Germany flamboyantly opposes the death penalty
while the US uses it soil to operate drone assassination program
https://twitter.com/ggreenwald/status/589121677973422081
GERMANY IS THE TELL-TALE HEART OF AMERICA’S DRONE WAR
https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2015/04/17/ramstein/
http://www.911forum.org.uk/board/viewtopic.php?p=169824#169824
BY <https://firstlook.org/theintercept/staff/jeremy-scahill/>JEREMY SCAHILL
<https://twitter.com/@jeremyscahill>@jeremyscahill
FRIDAY AT 5:07 PM
This is a joint investigation with the German
news magazine
<http://www.spiegel.de/politik/deutschland/ramstein-air-base-us-drohneneinsaetze-aus-deutschland-gesteuert-a-1029264.html>Der
Spiegel.
A TOP-SECRET U.S. intelligence
<https://prod01-cdn02.cdn.firstlook.org/wp-uploads/sites/1/2015/04/ramstein-final.pdf>document
obtained by The Interceptconfirms that the
sprawling U.S. military base in Ramstein, Germany
serves as the high-tech heart of America’s drone
program. Ramstein is the site of a satellite
relay station that enables drone operators in the
American Southwest to communicate with their
remote aircraft in Yemen, Somalia, Afghanistan
and other targeted countries. The top-secret
slide deck, dated July 2012, provides the most
detailed blueprint seen to date of the technical
architecture used to conduct strikes with Predator and Reaper drones.
Amid fierce European criticism of America’s
targeted killing program, U.S. and German
government officials have long downplayed
Ramstein’s role in lethal U.S. drone operations
and have issued carefully phrased evasions when
confronted with direct questions about the base.
But the slides show that the facilities at
Ramstein perform an essential function in lethal
drone strikes conducted by the CIA and the U.S.
military in the Middle East, Afghanistan and Africa.
The slides were provided by a source with
knowledge of the U.S. government’s drone program
who declined to be identified because of fears of
retribution. According to the source, Ramstein’s
importance to the U.S. drone war is difficult to
overstate. “Ramstein carries the signal to tell
the drone what to do and it returns the display
of what the drone sees. Without Ramstein, drones
could not function, at least not as they do now,” the source said.
The new evidence places German Chancellor Angela
Merkel in an awkward position given Germany’s
close diplomatic alliance with the United States.
The German government has granted the U.S. the
right to use the property, but only under the
condition that the Americans do nothing there that violates German law.
The U.S. government maintains that its drone
strikes against al Qaeda and its “associated
forces” are legal, even outside of declared war
zones. But German legal officials have suggested
that such operations are only justifiable in
actual war zones. Moreover, Germany has the right
to prosecute “criminal offenses against
international law … even when the offense was
committed abroad and bears no relation to
Germany,” according to Germany’s
<https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0CB4QFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.iuscomp.org%2Fgla%2Fstatutes%2FVoeStGB.pdf&ei=vTQxVbKFEYi7yQTwvoHoBw&usg=AFQjCNE-AwvtiV8L5JMTxo5E5xAvabuocw&sig2=2JCGAMOFAnN2G8Lx6BmFyw>Code
of Crimes against International Law, which passed in 2002.
This means that American personnel stationed at
Ramstein could, in theory, be vulnerable to
German prosecution if they provide drone pilots with data used in attacks.
While the German government has been reluctant to
pursue such prosecutions, it may come under
increasing pressure to do so. “It is simply
murder,” says Björn Schiffbauer of the Institute
for International Law at the University of
Cologne. Legal experts interviewed by
<http://www.spiegel.de/politik/deutschland/ramstein-air-base-us-drohneneinsaetze-aus-deutschland-gesteuert-a-1029264.html>Der
Spiegel claimed that U.S. personnel could be
charged as war criminals by German prosecutors.
<https://prod01-cdn00.cdn.firstlook.org/wp-uploads/sites/1/2015/04/creech-pull.png>
[]
A top-secret slide confirms the central role
Germany plays in the U.S. drone war.
RAMSTEIN IS ONE of the largest U.S. military
bases outside the United States, hosting more
than 16,000 military and civilian personnel. The
relay center at Ramstein, which was completed in
late 2013, sits in the middle of a massive forest
and is adjacent to a baseball diamond used by
students at the Ramstein American High School.
The large compound, made of reinforced concrete
and masonry walls and enclosed in a horseshoe of
trees, has a sloped metal roof. Inside this
building, air force squadrons can coordinate the
signals necessary for a variety of drone
surveillance and strike missions. On two sides of
the building are six massive golf ball-like
fixtures known as satellite relay pads.
In a 2010
<https://www.ndr.de/geheimer_krieg/satcom101.pdf%20>budget
request for the Ramstein satellite station, the
U.S. Air Force asserted that without the
Germany-based facility, the drone program could
face “significant degradation of operational
capability” that could “have a serious impact on
ongoing and future missions.” Predator and Reaper
drones, as well as Global Hawk aircraft, would
“use this site to conduct operations” in Africa
and the Middle East, according to the request. It
stated bluntly that without the use of Ramstein,
drone “weapon strikes cannot be supported.”
“Because of multi-theater-wide operations, the
respective SATCOM Relay Station must be located
at Ramstein Air Base to provide most current
information to the war-fighting commander at any
time demanded,” according to the request. The
relay station, according to that document, would
also be used to support the operations of a
secretive black ops Air Force program known as “Big Safari.”
The classified slide deck maps out an intricate
spider web of facilities across the U.S. and the
globe: from drone command centers on desert
military bases in the U.S. to Ramstein to
outposts in Afghanistan, Djibouti, Qatar and
Bahrain and back to NSA facilities in Washington
and Georgia. What is clear is that most paths
within America’s drone maze run through Ramstein.
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Please consider seriously the reason why these elite institutions are not discussed in the mainstream press despite the immense financial and political power they wield?
There are sick and evil occultists running the Western World. They are power mad lunatics like something from a kids cartoon with their fingers on the nuclear button! Armageddon is closer than you thought. Only God can save our souls from their clutches, at least that's my considered opinion - Tony
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