Infinite Unknown

Source: STaSi USA… by William Banzai

- Germany Demands Obama Explain “American-Style Stasi Methods” (ZeroHedge, June 11, 2013):

When even Zee Germans are staring open-mouthed at what they call “American-style Stasi methods” you know things have got a little out of hand. As Reuters reports, German outrage over a U.S. Internet spying program has broken out ahead of a visit by Barack Obama, with ministers demanding the president provide a full explanation when he lands in Berlin next week and one official likening the tactics to those of the East German Stasi. “The more a society monitors, controls and observes its citizens, the less free it is,” Merkel’s Justice Minister exclaimed, adding, “the suspicion of excessive surveillance of communication is so alarming that it cannot be ignored.” While Obama has defended it as a “modest encroachment” on privacy and reassured Americans that no one is listening to their phone calls, the Germans reflect “I thought this era had ended when the DDR fell.” Via Reuters,

…

German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s spokesman has said she will raise the issue with Obama in talks next Wednesday, potentially casting a cloud over a visit that was designed to celebrate U.S.-German ties on the 50th anniversary John F. Kennedy’s famous “Ich bin ein Berliner” speech.

Government surveillance is an extremely sensitive topic in Germany, where memories of the dreaded Stasi secret police and its extensive network of informants are still fresh in the minds of many citizens. Continue reading »

Tags: Angela Merkel, Barack Obama, Big Brother, Dictatorship, Germany, Global News, Government, Internet, New World Order, Obama administration, Politics, Stasi, Surveillance, U.S.

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Nigel Farage spoke at the Sovereign Man: Offshore Tactics Workshop in Santiago, Chile, on March 30 – April 1, 2013.

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- Nigel Farage: Eurocrats’ Cyprus Cash Grab A Template For Future Stealing – Get Your Money Out Of The Eurozone! (Video)

- Nigel Farage – EU Parliament, April 17, 2013: ‘You Are Common Criminals’ (Video)

Tags: Angela Merkel, Banking, Collapse, Economy, EU, Europe, Germany, Global News, Government, Italy, Nigel Farage, Politics

- 19% Of Germans Say They Would Vote For Anti-Euro Party (ZeroHedge, April 22, 2013):

In what may come as a shock to an otherwise quiet Germany, which has hardly seen any of the vocal (and actionable) “Euroskepticism” prevalent among its smaller peripheral neighbors, Handeslbslatt reports that a whopping 19% of Germans have said they would vote the anti-euro party Alternative for Germany (AFD). This means Bernd Lucke’s party, which appeared as if out of nowhere, has succeeded in taking Germany by storm, and is likely that his success and prominence will merely convert even more people on the fence about Europe’s future to those demanding a Deutsche Mark return. And while the AFD has yet to pose a direct threat to Merkel’s ruling CDU coalition which has 36.7% of the vote five months ahead of elections, recall that everyone ignored Beppe Grillo as a mere sideshow weeks before his blistering performance to nearly win the Italian election in February.All that would take for another surge in the Euroskeptic’s popularity is another summer of economic discontent and contraction: precisely the kind that is shaping up for Europe for the fifth year in a row.

From Handelsblatt, Google translated:

Continue reading »

Tags: Angela Merkel, Deutsche Mark, Economy, EU, Euro, Europe, Germany, Global News, Government, Politics

- Merkel says euro members must be prepared to cede sovereignty (Reuters, April, 22, 2013):

German Chancellor Angela Merkel said on Monday that euro zone members must be prepared to cede control over certain policy domains to European institutions if the bloc is truly to overcome its debt crisis and win back foreign investors.

Speaking at an event hosted by Deutsche Bank in Berlin alongside Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk, Merkel also defended her approach to the crisis against critics who argue she has put too much emphasis on austerity, saying Europe must find a way to deliver both growth and solid finances.

The comments came two months before European leaders are due to gather in Brussels to discuss moving towards a so-called “fiscal union”.

Continue reading »

Tags: Angela Merkel, Economy, EU, Germany, Global News, Government, Politics

Other Bilderberg members are Helmut Schmidt, Gerhard Schröder, Angela Merkel and Peer Steinbrück.

Get the picture Germany?

Your leaders are selected, not elected.

Just like in the US.

- George Carlin: The American Dream:

Helmut Kohl, Germany’s former chancellor, has admitted that he acted like a “dictator” to bring in the single currency to the country, otherwise he “would have lost” had he held a referendum.

“We would have lost a referendum on the introduction of the euro,” said former German Chancellor Helmut Kohl

- Helmut Kohl: I acted like a dictator to bring in the euro (Telegraph, April 9, 2013):

In an interview conducted for a journalist’s PhD thesis, Germany’s longest-serving postwar chancellor said that he would have lost any popular vote on the euro by an overwhelming majority.

“I knew that I could never win a referendum in Germany,” he said. “We would have lost a referendum on the introduction of the euro. That’s quite clear. I would have lost and by seven to three.”

The interview was conducted by Jens Peter Paul, a German journalist in 2002, the year when the Deutsche Mark was replaced by euro notes and coins, but has only been published now.

In it, Mr Kohl describes adopting the euro as an emblem of the European project, which he said had prevented war on the continent. Born in 1930, Mr Kohl’s politics were shaped by his country’s history in the 1930s and 1940s; his final years in power were focused on promoting European unity.

In the interview, he said: “If a Chancellor is trying to push something through, he must be a man of power. And if he’s smart, he knows when the time is ripe. In one case – the euro – I was like a dictator … The euro is a synonym for Europe. Europe, for the first time, has no more war.”

Mr Kohl justified overcoming the German public’s reluctance to relinquish the Deutsche Mark by saying that democratic politics had to be based on convictions rather than the ebb and flow of elections.

Continue reading »

Tags: Angela Merkel, Dictatorship, Economy, EU, Euro, Europe, Gerhard Schröder, Germany, Global News, Government, Helmut Kohl, Helmut Schmidt, New World Order, Peer Steinbrück, Politics

- El Pais Retracts Article Alleging “Merkel, Like Hitler, Has Declared War On Europe” (ZeroHedge, March 24, 2013):

What does it take for the Spanish “first amendment” journalistic override to kick in? Apparently, in the case of local media leader El Pais, putting up the following in print: “Merkel, como Hitler, ha declarado la guerra al resto del continente, ahora para garantizarse su espacio vital económico.” For the Spanish-challeneged this translates as follows: “Merkel, like Hitler, has declared war on the rest of the continent now to secure their economic living space.” Ah yes, the touchy verboten topic of German “Lebensraum” – its invocation, and ostensibly the unflattering Merkel comparison (seen so often in Greece) were enough to get the article by Juan Torres López in the Andalusia version of El Pais titled simply enough “Alemania contra Europa” taken down.Is it perhaps because unlike in Greece, where articles like that are a daily occurrence, Spaniards still have something to lose should they also lose the good graces of the German chancellor? Something that is more than one Spiderman towel per depositor in the nation’s just as insolvent banking system, where apparently unlike in Cyprus, the ESM actually does work to preserve liquidity and stability?…

A cached version of the article:

In its place one only now sees the following: Continue reading »

Tags: Angela Merkel, Dictatorship, El Pais, EU, Europe, Fascism, First Amendment, Germany, Global News, Government, Journalism, New World Order, Politics, Society, Spain

- Furious Merkel: “Cyprus’ Decision To Test Europe Is Unacceptable” (ZeroHedge, March 22, 2013):

Europe’s paymaster – that would be Germany for those who have not paid attention to events over the past four years – is not used to being snubbed. It certainly is not used to being snubbed by what every empty chatterbox and their kitchen sink will tell you is a “small and irrelevant” country (all the more so in the aftermath of last summer’s embarrassing defeat in its head on confrontation with the ECB, in which the Bundesbank showed that sometimes the best offense is a gracious retreat). It most certainly is not used to not being invited to discussions involving the future of its precious mercantilist European union, especially when said union may no longer exist as we know it in 48 short hours. And Germany is angry.

From Bloomberg:

As Russia spurned the island nation’s bid for a loan, Merkel told a closed-door meeting of legislators in Berlin today that she’s annoyed the Cypriot government hasn’t been in touch with the so-called troika of international creditors for days, according to a party official who spoke on condition of anonymity because the briefing was private. Cyprus’s decision to test Europe is unacceptable, she told them.

“We’re not ready to accept solutions that are full of wind,” Michael Fuchs, deputy parliamentary leader of Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union, said after the meeting. “I don’t think it’s appropriate to play poker in this matter, especially when you think that there’s a risk that two banks will become insolvent next Monday.”

In other words, how dare the pesky Cypriots think a “union” is comprised of equal “units”, instead of being a despotic tyrrany in which the adjusted version of the golden rule (perhaps explaining why the Buba is pulling all its French and a lot of its NY Fed gold) applies.

Germany will have none of that nonsense. Continue reading »

Tags: Angela Merkel, Banking, Cyprus, Economy, EU, Europe, Germany, Global News, Government, Politics, Society

- Merkel Advisor Feld: “Euro Crisis Will Return Shortly And With A Vengeance” (ZeroHedge, Feb 26, 2013):

For all the groundless, starry-eyed optimism permeating Europe’s bureaucratic corridors of the fading oligarchy these days (because this time is not like every other time that, too, was different), there has always existed one sure, never-fail antidote: Germany, which without fail has managed to ground Europe any time its delusion of grandure hit escape velocity. Sure enough, while all the statist soothsayers who threatened with armageddon if the outcome of the Italian elections happened to be precisely the one that transpired, were stuck in backpedal mode, and scrambling to calm nerves that all shall be well after all, one person who refuses to play by the script is Lars Feld, member of panel of economic advisers to German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who in an interview with the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung tomorrow says the euro crisis is to return shortly and “with a vengeance” as capital loss will lead to higher risk premiums for Italy’s interest rates.

From Handelsblatt, previewing the FAZ Wednesday edition:

The Italian economy would not find their way out of the recession, according to the pessimistic assessment by Lars Feld: “The sustainability of Italian public finances is in jeopardy. The euro crisis will therefore return shortly with a vengeance.”

Continue reading »

Tags: Angela Merkel, Economy, EU, Euro, Europe, Germany, Global News, Government, Italy, Mario Monti, Politics

Prescription aimed at rescuing the single currency is one that other member nations may find hard to swallow

- Merkel calls for eurozone countries to surrender key tax-and-spend powers (Guardian, Nov 7, 2012):

Angela Merkel has called for the surrender of key national powers over tax-and-spend policies to Brussels by the 17 countries in the eurozone within three years in order to rescue and shore up the embattled single currency.

In a rare landmark policy speech on Wednesday to the European parliament in Brussels, the German chancellor voiced Berlin’s absolute determination to stand by the euro and to strengthen the EU through greater integration of policymaking. But her commitment came with a price tag that many others in the eurozone may find hard to swallow.

Merkel called for a major centralisation in Brussels of sovereign national powers in sensitive areas of fiscal, budgetary and economic policies, arguing that action already taken during three years of euro crisis had only left the job half-done. “Stronger economic policy co-ordination will also perhaps be needed in areas that affect the core of national sovereignty. I’m thinking of sensitive policy areas such as labour market and tax policy,” the chancellor said. “We need solutions creating a sensible balance between the necessary new intervention rights at the European level and the scope for action of the member states and their parliaments. The European institutions must be strengthened to allow them to correct mistakes and breaches of the rules effectively.”

She added that eurozone governments should strike “binding and feasible reform contracts” with the European commission, which then could be partly financed from a new eurozone budget.

Continue reading »

Tags: Angela Merkel, Dictatorship, EU, Europe, Fascism, Germany, Global News, Government, New World Order, Politics

- 21 Signs That The Global Economic Crisis Is About To Go To A Whole New Level (Economic Collapse, Oct 14, 2012):

The global debt crisis has reached a dangerous new phase.  Unfortunately, most Americans are not taking notice of it yet because most of the action is taking place overseas, and because U.S. financial markets are riding high.  But just because the global economic crisis is unfolding at the pace of a “slow-motion train wreck” right now does not mean that it isn’t incredibly dangerous.  As I have written about previously, the economic collapse is not going to be a single event.  Yes, there will be days when the Dow drops by more than 500 points.  Yes, there will be days when the reporters on CNBC appear to be hyperventilating.  But mostly there will be days of quiet despair as the global economic system slides even further toward oblivion.  And right now things are clearly getting worse.  Things in Greece are much worse than they were six months ago.  Things in Spain are much worse than they were six months ago.  The same thing could be said for Italy, France, Japan, Argentina and a whole bunch of other nations.  The entire global economy is slowing down, and we are entering a time period that is going to be incredibly painful for everyone.  At the moment, the U.S. is still experiencing a “sugar high” from unprecedented fiscal and monetary stimulus, but when that “sugar high” wears off the hangover will be excruciating.  Reckless borrowing, spending and money printing has bought us a brief period of “economic stability”, but our foolish financial decisions will also make our eventual collapse far worse than it might have been.  So don’t think for a second that the U.S. will somehow escape the coming global economic crisis.  The truth is that before this is all over we will be seen as one of the primary causes of the crisis.

The following are 21 signs that the global economic crisis is about to go to a whole new level…. Continue reading »

Tags: Angela Merkel, Argentina, Banking, Ben Bernanke, Dollar, Economy, EU, Euro, Europe, Fed, Federal Reserve, France, GDP, Germany, Global News, Government, Greece, IMF, JPMorgan, Politics, Quantitative Easing, Recession, Society, Spain, Switzerland, U.S., Unemployment, Wells Fargo