Berlin will no longer be required to ensure that US drone strikes coordinated through an air base in Germany are in line with international law, a top court has ruled, in a “severe blow” to a case brought by human rights groups.
This verdict is a revision of an earlier verdict by a lower court. It appears obvious to me that the reasoning of the court was tailor-made to entirely exculpate the German government from any responsibility for drone strikes conducted through the Ramstein air base. I'm willing to bet my mayo ass that they did not come to this conclusion on their own.
What's key here is the argumentation that the decisions for these strikes are not made on German territory - they are made in a container on a military base in New Mexico. Germany is a relais station in the signal chain leading from NM to the Greater Middle East - more precisely, it's the place where the signal stops being transmitted by a transatlantic cable and starts being broadcast wirelessly by relais drones like the Global Hawk.
According to the court, mere transmission of this signal does not mean our government has to do anything about it. The fact that our government knows about this transmission and does nothing to stop it is regarded as entirely irrelevant, even though German courts are regularly willing to hold people culpable for trivialities like copyright infringement just for providing free wifi that is then used by somebody else to pirate something. But hey, it's consistent with our intelligence agencys' highly creative opinion that your civil rights do not apply to you when you're using a satellite uplink because the satellite is outside of German jurisdiction. God, this country is such a fucking joke.
There's other gems in the verdict, such as the court not believing there's evidence for the USA committing further war crimes in the future. Here's a German article on the whole subject.
This verdict is a revision of an earlier verdict by a lower court. It appears obvious to me that the reasoning of the court was tailor-made to entirely exculpate the German government from any responsibility for drone strikes conducted through the Ramstein air base. I'm willing to bet my mayo ass that they did not come to this conclusion on their own.
What's key here is the argumentation that the decisions for these strikes are not made on German territory - they are made in a container on a military base in New Mexico. Germany is a relais station in the signal chain leading from NM to the Greater Middle East - more precisely, it's the place where the signal stops being transmitted by a transatlantic cable and starts being broadcast wirelessly by relais drones like the Global Hawk.
According to the court, mere transmission of this signal does not mean our government has to do anything about it. The fact that our government knows about this transmission and does nothing to stop it is regarded as entirely irrelevant, even though German courts are regularly willing to hold people culpable for trivialities like copyright infringement just for providing free wifi that is then used by somebody else to pirate something. But hey, it's consistent with our intelligence agencys' highly creative opinion that your civil rights do not apply to you when you're using a satellite uplink because the satellite is outside of German jurisdiction. God, this country is such a fucking joke.
There's other gems in the verdict, such as the court not believing there's evidence for the USA committing further war crimes in the future. Here's a German article on the whole subject.
:germany-cool: :amerikkka: