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Spiegel Online reported that the Germany’s Federal Intelligence Agency (BND) spied on EU institutions and France and the USBy NEOnline/GK BND embroiled in another scandal as Spiegel Online reported that Germany’s intelligence agency was spying on EU institutions, France and the US until late 2013, on its own and not on behalf of the NSA. The German newsmagazine “Spiegel Online” reported that BND was spying several allied countries until late 2013. The news comes on top, of the April’s 2015 news, that the US National Security Agency (NSA) spied on businesses and countries in Europe via the BND’s foreign intelligence agency’s monitoring station at Bad Aibling in southern Bavaria. According to the 14 October report, the spying operations by BND may not all have taken place under the guidance of the NSA but also under BND’s own initiative. Spiegel reported that BND, used the technique promoted for NSA, for its own purposes too, which according to Deutsche Welle is “an act which would fall outside its constitutional mandate and qualify as illegal.” According to Spiegel, France and the United States were reported to be among the nations affected by BND’s spying activities while friendly embassies and EU authorities were also targets. Deutsche Welle, reported that besides Spiegel, public broadcaster RBB revealed that BND aimed to spy on issues, prohibited under the German law. German politicians have already begun to question whether the BND overstepped its official mandate by interfering in communications of friendly states. During the next week, German MPs are planning to interview BND staff at the headquarters of the intelligence agency in Pullach. Inquiry committee and the US According to German tabloid, “Bild,” US intelligence director James Clapper advised US authorities in May to no longer rely on Germany to protect classified documents. Clapper said that the German parliamentary committee which is investigating the spying acts of BND, might circulate classified US material to the media. “What the German government
is staging there is more dangerous than the Snowden
revelations,” the document obtained by Bild said. |
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Nazi Extortion: Study Sheds New Light on Forced Greek LoansLoukas Zisis, the deputy mayor of Distomo, a village nestled in the hills about a two hour drive from Athens, says he thinks about the Germans every day. On June 10, 1944, the Germans massacred 218 people in Distomo, including dozens of children. Zisis, who is just 48 years old, wasn't yet born at the time of the attack. "We can't forget the Germans," Zisis says. They came to Distomo 71 years ago with their guns. "Today they are exerting power over our village with their banks and policies," he adds. He's standing in the wind on a rocky ledge, a small man in a leather jacket, and looking out over the town. Two-thousand people live here.The massacre, which continues to shape the place today, was one of the most brutal crimes committed by the Nazis in Greece, with the carnage lasting several hours. For decades, a trial over the massacre wound its way through the courts at all levels in Greece and Germany. Greece's highest court, the Areopag, ruled in 2000 that Germany must pay damages to Distomo's bereaved. "But we are still waiting," says Zisis. "There has been no compensation." Last week in Greek parliament, Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras demanded German reparations payments, indirectly linking them to the current situation in Greece. "After the reunification of Germany in 1990, the legal and political conditions were created for this issue to be solved," Tsipras said. "But since then, German governments chose silence, legal tricks and delay. And I wonder, because there is a lot of talk at the European level these days about moral issues: Is this stance moral?" Tspiras was essentially countering German allegations that Greece lives beyond its means with the biggest counteraccusation possible: German guilt. Leaving aside the connection drawn by Tsipras, which many consider to be inappropriate, there are many arguments to support the Greek view. SPIEGEL itself reported in February that former Chancellor Helmut Kohl used tricks in 1990 in order to avoid having to pay reparations. A study conducted by the Greek Finance Ministry, commissioned way back in 2012 by a previous government, has now been completed and contains new facts. The 194-page document has been obtained by SPIEGEL. Outstanding German Debt The central question in the report is that of forced loans the Nazi occupiers extorted from the Greek central bank beginning in 1941. Should requests for repayment of those loans be classified as reparation demands -- demands that may have been forfeited with the Two-Plus-Four Treaty of 1990? Or is it a genuine loan that must be paid back? The expert commission analyzed contracts and agreements from the time of the occupation as well as receipts, remittance slips and bank statements. They found that the forced loans do not fit into the category of classical war reparations. The commission calculated the outstanding German "debt" to the Greek central bank and came to a total sum of $12.8 billion as of December 2014, which would amount to about €11 billion. As such, at issue between Germany and Greece is no longer just the question as to whether the 115 million deutsche marks paid to the Greek government from 1961 onwards for its peoples' suffering during the occupation sufficed as legal compensation for the massacres like those in the villages of Distomo and Kalavrita. Now the key issue is whether the successor to the German Reich, the Federal Republic of Germany, is responsible for paying back loans extorted by the Nazi occupiers. There's some evidence to indicate that this may be the case. In terms of the amount of the loan debt, the Greek auditors have come to almost the same findings as those of the Nazis' bookkeepers shortly before the end of the war. Hitler's auditors estimated 26 days before the war's end that the "outstanding debt" the Reich owed to Greece at 476 million Reichsmarks. Auditors in Athens calculated an "open credit line" for the same period of time of around $213 million. They assumed a dollar exchange rate to the Reichsmark of 2:1 and applied an interest escalation clause accepted by the German occupiers that would result in a value of more than €11 billion today. 'No Ifs or Buts' This outstanding debt has to be paid back "with no ifs or buts," says German historian Hagen Fleischer in Athens, who knows the relevant files better than anyone else. Even before the new report, he located numerous documents that prove without any doubt, he believes, the character of forced loans. Nazi officials noted on March 20, 1944, for example, that the "Reich's debt" to Athens had totaled 1,068 billion drachmas as of December 31 of the previous year. "Forced loans as war debt pervade all the German files," says Fleischer, who is a professor of modern history at the University of Athens. He has lived in Athens since 1977 and has since obtained Greek citizenship. He says that files from postwar German authorities about questions of war debt "shocked" him far more than the war documents on atrocities and suffering. In them, he says German diplomats use the vocabulary of the National Socialists to discuss reparations issues, speaking of a "final solution for so-called war crimes problems," or stating that it was high time for a "liquidation of memory." He says it was in this spirit that compensation payments were also constantly refused. Fleischer had long been accused of bias and he says he is now pleased to have support from Athens -- particularly given that the present study has nothing to do with Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras' Syriza government. When work on the study first began in early 2012, the cabinet of independent Prime Minister Loukas Papademos still governed in Athens. A former vice president of the European Central Bank, Papademos formed a six-month transition government after Georgios Papandreou resigned. In April 2014, the successor government of conservative Prime Minister Antonis Samaras decided to continue work on the study and appointed Panagiotis Karakousis to lead the team of experts. The longtime general director of the Finance Ministry was considered to be politically unobjectionable. 50,000 Pages of Documents Karakousis spent five months reading 50,000 pages of original documents from the central bank's archives. It wasn't easy reading. The study calculates right down to the gram the amount of gold plundered from private households, especially those of Greek Jews: 7,358.0014 kilograms of pure gold with an equivalent value today of around €235 million. It also notes also how German troops, as they pulled out, quickly took along "the entire cash reserves from branch offices and regional branches" of the central bank: Exactly 634,962,691,995,162 drachmas in notes and coins, which would total about €40 million today. Above all, the study, with some reservations, provides clarity about the forced loans. "No reasonable person can now doubt that these loans existed and that the repayment remains open," says Karakousis. This history of the loans began in April 1941, after the German troops rushed to assist their Italian allies and occupied Greece. In order to provide their troops with provisions, the German occupiers demanded reimbursement for their expenses, the so-called occupation costs. It's a cynical requirement, but one that became standard practice after the 1907 Hague Convention. Out of the ordinary, though, was the Wehrmacht requirement that the Greeks finance the provision of its troops on other fronts -- in the Balkans, in Russia or in North Africa -- despite Hague Convention rules forbidding such a practice. Initially, the German occupiers demanded 25 million Reichsmarks per month from the government in Athens, around 1.5 billion drachmas. But the amount they actually took was considerably higher. The expert commission determined that payments made by the Greek central bank between August and December 1941 totaled 12 billion rather than 7 billion drachmas. 'Unlimited Sums in the Form of Loans' With their economy laid to waste, the Greeks soon began pushing for reductions. At a conference in Rome, the Germans and Italians decided on March 14, 1942 to halve their occupation costs to 750 million drachmas each. But the study claims that Hitler's deputies demanded "unlimited sums in the form of loans." Whatever the Germans collected over and above the 750 million would be "credited to the Greek government," a German official noted in 1942. The sums of the forced loans were up to 10 times as high as the occupation costs. During the first half of 1942, they totaled 43.4 billion drachmas, whereas only 4.5 billion for the provision of troops was due. A number of installment payments, which Athens began pressing for in March 1943, serve to verify the nature of the loans. Historian Fleischer also found records relating to around two dozen payment installments. For example, the payment office of the Special Operations Southeast was instructed on October 6, 1944 to pay, inflation adjusted, an incredible sum of 300 billion drachma to the Greek government and to book it as "repayment." 'Debts Have to Be Paid Back' In Fleischer's opinion, the report makes unequivocally clear that the Greek demands do not relate to reparations for wartime injustices that could serve as a precedent for other countries. "One can negotiate reparations politically," Fleischer says. "Debts have to be paid back -- even between friends." Postwar Greek governments sought repayment early on. The German ambassador confirmed on October 15, 1966, for example, that the Greeks had already come knocking "over an alleged claim." On November 10, 1995, then Prime Minister Andreas Papandreou proposed the opening of talks aimed at a settlement of the "German debts to Greece." He proposed that "every category of these claims would be examined separately." Papandreous' effort ultimately didn't lead anywhere. So what happens now? What should become of this new study, the contents of which had remained secret before now? "I am not a politician," says Karakousis, "I've just done my duty." But the question also remains whether the surviving relatives of the victims of Distomo will ever be provided with justice -- and whether there are similar cases in other countries. German lawyer Joachim Lau, whose law firm is based in Florence, Italy, represents the interests of village residents of Distomo even today. Lau, born in Stuttgart, a white-haired man of almost 70, is fighting for compensation in the name of the Greek and Italian victims of the Nazis. "I am disappointed by the manner in which Germany is dealing with this question," he says. He says it's not just an issue of financial compensation. More than anything, it is one of justice. Careless Statements In February, Lau warned German President Joachim Gauck in an open letter against propagating the "violation of international law" with careless statements about the reparations issue. In his view, the legal situation is clear: Greek and Italian citizens and their relatives affected by "shootings, massacres by the Wehrmacht, by deportations or forced labor illegal under international law" have the right to individual claims. For the past decade, Lau has been pursuing the claims of the Distomo victims in Italy. The Court of Cassation in Rome affirmed in 2008 that the claims were legitimate and that he could pursue the case. Earlier, the lawyer had already succeeded in securing Villa Vigoni, a palatial estate on the shore of Lake Como owned by Germany -- and used by a private German association focused on promoting German-Italian relations -- as collateral for the suit. In 2009, Lau succeeded in having €51 million in claims made by Deutsche Bahn against Italian state railway Trenitalia seized. On Tuesday, the high court in Rome is expected to rule on the lifting of the enforcement order. Following a ruling made by Italy's Constitutional Court in October 2014, private suits in Italy against Germany have been possible again. One of the justices who issued the ruling is the current president of Italy, Sergio Mattarella. It remains unclear whether this ruling will unleash "a wave of new proceedings" in Italy, says Lau, who currently represents 150 cases, including various class-action lawsuits. Present and Past, Guilt and Anger Everything
connects in the mountain village of Distoma -- the
present and past, guilt and anger, the Greek demands
on Germany today and past calls for reparations.
Efrosyni Perganda sits in the well-heated living
room of her home. The diminutive woman, 91 years of
age, has alert eyes and wears a black dress. She
survived the massacre perpetrated by the Germans at
Distomo and she's one of the few witnesses still
alive in the village. As the Germans began to rampage, she hid behind the bathroom door and later behind the living room door of the house in which she still lives today. She held her baby tightly against her chest. "I forgive my husband's murderers," she says. Loukas Zisis, the deputy mayor, silently leaves the house as the woman finishes telling her story. He needs a break and heads over to the tavern, where he orders a glass of wine. "I admire Germany: Marx, Engels, Nietzsche," he says. "The prosperity. The degree to which society is organized. But here in the village, we aren't finding peace because the German state isn't settling its debt." Zisis
admires Germany, but the country remains
incomprehensible to him. "We haven't even heard a
single apology so far," he says once again. "That
has to do with Germany's position in Europe." This
is something that he just doesn't understand, he
says. |
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In the fight against corruption, Germany falls behind |
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Bestiality
brothels are 'spreading through Germany' warns
campaigner as abusers turn to sex with animals as
'lifestyle choice'
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german-foreign-policy.com:
In your book you write that the IMF and the World
Bank have supported many dictatorships all around
the world...
Eric Toussaint: It's very clear that from the beginning, the IMF and the World Bank have supported numerous dictatorships all around the world in accordance with the political interests of the United States and its allies. We can mention for instance, the support given by the IMF and World Bank in the 1950s, '60s and '70s to the Somoza dictatorship in Nicaragua. We can also mention the IMF and World Bank support for the military dictatorship in Guatemala in 1954, which was installed to replace the democratically elected president Jacobo Arbenz, who wanted to initiate an agrarian reform. If we go on to the '60s, we can mention the military coup of the generals in Brazil, in April 1964, against the left democratic president Joao Goulart, who also wanted to initiate an agrarian reform and nationalize Brazilian oil. There was also support of the Marcos dictatorship in the Philippines from 1971/72 up to 1986. gfp.com: Are there also current examples? Toussaint: Looking at the last few years, we can mention the IMF and World Bank's support of the Idriss Deby regime in Chad, because of the oil companies' strong interest in the pipeline between Chad and Cameroon. The corrupt Idriss Deby regime was not respecting the World Bank's anti-corruption clauses, so the World Bank announced the suspension of disbursement in December 2005. But under pressure of the US government, the World Bank's leadership decided in April 2006 to renew the disbursement in support of the Idriss Deby regime. We can also mention the strong IMF and World Bank support of the Musharraf dictatorship in Pakistan. There is today a large democratic movement in Pakistan, a very active struggle of judges against Musharraf's regime. Meanwhile the World Bank is supporting major projects in Pakistan. gfp.com: Has there been any direct German involvement? Toussaint: Of course. For example, the German government was actively involved in the support for the Mobutu regime which had been backed by the IMF and World Bank - alongside with the Belgian and the US governments. A member of the board of the Deutsche Bank was sent to Zaire in 1981 to draw up a report on the corruption in the Mobutu regime. His name was Edwin Blumenthal. He wrote a report denouncing the very high level of corruption, but the World Bank, with German complicity and under Belgian and US pressure, never used this report and increased its loans to the Mobutu regime. This took place in the climate of the Cold War and because of German, Belgian, US and other corporations being interested in investing in Zaire. It is also important to mention the support the German government gave the Suharto regime, whose military coup against Sukarno in 1965, had been backed as well by the IMF and the World Bank - notwithstanding the massacre of 500.000 civilians accused of being communist supporters. Germany made a sizable loan to Suharto for his transmigration project. Some 3.200.000 people were deported. For more or less 100.000 people, it was forced deportation, which means it was a crime against humanity. Germany was very actively involved in supporting this project. While Germany was supporting Suharto, his regime also invaded East Timor in 1975 and very repressively exploited the East Timorians. Germany and the US government never criticized the Indonesian policy toward East Timor. I think it would be very important for Germans to examine the possibilities of a lawsuit against those responsible for these policies toward Zaire and Indonesia. gfp.com: What about current examples in Latin America? Toussaint: When the military coup was carried out against Chavez in April 2002, the person in charge of external relations in the IMF, Thomas Dawson, immediately declared the IMF's support of the coup regime. In April 2005 when Rafael Correa was the minister of finance in Ecuador, he decided to use a portion of the oil revenues to increase the government's social budget. The World Bank and the IMF denounced his policy, demanding that all revenues must go toward repaying the external debt. Rafael Correa didn't accept this demand, and in retaliation, the World Bank and the IMF suspended disbursement to the Ecuadorian government. This is why Rafael Correa, Ecuador's new president, expelled the World Bank representatives from Ecuador this year. We can say that the IMF and the World Bank are now going through a major credibility crisis with Third World governments taking initiatives to form a new instrument to become independent from the IMF and World Bank. For instance, six Latin American governments are now founding the Bank of the South. gfp.com: Do the IMF and World Bank have German support for their policies? Toussaint: Yes, of course. During the latest crisis of the Wolfowitz leadership of the World Bank, Germany asked the US government to reconsider its support of Paul Wolfowitz. But Germany is supporting the decision of the US to replace Wolfowitz with Robert Zoellick, another US citizen. The German government therefore is not really using its influence inside the World Bank to democratically change its rules. It is totally absurd that, since the very beginning, the president of the World Bank has always been a US citizen, selected by the US president. I think that it is very important to criticize the German government's policy toward the Bretton Woods institutions. Source |
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SEC Charges Siemens AG for Engaging in Worldwide BriberyFOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
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