International • 10:40 • Modified at 10:40 German intelligence: AfD is far-right organization Author : Matthijs Damsteeg Germany's Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution has labeled the political party Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) a "proven far-right organization." A press release from the agency said the evidence had intensified. The party now holds 152 of the 630 seats in the German parliament. The ruling allows authorities to use more powers to investigate the party.
Local branches of the party had previously been labelled as right-wing extremist, but this was not the case for the national party. It had already been designated as a suspect case, but the Verfassungsschutz still conducted extensive investigations into the party.
Read also Trade war unexpectedly puts German service providers in trouble According to the service, violations of human dignity, the rule of law and the principle of democracy were decisive in the judgment. According to German media, the investigation comprises around a thousand pages and is based on current, public information about the party.
Recruiting informants The status means that authorities will have more powers to keep an eye on the AfD. For example, it will now be allowed to recruit informants and intercept communications. The party will not be banned.
Read also Stricter approach to migration and corporate tax gifts: these are the plans of the new German coalition The AfD has always considered the investigation by the service to be politically motivated. The results of the investigation were reportedly postponed to limit the influence on the February elections. The AfD is expected to appeal the decision of the service.
Party ban In Germany, opponents of the party have been talking about a party ban for years. The ruling does not bring such a ban any closer: a ban procedure is different. The parliament, the senate or the government can submit an application to the German Federal Constitutional Court, which will then consider the matter. The last time a member of the Bundestag called for such an application, it came to nothing, there were too few supporters.
"The king is dead, long live the king!"
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[Re: olivant]
#1121555 05/02/2508:07 AM05/02/2508:07 AM
The Barbie Tapes Gestapo executioner Klaus Barbie speaks about 'good old days' in unique audio tapes Rick Hartkamp • May 2, 2025 2:16 PM In the context of eighty years of freedom, journalist Foeke de Koe delved into the story of Gestapo chief Klaus Barbie. In previously unaired audio recordings, the war criminal speaks freely about deported Jewish children, arrests and executions. "During those hours in the hotel room, the atmosphere of the Third Reich was there again," says De Koe in Goedemorgen Nederland on NPO 1.
Summary In 1979, controversial German journalist Gerd Heidemann made audio recordings of war criminal Barbie, who was enjoying a whiskey with former SS leader Karl Wolff (for many years Heinrich Himmler's right-hand man) in a hotel in the Bolivian capital La Paz. Barbie was completely unaware that a tape recorder was recording their conversations. "In that hotel room, the SS codes were in force again. They addressed each other by their SS rank in a casual setting. Shocking."
Gerd Heidemann De Koe found the tapes in the archive of Heidemann, who died in December 2024. In the 1970s he made a splash as the war reporter for the German weekly Stern , who later became known as the journalist who allegedly found false diaries of Adolf Hitler. "He shouted that he had found the original. That's why he disappeared into prison."
Heidemann's collecting mania resulted in a massive private Nazi archive. "He had the tapes in his possession, but the man was so contaminated that no one went to look in his archive. When I heard about it, I thought: I'm curious to see what he has. Then I came across this audio material."
"He says he kicked the stool away" The audio tapes reveal that Barbie greatly exaggerated his role and that he was only too happy to portray himself as bigger than he was. "Barbie said that he looked up to Wolff enormously, who was his superior. He was only too happy to share all the stories about the war and the occupation. He wanted to show that he was a very tough guy."
Foeke de Koe Journalist “In that hotel room, the SS codes were in effect again. They addressed each other by their SS rank in a casual setting. Shocking.”
Wolff was a person who was close to the center of power, " Hitler's inner circle ," De Koe continues. "Men of this caliber who talk about war crimes, we actually only heard after the war during a tribunal or in a courtroom, often under oath. But here they poured a glass of whiskey, sat back and talked freely about the 'good old days'. They didn't mince their words. That makes the material very special, because it is unfiltered."
Barbie arrived in Amsterdam in May 1940, "where he took the hunt for Jews very seriously". On the tapes, he talks about discipline within the SS during his time in the Netherlands. "He says that at one point he heard that non-commissioned officers had committed looting and rape. He gave the order to hang them himself at his headquarters at six in the morning, in the presence of all colleagues. Barbie says that he was the one who kicked the stool away. It is ruthless and sadistic."
Unique audio tapes The documentary maker says that he found more than a hundred hours of material. "And the conversations of these two pensioners is about fifteen hours of audio." On those tapes, among other things, Barbie can be heard looking back on the raids in Amsterdam following the February strike in 1941. "We first raised all the bridges over the canals, except for one. It was a house-to-house fight. The Jews from above and us from below. They threw porcelain, full chamber pots, everything, but we had hand grenades."
Barbie also looks back on a raid on the Koco ice cream parlor in the Van Woustraat in Amsterdam on February 19, 1941, where he was injured by ammonia gas. He vented his frustration on the Jewish shop owner, Ernst Cahn. "I was hit full on. That made me so angry, so when I saw an ashtray, I grabbed it. I hit him and he flew through the whole shop. There were eleven or twelve Jews there, the staff. We arrested them."
Cahn was a Jewish man who had fled from Germany. "There, members of a Jewish resistance group would sometimes meet. Barbie had heard about it, which is why they decided to raid it," De Koe explains. Cahn was arrested along with others and he was the first resistance fighter to be shot dead on the Waalsdorpervlakte. "Barbie claims on the tapes that he was the one who led the firing squad." The arrests and imprisonment were the reason for the February strike.
As many questions as answers The audio recordings reveal much, but also raise even more questions. Wolff betrayed his SS comrade Barbie by taking journalist Heidemann with him, but why? And what surprised De Koe most is that the most gruesome details are told, but not a word is said about the Holocaust.
After the discovery, De Koe spoke to Cahn's nephews and let them hear what Barbie had to say about their uncle's death. "I thought it would be shocking, but I could tell from the two men that it didn't even affect them much. The story has been going around in the family for eighty years and that doesn't make the suffering any less bad."
Klaus Barbie's audio tapes, his war crimes, his continuation of life in South America under a pseudonym and his eventual conviction at an old age can all be seen in the WNL documentary The Barbie Tapes, on Saturday 3 May at 8:30 PM on NPO 2. The six-part podcast series can be listened to weekly in the podcast apps from Saturday 4 May.
Last edited by Hollander; 05/03/2504:04 PM.
"The king is dead, long live the king!"
Re: General Discussion Random Posts
[Re: olivant]
#1121759 05/04/2506:06 PM05/04/2506:06 PM
Trump said himself he would be the best pope lol. He's not Catholic like JD Vance though. People in the Church are upset they posted the AI picture I find it funny after all DJT is a showbizz man dont take it so seriously.
"The king is dead, long live the king!"
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[Re: olivant]
#1121866 05/05/2511:55 AM05/05/2511:55 AM
The Jewish boxer Leen Sanders (Rotterdam, 1908) was considered, together with Bep van Klaveren, to be one of the greatest Dutch boxing talents of the early 20th century. He had already achieved international fame when he and his family were deported to Auschwitz via Westerbork on 11 January 1943. His wife and two sons, aged eight and ten, were murdered immediately upon arrival. Leen escaped the gas chamber after an SS officer recognised the boxer. On condition that he would compete in boxing matches in the camp, for the entertainment of Nazi leaders, he was put to work in the kitchen. For two years, Leen managed to keep himself alive, as well as many of his fellow prisoners, by stealing food and clothing and distributing them among the most vulnerable. In Leen Sanders: the boxer who saved lives in Auschwitz, Erik Brouwer tells the incredible life story of a true war hero, based on extensive research.
“For some people, no statue was erected, and it was wrong,” wrote resistance fighter Bill Minco shortly after Sanders’ death. Erik Brouwer, author of the new book ‘ Leen Sanders ’, which will be published in April, agrees. “I came across him years ago when I wrote a boxing article for a sports magazine. In an archive, I came across Louis van Sinderen, who, with a group of boxers, picked up pamphlets in the Kralingse Bos that the English dropped. That resistance group also included a certain Leen Sanders, a Jewish boxer. He immediately caught my attention, because you don’t see that very often. I discovered that he survived Auschwitz and saved the lives of fellow prisoners. That story has always stayed with me,” says Brouwer when I meet him in front of the city hall. The English rights to his book have already been sold for publication.
From the city hall we walk through the district where the boxer was born: the notorious Zandstraatbuurt. A shady area full of bars, brothels, criminals, dance halls and prostitutes. Although the impoverished district was demolished in 1912 to make way for the current city hall, among other things, Brouwer brings this exciting district back to life. “I immersed myself in pre-war Rotterdam. Through photos and newspaper articles I came across people like Rie Brusse, a journalist who wrote stories and portraits about the ghetto as it was called. It is a slum where the poorest Rotterdammers lived, mixed with pimps and their 'girls', alcoholics, fighters and in between a Jewish community. That Brusse hung around there with artists like painter Kees van Dongen and poet Koos Speenhoff. Tuschinski had his first cinema here. All the artists came to the Zandstraat, that's where it happened.” \ [img]https://image.trouw.nl/230261359/wi...s-in-de-jaren-dertig-nederlands-kampioen[/img]
Last edited by Hollander; 05/05/2512:45 PM.
"The king is dead, long live the king!"
Re: General Discussion Random Posts
[Re: olivant]
#1121881 05/05/2506:32 PM05/05/2506:32 PM
Filmmakers and Hollywood financiers are baffled, to say the least, by President Trump’s announcement that he wants a 100% tariff on movies produced outside the United States.
Several movie studio and streaming industry executives who spoke with CNN are downright apoplectic because, they believe, the president hasn’t thought about the ramifications of his proposal, which could decimate an iconic industry.
Ahh yeah fuck foreign movies. Proud of my demented president for placing tariffs on those stupid annoying movies that nobody can even relate to. Thank you my beautiful orange president for making yet another coherent decision.
AMERICA FIRST!!!
But you had to play it cool, had to do it your way Had to be a fool, had to throw it all away
Re: General Discussion Random Posts
[Re: Giacalone]
#1121886 05/05/2506:53 PM05/05/2506:53 PM
Ahh yeah fuck foreign movies. Proud of my demented president for placing tariffs on those stupid annoying movies that nobody can even relate to. Thank you my beautiful orange president for making yet another coherent decision.
AMERICA FIRST!!!
LOL, next step get rid of the "Woke films" and bring back cowboy and gangster movies.
"The king is dead, long live the king!"
Re: General Discussion Random Posts
[Re: Hollander]
#1121888 05/05/2506:59 PM05/05/2506:59 PM
Ahh yeah fuck foreign movies. Proud of my demented president for placing tariffs on those stupid annoying movies that nobody can even relate to. Thank you my beautiful orange president for making yet another coherent decision.
AMERICA FIRST!!!
LOL, next step get rid of the "Woke films" and bring back cowboy and gangster movies.
Not all gangster movies. I can definitely see a 300% tariff being placed on movies like American Me and Blood In Blood Out (Or as Trump calls it Blood In Get Out!)
But you had to play it cool, had to do it your way Had to be a fool, had to throw it all away
Re: General Discussion Random Posts
[Re: Giacalone]
#1121889 05/05/2507:04 PM05/05/2507:04 PM
Ahh yeah fuck foreign movies. Proud of my demented president for placing tariffs on those stupid annoying movies that nobody can even relate to. Thank you my beautiful orange president for making yet another coherent decision.
AMERICA FIRST!!!
LOL, next step get rid of the "Woke films" and bring back cowboy and gangster movies.
Not all gangster movies. I can definitely see a 300% tariff being placed on movies like American Me and Blood In Blood Out (Or as Trump calls it Blood In Get Out!)
True or anything with De Niro in it.
"The king is dead, long live the king!"
Re: General Discussion Random Posts
[Re: olivant]
#1121898 05/05/2508:15 PM05/05/2508:15 PM
Closed since 1963 Trump wants to reopen Alcatraz prison: 'This is how it should be'
RTL News US President Donald Trump says he has ordered his administration to rebuild and reopen the notorious Alcatraz prison, CBS News reports. The prison would be reopened to house "America's most ruthless and violent criminals."
"For too long, America has been plagued by vicious, violent criminals and repeat offenders, the dregs of society who never contribute anything but misery and suffering," the president continued . "When we were a more serious nation, we didn't hesitate to lock up the most dangerous criminals and keep them away from anyone they could harm. That's the way it should be."
Foreign prisons Trump’s Truth Social post comes after he has run afoul of courts over his attempt to send accused gang members to a notorious prison in El Salvador without due process . Trump has said he also wants to send U.S. criminal citizens to Salvadoran and other foreign prisons.
The notorious former federal prison is located on an island near San Francisco, California. It previously housed notorious American criminals, including Al Capone. The prison was built to "show the law-abiding public that the federal government was serious about stopping the rampant criminality of the 1920s and 1930s," according to the Federal Bureau of Prisons on its website.
The institution closed in 1963. Today it is one of San Francisco's most popular attractions.
Last edited by Hollander; 05/05/2510:09 PM.
"The king is dead, long live the king!"
Re: General Discussion Random Posts
[Re: olivant]
#1121958 05/06/2505:31 PM05/06/2505:31 PM
Reinstating Alcatraz as a functioning prison would be a logistical nightmare and a financial burden, far outweighing any practical benefits. Not to mention, the place brings in millions annually as a tourist destination.
But you had to play it cool, had to do it your way Had to be a fool, had to throw it all away
Re: General Discussion Random Posts
[Re: olivant]
#1121967 05/06/2506:36 PM05/06/2506:36 PM
Congrats to the Americans he is an Augustinian similar to the Jezuits pretty critical thinking orders within the Church. I heard he speaks English ofcourse but also Spanish French Italian and German.
"The king is dead, long live the king!"
Re: General Discussion Random Posts
[Re: olivant]
#1122131 05/08/2506:38 PM05/08/2506:38 PM
Trump’s new national holiday — a commemoration of the end of World War II in Europe — arrived without warning. In fact, it’s today: Thursday, May 8.
“We won two World Wars, but we never took credit for it — Everyone else does!” Trump wrote. “All over the World, the Allies are celebrating the Victory we had in World War II. The only Country that doesn’t celebrate is the United States of America, and the Victory was only accomplished because of us.”
Nonetheless I think he has a point I visited the cemetery as a youngster very impressive.
"The king is dead, long live the king!"
Re: General Discussion Random Posts
[Re: olivant]
#1122133 05/08/2506:41 PM05/08/2506:41 PM
Haha that's ridiculous. Everyone already knows we saved the world
He wants the same stuff he saw in France and Tomorrow again in Moscow with Putin and Xi. Those parades he feels are a show of power.
That's what an insecure man would want. If you've read a history book or been alive for the last few decades, you already know what we're capable of. We don't need another parade to remind us. We have Memorial Day to honor those who sacrificed everything, Veterans Day to recognize those who served, and countless monuments standing as proof of our strength and resilience. The legacy of American courage is etched in fucking stone, written in history books, and carried in the hearts of those who remember.
Endless parades are for regimes that need to project power because they fear it's slipping away. We don’t need tanks rolling down Main Street like it's Saddam Hussein's fucking birthday. Our strength isn’t measured by displays of force, but by the principles we stand for and the freedoms we protect.
But you had to play it cool, had to do it your way Had to be a fool, had to throw it all away
Re: General Discussion Random Posts
[Re: olivant]
#1122166 05/08/2508:16 PM05/08/2508:16 PM
Too bad Philips is a great Dutch company and nostalgia when it comes to TV and Sound.
Economy • May 8, 20:10 • Modified on May 8, 20:10 Philips prepares for doomsday scenario around trade war and import duties Author : Thijs Baas Philips assumes very negative effects of the trade war and the high import duties from the United States, says reporter Martijn de Rijk. 'Philips thinks that the tariffs will simply come to 20 percent after a ninety-day freeze, and that tariffs of 125 and 145 percent will apply between the US and China.'
\hareholders meeting of Philips today in Amsterdam. From the worst-case scenario, Roy Jakobs comes to a setback of 250 to 300 million euros for this year, says De Rijk. 'That is quite a lot, it means that there is a very real chance that no profit will be made for the fourth year in a row. That really hurts.'
Jakobs does notice the impact of import duties, especially from the US and China. These will affect profit and cash flow, also based on what has been announced at the moment, he said on Tuesday. 'We have taken substantial mitigating measures against this in the form of several hundred million euros. Knowing that it is still a very fluid situation, where what is going to happen in the coming period is especially important. Demand is encouraging, we can hold on to the sales figures.'
Read also Philips expects a blow of at least 250 million euros due to levies
With the mediocre news and the pain of expectations in mind, you would almost expect a revolt and a huge disappointment, but the opposite seems to be true, says De Rijk. 'Gerben Everts of the VEB started his speech today with compliments, and I have certainly heard him say things differently at shareholder meetings. You may ask openness from companies like Philips, who cannot simply lift those trade tariffs on their own.'
Long process in US Although Everts has found a hobbyhorse for this, by means of the 'Nairobi exemption' - which applies to levies on medical equipment, from the corona period. De Rijk: 'He wondered whether that medical equipment could not fall under that. Philips is indeed working on that, but it is a long process to persuade the American government to include it, and moreover it is very complicated, because that equipment is built almost everywhere in the world.'
Read also 'Europe has missed the boat, but great opportunities for research and innovation' Philips still has the ambition to maintain the ESG goals. For example, Philips employees must reflect their customers: of all shapes, sizes and colors you can think of. However, the company will have to adhere to the locally applicable laws worldwide, says De Rijk. 'So quotas, as demanded in some places, will not be possible in the US for a while. Trump has also demanded that companies may not demand that in other places either, but Philips is not responding to that.'
"The king is dead, long live the king!"
Re: General Discussion Random Posts
[Re: olivant]
#1122203 05/08/2510:23 PM05/08/2510:23 PM
Trump Revives Push for Higher Taxes on the Rich The president is said to want to create a new top income bracket for people making more than $2.5 million per year and to tax income above that level at a rate of 39.6 percent.