Tag: germany

Germany Begins Felling 120,000 Trees From ‘Fairy Tale’ Forest to Make Way for Wind Turbines

The windmills are spinning golden subsidies in the central German ‘fairy tale’ forest of Reinhardswald, but the payment is the partial destruction of the 1,000 year-old ancient wood itself. Work has started on the clearing of up to 120,000 trees in the forest, the setting for many of the Brothers Grimm mythical stories, to provide access for an initial 18 giant wind turbines around the Sababurg ‘Sleeping Beauty’ castle. Who is opposing this massive destruction of the ancient forest teeming with wildlife with trees over 200 years old? Certainly not the Green party, now in power at national and local level. In fact the project is being led by local Hesse Green Minister Priska Hinz who is reported to have said: “Wind energy makes a decisive contribution to the energy transition and the preservation of nature. It is the only way to preserve forests and important ecosystems.”

There is some local press interest in Germany about the destruction of part of the forest that covers a 200 square kilometre area. Nevertheless, the mainstream media generally keep well away from covering environmental destruction when the Greens are doing it in the claimed cause of saving the planet. The BBC did cover the story under the headline ‘Battle over wind turbines in the land of Sleeping Beauty‘, but that was in 2013 when plans for the industrial development were first announced. It seems that the state-reliant broadcaster is less interested now that the Big Bad Wolf has finally made a meal of Little Red Riding Hood.

Pierre Gosselin, who runs the German-based science site No Tricks Zone, has been covering the outrage felt in a number of German quarters at the plans to destroy some of the Reinhardswald forest in the interest of inferior green technology. He feels the affair shows what an inefficient and costly scam green energy is. “It’s not cost-free, it’s full of corrupt and unresponsive politicians who no longer care about democracy, and it certainly doesn’t make the environment better. It’s a nasty juggernaut of waste, fraud, corruption and ecological degradation – with dead birds, turbine vibration sickness, strobe dizziness and landscape pollution,” he adds.

The Guardian has been curiously silent over the clearing of woodland to build wind turbines in Hesse. In 2020 it was less reticent about reporting on the construction of a 3 km highway in another Hessian forest at Dannenroder. Thousands of climate activists gathered on the site north of Frankfurt, it reported. Dannenroder tree-felling would be a catastrophe, environmental campaigners are reported to have said. “Some parts of this forest are 250 years old,” noted Nicola Uhde of the German Federation for the Environment and Nature Conservation (Bund), “and there is simply not much of this kind of woodland around anymore.” At the time, the Guardian noted the fate of Dannenroder was a “litmus test for the Green party” which governed the state as part of a coalition. It seems to have been remiss in not suggesting such a test with the Reinhardswald deforestation. But then it seems none of the usual climate activists have been protesting about the loss of trees and wildlife habitat on this occasion.

Keep reading

Scholz’s Slip Of The Tongue Spilled The Beans On Ukraine’s Worst-Kept Secret

The worst-kept secret of this proxy war is that it’s already a hot NATO-Russian war but an undeclared and limited one where both sides still abide by informal “rules of engagement”.

German Chancellor Scholz’s innuendo that France and the UK have clandestinely deployed troops to Ukraine to assist with “target control” against Russian forces prompted a harsh reaction from the British, but his slip of the tongue simply spilled the beans on this proxy war’s worst-kept secret. No honest observer believed the prior denials about Western troops in that country since their Ukrainian counterparts couldn’t realistically be trained to operate such modern-day arms in such a short time.

His inadvertent revelation, which was shared to explain why Germany won’t send long-range Taurus missiles to that country since it doesn’t want to follow the others’ lead by clandestinely deploying troops there, came shortly after French President Macron’s relatedly scandalous claim. He said that NATO countries debated whether to conventionally intervene in Ukraine when many of their leaders met in Paris on Monday though no consensus had been reached on this ultra-sensitive question.

Although practically every one of his peers denied that anything of the sort was discussed, the Financial Times then quoted an unnamed senior European defense official who bluntly confirmed that “Everyone knows there are western special forces in Ukraine — they’ve just not acknowledged it officially.” Such claims were hitherto dismissed as “Russian conspiracy theories” but now they predictably turned out to be statements of “conspiracy fact” to the surprise of only the most dishonest and naive observers.

The Ukrainian Conflict has always been a NATO proxy war on Russia that was waged by hybrid means through that former Soviet Republic, with this latest development removing any “plausible deniability” about that after the words that just came from the mouth of the EU’s de facto leader. This prompts a re-evaluation of the way in which the unprecedented NATO-Russian security dilemma there has been managed up until this point.

President Putin famously said the following on 24 February 2022 about those who’d like to interfere with the special operation: “No matter who tries to stand in our way or all the more so create threats for our country and our people, they must know that Russia will respond immediately, and the consequences will be such as you have never seen in your entire history. No matter how the events unfold, we are ready. All the necessary decisions in this regard have been taken. I hope that my words will be heard.”

Keep reading

Germany’s Parliament Approves Marijuana Legalization Bill

Germany’s parliament has officially approved a bill to legalize marijuana nationwide.

Two days after the cannabis legislation was considered by eight committees of the Bundestag, the full body voted 407-226 on final passage on Friday.

The bill—which will make possession and home cultivation legal and authorize social clubs that can distribute marijuana to members—now heads to the Bundesrat, a separate legislative chamber that represents German states, though its members cannot stop the reform from being enacted.

While supporters have said legalization would take effect in April if it’s enacted, there are new questions about that timeline. The Bundesrat may move to refer the legislation to a mediation committee to address criminal justice-related implications of the law, which could mean several months of additional discussion.

The floor vote comes weeks after leaders of Germany’s so-called traffic light coalition government announced that they’d reached a final agreement on the legalization bill, resolving outstanding concerns, primarily from the Social Democratic Party (SPD).

Health Minister Karl Lauterbach, who has for months been the government’s lead on the cannabis plan, said ahead of the floor vote that the country is “fundamentally changing our cannabis control policy in order to combat the black market.”

Keep reading

TECHNO-HELL: GERMANY ANNOUNCES ‘PRE-CRIME’ POLICE UNIT TO TARGET ‘FAR-RIGHT’

“If you want to keep a secret, you must also hide it from yourself.”
-George Orwell, 1984

In a classic case of “life imitating dystopian sci-fi pulp fiction,” the German Fourth Reich has announced big plans for so-called “far-right extremist” (which now means “anyone not blindly obedient to government”) elements of the population it oversees.

This will evoke in many connoisseurs of pop culture remembrance of a little ditty from 2002 titled “Minority Report,” the plot of which is that the state has devised a convoluted method of detecting crime before it happens and therefore eliminated all murders in Washington, D.C. by 2054.

“Germany’s top security official said Tuesday that she aims to make it easier to trace right-wing extremists’ financing and plans to set up an ‘early recognition unit’ to detect far-right and foreign disinformation campaigns as early as possible.

Interior Minister Nancy Faeser’s proposals follow large protests against the far right in Germany in recent weeks. They reflect growing concern after a report said extremists met to discuss deporting millions of immigrants, including some with German citizenship, and that some members of the far-right Alternative for Germany party, whose support has doubled since the country’s 2021 election, were present.

Germany’s domestic intelligence agency says the number of far-right extremists has been rising*. In 2022, it reached 38,800, with 14,000 of them considered potentially violent. The agency’s head, Thomas Haldenwang, said the numbers are believed to have risen again last year.”

*Note that the governing authorities never seem to bother to investigate why so-called “far-right extremism” (again, a misnomer designed to smear, not describe) might be attractive to a growing swathe of Western populations — as if, apropos of nothing, the previously well-heeled, domesticated, cosmopolitan, thoroughly liberalized German population suddenly decided to return to its Nazi roots because…

Something, something… probably Russia, definitionally “disinformation,” or maybe the sleazy “malinformation” reared its ugly head. 

Keep reading

MASSIVE STONE WALL BUILT MORE THAN 10,000 YEARS AGO FOUND HIDDEN BENEATH THE BALTIC SEA

Researchers from the Leibniz Institute for Baltic Sea Research in Warnemünde report the discovery of an ancient, 10,000-year-old massive stone wall that has remained submerged beneath the Baltic Sea for millennia.

At nearly a kilometer in length, the Stone Age megastructure hidden beneath the waters of the Bay of Mecklenburg in Germany is not only one of the oldest man-made hunting structures in Europe but likely one of the oldest pieces of construction in the entire world.

“It was likely constructed by hunter–gatherer groups more than 10000 y ago and ultimately drowned during the Littorina transgression at 8500 y B.P.,” the researchers explain in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. “Since then, it remained hidden at the seafloor, leading to a pristine preservation that will inspire research on the lifestyle and territorial development in the larger area.”

CROSS DISCIPLINES OF ARCHAEOLOGY AND MARINE GEOSCIENCE REVEAL DETAILS OF ANCIENT MASSIVE STONE WALL

When describing the discovery and early excavation of the submerged site, the researchers behind the historic find say that studying sites that have been underwater for this length of time is both rewarding and challenging. For instance, remaining underwater for thousands of years likely helped preserve much of the ancient site. However, studying something that is over 21 meters below the surface also has challenges that archaeologists don’t always face.

“The Baltic Sea basins, some of which only submerged in the mid-Holocene, preserve Stone Age structures that did not survive on land,” they explain. “Yet, the discovery of these features is challenging and requires cross-disciplinary approaches between archeology and marine geosciences.”

Keep reading

SCIENTISTS SUCCEED IN PRODUCING A DURABLE “TIME CRYSTAL”

Researchers at Germany’s TU Dortmund University report that they have developed an ultra-robust time crystal. Their study, published in Nature Physics, offers new insights into the potential applications and the physics governing time crystals, and offers a new method for keeping them stable. 

Time crystals represent a new phase of matter, first theorized in 2012 by Nobel laureate Frank Wilczek. Unlike traditional crystals, which exhibit repeating patterns in space, time crystals display patterns that repeat in time. This means their atomic structures undergo periodic motion even without external energy, defying the traditional laws of thermodynamics that govern equilibrium in most systems.

The importance of the TU Dortmund team’s work lies in its demonstration of an ultra-robust time crystal within a semiconductor material. The time crystal they developed can maintain its periodic oscillations over extensive periods, roughly 40 minutes, which is millions of times longer than previous attempts. 

Keep reading

Leaked German Military Docs Warn of WWIII with Russia by 2025, Hundreds of Thousands of Troops Deployed in Europe

Leaked classified documents from the German military have warned of a potential full-blown war between Russia and NATO in which hundreds of thousands of troops are deployed in Europe.

Germany’s Bild, the largest circulation newspaper in Europe, has claimed to have obtained classified documents from the Bundeswehr labelled “Classified Information – For Official Use Only” in which the Defence Ministry lays out details for a possible “path to conflict” between Russia and NATO beginning as soon as next month.

Under the scenario laid out by the German military, the Kremlin would begin a mobilisation of 200,000 soldiers in February and launch renewed efforts to capture the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv, which it failed to do so at the outset of the invasion in 2022. This would be followed by a series of cyber attacks and other forms of hybrid warfare waged by Moscow intended to destabilise the Baltic states.

Using the destabilisation and potential clashes in border regions as a pretence, Russia would then — the Gemran planning assumptions state — deploy 50,000 soldiers to western Russia and Belarus by September, with massive troop buildups along the Polish and Lithuanian borders as well as the deployment of medium-range missiles to the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad between Lithuania and Poland to pre-empt an alleged NATO attack.

The German military then predicted that by December, when the United States will likely be in the transition period between presidents — assuming the defeat of President Joe Biden — a border conflict with “riots with numerous deaths” will be artificially sparked by Russia in the Suwałki Gap, a strategically important corridor between Lithuania and Poland that separates Belarus and Russia’s Kaliningrad exclave.

The border crisis would be used as justification for Russia to send soldiers onto NATO territory to seize the Suwałki Gap while the United States will be in a state of flux. In the plans,  the German army predicted that this would ultimately spark a full-scale war between the West and Russia, with hundreds of thousands of troops being mobilised throughout Europe and fighting to break out by the summer of 2025.

Keep reading

German Parliament Accepts Constitutional “Children’s Rights” Petition From Pro-Pedophile Activist Group

The German Bundestag has accepted a petition outlining children’s rights which was drafted by men involved in a pro-pedophilia activist organization. Krumme-13, a lobby group which advocates for lowering the age of consent and legalizing child pornography, announced on its website that a resolution developed by the group’s founder, Dieter Gieseking, had achieved enough votes to be added to the constitution, or Basic Law.

Gieseking’s petition amends Article 6 of the Basic Law to add statements regarding children’s rights, and states that “children should be viewed as legal subjects with their own rights.” It was first submitted to the Bundestag on May 22, 2019, and has been the subject of lengthy review process.

Among the rights listed within the petition’s text is the assertion that children have “the right to have a say in all matters that affect their emotional, mental and physical well-being,” and “the right to the free development of their personality.”

“Sexual self-determination” is included in Article 2 of the Basic Law under the phrase “free development of personality,” a fact that Gieseking made certain to point out to his followers on his website.

As a reference, the petition as well as the German Bundestag both cite the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.

Typically, a petition to amend the national constitution must gather the support of more than 50,000 citizens. However, Gieseking was informed by the Petitions Committee that a decision had been reached on February 14, 2021, to bring the pro-pedophile group’s petition to a vote alongside similar petitions on children’s rights that were being considered.

This grouping of multiple petitions was formally finalized on October 11. Due to the petitions being considered as a bundle, when representatives voted during the October 19 session, neither Gieseking’s name nor the title of his organization, Krumme-13 (K13), appears on the Bundestag website for that day.

Instead, the pro-pedophile group’s demands to add “children’s rights” to the constitution is listed under the numeric code 20/8782, petition 4-19-07-10000-043821.

Keep reading

What Happens Where Free Speech Is Unprotected

C.j. hopkins is one of the very few Americans to follow through on the quadrennial promise, sworn by countless millions, to leave the country because they didn’t like the result of a particular general election.

You probably haven’t heard of C. J. Hopkins. A playwright, satirist, and self-described “old lefty,” Hopkins, who is now 62, was working in New York’s downtown experimental-theater scene in the early years of the 21st century when he began to “grow sick of the atmosphere” during the run-up to the Iraq War. “I helped organize those big protests before the invasion,” Hopkins told me, and “was active a little bit in the anti-globalization stuff, the anarchists.” Serendipitously, around that time, one of his plays took off in Europe, and in the summer of 2004, he packed his bags for Berlin, thus sparing himself the agony of witnessing George W. Bush’s reelection up close.

Having fled his native country for Germany nearly 20 years ago because of what he describes as America’s “really oppressive” climate of opinion, Hopkins now has reason to reconsider the wisdom of that decision. Facing criminal charges for a tweet, he is getting a taste of his adopted country’s limited tolerance for free expression.

Keep reading

Eisenhower’s Dirty WWII Secret

A vast field is filled as far as the eye can see with miserable and gaunt men in remnants of military uniform. It’s May 1945 and the war in Europe has ended. By rights, these surrendered soldiers will be allowed to return to their families, but many will not leave this muddy ground alive. There is no food, no shelter, and no medicine. The Rheinwiesenlager (Rhine meadow camps) were the killing fields of one of the worst war crimes in modern history, committed by General Dwight Eisenhower and the US Army.

The cull of German troops was a closely-guarded secret until four decades after the war, when a Canadian researcher was writing a book on a French resistance hero. James Bacque found that his subject, Raou Laporterie, had been saved by a German soldier, Hans Goertz. In gratitude, in 1946, Laporterie got Goertz out of a French prison camp to work in his chain of drapery stores. Goertz told of mass deaths of inmates through lack of sustenance.

After pursuing leads in the French records, Bacque came to realise that Allied military leaders had ‘committed an appalling crime against humanity’. His investigation culminated in Bacque’s harrowing book Other Losses: The Shocking Truth Behind the Mass Deaths Of Disarmed German Soldiers And Civilians Under General Eisenhower’s Command (1989). The foreword to this expose was written by Ernest Fisher, a retired colonel of the US Army, and war historian noted for his book Cassino to the Alps. Fisher set the scene: –

‘Over most of the western front in April 1945, the thunder of artillery had been replaced by the shuffling of millions of pairs of boots as columns of disarmed German soldiers marched wearily towards Allied barbed wire enclosures. Scattered enemy detachments fired a few volleys before fading into the countryside and eventual capture by Allied soldiers.’

As Fisher explained, German soldiers did everything they could to evade capture by the Russians, who raped and pillaged as they advanced over eastern Germany:

‘The mass surrenders in the west contrasted markedly with the final weeks on the eastern front where surviving Wehrmacht units still fought the advancing Red Army to enable as many of their comrades as possible to evade capture by the Russians. This was the final strategy of the German High Command then under Grand Admiral Doenitz who had been designated Commander-in-Chief by Adolf Hitler.’

But crossing to the Allied side was not the sanctuary that the defeated Germans expected, due to the visceral hatred of Eisenhower. The supreme military commander, of Swedish-Jewish background, had wriiten in a letter to his wife ‘God, I hate the Germans’. In September 1944, in the presence of the British ambassador to Washington, Eisenhower proposed that the entire German general staff, all officers of the Gestapo and all leaders of the Nazi party from mayor upwards should be exterminated (around a hundred thousand men).

Fisher had met Bacque in Washington in 1987 where they uncovered evidence, deeply buried in national archives, of a systematic slaughter. ‘More than five million German soldiers in the American and French zones were crowded into barbed wire cages, many of them literally shoulder to shoulder. The ground beneath them became a quagmire of filth and disease. Open to the weather, lacking even primitive sanitary facilities, underfed, the prisoners soon began dying of starvation.’

Shockingly, more German soldiers died in the camps from April 1945 onwards than died in combat.

Keep reading