"German politicians are puppets of the USA"
A major scandal erupted in Germany: Udo Ulfkotte, a former correspondent for one of the largest German newspapers in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, published the book Corrupt Journalists, in which he described how the American and German politicians influence the German media in a certain way. positions. The emphasis that was required of journalists was, of course, primarily pro-American and anti-Russian, Ulfkotte says. About how exactly this happened and how his life is now, after these revelations, Udo Ulfkotte told the newspaper VIEW.
VIEW: Mr. Ulfkotte, you said that you received a lot of money for pro-American articles. How profitable to be in Germany, a pro-American journalist?
Udo Ulfkotte: I did not receive money, but gifts. Things like gold watches, diving equipment, trips with accommodation in five-star hotels. I know many German journalists who once could buy a villa for their foreign holidays. But much more important than money and gifts is that if you write pro-American or pro-NATO materials, then you are supported. If you do not do this, you are treading water, you are only allowed to sort letters from readers in the editorial office.
VIEW: According to you, journalists are imperceptibly corrupt when they are invited at their own expense on a trip to the United States. But do serious people sell for such a small thing?
U. W.: When you fly to the USA again and again, where they pay for you everywhere and you are invited to interview American politicians, you are closer and closer to the circles of power. And you want to remain in the circle of this elite, and you write in a way that these elites might like. Everyone wants to be a journalist-star who is allowed to speak exclusively with a famous politician. But one wrong sentence - and your career as a star journalist is in the past. Everybody knows that. And everyone collaborates.
VIEW: Why have you just now decided to publish your opinion about journalism in Germany?
W.W .: I had three heart attacks, I no longer have to support my children, I saw day after day in the newshow the Americans are preparing another war over and over again. This time in Ukraine and against Russia. It's still the same game. Even complete fools were struck by the one-sided US propaganda against Moscow after the crash of MH17. Now the Americans are even thinking about how to blow up a nuclear power plant in Ukraine and then declare that they were separatists or Russians. I hear this all the time. It's shameless!
VIEW: You claim that Germany is a "banana republic." Is it too harsh judgment? After all, there is opposition in the Federal Republic of Germany, including the radical one, and there is criticism in the media about the government. For example, recently the sensational television program Die Anstalt was broadcast, in which there was a very tough criticism of the biased German media.
U. W .: After the program you mentioned came out, journalists, who in the form of satire (!) Criticized the German media, and above all - against a purely pro-American coverage of the events, were lodged and brought to court. This is proof that Germany is a banana republic: when you shouldn’t criticize one-sided coverage of events with satire at all. This is a simulation of press freedom. This is crazy.
VIEW: What do you think about the persecution of politicians, whom the German press has united in the so-called group of "understand Russia" (Schröder, Gysi, Wagenknecht, etc.), and pro-Russian journalists?
W. W .: “Understanding Russia” are cultural sincere people. I say this, although politically I am not one of them. But I respect them for their honesty. Harassment in their respect is typical of banana republics such as Germany, where opinions deviating from the main course are brutally suppressed.
VIEW: You mentioned that in Germany it is still a fact that in March 1988, the regime of Saddam Hussein, the then ally of the West, committed an act of genocide in one of the Kurdish cities near the border with Iran, using a chemical weapon German production. Really, not a single one, not even an opposition newspaper, has written about this fact over the years.
W. W .: No, they wrote about it, but only a year later! When I was photographing the poisoning of Iranians by German chemical weapons under American supervision, this should not have been known. Then the Iraqis, Germans and Americans celebrated their "final" victory over the Iranians. For me it was terrible: they celebrated in Baghdad that they jointly poisoned people with gas. I suffered a lot from gas, I even had cancer later, I tried with all my might to write down what happened there, and hoped that it would cause resentment all over the world. But it is not published. Instead, everyone celebrated a victory. To this day, I ask myself why German chancellors go to Israel and kneel there and ask forgiveness of the Jews that they were poisoned by gas, and this is normal, and the Iranians killed by German gas are second-rate people? Have you ever heard that the German chancellor apologized for this in Tehran? We see that German politicians are nothing more than puppets of the USA. They must obediently do what Washington prescribes. We continue to be a colony of the United States, a banana republic, and not a free country.
VIEW: You say that the security services provided you with information about Libya, which you signed with your name. And call it the fulfillment of the CIA and BND assignment. But if the information was interesting and correct, is it not possible in this case to say that your interests simply coincided? You could refuse to publish it.
W. W .: Yes, yes, I could say no. You know, in the largest German automobile club ADAC there was an employee of the helicopter rescue service, who refused to secretly cooperate with the BND. He was immediately expelled from ADAC, he was put on trial, and the judges decided that a person should not refuse to work with BND, and it’s normal that he will lose his job after that. Clear? You understand? I did not want to be without work.
VIEW: You said that the security services at your home searched six times. But if you just published what the intelligence services gave you, then why did they have to look for something in your home? On the other hand, if you did find the information that the security services tried to conceal themselves, then you were acting as an independent journalist, and not as an “unofficial CIA agent”?
W. W .: This is a translation error; it was not the secret services who searched, but the secret state police. The fact that under the Nazis called the Gestapo, now called the Department of State Security. And they came and searched six times under the pretext that I betrayed state secrets. These are bullying measures that are typical of banana republics.
VIEW: You say that publishing a book can bring you problems. Which for example?
W. W .: The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung newspaper in writing stated to me that it would complain to me in court for violating criminal, civil, labor laws and journalistic corporate standards. Only this one could destroy me. As I heard, many others want to put me in jail, because I again revealed "state secrets". Perhaps I should, like Edward Snowden, fly to Moscow and seek asylum there. Let us wait, as the leadership of the banana republic of Germany will react, because they have been compromised, and everyone can read in my bestseller how the freedom of the press feigns here and that democracy in Germany is just an illusion.
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