Turmoil in Germany

[onawah]

How a small Chinese company tricked the German state | DW Investigation
DW Planet A
679K subscribers
Dec 10, 2024

"DW uncovered that dozens of Chinese climate projects, certified by the German authorities as carbon credits under the upstream emission reduction scheme, failed to deliver on promises to save millions of tons of carbon emissions. A joint investigation by DW and ZDF reveals how Germany was deceived – and exposes the shadowy company Beijing Karbon behind the alleged fraud."

Read more:

Background information about the carbon credit scheme from the Federal Environment Agency:
https://www.dehst.de/EN/Topics/Climat...

Background on the prosecutor’s investigation (press release):
https://www.berlin.de/generalstaatsan...

Chapters:
00:00 Intro
00:50 Investigating projects in China
03:10 Upstream Emission Reduction (UER): A new scheme in Germany
04:05 Lack of control by the German authorities
07:13 The Chinese company behind the alleged fraud
10:44 The buyers
12:25 Were the auditors complicit?
14:30 The Consequences

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[grapevine]

16 Candidates have died from the beginning of the electoral process
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Statistically impossoible . . .

[Jaak]

1968038825957134543

[Raskolnikov]

this has got to end...
https://images3.memedroid.com/images/UPLOADED567/6914892382c03.webp

[Vicus]

German police raid a libertarian's home for the crime of calling civil servants "parasites," advise him to "Think carefully about what you post in future" - Nov.14.2025

https://www.sott.net/image/s36/736298/super/1_German_police_Paul_Zinken_dp.jpg

A new insane German speech crime investigation just dropped.

On 29 September of this year, a German man of libertarian persuasion known only by the pseudonym Damian N. tweeted the following:

" No, anyone who is financed by the state pays no net taxes; they live off taxes: Every civil servant, every politician, every employee in a state-owned enterprise, everyone who is subsidized and financed by the state. Not a single parasite pays any net taxes."

You can find the tweet here; as I write this, it has a grand total of 402 views and ten likes.

https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!DlYt!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F35651000-dbb1-4c5e-b598-5e393ec4d16e_898x464.png

No matter: Yesterday morning, police acting on behalf of the Ulm public prosecutor’s office raided Damian’s home. He is suspected of the crime of inciting hatred (in violation of Section 130 of the German Criminal Code) for his rough remark about government “parasites.”

Apollo news report:

https://apollo-news.net/ueberlegen-sie-sich-was-sie-in-zukunft-posten-mann-erlebt-durchsuchung-und-radikale-polizeimassnahmen-nach-x-post/

The identification procedures – roughly comparable to a police booking in the United States – were likely illegal in this case. Damian N. further claims that the police produced no search warrant and provided no receipt for his confiscated phone, which would represent a further violation of the law. Before leaving, an officer instructed our suspected speech criminal to “Think carefully about what you post in future,” because “You must realise that you are now under observation.”

This has all the hallmarks of another NGO-driven speech investigation. We have a low-visibility post containing a suggestive vocabulary item (“Parasit”) that was likely uncovered via keyword search, a lazy attempt to find a distantly relevant criminal statute and then maximum police harassment and intimidation because as in all these cases the process is most of the punishment. They really, really like the 6am morning raids, and they also really like to confiscate phones. As the Lower Saxon prosecutor (and “online hate task force” leader) Frank-Michael Laue told American reporters earlier this year, “It’s a kind of punishment if you lose your smartphone, it’s even worse than the fine you have to pay.”

https://www.eugyppius.com/p/german-police-raid-a-libertarians

[Vicus]

The Censorship Industrial Complex's Power Grip in Germany

New liber-net report maps an expansive network of government and private censors across Germany

https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!RsIg!,w_1456,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Ff8f7e207-7bbd-44e9-a34e-35373f0cacbc_679x482.png

Many organizations and federal agencies involved in censoring Americans under the guise of mis/disinformation have shut down in the last couple years. Racket’s Twitter Files exposed the level of censorship slime oozing from organizations such as the Stanford Internet Observatory, the Election Integrity Project, and the Virality Project. On the government side of things, there was the Global Engagement Center, the Foreign Influence Task Force, and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), which still exists but is no longer involved in mis/disnfo work.

That’s not to say Amerika is perfect when it comes to free speech, but as Sen. Rand Paul said in September, “throughout government, the censorship apparatus that Biden had put in place is gone.”

However, if you look to Germany, the strongest economic power in the European Union, it’s easy to see where America was going. It has about 330 organizations working with federal and state levels of government to suppress speech and about 425 grants — mostly from the government — that fund this work, according to research from liber-net, a free speech group that tracks censorship.

The most high-profile cases of German censorship, at least in America, have been raids of people who authorities determined had engaged in “digital violence” for offenses that include insulting someone. These raids were the subject of a high-Zprofile “60 Minutes” segment last February. Prosecutors and police largely depend on a system of government-certified and government-funded “flaggers.”

While these incidents understandably get the most attention, the censorship apparatus is much more deeply ingrained in German society, says Andrew Lowenthal, the CEO of liber-net.

“Germany is the most important country doing this type of content controls work in the entirety of the EU and I would argue has a significant influence on the EU. There’s not really any light between civil society and the government.”

As a result, there’s a constant “atmosphere of intimidation,” says Thomas Geisel, a former mayor of Dusseldorf and now a member of the European Parliament.

“People are afraid to speak their mind. That people always have to find some sort of way of expressing their mind in a politically correct way has created a narrower space for discourse, and I think that is really threatening our democracy.”

Liber-net’s report includes a searchable database of organizations involved in content control and the grants that fund their work, categorized from 1-5 flags, with five being the worst for its censorship advocacy.

continue: https://www.racket.news/p/the-censorship-industrial-complexs

[Vicus]

New Berlin law allows police to install spyware in homes

https://www.sott.net/image/s36/737238/super/1_File_Getty_Images.jpg

Berlin police will be allowed to secretly enter private homes to install spyware, after the German House of Representatives approved sweeping changes to the city's police law.

Backed by the governing CDU-SPD coalition and opposition AfD, the law gives police broad new powers over both physical and digital surveillance.

The new law allows the authorities to secretly enter a suspect's home to install spyware if remote access isn't possible.

Berlin police can now legally conduct physical break-ins for digital surveillance. The updated rules also allow phones and computers to be hacked to monitor communication. Police can also turn on their bodycams inside private homes if they believe someone is in serious danger.

Passed on Thursday, the law also expands surveillance in public areas. The authorities can now collect phone data from everyone in a location, scan license plates, and counter drones. They can use facial and voice recognition to identify people from surveillance images. Real police data can also be used to train AI. Critics say this risks misuse and intrudes on private life.

Interior Senator Iris Spranger of the SPD party has defended the move:

"With the biggest reform of the Berlin Police Law in decades, we are creating a significant plus for the protection of Berliners. We are giving law enforcement better tools to fight terrorism and organized crime."

Berlin has seen a rise in crime. In 2024, police recorded over 539,000 offenses - more than the year before. Violent crimes such as assault and domestic violence also increased. Officials say there is a growing problem with crimes involving young people and migrants, especially in large cities. More than half of all crimes go unsolved.

Opposition to the law has grown since its passage. During the debate, Green Party MP Vasili Franco said the law feels like a wish list for a state with excessive control over its citizens. Civil rights groups call the expanded use of AI and facial recognition "a massive attack on civil liberties."

The NoASOG campaign alliance also strongly criticized the reform, saying: "What is being sold as security policy is in reality the establishment of an authoritarian surveillance state."

https://www.sott.net/article/503384-New-Berlin-law-allows-police-to-install-spyware-in-homes