Farewell, Rule of Law, Hello Tyranny

As the Americanisation of Europe Progresses, What Passes For 'Politics' O'er, Ever More Here Resembles Hofstadter's 'Paranoid Style'

Another day, another nail in the rule of law’s coffin that shows you, me, and everyone else who still cares the advanced decay of the institutional set-up of Western civilisation.

Today, we’ll look yet again at Germany, which is currently bedevilled by its own Lawfare scandal involving a cast of actors—Nancy Faeser, Federal Minister of the Interior, the Bundesverfassungsschutz (Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, Germany’s domestic political ‘police’), and one Jan Böhmermann, a highly-paid late night anchor (Germany’s equivalent to, say, Jimmy Kimmel or Stephen Colbert).

What, you might ask, unites these characters? Well, the best summary I found so far is by alt-media outlet NIUS, and I’ll let them take it from here. As always the below piece comes to you in my translation and with my emphases; bottom lines mine.

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Surveillance Affair: Faeser’s State Secretary [Deputy Minister] Called Böhmermann

By Joelle Rautenberg, NIUS, 7 Sept. 2023 [source]

It is an outrageous suspicion: Did Nancy Faeser’s Ministry of the Interior and [state broadcaster] ZDF satirist Jan Böhmermann actually exchange explosive information that led to top civil servant, Arne Schönbohm, having to go?

As a reminder: almost a year ago, on 7 Oct. 2022, a video of the ZDF ‘Magazin Royale’ went online. In it, its frontman Jan Böhmermann made serious accusations against the then BSI President and Cybersecurity Chief, Arne Schönbohm [BSI = Bundesamt für Sicherheit in der Informationstechnik, or Federal Office for Information Security, the country’s agency in charge of IT ‘solutions’ for the gov’t]: the top official was said to have connections to Russian cybersecurity companies, hence he is no longer tenable. [Hello, General Flynn!]

The Schönbohm case then evolved into the Faeser case. [Minister of the Interior] Faeser unceremoniously relieved Schönbohm of his duties and expressly distanced herself, although Schönbohm asks her for support against the ‘unfounded accusations’. The official is transferred, one could also say: dropped like a hot potato.

Now it turns out that state secretaries from Faeser’s Ministry of the Interior may have been involved in the programme!

Juliane Seifert, State Secretary in the Ministry of the Interior [in German Europe, a state secretary is the equivalent of a deputy minister], had talks with Böhmermann in the run-up to the broadcast of the ZDF ‘Magazin Royale’ show. This is according to the federal government’s answer to a small enquiry [parliamentary enquiry that the gov’t must answer] by the AfD on 19 October 2022, which NIUS has seen.

The talks between State Secretary Seifert and Böhmermann are said to have taken place on 6 April 2022 and 23 May 2022, i.e., only a few months before the broadcast of the programme concerning Schönbohm.

These are said to have been telephone calls and video conversations. The conversations allegedly dealt with the ominous project ‘Hate on the Net’, which is funded by the Federal Ministry for Family Affairs. No concrete details were given. When asked by NIUS, the Federal Ministry of the Interior did not want to comment.

But the version raises questions: at the time of the conversations [with Böhmermann], Seifert was no longer employed at the Ministry of Family Affairs at all. When she spoke with Böhmermann, she was already a staff member at the Interior Ministry—and thus had access to relevant information, incl. concerning Schönbohm. To date, the Ministry of the Interior has not provided minutes of these conversations.

Seifert had an official SPD career before working for the Ministry of the Interior and the Ministry of Family Affairs: she has been head of department, managing director of the party [Bundesgeschäftsführerin], advisor, head of an MP’s office, and employee of the Friedrich Ebert Foundation [the SPD Party Foundation, a taxpayer-funded ‘think tank’]. She comes from Rhineland-Palatinate and has known Faeser for years.

Questionable Connections

The meetings between Seifert and Böhmermann in the context of the project already cited are not the only connections that seem questionable: Sylvia Macco, known as rapper Cora E. from Heidelberg (‘Schlüsselkind’), is also said to have worked (with) the editorial team of the ZDF ‘Magazin Royale’. Interesting: Macco worked on several songs with the music producer Bastian Fleig, who in turn is Nancy Faeser’s office manager.

Special Session in the Bundestag’s Interior Committee: Faeser Absent

Most recently, Faeser was conspicuously absent from the special session of the Interior Committee and the Parlamentarisches Kontrollgremium (PKGr, the Bundestag’s select committee on intelligence). The CDU/CSU had requested the special session because they demanded an explanation from the interior minister on the Schönbohm scandal. Faeser cancelled her appearance twice within a few days.

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Bottom Lines

And here, in a nutshell, we can see the advanced decay of the body politic: even if Ms. Faeser’s conduct would eventually reveal no abuse of power (although that appears quite unlikely), her ‘best before’ date has obviously lapsed a while ago.

Conflicts of interest, her repeat statements insinuating her desire to do away with the notion of in dubio pro reo (innocent until proven guilty), which is one of the tenets of the rule of law, and her refusal to explain herself to parliament shows clearly:

If you think that Central Europe’s big player Germany is abiding by its own laws, I’d have a wonderful project to sell to you: a tunnel for holiday cruise ships (which is, sadly, not a joke: see here).

The day after the above piece appeared, Ms. Faeser eventually made it to the Bundestag. Speaking about next year’s budget, she was asked by CDU/CSU opposition MPs, and balked (courtesy of Die Welt, 8 Sept. 2023, translation and emphases mine):

Federal Interior Minister Nancy Faeser (SPD) has defended herself against accusations by the CDU/CSU in the Schönbohm case. ‘Stick to the facts’, Faeser said on Thursday during the debate on her department’s budget in the Bundestag plenary. ‘Leave it to the CDU in Hesse to campaign.’ She accused CDU/CSU MPs of doing everything they could ‘to throw mud at me’ because of the upcoming Hessian state elections…

In the Bundestag, Faeser firmly rejected [the above-related] accusations, adding that no intelligence information had been used against Schönbohm. ‘This allegation is complete nonsense’, she said in the direction of the CDU/CSU parliamentary group. Cybersecurity was important to her, Faeser said, referring to the BSI. She had strengthened the Federal Office ‘in view of the current threat’ and would continue to do so. ‘To do this, a reshuffle at the top was necessary’…

CDU MP Christoph de Vries took the floor…and accused Faeser of ‘gross disrespect [Missachtung] of Parliament’ for her failure to appear in the Interior Committee…What had happened with Schönbohm was ‘not only politically motivated but also personally highly indecent’.

De Vries accused Faeser of wanting to initiate a request for information against Schönbohm by the Office for the Protection of the Constitution. ‘From our point of view, this is an instrumentalisation of the Office for the Protection of the Constitution that is unprecedented.’

Alexander Throm, the spokesperson on domestic policy of the CDU/CSU parliamentary group, also criticised the minister’s absence. There is a ‘serious suspicion’ that the Office for the Protection of the Constitution has been instrumentalised in order to justify a wrong decision afterwards, Throm said in the budget debate.

None of these shenanigans are ‘news’ to Americans, though, as the case of the General Flynn, a highly decorated defence/intelligence officer tapped by President-elect Trump shows. Label some accusations of indecency, call this person a ‘threat’ without ever bothering to provide anything like, say, evidence—not even in closed (!) committee meetings—and call anyone who points this out a bad person. The MO of someone who has something to hide, if you’d ask me.

Oh, lest I forget, eugyppius already wrote about it, the new building regulations, although water down to such a degree, have passed the Bundestag. Chancellor Scholz, deeply corrupt (I think) and at the heart of a massive tax fraud scandal known as “cum ex” while he was serving as State Finance Minister in Hamburg, cannot “recall anything” when asked, the Interior Minister allegedly abuses her oversight capacity over the intelligence community but refuses to answer parliament, and the Economics Minister destroys Germany’s businesses and bankrupts home-owners.

It becomes ever harder to escape Cardinal-Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò’s conclusions (Viganò was Papal Nuntio—Ambassador—to the US from 2010-16) as reported by Lifesitenews.com (my emphases) who ‘painted a link between globalism and satanism, arguing that they are almost synonymous: “The essence of globalism is satanic, and the essence of satanism is globalist.”’

Viganò held:

For Satan’s plan is to establish the reign of the Antichrist, giving him a way to parody the earthly life of Christ, imitate His miracles with grotesque wonders, drag the crowds not with the simplicity of Truth but with deception and lies. 

Globalism constitutes, so to speak, the stage set-up, the script and the screenplay that must prepare humanity for the political rise of the Antichrist, to whom the rulers of the world-his servants-will surrender national sovereignties so that he will become a kind of world tyrant.

Up is down, digital surveillance is freedom, and constitutions contain abuses of power.

The Upside-Down is here:

Welcome to the Upside-Down

I find it ever more troubling not to agree with Viganò on his millennarian conclusions. More from Cardinal-Archbishop Viganò is here.

As does Paul Craig Roberts, former deputy Secretary of the Treasury during the Reagan years, who held (my emphasis):

One doesn’t have to be religious, as Archbishop Vigano is, to see how completely the Western World today reflects the description in the Book of Revelation. Power has been transferred from the people to authorities throughout society and countries. Sexual perversity is being normalized. Normality is being mocked. Truth ridiculed as misinformation. Hatred encouraged among races. The rule of law turned from a shield of the people into a weapon against them. War is liberation and building democracy. Integrity, honor, justice are extinguished. Wantonness encouraged. Evil acts and thoughts are everywhere to be found.

Act accordingly and be prepared to stand your ground; the time has come to choose.