Monday, August 20, 2018

The Religion Issue | Politicizing Intelligence in Austria & America | Efficiency & Laziness - Daily Pnut

The Religion Issue | Politicizing Intelligence in Austria & America | Efficiency & Laziness - Daily Pnut

The Religion Issue | Politicizing Intelligence in Austria & America | Efficiency & Laziness

"Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. Three times is enemy action" – Ian Fleming

Politicizing Intelligence in Austria: As long as extremist groups stay on the fringes of government, independent state institutions can continue to function. Once anti-establishment, hard-line parties gain a foothold within government, they can begin taking control of systems meant to remain above politics—courts, the military, intelligence agencies. Many fanatical groups holding power in several European countries have close ties to Russia. In Austria the anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim rhetoric of the far-right Freedom Party continued gaining in popularity until elections in October 2017 put the party into power in a coalition with the center-right. The Freedom Party had been founded in the 1950s by former Nazi SS officers, and some of its current members share a nostalgia for Hitler's Third Reich. The party has a formal cooperation agreement with President Vladimir Putin's United Russia party.

The Freedom Party controls Austria's Interior Ministry, which is responsible for law and order. The country's main domestic intelligence agency, the BVT, is part of the Interior Ministry. In February 2018 Freedom Party bosses ordered a police raid on the agency's offices, along with top spy service officials working at home. Some of the nation's most sensitive secrets were carted off in open crates and plastic bags. The basis for the search warrant was flimsy and transparent; critics called it an absurd pretext for a politically motivated stab at an independent institution that could threaten the party's agenda. The decision to target the agency responsible for defending the country against a multitude of threats, including right-wing extremism, was so shocking other foreign services have stopped sharing intelligence information with Austria for fear it would wind up in the wrong hands. One European intelligence official said: "The alarms are going off…(the raid) reminds me of what autocrats would do."

Additional read: "The Bride Was a Dream in a Dirndl, but Putin Stole the Show: President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia has always shown a mastery for playing to the cameras, whether posing bare-chested on horseback, dancing with Tartars or riding Harleys with bikers. On Saturday, that command was on display again, this time as the Russian leader made a brief personal appearance in the Styrian Alps at the wedding of Austria's foreign minister, before continuing north to Germany where he was to hold talks with Chancellor Angela Merkel." (NYT)



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