‘German government sells the privacy of German citizens to the US’
by alethoRT | July 08, 2013
The
recent NSA spying scandal showed the German government behaves towards
US like a puppet regime, involving all major political parties just
before the September elections, German journalist Manuel Ochsenreiter
told RT.
RT: Let’s
just discuss it now with the journalist Manuel Ochsenreiter who is
joining us from Berlin. Mr. Ochsenreiter, to what extent do you think
Germany may have cooperated with the NSA?
Manuel Ochsenreiter:
Well, I think it’s a matter of fact that we know that the German
authorities, the German mainstream politicians, the German government
they all cooperate in a very intense way with US intelligence. I feel a
little bit weird to use the term “cooperation” for this because when we
look exactly at what is going on that they were spying on German
citizens we have to say that the German government behaves towards the
US government in this question more or less like a US puppet regime. No
claim of sovereignty. No claim of independence. Of course, no claim of
privacy, for the right to privacy of their own citizens. So, the German
citizens are not at all protected by their own government. The German
government sells the privacy of German citizens to the US government.
And this is the really, really serious case, it’s a big scandal.
RT: Snowden
claims top politicians were insulated in case of a scandal - yet now
they seem to be outraged. What you are saying is that they might be
doing this because of the public outrage. What's got them more angry
then, if that’s the case that they did not know, or that they did not
know about the scale of the operations that they would too be spied on?
MO:
To be honest I believe that they are angry that it became public, that
now all the facts are open and the citizens can see what’s going on
because I wouldn’t believe any word right now of a government
politician. By the way, I’m also not fond of opposition politicians in
the German parliament. We have to know that the government before the
Merkel government was built by the GPD opposition. And they cooperated
as well with the Americans as today’s government is doing. And when we
listen very well to the words of mainstream politicians in Germany we
hear right now a lot of justifications of this. Yes, let us say
cooperation as they call it. They say it’s for our security, they say
that this is a partnership, that this is a friendship but, of course,
it’s not. It’s pure spying. And we have to watch a little bit back in
the past we had in the 1990s the ECHELON project. It was also a USA spy
project especially on Germany. And this spying project was especially
for economic espionage. The German companies, the German economy was
monitored by the US secret service. So, what we see here is that Germany
is behaving more or less like, well, let me say like a state fully
under control of the US without any independence. And the scandal’s not
that US are doing that. The real scandal’s that the German politicians
are not doing something against it…
‘German politicians should expel the US American military bases’
RT: Snowden
did say that this went beyond agreements between the countries in terms
of what they can share, what they can… in terms of sharing information.
So, how is this affecting the politicians knowing that. They have been
spied on far more than the agreement they had. So, yes, so, we say “yes”
they did know about this. But to the extent that they have been spied
on, I mean, this is going beyond spying on just their own citizens. It
goes it is spying within politicians as well. How are they reacting to
that? Is it going to create tension between the US and its allies now?
Are they not seeing this? Are we just reading too much into something
which is been happening anyway?
MO:
We are knowing a very interesting time Germany because we have in
September the elections. And I think the spying scandal is really really
disturbing the election campaigns of all the mainstream parties because
they all are involved in the scandal. So, what they are doing now is
that they all try to give the impression that on the one side they knew
about so-called cooperation but that they are completely surprised about
how far it went. And to be honest I wouldn’t believe any word because
we had already the experience in the past about how far the US
governments go and how they treat their so-called allies or their
so-called partners. So, if the German politicians… Let me finish with
one sentence. If they are really so upset and so surprised as they act
now then we have to see the consequences. And there are many
consequences we could do with. For example, that the US ambassador is
summoned to the Chancellor and is so criticized that there is diplomatic
protest, that, for example, we make it to initiate that we have until
today US barracks and US army troops on Germans soil. And we know that
those military bases are also used for the NSA projects. So we invite
the Americans to our country or our politicians invite them in our
country to establish their military and intelligence bases there. So, if
the German politicians want to do something it’s very easy to them just
expel the US American military bases. Don’t make Germany any more do
the military aircraft carried out in Europe of the US Americans. It
would be easy but they will not do it, because they believe in this
partnership which is not a partnership.
RT: So,
how does the spying on the EU leaders sit, with the intelligence
community cooperating. I mean, is that a sign that the US doesn’t trust
its allies? Or it’s just keeping a close eye on its allies?
MO:
I think this shows a lot about the attitude that the American
government has towards the allies because we are never talking about the
partnership we are talking about hegemonic politics. They want to be
able to control a partnership or something else. Partnership is when two
countries make an agreement with each other. But what we see here is
that the US have gained control of those countries. I’m not sure that it
will really bring mistrust in the EU bureaucracy because these people
are used to that and I’m not sure if they are really upset about this
because they know about this. But the interesting question is how long
will the population be so tolerant to bear those problems. This is the
interesting question.
RT: Just
one more from you. In terms of destroying itself, I mean, we now have
been focusing a lot on Snowden instead of what he’s actually been
leaking. Do you think we are just kind of missing why politicians in the
EU are trying to cover all of this up, by focusing on him rather then
what actually Snowden keeps on releasing?
MO:
Why? I don’t know. Perhaps, it might be interesting what Snowden has on
his four laptops he took with him and I’m pretty much sure the
information we got until now is not really 100% percent of what he has
with him. I think you know he is in Moscow. Now, I think, the Russians
are very interested in the content and the Germans again (I’m from
Germany) my politicians, my government, they should be really interested
in the content of the full-scale, of these espionage practices if they
really want to know this. But I don’t see that right now. But I think in
the near future we will get may be a lot of surprises how intense the
spying is really.
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