investigated me. They prosecuted me. They put me on trial for tweeting. After I was acquitted, that wasn’t enough, so they have put me on trial again. They defamed me. They have damaged my income and reputation as an author. They have forced me to spend thousands of Euros in legal fees to defend myself against these clearly ridiculous charges.”

While he reads, I see a couple of the journalists sitting in front of me chuckle or sigh dismissively.

“Why, rational people might ask, have I been subjected to this special treatment, while Der Spiegel, Stern, Die Tageszeitung, and many others who have also tweeted swastikas, have not?”

Five feet away from me, the reporter from Der Spiegel squirms a little while taking notes.

“It has nothing to do with punishing people who disseminate pro-Nazi propaganda. It is about punishing political dissent, and intimidating critics into silence. I’m not here because I put a swastika on my book cover. I am here because I put it behind a “Covid” mask.”

Just like the first trial, at the end of his statement the gallery erupts in applause and cheers to the annoyance of the judges.

The presiding judge, Delia Neumann, declares a forty-five minute break so that her and the other two judges, Dr. Ammann and Dr. Brunozzi, can deliberate and return a verdict.

In the corridor outside, I notice that on the clipboard showing the docket for today’s trial, the names of CJ and his lawyer have been misspelled: ‘Hopkings’ and ‘Däbitz’. CJ sits on a bench with his wife and tries to relax.

The time passes surprisingly quickly.

After we’re all seated, the judge begins to read her verdict. She reads for twenty minutes with barely any inflection or pauses. I find myself wondering how the judges managed to deliberate, reach a consensus, and write a twenty-minute verdict in forty-five minutes. Judge Neumann stops reading abruptly, stands up and leaves. We’re ushered out of the gallery. I turn to the person next to me and ask what happened. He shrugs.

“Guilty,” a helpful fellow observer says, leaning over.

In the words of Kurt Vonnegut, so it goes.

The Verdict

The official statement of the Chamber Court declares that CJ Hopkins has been found “guilty of using symbols of unconstitutional organizations.”

Referring to the judge’s ruling in the first trial, the Chamber Court calls her line of reasoning “legally incorrect” because “[t]he protective purpose of the law is to banish the use of symbols of unconstitutional organizations from the picture of political life, regardless of the intention behind it.” The Court’s statement continues by emphasising that “the communicative taboo” preventing the use of the swastika in daily life “must be maintained so that people do not become accustomed to such symbols.”

Däblitz is taken aback. “They left out what my core argument was,” he says. “My core argument was he was objecting to unconstitutional activities and in these cases it is explicitly allowed to use the swastika, and they didn’t say anything about that.”

When asked about “the communicative taboo”, Däblitz is adamant that according to the law as written “you can use [the swastika] to speak up against unconstitutional activities because this law, basically, wants to protect a free order, with freedom of speech, because a free democratic society needs freedom of speech, so basically that’s the ultimate goal and that’s why they want to ban Nazis and also Nazi symbols.”

The Chamber Court, it would seem, has either changed the law or is at odds with it.

Milling around on the steps of the block-sized building, nobody who attended the trial, from the Court’s press liaison to journalists to members of the public, gives the same answer when asked what the verdict actually meant, what the reasoning behind it was, how it related to the law in question, and what the implications are going forward. Confusion reigns.

Däblitz confirms that he and CJ will be applying to have the case heard at the Constitutional Court, the highest legal authority in the country. It’s their last chance, a Hail Mary, and, as he puts it, “they’ll probably refuse to hear the case.” The alternative is that the lower court will now decide on a sentence.

What Now?

Over wine and flammkuchen at a café in the Neukölln neighbourhood, I ask CJ what he thinks his sentence will be if the Constitutional Court doesn’t accept his case.

“They could do anything,” he says. “I could get three years in jail.”

His wife, who happens to be Jewish, holds his hand and watches him lovingly. I can see that she’s worried.

I ask him how it feels to have moved here from America specifically because of what he felt was a rising tide of fascism, only to have this happen.

The convicted thought criminal shakes his head. “This country broke my heart.”

In the famous German novella Michael Kohlhaas, published in 1810, the eponymous protagonist is wronged and sets out for justice, only to find that the system will not let him have it. In despair, he cries out: “I will not abide in a country in which my rights are not protected.”

That novella was written by Heinrich von Kleist, the suicidal author whose name adorns the park that surrounds on three sides the courthouse where Germany broke CJ’s heart.

Germany is indeed a place of dark irony.

_You can make contributions to CJ’s defense fund here, read his work on Substack and Consent Factory, and follow him on X where he is @CJHopkins_Z23.

More bad news:  the newly created U.S. coordination center in Stuttgart for Ukraine operations as a landmark on the way to WWIII

Earlier today I received an email from my good friend Professor of Law at the University of Illinois Francis A. Boyle regarding the creation in Stuttgart of a new U.S. coordination center for war operations in Ukraine headed by a 3-star general. The news item seems to have been sidelined this past week by Western mainstream coverage of the Russian withdrawal from Kherson and entry of Ukrainian forces into that city.  However, judging by Boyle’s interpretation, there is every reason to put a spotlight on this issue and to seek the broadest possible discussion in Alternative News electronic and print media.

I offer the following quote from Boyle’s email with his permission:

The story below is a pure cover story by the Pentagon. You do not need a 3 Star General and a Staff of 300 to keep tabs on U.S. Weapons in Ukraine. This is a War Command to wage war against Russia. The last time I dealt personally with a 3 Star General was  when I lectured at West Point on “Nuclear Deterrence” in their Senior Conference on that subject in front of, among others, the 3 Star General in Charge of War Operations at the Pentagon. The Pentagon puts a 3 Stars  General in Charge of War Operations—not Inventory. And you do not need a Headquarters Staff of 300 to do an Audit. It’s a War Headquarters Staff. We are going to war against Russia unless the American People can figure out some way to stop it!

Francis A. Boyle

Professor of Law

STUTTGART, Germany — A three-star general will lead a new Army headquarters in Germany that will include about 300 U.S. service members responsible for coordinating security assistance for Ukraine, a senior U.S. military official said this week.

Unquote

I refer those unfamiliar with Francis Boyle to his brief biography in the University of Illinois website:

https://law.illinois.edu/faculty-research/faculty-profiles/francis-boyle/   To that I can add, that his ‘political science’ studies for the Masters and Ph.D. degrees at Harvard were primarily in Russian/Soviet affairs, and that in his time at Harvard he worked under many of the same professors as did I.  In this sense, Boyle is a well qualified Russia expert, even if his primary listing at Illinois is as defender of human rights.  He is also particularly noteworthy this year for his efforts to promote among several key Congressmen the articles of impeachment against President Biden that he has drafted; the charges – waging undeclared war on Russia in violation of the Constitution. So far that has gained little traction, but when the new Congress with Republican majority takes its seats in 2023 the prospects of finding sponsors may be significantly improved.

Notwithstanding the worrisome or alarming news above, I close this essay with a glimmer of hope that the world has not yet gone completely mad.  From my volunteer translator in Germany, I have learned about the start of what should be a nationwide “Ami Go Home” movement in the Federal Republic. It will begin with mass demonstrations in the East German city of Leipzig on 26 November. The protests are inspired by the thinking of Oskar Lafonteine, a German politician who held leading positions in the SPD and later in Die Linke: namely the notion that it is high time for the United States occupation forces to leave Germany so that the country may recover its sovereignty. Those new to German politics may more easily identify Lafonteine as the husband of the eloquent Opposition member of the Bundestag Sahra Wagenknecht. It behooves me to add that per the advice of my translator when he forwarded to me news about the ‘Ami Go Home’ demonstration that the actual organizers are not on the German Left but, on the contrary, on the Hard Right. This interpretation has been reconfirmed by a well informed reader living in Berlin. Call this yet another ‘impersonation’ or imposter phenomenon if you will. We are living through interesting times.

KünstlerInnen und WissenschaftlerInnen im Dialog über die Corona-Krise

Mit zunehmender Sorge beobachten wir die Entwicklung des politischen Handelns in der Corona-Krise. Viele ExpertInnen wurden bisher in der öffentlichen Corona-Debatte nicht gehört. Wir wünschen uns einen breit­gefächerten, fakten­basierten, offenen und sachlichen Diskurs und auch eine ebensolche Auseinander­setzung mit den Videos.

Beiträge zu

• Angst
• Angstkommunikation und ihre Folgen
• Antidemokratische Sprache
• Behandlung von Risikogruppen
• Corona Angst
• Corona-Maßnahmen für Kinder
• Corona Schutzimpfung
• Covid Therapie 1.Teil
• Corona Schutzimpfung 2.Teil
• Corona Schutzimpfung für Kinder
• Corona und die Rolle der Medien
• Corona und Kinder
• Corona und Kinderrechte
• Corona und Rechtsstaat
• Corona-Zahlen
• Demokratie und Eigenverantwortung
• Die Expertise in der Krise
• Digitaler Impfpass
• Ethik in Zeiten von Corona
• Evidenzbasierte Medizin
• Faktenchecker
• flatten the curve
• freie Impfentscheidung
• Fremdbestimmung
• Gehorsam
• gekaufte Forschung
• Geldsystem
• Geraubte Kindheit
• Geschlossene Gesellschaft
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• Immunität
• Impfpflicht
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• Künstler im politischen Diskurs
• Kulturkrise
• Masken
• Meinungsfreiheit
• ökonomische Effekte der Pandemie
• Panda (Alternativen)
• Pandemie Definition 1. Teil
• Pandemischer Imperativ
• Peer-Review Drosten-Test
• Rechtsstaat und die Grundrechte
• Risikobewertung 2. Teil
• Risikokommunikation
• Schweden
• soziale Ausmaße der Pandemie
• Spaltung der Gesellschaft
• Spike Proteine
• Virusgefahr
• Wahrheitsdefinition
• zurück zur Rationalität

Vladimir Putin had a telephone conversation with Federal Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany Angela Merkel, at the German side’s initiative, on the occasion of the 80th anniversary of the beginning of the Great Patriotic War, and the Day of Memory and Sorrow marked in Russia on that day.

June 22, 2021

17:35

Angela Merkel Merkel AngelaFederal Chancellor of Germany expressed sympathy for the innumerable hardships and suffering brought about by the war that was launched by the Nazi regime. Both leaders emphasised the importance of preserving the historical memory of the tragic events of that period. Vladimir Putin mentioned Russia’s appreciation of Angela Merkel and Federal President of Germany Frank-Walter Steinmeier Steinmeier Frank-WalterPresident of the Federal Republic of Germany ’s participation in the commemoration events held in Germany. It was pointed out that overcoming mutual hostility and achieving reconciliation between the Russian and German people was of crucial significance for the post-war future of Europe, and that ensuring security on our common continent now is only possible through joint efforts.

At the request of the Federal Chancellor, the President of Russia updated Angela Merkel on the main results of the Russia-US summit held in Geneva on June 16.

The parties agreed on further personal contacts.

The six major world powers approach the reorganization of international relations according to their experiences and dreams. Prudently, they intend to defend their interests first before promoting their vision of the world. Thierry Meyssan describes their respective positions before the fight begins.

The US withdrawal from Syria, even if it was immediately corrected, indicates with certainty that Washington no longer intends to be the world’s policeman, the "necessary Empire". It destabilized without delay all the rules of international relations. We have entered a period of transition during which each major power is pursuing a new agenda. Here are the main ones.

The United States of America

The collapse of the Soviet Union could have caused the collapse of the United States, since the two empires were leaning on each other. This was not the case. President George Bush Sr. ensured with Operation Desert Storm that Washington became the undisputed leader of all nations, then demobilized 1 million soldiers and proclaimed the quest for prosperity.

Transnational corporations then signed a pact with Deng Xiaoping to have their products manufactured by Chinese workers, who were paid twenty times less than their American counterparts. This led to a considerable development of international freight transport, followed by the gradual disappearance of jobs and the middle classes in the United States. Industrial capitalism was replaced by financial capitalism.

At the end of the 1990s, Igor Panarin, a professor at the Russian Diplomatic Academy, analyzed the economic and psychological collapse of American society. He hypothesized that the country would break up along the lines of what had happened to the Soviet Union with the emergence of new states. To repel the collapse, Bill Clinton freed his country from international law with NATO’s aggression against Yugoslavia. As this effort proved insufficient, US personalities imagined adapting their country to financial capitalism and organizing, by force, international trade so that the coming period would be a "new American century". With George Bush Jr., the United States abandoned its position as a leading nation and tried to transform itself into an absolute unipolar power. They launched the "endless war" or "war on terrorism" to destroy one by one all state structures in the "broader Middle East". Barack Obama continued this quest by associating a host of allies with it.

This policy paid off, but only a very few benefited, the "super-rich". The Americans responded by electing Donald Trump as president of the federal state. He broke with his predecessors and, like Mikhail Gorbachev in the USSR, tried to save the United States by relieving it of its most costly commitments. He boosted the economy by encouraging national industries against those that had relocated their jobs. He subsidized the extraction of shale oil and managed to take control of the world hydrocarbon market despite the cartel formed by OPEC and Russia. Aware that his army is first and foremost a huge bureaucracy, wasting a huge budget on insignificant results, he stopped supporting Daesh and the PKK, negotiating with Russia a way to end the "endless war" with as little loss as possible.

...

In the coming period, the United States will be driven primarily by the need to save on all its actions abroad, until it abandons them if necessary. The end of imperialism is not a choice, but an existential question, a survival reflex.

The People’s Republic of China

...

In the coming period, China should affirm its positions in international fora, bearing in mind what the colonial empires imposed on it in the 19th century. But it should refrain from military intervention and remain a strictly economic power.

The Russian Federation

...

In the coming years, Russia will try to reorganise international relations on two bases: to separate political and religious powers; to restore international law on the basis of the principles formulated by Tsar Nicholas II.

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland

...

If Boris Johnson remains in power, the United Kingdom should in the coming years try to pit the European Union and the Russian Federation against each other.

The French Republic

...

In the coming years, France should measure its decisions in terms of their impact on the building of the European Union. It will seek as a priority to ally itself with any power working in this direction.

Federal Republic of Germany

...

In the coming years, Germany should focus on the possibilities of military intervention in the framework of NATO, particularly in the Middle East, and be wary of the project of a centralised European super-national state.

It is very strange to hear today about "multilateralism" and "isolationism" or "universalism" and "nationalism". These questions do not arise because everyone has known since the Hague Conference (1899) that technological progress has made all nations in solidarity. This logorrhoea does not hide our inability to admit the new power relations and to envisage a world order that is as unjust as possible.

Only the three Great Powers can hope to have the means to implement their policies. They can only achieve their ends without war by following the Russian line based on international law. However, the danger of internal political instability in the United States raises more than ever the risk of a generalized confrontation.

When they left the Union, the British were forced to join the United States (which Donald Trump rejected) or to disappear politically. While Germany and France, which are losing ground, have no choice but to build the European Union. However, for the time being, they assess the time available very differently and consider it in two incompatible ways, which could lead them to disrupt the European Union themselves.

For five years, Russia has been multiplying its approaches in order to re-establish international Law in the Middle East. It has relied in particular on Iran and Turkey, whose manner of thinking it does not really share. The first results of this patient diplomatic exercise are redefining the lines of division existing at the heart of several conflicts.

New balances of power and a new equilibrium are being set up discreetly in the Nile valley, in the Levant and the Arab peninsula. On the contrary, however, the situation is blocked in the Persian Gulf. This considerable and coordinated change is affecting different conflicts which in appearance have no connection with one another. It is the fruit of patient and discreet Russian diplomacy and, in some cases, the relative good will of the USA.

Unlike the United States, Russia is not seeking to impose its own vision on the world. It begins on the contrary with the culture of its interlocutors, which it modifies by small touches at its contact.

...

Conclusion

With time, the objectives of each protagonist have been organised into a hierarchy and are becoming clearer.

In conformity with its tradition, Russian diplomacy, unlike that of the United States, is not attempting to redefine frontiers and alliances. It is working to untie the contradictory objectives of its partners. Thus it helped the ex-Ottoman Empire and the ex-Persian Empire distance themselves from their religious definition - (the Muslim Brotherhood for the former, and Chiism for the latter - and return to a post-Imperial national definition. This evolution is clearly visible in Turkey, but supposes a change of leaders in Iran in order to become operational. Moscow is not seeking to « change the régimes », but to change some aspects of the mentalities.

The Federal Court of Justice (Bundesgerichtshof, BGH), Germany's highest court of civil and criminal jurisdiction, has ruled that a new law that bans child marriage may be unconstitutional because all marriages, including Sharia-based child marriages, are protected by Germany's Basic Law (Grundgesetz).

The ruling, which effectively opens the door to legalizing Sharia-based child marriages in Germany, is one of a growing number of instances in which German courts are — wittingly or unwittingly — promoting the establishment of a parallel Islamic legal system in the country.

The case involves a Syrian couple — a 14-year-old Syrian girl married to her 21-year-old cousin — who arrived in Germany at the height of the migrant crisis in August 2015. The Youth Welfare Office (Jugendamt) refused to recognize their marriage and separated the girl from her husband. When the husband filed a lawsuit, a family court in Aschaffenburg ruled in favor of the Youth Welfare Office, which claimed to be the girl's legal guardian.

In May 2016, an appeals court in Bamberg overturned the decision. The court ruled that the marriage was valid because it was contracted in Syria, where, according to Sharia law, child marriages are allowed. The ruling effectively legalized Sharia child marriages in Germany.

The ruling — described as a "crash course in Syrian Islamic marriage law" — ignited a firestorm of criticism. Some accused the Bamberg court of applying Sharia law over German law to legalize a practice banned in Germany.

"Religious or cultural justifications obscure the simple fact that older, perverse men are abusing young girls," said Rainer Wendt, head of the German police union.

Monika Michell of Terre des Femmes, a women's rights group that campaigns against child marriage, added: "A husband cannot be the legal guardian of a child bride because he is involved in a sexual relationship with her — a very obvious conflict of interest."

The Justice Minister of Hesse, Eva Kühne-Hörmann, asked: "If underage persons — quite rightly — are not allowed to buy a beer, why should the lawmakers allow children to make such profound decisions related to marriage?"

Others said the ruling would open the floodgates of cultural conflict in Germany, as Muslims would view it as a precedent to push for the legalization of other Islamic practices, including polygamy, in the country.

In September 2016, the German Interior Ministry, responding to a Freedom of Information Act request, revealed that 1,475 married children — including 361 children under the age of 14 — were known to be living in Germany as of July 31, 2016.

In a bid to protect girls who were married abroad but sought asylum in Germany, the German parliament on June 1, 2017 had passed legislation banning child marriages. The so-called Law to Fight Child Marriage (Gesetz zur Bekämpfung von Kinderehen) set the minimum age of consent for marriage in Germany at 18 years and nullified all existing marriages, including those contracted abroad, where a participant was under the age of 16 at the time of the ceremony.

he German Chancellor, Angela Merkel (Angie), is making an official visit to Jordan and Lebanon. Officially, she intends to prevent a fresh round of refugees arriving in Europe by helping Jordan and Lebanon respond to the Syrian crisis.

This visit is taking place while the US plan is being drawn up to unlock the Israeli-Arab conflict.

Angie was accompanied by a delegation of CEOs of German companies that hope to negotiate contracts, in particular, for the “reconstruction” of Lebanon.

In Amman, the Chancellor was received by King Abdallah II. His concern was that the pro-Iranian Hezbollah might lay down roots in South Lebanon which would threaten both Israel and Jordan. Angie released a 100 million dollar loan to help the Kingdom address its economic crisis, attributable in part to its welcoming 650 000 Syrian refugees and its responding to IMF demands. It appears that Angie supported the US Plan to establish a New Jordan that would bring together all the Palestinian territories (Cisjordan and Gaza).

The Chancellor also visited the German troops based at Al-Asrak after they withdrew from Turkey.

You cannot compare the arrival of Syrians in Lebanon with the influx of Syrian in Germany. This is because Lebanon and Syria were historically the same country until the Second World War. If you must make a comparison, it is with German reunification, although today, noone is making any attempt to reunify Great Syria. Today the number of Syrians in Lebanon is well over a million. However not all are refugees.

The third meeting did not prove nearly so fruitful. President Aoun stressed the burden that the refugees presented for his country and requested their return to Syria, to areas which have now been liberated. The issue is that Germany, does not consider that the liberated zones are controlled by democratically elected authorities but by “moderate opposition” that President Aoun classes as jihadists. Michel Aoun’s position is that by proposing to help Libya welcome the Syrians, Berlin is seeking to make Lebanon participate in Germany’s anti-Syrian policy.

An indisputable fact is that what has led to both World Wars – that was British politics, or, if you prefer, whatever acted through it. However, there is an interesting difference between the activities of London in 1914 and 1917, and in 1939 – and also there exists a lot of similarities with present London (and Washington) proceedings.

Just before and during the Great War, the United Kingdom's priority was to counteract the possibility of repeating the Treaty in Björkö[i] (and giving it real shape to this fundamental geopolitical construction), but twenty years later, towards the upcomingWorld War II - the British war party seemed to be sure that is possible and absolutely necessary to finally solvethe problem of both continental rivals of Britain - ie. Germany and the Soviet Union. If we want to clearly understand present global situation, and even recent events connected with British-Russian crisis – we should analyse all aspects of these processes 

Different strategies - one goal

While the Britain did everything to prevent the German-Russian agreement during the First World War and even went so far as to overthrow the Tsarist regime in the name of continuing the conflict lost by Russia - in July and August 1939 the British diplomacy sabotaged the chances of concluding a trilateral British -French -Soviet treaty. Thus, the action was seemingly opposite - but the aim, however, was one, in both cases indeed achievable by a similar method, i.e. the ruthless pursuit of War, which was to break out in the place and time chosen by London.

Only Hitler's speed and the cunning of Stalin we owe that the plan (of which a fervent advocate was, among others, Winston Churchill) has fallen and there was no armed clash between the Ocean and the Continent on that moment in blocks as geopolitically natural as well as simultaneously forced by British policy. However, as it happened in history - the War which anyway has broken out about the imperial interests of the Ocean - brought victims primarily to the nations that were drawn into it, not only European ones.

In the parliament of Brandenburg recently, the Green Party introduced a bill to adopt a "Campaign for Acceptance of Gender and Sexual diversity, Self-Determination and against Homo and Trans-phobia in Brandenburg" as well as "Giving equal rights and societal equality for LGBTTQQ (Lesbian, Gay, Bi-sexual, Trans, Two-spirit, Queer, Questioning) people in Brandenburg"
The Green Party, which still holds a substantial share of the vote in Germany, is notorious for their advocacy of homosexual marriage and adoption as well as pedophilia and promotion of "trans-gender" agendas. (One Green Party leader, Daniel Cohn-Bendit even openly bragged about raping kindergartners.)

Germany already has strict "hate speech" laws that effectively criminalize any criticism of racial or religious minorities - those laws may soon include criticism of someone's self-proclaimed "gender."

Enter Steffen Königer of Germany's new Alternative for Germany party (German acronym: AfD). AfD is known for being a Euroskeptic party which opposes mass immigration to Germany and political correctness. Königer rose to voice his party's opposition to the measure, which was also supported by the Left Party and the Social Democratic Party.

Not wanting to leave anyone out, Königer opened his speech "Dear Ladies and Gentleman..." and then took the complete list of 60 possible genders which has been adopted by Facebook, and proceeded to name each one in a salutation which lasted over 3 minutes. Even the establishment politicians sitting behind him could not fail to recognize the brilliance of his response.

They are multitudinous almost beyond our imagining. They thrive in soil, water, and air; they have triumphed for hundreds of millions of years in every continent bar Antarctica, in every habitat but the ocean. And it is their success – staggering, unparalleled and seemingly endless – which makes all the more alarming the great truth now dawning upon us: insects as a group are in terrible trouble and the remorselessly expanding human enterprise has become too much, even for them.

Does it matter? Oh yes. Most of our fruit crops are insect-pollinated, as are the vast majority of our wild plants. The astonishing report highlighted in the Guardian, that the biomass of flying insects in Germany has dropped by three quarters since 1989, threatening an “ecological Armageddon”, is the starkest warning yet; but it is only the latest in a series of studies which in the last five years have finally brought to public attention the real scale of the problem.

Does it matter? Even if bugs make you shudder? Oh yes. Insects are vital plant-pollinators and although most of our grain crops are pollinated by the wind, most of our fruit crops are insect-pollinated, as are the vast majority of our wild plants, from daisies to our most splendid wild flower, the rare and beautiful lady’s slipper orchid.

Udo Ulfkotte was a prominent European journalist, social scientist, and immigration reform activist. Upon writing Gekaufte Journalisten and becoming one of the most significant media industry and deep state whistleblowers in recent history, Ulfkotte complained of repeated home searches by German state police and expressed fear for his own life. He also admitted previous health complications stemming from witnessing a 1988 poisoned gas attack in Iraqi Kurdistan.

Ulfkotte’s testimony of how intelligence agencies figure centrally in Western journalism is especially compelling because he for many years functioned in the higher echelons of mainstream newsworkers. The German journalist explains how he was recruited during the 1980s to work in espionage. This began through an invitation proffered by his graduate school advisor for an all-expense-paid trip to attend a two-week seminar on the Cold War conflict in Bonn.

After Ulfkotte obtained his doctorate he was given a job as a reporter at “the leading conservative German newspaper, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, oddly appointed despite no journalistic training and hundreds of other applicants. Serving as a correspondent throughout the Middle East, Ulfkotte eventually became acquainted with agents from the CIA, German intelligence agency Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND), Britain’s MI6, and Israel’s Mossad, all of whom valued his ability to travel freely in countries largely closed to the West. His editors readily collaborated in such intelligence gathering operations,”[5] for which journalist possess “non-official cover” by virtue of their profession.

"There are not so many countries in the world that enjoy the privilege of sovereignty. I don't want to offend anybody, but what Ms Merkel said is an expression of her resentment over a limited sovereignty."