Tag: germany

German farmer investigated over gift from Russia

A farmer is facing criminal prosecution in Germany over receiving a small Easter gift from a Russian friend. The man is now accused of violating sanctions and could face up to five years behind bars.

A public prosecutor’s office in the northeastern German state of Mecklenburg–Western Pomerania confirmed on Friday that a criminal case had indeed been opened against a local man on suspicion of violating the restrictions.

The case dates back several months, to when a German customs office intercepted a small package which was sent to the farmer from Russia. According to the broadcaster NDR, the package contained a piece of soap, a wooden figurine, and a CD – worth less than €27 ($32) in total. All of the items were on the sanctions list, the report said, adding that the customs office had confiscated the package and a probe was opened into it.

The farmer, who has been identified as Rudolf Denissen by NDR, could face between three months and five years of imprisonment if found guilty. The prosecutor’s office also requested an official written statement from him, as well as “complete personal details and information on net monthly income.”

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Why is Germany covering for the terrorists that attacked it?

Once upon a time, long, long ago, scandals had consequences even in the West, at least sometimes. In the ancient US of 1974, Richard ‘Tricky Dick’ Nixon had to go because of Watergate, which, unlike Russiagate, was real, if hardly sensational by our standards today.

Even in the late 1990s, early post-unification Germany, the career of a giant like Helmut ‘chancellor of unification’ Kohl took a lethal hit from a rather boring affair turning on creative accounting in party finances. Indeed, biased media hype and liberal pearl-clutching was the whole brouhaha’s real essence. Without it, Angela Merkel might never have been able to knife her old benefactor Kohl in the back, and Gerhard Schroeder might not have become chancellor.

Now the West has devolved further. Our political elites in the US and EU have learned not to care, and more importantly, they have learned how to make us not care, or at least not enough. The worst political scandal of recent US history is the oddly inexplicable career of Jeffrey Epstein, convicted pedophile criminal and suspected intelligence operative as well as intimate friend of, it seems, most of the American establishment (in a thoroughly ‘bipartisan’ manner with vile favors to all). Its fall-out should already have profoundly changed America’s domestic and foreign policy, especially in the Middle East. And yet, it probably never will.

In NATO-EU Europe, things are at least equally dismal, as is appropriate for what is really just the most masochistic backyard of the American empire. There, the single worst scandal is what has happened to the Nord Stream pipelines at the bottom of the Baltic. Built at a cost of around $20 billion to bring inexpensive gas from Russia to Germany and the EU as a whole, in September 2022, they were mostly destroyed by sabotage.

That was the worst act of eco-terrorism in European history. Especially, with Russia and China now finalizing the building of the Power of Siberia Two pipeline, the destruction of Nord Stream will also be remembered as part of a historic reorientation of Eurasian energy flows that locked in Germany’s – and the EU’s – self-Morgenthauing de-industrialization.

This insane event was then followed by a most bizarre cover-up. Indeed, between the attack and the cover-up, it is impossible to tell which has been the more stunning, jaw-dropping outrage. But then, we don’t have to: the whole thing is one big mess.

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Over Half Of Berlin’s New Police Recruits Can’t Speak Basic German, Officials Admit

For some reason, Germany loves recruiting migrants into its police force in the name of diversity. In 2022, roughly 42% of police recruits who took the most common path into Berlin’s police force were migrants or came from migrant families, according to a major survey (37% including all pathways). 

What’s more, Berlin is the only German state where the proportion of new police recruits with a migration background matches or exceeds the city’s own population share (35%) according to that same survey. 

Now, (shocker!) roughly 55% of Germany’s new police recruits don’t meet basic German language standards – so obviously that percentage of migrant recruits went way up. 

Out of 240 police trainees who began their training in spring 2025, a staggering 132 recruits, roughly 55% need extra German-language support, the Berlin Police confirmed to Nius (via Apollo News).

The problem, authorities say, hits hardest in the first semester of training. “About half of the new recruits require regular language support at the start of their training,” the police statement said. However, they noted that the need for assistance drops over time as recruits progress through the program.

No word on where these recruits are migrating from. Maybe it’s the Poles? The Turks?

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Top German Judge Says Overzealous ECHR ‘Endangers The Existence Of Western Democracies’

Hans-Jürgen Papier, Germany’s former chief justice and one of the country’s most senior legal scholars, has warned that the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) is undermining national sovereignty by creating what he called a “de facto right to immigration through the back door.”

The 82-year-old Ludwig Maximilian University professor, who led Germany’s Federal Constitutional Court at the start of Angela Merkel’s chancellorship, told The Times newspaper that a growing body of asylum case law from national courts and the ECHR in Strasbourg had created an “ever deeper reaching and ever more closely meshed agglomeration” of rulings. These, he said, were now “settling like mildew over the states’ political power to take action.”

In his view, the result has been a dramatic broadening of the right to asylum, far beyond what was originally intended under the Geneva Convention.

“The citizens expect those with political responsibility to revise the asylum policies to suit the changed circumstances. But that is in danger of failing because of the ossification of a body of law that is getting increasingly rarefied and ultimately looks irreversible to many politicians,” he said.

Papier criticized the way European courts have interpreted Articles 3 and 8 of the ECHR — the rights against inhuman treatment and to family life — to block deportations, including cases where asylum seekers could face homelessness or irregular work in other EU states.

“That simply goes too far,” he argued.

“Here, human dignity is being treated like small change and thereby robbed of its special dignified status.”

The former judge warned that the overzealous application of human rights laws by the ECHR was “generally destroying the European citizen’s trust in the capacity of their democratic institutions to act, and so at the end of the day endangering the existence of Western democracies.”

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Germany Targets X Executives in Unprecedented Criminal Probe over Refusal to Hand Over User Data in “Hate Speech” Cases

German authorities have opened a criminal investigation targeting three managers at X, accusing them of “obstruction of justice” for refusing to directly provide user data in online speech-related cases.

Two of the employees are American, and one of them is reportedly Diego de Lima Gualda, the former head of X’s operations in Brazil, who previously faced off against legal demands in his home country before resigning in April 2024.

The alleged problem for Germany is X’s policy of forwarding German requests for user data to US authorities, following procedures established under a bilateral Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty (MLAT).

That treaty lays out the legal framework for cross-border data sharing, requiring requests from German prosecutors to be reviewed and processed through US legal channels before X is compelled to hand over user information.

Despite this legally grounded process, prosecutors in Göttingen have decided to treat the policy as criminal interference, marking what appears to be the first time in German legal history that social media executives are being investigated for how they respond to international legal requests.

German prosecutors have reportedly been frustrated by X’s unwillingness to grant them direct access to account data, particularly in cases involving posts that include banned symbols like swastikas or comments that authorities allege may amount to defamation.

The inability to obtain data has resulted in stalled investigations and dropped cases, including one where a post containing a swastika could not be traced to its author.

Although X restricted that post within Germany, the company declined to release identifying information.

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Seventh AfD Candidate Dead in North Rhine-Westphalia Election Campaign

The online rumour mill has been given yet more fodder following the death of a seventh AfD North Rhine-Westphalia election candidate.

Hans-Joachim Kind, a candidate in Kremenholl, has died at the age of 80 of natural causes after a long illness, Welt reported on Wednesday afternoon.

Police say there is no indication of foul play surrounding any of the now seven deaths. The deputy state chairman of the AfD in North Rhine-Westphalia, Kay Gottschalk, also said on Tuesday there was “no indication” of “murder or anything similar” and that some of the deceased had “pre-existing medical conditions.”

But following the fourth reported death, party co-chair Alice Weidel shared a social media post saying the cluster was “statistically almost impossible.”

Gottschalk did add that “we will, of course, investigate these cases with the necessary sensitivity and care.”

Despite this caution, Politico journalist Pauline von Pezold accused the AfD of “causing its voters to lose faith in our democracy” over the growing list of deaths.

Rod Dreher wrote in these pages on Tuesday: “It must be hoped that the unfortunate and statistically unlikely deaths of four politicians from a party the German government is considering outlawing were nothing more than a fluke.”

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Germany’s far-right AfD suffers series of candidate deaths ahead of local vote

As many as six candidates for Germany’s far-right AfD have died in recent weeks ahead of local elections in the big western state of North Rhine-Westphalia.

Police have made clear there is no evidence of foul play in the deaths, but it means that new ballots will have to be printed and some postal voters will have to recast their ballots.

North Rhine-Westphalia has a population of 18 million and a reported 20,000 candidates will run for office in its 14 September local elections.

The number of deaths has nevertheless raised questions on social media. The state’s interior ministry has pointed out that candidates from other parties, including the Greens and Social Democrats, have also died.

The AfD became Germany’s second biggest party in February’s federal elections, spreading from its eastern heartland to areas of the west too.

The domestic spy agency classified it as a right-wing extremist organisation in May, before placing a pause on that description due to an appeal pending in court. In three eastern states, its AfD associations are still listed as extremist.

Initial reports centred on news that four of its candidates had died, and then the deaths of two reserve candidates also emerged, prompting a flurry of conspiracy theories on social media.

AfD co-leader Alice Weidel made no effort to quash the speculation, reposting a claim by retired economist Stefan Homburg that the number of candidates’ deaths was “statistically almost impossible”.

However, asked about the rumours in his party, the AfD’s number two figure in North Rhine-Westphalia, Kay Gottschalk, acknowledged on Tuesday that “what I have in front of me – but that’s just partial information – that doesn’t back up these suspicions at the moment”.

He told Politico’s Berlin Playbook Podcast that his party wanted the cases to be investigated “without immediately getting into conspiracy-theory territory”. He said they had to tread carefully with the families concerned as they had lost a family member.

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Ukraine War To Drag On With No End In Sight: Germany’s Merz

Hawkish European leaders continue to speak in terms of Cold War-era domino theory nonsense, with the assumption that Russia aims to take over European countries one by one.

This is exactly how German Chancellor Friedrich Merz sounded in telling German public broadcaster ZDF on Sunday that Ukraine has to be defended, and not compromise, or else Germany could be next to be at risk of Russian invasion. He also said on this basis that the Ukraine war is likely to drag on with no end in sight.

While he described he hasn’t lost hope of a Trump-brokered ceasefire – he said he still “harbors no illusions” and that backing Ukraine’s defense remains an “absolute priority”.

“We are trying to end it as quickly as possible. But certainly not at the price of Ukraine’s capitulation. You could end the war tomorrow if Ukraine surrendered and lost its independence,” Merz said.

“Then the next country would be at risk the day after tomorrow. And the day after that, it would be us. That is not an option,” the German chancellor continued.

This seems at least a tacit acknowledgement that it is indeed Western action which continued to fuel the proxy war and keep it going.

His assumption that the ceasefire could only be achieved if Ukraine “lost its independence” is a dubious one, given that Russia is not demanding the whole of Ukraine or to have Kiev under its control, but wants the eastern Russian-speaking territories and an absolute pledge of neutrality regarding NATO.

“I want the US to work with us as long as possible to try to solve this problem,” Merz said. But “diplomacy is not about flipping a switch overnight and then everything will be fine again,” he added.

But Merz also remarked separately last Thursday it was now “obvious” that a meeting between Zelensky would not happen. The White House has expressed concerns that the Europeans sought to thwart this all along.

The Associated Press has tallied that over the course of the war Germany has committed military support worth some 40 billion euros ($47 billion).

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Germany: Economist Thomas Vierhaus Fined €16,100 for Sarcastic X Posts

A Düsseldorf-based economist has found himself at the center of a criminal case for making sarcastic remarks online about high-profile public figures.

Thomas Vierhaus is being prosecuted under Section 185 of the German Criminal Code for three separate X posts that government officials and journalists deemed insulting.

The total fine, delivered in the form of a penalty order from the Düsseldorf District Court on August 12, amounts to €16,100.

This is part of a growing trend in Germany where speech that irritates those in power increasingly results in legal consequences.

The first incident dates back to June 2023. Katrin Göring-Eckardt, Vice President of the Bundestag and a leading figure in the Green Party, had issued an alarmist post about climate change.

She cited droughts, wildfires, and high sea temperatures as proof that the climate crisis was unfolding “with full force.” Vierhaus, unimpressed, replied that “there is indeed an extreme drought, namely in Katrin Göring-Eckardt’s head.”

This offhand remark would likely have disappeared unnoticed if not for a doctoral student who had taken it upon himself to patrol the internet.

The student filled out a criminal complaint form on Göring-Eckardt’s behalf and sent it to her. She signed and forwarded it to the police, setting off the first of several investigations into Vierhaus’s social media activity.

The second charge came after Vierhaus discovered the identity of the same doctoral student and referred to him online as a “little snitch.”

Given that the student had already been submitting complaint forms to politicians for them to sign, the label was hardly unprovoked. Nevertheless, the student filed a personal complaint and claimed insult.

A third post earned Vierhaus further legal trouble when he criticized ARD journalist Moritz Rödle on July 7, 2023.

Rödle had defended Economics Minister Robert Habeck’s decision to skip a Bundestag debate on Germany’s heating law, attending a Bundesrat session instead.

Vierhaus responded with a post calling Rödle a “nincompoop” and added, “You still have a lot to learn in order not to be constantly fooled.”

Rödle filed a complaint through Hessen gegen Hetze, a government-operated online platform that encourages users to report speech deemed hateful or offensive.

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