Several readers including erlehmann and tmk wrote to inform us about the dawning of Internet censorship in Germany under the usual guise of protecting the children. "This week, the two big political parties ruling Germany in a coalition held the final talks on their proposed Internet censorship scheme. DNS queries for sites on a list will be given fake answers that lead to a page with a stop sign. The list itself is maintained by the German federal police (Bundeskriminalamt). A protest movement has formed over the course of the last several months, and over 130K citizens have signed a petition protesting the law. Despite this, and despite criticism from all sides, the two parties sped up the process for the law to be signed on Thursday, June 18, 2009."
We've had that in Denmark for years now. OpenDNS should be the solution to all of your problems...
Do you really think that the government doesn't know about other DNS servers? I assure you there is some sort of plan and reason why they have not asked the ISP's to block or MASQ any request with a destination of 53.
My simple guess is any request with a destination of 53 is logged and then resolved at some later time. A database of people who use these other servers is maintained and flags are included such as "pedophile, hacker, warez, terrorist, etc". This list then is used to help law enforcement and or they will just come and round all of you up one day.
What's going to end up happening is someone is going to have to run a hacked all the hell bind server that takes encrypted requests on port 80 and replies back with your request which will then need to be cached locally so as not to totally hose your browsing. Then the government is going to start banning those server's IP addresses and someone is going to have to make a DNS resolver that runs in a distributed manner. Then the government will do something else, probably make it a huge crime to use any of this stuff and we will all be basically where we are now with copyright infringement which is to say that people don't respect that law and so all law becomes less respected. This is all the same as what happened in the 1930's US Prohibition of booze.
"All of this has happened before, and it will happen again..."
Do you really think that the government doesn't know about other DNS servers?
Yes, after some TV magazine report, I know that they don't think that far. Blocking people from getting there is not the point. Intimidation, and getting the people used to this kind of government, is the real point.
Besides: Who stops you from using another port, and encrypting the data trough a VPN? Hell, my router can do that. Trough a simple web-interface. I don't need to change anything on my pc. It's done in 5 minutes. Now if you offer me an offshore DNS server with a VPN, a good connection, and just the price of keeping it running, you will have a client. (Those free ones are too slow, and the others that you buy are way too expensive, because they want to profit big time from it.)
I smell a nice non-profit business model here. Especially since half the world can be your clients.
As long as they don't go to war against our small island full of servers, and as long as they do still allow data into the net, we can circumvent their censorship. And offer the whole world to do so too, in one click (insert USB stick, run autostart, click OK, done).
I wonder how one could protect those servers better, even in case of attacks? Hey, I know it: Infect the censorship servers *themselves*!:D
Who wants to apply for a well-payed job in this emerging censorship-server-market? If we storm them, all of us will pretty much be moles. Meaning we can perfectly disable the censorship proxies/routers for users with our special client patch.:)
My god, and they thought they could stop *us all*. They can't even stop me alone.
I don't know if you consider the UK a functioning democracy, but recently they rounded up a group of hippies on the grounds that they might be thinking about causing disruption at a power station.
They were then released on bail, the conditions of which were that they weren't allowed to be hippies, weren't allowed to be against power stations, and weren't allowed to talk to anyone who was either a hippy or against power stations. More or less it amounts to house arrest. Without any form of trial or due process.
Note: I don't agree with the aforementioned hippies policy wise. But when they came for the hippies, I didn't speak out...
apt-get install bind9 127.0.0.1 top of resolv.conf
Any slashdot discussion about DNS will imminently fill up with hundreds of recommendations for opendns.com...which is fine, but also a bit puzzling. Don't most of us have at least one linux machine somewhere, where you can put a caching nameserver, then point any windows machines on the LAN to that.
Yeah, because that caching nameserver just magically pulls its DNS info out of thin air...
Err, yes? Or rather, it starts with the root servers, which is as good as anything gets. Certainly better than OpenDNS, which isn't above manipulating answers.
by Anonymous Coward
on Tuesday June 16, @12:55PM (#28350657)
Looks like it's time for Germans to learn how to browse like the Chinese; Encryption, proxies, darknets, deep web crawling, and leaving as few traces behind as possible.
For whatever naive reason I allowed myself to assume that Western Europe had finally begun to understand that police states are regressive and undesirable. Each passing day, it becomes clearer and clearer that realization has still yet to be made.
Or browse like the Iranians. There's currently a pretty decent number of people helping set up proxies around the world for use in Iran. Austin Heap [twitter.com] managed to setup some VPN servers on gigabit-ethernet.
I'm working on a Virtual Appliance that runs Squid, Tor, Polipo+Tor, ziproxy & ssh for use by people who don't quite know how to setup squid for themselves or want to sandbox it.
Again, this is just something I thew together last night when people on Fark (VII threads and counting) were wanting to help but not able to figure out squid.
I would appreciate any feedback or help hardening it or adding features or getting the download size down or etc...
Not that easy circumvention of a bad law makes it okay, but as a practical measure wouldn't it be easy to just use a DNS server in a different country? Or is Germany planning on firewalling all DNS queries except those from 'official' servers?
Remember back a year or so, when the.alt newsgroup was taken down because something like 1% of the newsgroups in that domain had child pornography on them? You might as well have gotten rid of the whole internet because people could have found child porn there. It doesn't make sense.
I would have expected something like this "DNS blacklist" in Iran or China. But Germany??
This sounds like censorship for the sake of censorship
Then we go on next to those who committed felonies?
We're on it. http://www.cs.unc.edu/~pozefsky/COMP006D_F05/Criminal.ppt
Finally, making it a requirement for all people who want to work, buy groceries, etc?
What's next?
There's firms that used to exist called city watcher that had their employees gain access to doors. U Conn developing chips to implant into soldiers to monitor vital signs.
by Anonymous Coward
on Tuesday June 16, @01:05PM (#28350823)
The law demands no specific way of intercepting the traffic, just one that works. If DNS spoofing proves to be unable to satisfy the law, then we will see more drastic measures, like blocking or rerouting access to alternative DNS servers and transparent proxies.
Officially the proposal is pushed as a means to combat child pornography, but politicians from all involved parties have already hinted at other possible uses for the filtering infrastructure which will be installed. The parties are quick to deny any intent to allow such an extension, but there are even official press releases clearly hinting at a not-so-hidden agenda.
Think about it:
1. it's a story about government censorship (with all the usual iron-fisted delicacy wielded by big-government)
2. it's a process that is completely non-transparent, and creates a sort of internet-secret-police
3. it's happening in Germany
It's the perfect storm of internet flamewars, completely immune to Godwin's Lawn!
We've had this in Finland for a while now, too. See http://lapsiporno.info/english-2008-02-15.html [lapsiporno.info] for internet activist Matti Nikki's fight against the debated censorship. OpenDNS is the de facto way to circumvent this censor list.
Ironically, his site is blocked by the child porn list by our Keskusrikospoliisi (federal police).
Read TFA. This is not a 'police state' in the forming. This is a decision by the government, that apparently is backed by a majority of their citizens. We tend to forget here on/. that not everyone values freedom of the net like we do. We netizens are outnumbered by well-mannered, law-abiding individuals who aren't particularly net-savvy, don't understand the social dynamics of the net, and frankly don't want to. These people hear the stories about child porn websites, they read about "HACKERS!!!" (aka black hats) conducting cyber warfare in Estonia and other government institutions, and they see the power of porn in general on the net, and they are frightened by it. To them, having government institute censorship under 'reasonable' guidelines is the norm and should be enforced because that is the system they live in. They're sheeple. They don't want to take the time to understand the true nature of the issues at stake because to them, there is no need to. They live safe, secure lives. They perceive the internet to be an unregulated, dangerous place where their children could be psychologically damaged, their finances plundered, their identities stolen, and above all else, a world that is completely outside their own. Yes, politicians are going to take this to the limit. Yes, this is a dangerous trend. In order to fight this, we have to understand the basis of this, and the basis is that we are outnumbered by people who do value security and comfort above freedom, because that is how they choose to live their lives.
germans tend to be technical, detail oriented and saavy and there is no way I can believe the population would WANT this.
Flattering stereotypes aside, the general populous here is just as uninformed and boon-ish as anywhere else. They take their information pre-digested from the mass media and believe that politicians act in the best interest of the people. Combine that with an outstanding history of propaganda culture in my country and you have an uninformed flock of obedient yay-sayers. Most people read as far as "child pornography" and whatever is proposed to fight it can't be wrong, now can it? The majority of internet users will never even notice the blockades until their weblogs, gambling, filesharing and porn sites end up on the "to burn" pile. I'm disgusted by the shameful lies and deceit campaigns run by elected officials and I am bound to believe that this won't change in the near future. People are just too caught up in their daily existence to realize the big picture and fathom the depths of power structures within governments. One would think that Germany had learned lessons from her past but it seems like the only lesson learned is how to effectively manipulate the public opinion. Our media and political parties are largely bound by industry rule and won't take the risk of losing ad contracts or parliament alliances to defend freedom. After all, freedom makes a ruler's life hard. A sad and remarkable episode in German history has begun. This is the beginning of some disgusting schemes to protect the ruling class and their outdated ideas from reality. Next on the list are copyright infringements, there are several officials that have already mentioned this as the next logical desirable step. I doubt we can still stop it. The way this country is run by right-wing nuts and infiltrated from left over Nazis ever since WWII ended is despicable and unbeknownst to most a reason for this direction we're heading. I would say I'd emigrate but I just can't find any country where to.
Yeah, that is exactly what Alexis de Tocqueville and John Stuart Mill warned about when they talked about the "Tyranny of the majority [wikipedia.org]."
The real discouraging thing here isn't the law itself (though that'd be enough in and of itself), it's the fact that despite criticism from all sides, a huge petition, thousands of people writing their elected officials and several protests outside government buildings the law is still being passed. Hell I've even seen stickers protesting the proposed law at bus stops and train stations. The "Zensursula" stickers are everywhere around here. When your government flat out ignores these things what's left to do? Wait for the next election, elect some other party into the majority and hope they actually behave differently? Just seems like every year things get worse, no matter who's in office.
One other fun fact, the ruling parties (the CDU and SPD) have already mentioned using this blacklist for other things too, mainly gambling sites, Islamic sites and "Killerspiele" (sites that contain or promote violent games).
It all brings to mind that South Park baseball episode where Randy gets arrested, with one small difference, "Oh I'm sorry I thought this was a democracy".
The "elect someone else" option unfortunately doesn't work. Basically there are two big parties (CDU and SPD) and both want the same in most of the cases. So you can be sure that one of them will lead the next government and nothing really changes.
It's like if in the US there is an important issue where Democrats and Republicans agree on. If you are against their plan, what do you do? What chance is there that a third party is going to take the house or bring up the next president? Guess why Ron Paul ran for the Republicans? Because he knew that as a third party/independent he wouldn't even get on the ballets / into the big TV debates.
When you read up a little on the history, views and personalities of the main politicians involved in this - Ursula von der Leyen and Wolfgang Schäuble - you find out quickly that they are both almost certainly borderline insane.
Schäuble is suffering from PTSD since that failed attack on him many years back. His medical records are kept secret.
von der Leyen is either a fanatic or crazy. The amount of disconnect from reality she displays certainly has a medical term, but I can't recall it right now. She's acting like the guy who insists on being Napoleon no matter what evidence to the contrary you come up with. You could show her a room full of scientific studies disproving each and every word she's ever said on the matter - and she wouldn't change her course one inch.
Quite frankly, these people are dangerous and criminally insane.
I know the feeling. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I know the feeling. (Score:4, Insightful)
OpenDNS is the solution.
At least until the DNS queries are hijacked.
Parent
Re:I know the feeling. (Score:5, Insightful)
We've had that in Denmark for years now. OpenDNS should be the solution to all of your problems...
Do you really think that the government doesn't know about other DNS servers? I assure you there is some sort of plan and reason why they have not asked the ISP's to block or MASQ any request with a destination of 53.
My simple guess is any request with a destination of 53 is logged and then resolved at some later time. A database of people who use these other servers is maintained and flags are included such as "pedophile, hacker, warez, terrorist, etc". This list then is used to help law enforcement and or they will just come and round all of you up one day.
What's going to end up happening is someone is going to have to run a hacked all the hell bind server that takes encrypted requests on port 80 and replies back with your request which will then need to be cached locally so as not to totally hose your browsing. Then the government is going to start banning those server's IP addresses and someone is going to have to make a DNS resolver that runs in a distributed manner. Then the government will do something else, probably make it a huge crime to use any of this stuff and we will all be basically where we are now with copyright infringement which is to say that people don't respect that law and so all law becomes less respected. This is all the same as what happened in the 1930's US Prohibition of booze.
"All of this has happened before, and it will happen again..."
Parent
Re:I know the feeling. (Score:5, Funny)
In Nazi Germany... wait, that isn't funny.
Parent
Re:I know the feeling. (Score:5, Insightful)
honeypot theory?
you may be right. letting port 53 outbound thru but LOGGING who connects out of the country.
yup, very plausible.
expect it to spread to other countries, too ;(
this is the century of anti-freedom, worldwide. yes, its really that bad and its getting WORSE each passing day.
Parent
Re:I know the feeling. (Score:5, Interesting)
Do you really think that the government doesn't know about other DNS servers?
Yes, after some TV magazine report, I know that they don't think that far.
Blocking people from getting there is not the point. Intimidation, and getting the people used to this kind of government, is the real point.
Besides: Who stops you from using another port, and encrypting the data trough a VPN? Hell, my router can do that. Trough a simple web-interface. I don't need to change anything on my pc. It's done in 5 minutes. Now if you offer me an offshore DNS server with a VPN, a good connection, and just the price of keeping it running, you will have a client. (Those free ones are too slow, and the others that you buy are way too expensive, because they want to profit big time from it.)
I smell a nice non-profit business model here. Especially since half the world can be your clients.
As long as they don't go to war against our small island full of servers, and as long as they do still allow data into the net, we can circumvent their censorship. And offer the whole world to do so too, in one click (insert USB stick, run autostart, click OK, done).
I wonder how one could protect those servers better, even in case of attacks? :D
Hey, I know it: Infect the censorship servers *themselves*!
Who wants to apply for a well-payed job in this emerging censorship-server-market? :)
If we storm them, all of us will pretty much be moles. Meaning we can perfectly disable the censorship proxies/routers for users with our special client patch.
My god, and they thought they could stop *us all*. They can't even stop me alone.
Parent
Re:I know the feeling. (Score:5, Insightful)
I expect political viewpoints judged "extreme" by those in power are already on the blacklist in Germany.
Hasn't Denmark put opposition political websites on the blacklist too? I recal a /. story on that.
Does anyone really think that blacklisting opposing political viewpoints is merely an "unfortunate side effect" of schemes like this?
Parent
Re:I know the feeling. (Score:5, Informative)
I don't know if you consider the UK a functioning democracy, but recently they rounded up a group of hippies on the grounds that they might be thinking about causing disruption at a power station.
They were then released on bail, the conditions of which were that they weren't allowed to be hippies, weren't allowed to be against power stations, and weren't allowed to talk to anyone who was either a hippy or against power stations. More or less it amounts to house arrest. Without any form of trial or due process.
Note: I don't agree with the aforementioned hippies policy wise. But when they came for the hippies, I didn't speak out...
Parent
Geez! (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Geez! (Score:4, Informative)
Actually, it's only a selected few politicians.
Everyone outside their small circle is opposed to this. From techies to NGOs and even abuse victims.
Parent
alternative dns servers; (Score:5, Informative)
https://www.opendns.com/ [opendns.com]
http://www.dnsserverlist.org/ [dnsserverlist.org]
Re:alternative dns servers; (Score:5, Informative)
apt-get install bind9
127.0.0.1 top of resolv.conf
Any slashdot discussion about DNS will imminently fill up with hundreds of recommendations for opendns.com ...which is fine, but also a bit puzzling.
Don't most of us have at least one linux machine somewhere, where you can put a caching nameserver, then point any windows machines on the LAN to that.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Yeah, because that caching nameserver just magically pulls its DNS info out of thin air...
Re:alternative dns servers; (Score:4, Interesting)
Yeah, because that caching nameserver just magically pulls its DNS info out of thin air...
Err, yes? Or rather, it starts with the root servers, which is as good as anything gets. Certainly better than OpenDNS, which isn't above manipulating answers.
Parent
Re:alternative dns servers; (Score:5, Informative)
No, it's not fine to recommend OpenDNS [slashdot.org].
Parent
Gigaton Fail - (Score:5, Insightful)
For whatever naive reason I allowed myself to assume that Western Europe had finally begun to understand that police states are regressive and undesirable. Each passing day, it becomes clearer and clearer that realization has still yet to be made.
Re:Gigaton Fail - (Score:5, Interesting)
Or browse like the Iranians. There's currently a pretty decent number of people helping set up proxies around the world for use in Iran. Austin Heap [twitter.com] managed to setup some VPN servers on gigabit-ethernet.
I'm working on a Virtual Appliance that runs Squid, Tor, Polipo+Tor, ziproxy & ssh for use by people who don't quite know how to setup squid for themselves or want to sandbox it.
Parent
Re:Gigaton Fail - (Score:5, Informative)
My host forgive me. http://www.exstatic.org.nyud.net:8080/proxybox/ [nyud.net].
Again, this is just something I thew together last night when people on Fark (VII threads and counting) were wanting to help but not able to figure out squid.
I would appreciate any feedback or help hardening it or adding features or getting the download size down or etc...
jjarvis98@gmail.com
Parent
Re:Gigaton Fail - (Score:5, Insightful)
Imagine if every single person in Iran thought that before they went outside.
I'm just a white collar guy that works 9-5. People asked for proxy servers. People wanted help setting up proxy servers. I did what I could.
I should have just watched American Idol.
Parent
Re:Gigaton Fail - (Score:5, Funny)
That's not what the Ministry of Truth told me.
Parent
Easily circumvented? (Score:5, Interesting)
Not that easy circumvention of a bad law makes it okay, but as a practical measure wouldn't it be easy to just use a DNS server in a different country? Or is Germany planning on firewalling all DNS queries except those from 'official' servers?
What are they censoring? (Score:3, Interesting)
Remember back a year or so, when the .alt newsgroup was taken down because something like 1% of the newsgroups in that domain had child pornography on them? You might as well have gotten rid of the whole internet because people could have found child porn there. It doesn't make sense.
I would have expected something like this "DNS blacklist" in Iran or China. But Germany??
This sounds like censorship for the sake of censorship
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
I would have expected something like this "DNS blacklist" in Iran or China. But Germany??
This sounds like censorship for the sake of censorship
You must not know much about Germany to be surprised by this. Have a good read on this [wikipedia.org] article.
Huh? (Score:3, Insightful)
This sounds like censorship for the sake of censorship
You mean there is another kind?
What's Next? (Score:4, Interesting)
Then we start with those older folks suffering from dementia?
Then we go on next to those who committed felonies?
Finally, making it a requirement for all people who want to work, buy groceries, etc?
What's next?
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Are gonna start tagging "children" with gps locator tag subcutaneous inserts?
Then we start with those older folks suffering from dementia?
Whole families have been chipped in Florida by their choice.
http://www.miaminightout.com/spotlight/advop/11172002/microchip.shtml
Then we go on next to those who committed felonies?
We're on it. http://www.cs.unc.edu/~pozefsky/COMP006D_F05/Criminal.ppt
Finally, making it a requirement for all people who want to work, buy groceries, etc?
What's next?
There's firms that used to exist called city watcher that had their employees gain access to doors. U Conn developing chips to implant into soldiers to monitor vital signs.
Mein Herr! (Score:5, Insightful)
First, switch to Open DNS, second, vote the bastards out. Keep voting the bastards out until you get your bastards in there.
Re:Mein Herr! (Score:5, Insightful)
What happens when the ballot looks like this:
Please select the candidate of your choice
Parent
Re:Mein Herr! (Score:5, Insightful)
We have a Pirate Party over here in Germany, and it's about time they get some more votes so the major parties start to listen.
Money and votes are the only things the bastards are interested in, after all.
Parent
DNS spoofing is just one way to satisfy the law (Score:4, Insightful)
The law demands no specific way of intercepting the traffic, just one that works. If DNS spoofing proves to be unable to satisfy the law, then we will see more drastic measures, like blocking or rerouting access to alternative DNS servers and transparent proxies.
Officially the proposal is pushed as a means to combat child pornography, but politicians from all involved parties have already hinted at other possible uses for the filtering infrastructure which will be installed. The parties are quick to deny any intent to allow such an extension, but there are even official press releases clearly hinting at a not-so-hidden agenda.
Re:DNS spoofing is just one way to satisfy the law (Score:5, Informative)
Given that the whole world is moving to DNSSEC, have fun trying to spoof it two years from now.
Parent
Holy shit! (Score:5, Funny)
Think about it:
1. it's a story about government censorship (with all the usual iron-fisted delicacy wielded by big-government)
2. it's a process that is completely non-transparent, and creates a sort of internet-secret-police
3. it's happening in Germany
It's the perfect storm of internet flamewars, completely immune to Godwin's Lawn!
Re:Holy shit! (Score:4, Funny)
Parent
Old news for Finland, too (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Old news for Finland, too (Score:5, Insightful)
Ironically, his site is blocked by the child porn list by our Keskusrikospoliisi (federal police).
Dude, that's not ironic, that's inevitable.
Parent
Before we use the 'police state' meme again... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Before we use the 'police state' meme again... (Score:5, Interesting)
I don't believe its at all the will of the people, on this one.
its a power grab for the gov, plain and simple.
germans tend to be technical, detail oriented and saavy and there is no way I can believe the population would WANT this.
Parent
Re:Before we use the 'police state' meme again... (Score:5, Insightful)
germans tend to be technical, detail oriented and saavy and there is no way I can believe the population would WANT this.
Flattering stereotypes aside, the general populous here is just as uninformed and boon-ish as anywhere else. They take their information pre-digested from the mass media and believe that politicians act in the best interest of the people. Combine that with an outstanding history of propaganda culture in my country and you have an uninformed flock of obedient yay-sayers. Most people read as far as "child pornography" and whatever is proposed to fight it can't be wrong, now can it? The majority of internet users will never even notice the blockades until their weblogs, gambling, filesharing and porn sites end up on the "to burn" pile. I'm disgusted by the shameful lies and deceit campaigns run by elected officials and I am bound to believe that this won't change in the near future. People are just too caught up in their daily existence to realize the big picture and fathom the depths of power structures within governments. One would think that Germany had learned lessons from her past but it seems like the only lesson learned is how to effectively manipulate the public opinion. Our media and political parties are largely bound by industry rule and won't take the risk of losing ad contracts or parliament alliances to defend freedom. After all, freedom makes a ruler's life hard. A sad and remarkable episode in German history has begun. This is the beginning of some disgusting schemes to protect the ruling class and their outdated ideas from reality. Next on the list are copyright infringements, there are several officials that have already mentioned this as the next logical desirable step. I doubt we can still stop it. The way this country is run by right-wing nuts and infiltrated from left over Nazis ever since WWII ended is despicable and unbeknownst to most a reason for this direction we're heading. I would say I'd emigrate but I just can't find any country where to.
Parent
Re:Before we use the 'police state' meme again... (Score:5, Insightful)
Censorship is *always* backed by the majority. Doesn't keep it from being a violation of human rights.
Parent
Re:Before we use the 'police state' meme again... (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Before we use the 'police state' meme again... (Score:5, Insightful)
Read TFA. This is not a 'police state' in the forming.
Indeed not. When the police can decide what you are and aren't allowed to access on the Internet, the police state is already here.
Parent
For a list of the fastest DNS servers for you... (Score:3, Informative)
The real discouraging thing (Score:5, Insightful)
One other fun fact, the ruling parties (the CDU and SPD) have already mentioned using this blacklist for other things too, mainly gambling sites, Islamic sites and "Killerspiele" (sites that contain or promote violent games).
It all brings to mind that South Park baseball episode where Randy gets arrested, with one small difference, "Oh I'm sorry I thought this was a democracy".
Re:The real discouraging thing (Score:4, Informative)
> "Oh I'm sorry I thought this was a democracy".
Do not confound democracy with liberty.
Parent
Elect someone else doesn't work! (Score:4, Insightful)
The "elect someone else" option unfortunately doesn't work. Basically there are two big parties (CDU and SPD) and both want the same in most of the cases. So you can be sure that one of them will lead the next government and nothing really changes.
It's like if in the US there is an important issue where Democrats and Republicans agree on. If you are against their plan, what do you do? What chance is there that a third party is going to take the house or bring up the next president? Guess why Ron Paul ran for the Republicans? Because he knew that as a third party/independent he wouldn't even get on the ballets / into the big TV debates.
Parent
insane politicians (Score:4, Interesting)
When you read up a little on the history, views and personalities of the main politicians involved in this - Ursula von der Leyen and Wolfgang Schäuble - you find out quickly that they are both almost certainly borderline insane.
Schäuble is suffering from PTSD since that failed attack on him many years back. His medical records are kept secret.
von der Leyen is either a fanatic or crazy. The amount of disconnect from reality she displays certainly has a medical term, but I can't recall it right now. She's acting like the guy who insists on being Napoleon no matter what evidence to the contrary you come up with. You could show her a room full of scientific studies disproving each and every word she's ever said on the matter - and she wouldn't change her course one inch.
Quite frankly, these people are dangerous and criminally insane.
Re:These parties are also big Linux supporters (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:the wall (Score:5, Interesting)
All in all it's just another brick in the wall.
Parent