Submission statement: free speech is vital, particularly when we don’t like what’s being said. Or, in this case, if we don’t know anything at all:
> He struck three left-leaning bookshops from the list after receiving “intelligence information” about them. Asked what the intelligence was, Weimer said he neither knew nor was allowed to know. His inquiry was made via a decade-old procedure allowing German politicians to access intelligence service assessments of organisations receiving public funding, without domestic intelligence having to reveal the operation – or grounds that lead to their assessment.
It brings to mind the UK Conservative Party deciding to intervene and illegally block an independently-awarded prize to Kneecap because it didn’t like its speech.
Skagzill on
> A Green parliamentary inquiry into the intelligence service revealed that the Weimer intervention against the three bookshops was not a one-off. In the seven years to 2025, federal government ministries filed about 3,000 background check requests with the domestic intelligence agency on people or organisations in receipt of public funding. In reply, the agency flagged 302 organisations and persons for non-specified “intelligence-relevant reasons”.
It would be interesting to see political distribution of these 3000 and eventual 302 orgs cause while they keep citing AFD as cause, I feel like leftist bookshops are not very sympathetic to their cause.
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Submission statement: free speech is vital, particularly when we don’t like what’s being said. Or, in this case, if we don’t know anything at all:
> He struck three left-leaning bookshops from the list after receiving “intelligence information” about them. Asked what the intelligence was, Weimer said he neither knew nor was allowed to know. His inquiry was made via a decade-old procedure allowing German politicians to access intelligence service assessments of organisations receiving public funding, without domestic intelligence having to reveal the operation – or grounds that lead to their assessment.
It brings to mind the UK Conservative Party deciding to intervene and illegally block an independently-awarded prize to Kneecap because it didn’t like its speech.
> A Green parliamentary inquiry into the intelligence service revealed that the Weimer intervention against the three bookshops was not a one-off. In the seven years to 2025, federal government ministries filed about 3,000 background check requests with the domestic intelligence agency on people or organisations in receipt of public funding. In reply, the agency flagged 302 organisations and persons for non-specified “intelligence-relevant reasons”.
It would be interesting to see political distribution of these 3000 and eventual 302 orgs cause while they keep citing AFD as cause, I feel like leftist bookshops are not very sympathetic to their cause.