Motley Moose – Archive

Twenty-four years later: a look at the city of Berlin, Germany just before reunification, after the jump ….  

(Cross posted by author from the Daily Kos)

(Written by an American expat living in the European Union)

German magazine Der Spiegel reports,”Nine months after the NSA affair, the German government is steering towards a serious confrontation with the US”

In the wake of the Snowden affair, whistler blower Edward Snowden revealed that Angela Merkel’s telephone had been spied on by the NSA. Please let’s understand according to Forbes magazine Angela Merkel as the Chancellor of Germany which has become the richest and most powerful country in the European Union (the number 2 exporting nation in the world) has according to Forbes magazine rated Angela Merkel as the most powerful woman in the world. So as you can well imagine, to reiterate the Snowden revelation that Angela Merkel’s phone had allegedly been spied on by the NSA sent shock waves through the capitals of the great social democracies of Western Europe and sent shock waves through the German capital, that if the chancellor’s private cell phone had been illegally wiretapped, then no one was safe from an illegal alleged NSA wiretap. The very real anger and humiliation this produced throughout the European Union, which as a population of 500 million people is larger than the population of the US, and whose economy is likewise larger than the US and of course the Euro rivals the US dollar in power. So it is that Europe has taken a very dim view of the NSA alleged spying matter on millions of its citizens, to include the head of the European Union’s most powerful country, German chancellor Angela Merkel.

So it is that in the recently published Spiegel article which this diary attempts to review, we see that Germany appears to be on the road to declaring a defacto sort of counter-espionage war against the United States on German soil. This turn of events has alarmed diplomats, scholars and statesmen/statespersons around the world. As such I invite you to give a very careful reading of the review of the Spiegel article whereupon I invite you to read in full for yourself the Spiegel article being reviewed entitled “Striking Back: Germany Considers Counterespionage Against US”.

“Unsatisfied with the lack of answers provided by Washington in the NSA spying scandal, officials in Berlin are considering a new approach. Germany might begin counterespionage measures aimed at allies.”…….”In other words: Germany intends to defend itself against all spying efforts in the future,”.…”While the minister’s words may have sounded innocuous, they marked nothing less than the start of a political about-face. Away from the public eye, the German government is moving toward implementing plans to turn its own spies against partner countries like the United States, putting allies on the same level as the Chinese, Russians and North Koreans”.

To reiterate, diplomats, scholars and Statespersons the world over are alarmed and indeed dismayed at this turn of events. Whereupon we should ask how did it ever come to this and why has this been allowed to happen? Whereupon this diary asks you to write to your member of Congress today to ask them these very questions so as to provide their leadership for a diplomatic solution before matters in this sad, retrograde state of affairs are allowed to progress any further.

“When whistleblower Edward Snowden first went public with his revelations about the NSA’s efforts to spy on Europe and other parts of the world. In response to the allegations surrounding the documents he leaked,…..after months of waiting, no satisfactory answers have been provided”.

Aren’t we as American voters legitimately allowed to ask our members of Congress why it is that the NSA to date has not provided the German government and other allied governments with the answers that they reasonably seek in the matter of the whistler blower Edward Snowden’s disclosure. Shouldn’t we be allowed to ask our members of Congress this question before the US is dragged into an expensive counterespionage new Cold War. Shouldn’t we as American voters hold our members of Congress responsible for providing the public with this information in a transparent democracy, wherein government is held accountable to the people who have voted them into office.

Humiliating Revelations from the Wild West!

“The stubbornness of the Americans, who have answered few relevant questions from Germany during the National Security Agency spying scandal…Now, pressure is growing for Germany to find its own answers to the questions Washington has been ignoring.”………..  “They’re like cowboys who only understand the language of the

Wild West,” sources in Merkel’s party say, referring to the Americans’ intractability. Two government agencies are at the center of the strategy to restore respect that has been lost over months of humiliating revelations that the US has been spying on Germany: the Office for the Protection” of the Constitution and the Federal Prosecutor’s Office.”

Honestly as American voters, shouldn’t we be alarmed at the NSA’s conduct in humiliating our allies into declaring a counterespionage war against the United States, but more to the point shouldn’t we as American voters be allowed to ask our members of Congress, whose taxes do they intend to raise in order to pay for the NSA’s declared new cold espionage war. Or perhaps we should hold a national referendum asking for tax payers to volunteer to pay for this latest NSA undertaking produced in our name.

In America today, we have 59 million people who don’t have medical insurance, 133 million people who don’t have dental insurance, over 45 million people who are on food stamps, 60 million Americans get no paid sick leave. The United States is the only major industrialized nation in the world that by law doesn’t provide job protected paid maternity leave by right of law. As such, please excuse us for asking just who the hell is going to pay for the NSA’s self-declared new counterespionage cold war? And exactly whose taxes do you intend to raise (and whose benefits do you intend to cut) in order to pay for it, now that the Europeans have been humiliated into defending themselves, their people and their leaders through counterespionage defensive measures. Because in the mind of this reviewer, this Spiegel article seems to be telling us along with other European press sources that the Europeans have undertaken exhaustive diplomatic measures to resolve the matter and the US government has simply ignored them. Aren’t these questions something that we should reasonably ask our members of Congress who we voted into office?

Diplomats Leave Washington Empty-Handed

“A number of high-level German delegations have traveled to Washington on fact-finding missions, but they have also returned empty-handed for the most part”. ……….”And no progress whatsoever has been made on a “no-spy agreement.”Last week, US President Barack Obama himself rejected any form of a “no-spy agreement”. “There’s no country where we have a no-spy agreement,” Obama said in a press conference during a visit by French President François Hollande.The French leader, who had expressed similar wishes to those of the Germany, was forced to travel back to Paris empty-handed”.

I must say having voted for President Obama twice, I really find his statement in this regard to be a real disappointment as it relates to an unwillingness for a diplomatic solution in the matter.

Teaching the US a Lesson

“The changes mean that, nine months after the NSA affair, the German government is steering towards a serious confrontation with the US. …… “Increased monitoring of allies could trigger unforeseen consequences and potentially cause damage to existing intelligence partnerships”.

The trading relationship that we have established with the European Union is vital to the American economy, vital to a strong American dollar, vital to the future of America’s children. I therefore ask and urge you today to take the time to write to and call your member of Congress on this important issue. To stand up and be counted and tell them how you feel and most importantly ask them exactly how much they intend to raise your taxes to pay for a counter intelligence espionage cold war that will only benefit NSA bureaucrats and contractors.

PS: I’d like to invite you to another diary that maybe of interest to you. Thank you for your support of progressive issues.

Switzerland far right party of hate declares war on European immigration

http://www.dailykos.com/story/…

The scene was portrayed in War & Remembrance and again in Mr. Cruise’s  Valkyrie.

Here is the real man from this story, who escaped with his life.  The last survivor has died in Munich.

Ewald-Heinrich von Kleist, who volunteered to assassinate Hitler with suicide bomb, dies at 90

Despite his family’s opposition to the Nazis, younger von Kleist joined the German army in 1940, and was wounded in 1943 in fighting on the Eastern Front.

During his convalescence, he was approached in January 1944 by Col. Claus von Stauffenberg, another officer from an aristocratic family, and presented with a plan to kill Hitler. Von Kleist had been chosen as the officer to model a new uniform for Hitler, and von Stauffenberg proposed that he wear a suicide vest underneath, and detonate it when he stood next to the dictator.

Years later von Kleist remembered explaining the suicide plot to his father, who paused only briefly before telling his 22-year-old son: “Yes, you have to do this.”

Raise a toast of your choice to the bravery.  

And remember, Hitler was Hitler.  Don’t make Mike Godwin make another meme.  

cross-posted in orange.

Having recently arrived on your welcoming purple shores, I’ve been thinking about immigration. It’s a subject that amazes and perplexes me, and one that our witless politicians are finally beginning to grapple with, but for all the wrong reasons. They see what all the rest of us have seen for years: the US is no country for old [white] men.  While our politicians were busy re-fighting the battles of the past, millions of folks in search of opportunity have quietly entered the country and begun living, working, and studying along with the rest of us.

It’s an enormously complex and interesting challenge. As usual, the politicians approach it primarily from the perspective of near-term personal advancement. They can’t win without the Hispanic vote, gosh darn it all to heck. Guess it’s time to do something, they sigh. Just have to be careful not to scare away the old white guys, so we’ll be sure to include a big fence with concertina wire and armed guards. Plus our contractor friends will get some good work out of it.

Me? I’m not a politician, thank [insert name of deity here]. I’m just the daughter of an immigrant mom, trying to connect the dots in hopes that I can figure out what’s happened so far, and what might come next. So please pull up a chair, and let’s try to sort this out together.  Maybe we can make some sense of all this.

A World War I veteran in the medical corps and prominent neurosurgeon in Berlin, my grandfather left Nazi Germany in 1938, arriving in the US. He learned English, and obtained a position as a university lecturer (for a salary of $500 per year) while studying to re-take all of his medical boards in every field of medicine, not just his specialties of neurology and psychiatry (in English, of course), before being allowed to practice medicine. Then, in order to become a naturalized citizen, he had to leave the US and re-enter. He took a bus from Boston to Miami, traveled to Cuba by boat, then back into the US. Only then could he send for my mother and grandmother to join him.

Back in Germany, my mother and grandmother packed up their belongings under the watchful eye of the Gestapo, who required that every item taken out of the country be inventoried. Under ordinary circumstances, this would be an irritating and time-consuming hassle.

Heightening the danger in this case was the fact that my grandmother was smuggling out hundreds of black-listed books by authors that had been critical of the Third Reich.

Picture: The Conte di Savoia – Gateway to America for My Mother and Grandmother