You really do have to spend some time here in Germany...you might be surprised how many US expats are here and they are not the older types....Originally Posted by Azor
I assume that you mean the GRU/KGB and the GRU/SVR, respectively. FSB now handles counter-intelligence and domestic intelligence, albeit it has been involved in Ukraine. Having said that, Moscow considers various parts of Ukraine to be part of Russia, so the FSB would be involved there as opposed to say developing and managing assets in the United States.
The HVA was certainly not above direct assassination or the use of terrorist proxies. Yet in the end, the MfS failed in its primary mission to protect the SED and the DDR. The reunification process was rather lenient on a service whose activities went well beyond espionage, and which deliberately committed murders and terrorist atrocities.
I have heard it argued that the greatest success of the Warsaw Pact intelligence services was to promote anti-nationalism, anti-Christianity, political correctness and multiculturalism in Western Europe, in a bid to sap patriotic sentiment, demoralize the population and thereby undermine the ideologies most resistant to Communist rule. As an example, it was said that Olaf Palme was under such influence. I have not investigated this line of thought, so it may well be wrong.
Given the relatively recent discoveries of Herman Simm, Aleksei Dressen, Shigehiro Hagisaki and Jeffrey DeLisle, I would say that the Russians are still quite capable of turning key NATO insiders. The fact that two of these names are Estonian should put to bed your praise for Estonian intelligence, as it takes more than a few years to recover from such blows; moreover, they are indicative of deeper rot. Incidentally, the former President of Estonia under whose watch these traitors were operating became quite agitated when reminded of them by yours truly.
I have no doubt that the CIA created a dragnet across East-Central Europe in the early 1990s. I would imagine that the CIA and other Western intelligence services have replaced the FSB/GRU/SVR in Ukraine: those parts under Kiev’s control.
Interesting. I think the same checks should be applied to spouses. After fifteen years they can be very different from when they were on honeymoon.Of course, with no-fault divorces and little recognition of prenuptial agreements, CI is difficult…
Germany is by comparison a police state. The fact that the police happen to wear green and are generally friendly is irrelevant. I worry about German liberal democracy, as it is largely an Anglo-American imposition from 1945 to present, irrespective of the failed Liberal Revolutions and the brief interwar experiment.
I am highly suspicious of a society that can turn on a dime in lockstep, as Germany has been wont to do.
1. Germany strangely is now the defender of liberal democracy as the US has claimed it is has been since 1776.....
2. Germany is lowering the voting age to 16..why because they say the younger generation needs a voice in what their futures will look like...AND the US over 50% do not even vote in a presidential election....
3. That country that can turn on a dime when a three set IED exploded on a soccer team bus immediately started a thorough investigation taking it wherever it would go and thoroughly named it the responsibility of the extreme right wanting to blame refugees ie jihadists.....
BUT WAIT. there is a proTrump organized by US Nazi rally held in Berkeley that goes out of control surprise surprise that makes the UK MSM as a proTrump demonstration that was attacked by non Trump supporters...NOT a single word of it being Nazi organized...either in US or UK MSM.....
It is the only EU country that can organize and pull off a Salafist series of raids in 45 locations all over Germany with 500 police behind those raids and no one knew it was coming.....
We telegraph coming TLAM strikes TWO days in advance....and tweet it one hour before the actual strike....
I had two attempted break-ins in my company which were triggered by silent alarms...police were there within minutes and a total of four people were arrested....
NOW try to call any US police force and state there is an impending break-in and see how long it takes for them to respond if they respond at all...
And IT privacy and privacy in general....extremely defended in Germany and many think it is to well defended and hurts the policing...all based on good ole Hitler and the Gestapo.....CCTV....only in critical locations but totally against it due to the same privacy issues.....right to control photos taken of you...a non right in the US...a total right in Germany...do I need to go on.....??
So do not tell me that Germany is somehow a goose stepping non democratic country when what US limited internet privacy rights were signed away recently under Trump and since 9/11 virtually all US private rights no longer really exist...
Remember it was Germany leading the EU that forced the US to "safe harbor personal internet data" when the US wanted access to all European personal internet data under GWOT.....
AND it was Merkel to mentioned it again to Trump when the US wanted to cancel "safe harbor"...she told him...then US internet/IT companies could no longer do business in EU areas....as simple as that...he caved BTW...
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