Germany Decriminalizes Child Porn
The German parliament officially approved a bill to decriminalize the distribution and possession of child sexual abuse material (CSAM) by reducing the minimum sentence and reclassifying the felony as a misdemeanor, reports feminist news site Reduxx.
The bill adopted in the Bundestag basically reverses a 2021 decision that finally classified the possession of child pornography as a crime, carrying a minimum one-year custodial sentence in Germany, conforming to EU directives.
The new rules, however, go even further than the pre-2021 situation. Not only will the possession of child pornography be classified as a misdemeanor, but its distribution as well.
The bill states that “possession and acquisition should be punishable with a minimum penalty of three months’ imprisonment, and distribution with a minimum penalty of six months’ imprisonment. The offenses … are therefore classified as misdemeanors and not crimes.”
In addition to its domestic implications, the bill directly violates a European Union directive that classifies possessing any CSAM as a serious criminal offense.
The government’s rationale for downgrading crimes linked to child sexual abuse material to misdemeanors sounds pragmatic: those who are suspected of possession and distribution often turn out to be teenagers themselves. Moreover, they sometimes also accidentally implicate their parents and teachers who find CSAM on teens’ mobile devices phones before sharing it with other parents or with school boards, to notify them of the problem.
Therefore, the bill argues that the downgrade to a misdemeanor was “urgently required in order to be able to respond appropriately and with the necessary flexibility to the large proportion of juvenile offenders” who act “out of a drive typical of the adolescent stage of development.”
The opposition Christian Democratic Union (CDU) published a statement denouncing the “blanket reduction of penalty range,” saying that distribution, possession, and acquisition of child pornography “must, in principle, remain classified as crimes” and that the problematic cases the bill refers to must be addressed separately and more directly.
On the other side of the aisle, the move is celebrated by pro-pedophilia activist groups such as the Krumme-13 (or K13), which identifies as a “self-help” organization for “pedosexuals.”
While welcoming the change, K13 founder Dietrich Gieseking—who in the past has been repeatedly charged both with possessing and distributing child pornography—criticized the government for not apologizing “to the thousands upon thousands of those affected who fell victim” to the 2021 law making child porn possession a felony.
Gieseking, this self-proclaimed champion of the innocent, was first charged with a CSAM-related crime in 1996 for operating a mail-order child porn service from his van. In 2003, he was charged again for having hundreds of child porn files on his computer—as well as linking to a CSAM distribution website from his personal blog—and sentenced to eight months in prison. In a 2014 interview, Gieseking called for lowering the age of consent to 12 because allowing kids to have a “friendly and sexual relationship with a pedosexual … is long overdue in today’s enlightened society.”
“The taboo of pedophilia must finally be broken at all levels of society. If a pedophile can come out without fear of exclusion or even demonization, then this is the best prevention against child abuse,” Gieseking said in the interview.
Not for the first time, Germany’s socialist-green government appears to be increasingly susceptible to lobbying from K-13 and a dozen or more similar activist groups.
The new law was foreshadowed in 2023, when the Bundestag accepted a petition authored by Gieseking which proposed an amendment to Article 6 of the Basic Law entailing children’s rights. Gieseking’s assertion stipulated that children should “have a say in all matters that affect their emotional, mental, and physical well-being,” and have “the right to the free development of their personality,” including “sexual self-determination.”
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German State Succeeded With Less Than a Third of Planned Deportations Last Year
Of the total number of illegal migrants earmarked for deportation from the German state of Saxony-Anhalt last year, only a fraction were successfully carried out, the state’s interior minister has revealed.
In response to a parliamentary question from a left-wing lawmaker, the CDU Interior Minister Tamara Zieschang noted how just 535 of the 1,848 planned repatriations of illegal migrants to their country of origin were successfully achieved in 2023 — just under 29 percent of all cases.
The minister explained how in 565 cases, the would-be deportee had absconded and could not be located, while 354 cases involved legal attempts to thwart deportation proceedings or administrative failures in providing the necessary paperwork.
A further 205 illegal migrants were rejected by their country of origin, and in 46 cases the concerned individual evaded deportation through “church asylum” — a practice in Germany whereby prospective refugees can seek temporary protection through their local parish should they be considered to face persecution back in their home country. The measure allows time for a re-examination of their protection status by the state.
A further 37 cases were disrupted by illness and individuals not being medically fit to be deported, 17 cases were thwarted by urgent applications to German courts, and 9 cases were adjourned due to ongoing criminal proceedings.
The governing center-right CDU in the German state accused the federal government comprising a left-liberal coalition of being responsible for the low success rate, denouncing recent bilateral agreements with third countries as “nothing more than a bad PR stunt.”
“They have not brought about any noticeable improvements,” said Chris Schulenburg, the CDU’s domestic policy spokesman in Saxony.
At the national level, leading CDU politicians have expressed their support for off-shore processing of asylum applications as a way to reduce the attractiveness of Germany as a migrant hotspot. The move would mirror similar policies adopted by the U.K. Conservative government and fellow EU member states Denmark and Italy.
In December last year, the CDU’s former health minister, Jens Spahn, said, “If we did this and kept it up consequently for four, six, eight weeks, we would see the numbers reduce dramatically.”
CDU leader Friedrich Merz and Thorsten Frei, the deputy chairman of the CDU/CSU parliamentary group in the Bundestag, have also commented in favor of radically reforming Germany’s asylum policy.
Data from the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees (BAMF) published earlier this year revealed how asylum applications jumped by 51.1 percent to 350,000 last year compared to 2022 when 217,774 applications were made.
Prof. Hans-Jürgen Papier, who served as president of the Federal Constitutional Court for eight years until 2010, claimed that the German asylum law was not fit for purpose and claimed the country was being abused by an influx of economic migrants with the luxury of handpicking which European nation they’d like to settle in.
“Many people come to our country from all parts of the world for clearly non-asylum reasons. The right to asylum is therefore being misused and, in many cases, applied for improperly in Germany,” he noted.
Meanwhile, figures published this week by the Federal Employment Agency revealed how welfare benefits were sky-rocketing across Germany, with more than two-thirds of beneficiaries being either first or second-generation migrants.
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New X Policy Forces Earners to Verify Their Government ID With Israeli Verification Company
X, formerly Twitter, is now mandating the use of a government ID-based account verification system for users that earn revenue on the platform – either for advertising or for paid subscriptions.
To implement this system, X has partnered with Au10tix, an Israeli company known for its identity verification solutions. Users who opt to receive payouts on the platform will have to undergo a verification process with the company.
This initiative aims to curb impersonation, fraud, and improve user support, yet it also raises profound questions about privacy and free speech, as X markets itself as a free speech platform, and free speech and anonymity often go hand-in-hand. This is especially true in countries where their speech can get citizens jailed or worse.
“We’re making changes to our Creator Subscriptions and Ads Revenue Share programs to further promote authenticity and fight fraud on the platform. Starting today, all new creators must verify their ID to receive payouts. All existing creators must do so by July 1, 2024,” the update to X’s verification page now reads.
This shift towards online digital ID verification is part of a broader trend across the political sphere, where the drive for identification often conflicts with the desire for privacy and anonymous speech. By linking online identities to government-issued IDs, platforms like X may stifle expression, as users become wary of speaking freely when their real identities are known.
This policy shift signals a move towards more accurate but also more intrusive forms of user identification. Although intended to enhance security, these practices risk undermining the very essence of free speech by making users feel constantly monitored and raise fears that, in the near future, all speech on major platforms will have to be linked to a government-issued ID.
Anonymity has long been a cornerstone of free speech, allowing individuals to express controversial, dissenting, or unpopular opinions without fear of retribution. Throughout history, anonymous speech has been a critical tool for activists, whistleblowers, and ordinary citizens alike. It enables people to criticize their governments, expose corruption, and share personal experiences without risking their safety or livelihoods.
Governments around the world have been pushing for an end to online anonymity over the last year, and X’s new policy change is a step towards this agenda.
Over the last year, a slew of child safety bills has emerged, ostensibly aimed at protecting the youngest internet users. However, beneath the surface of these well-intentioned initiatives lies a more insidious agenda: the push for widespread online ID verification.
X owner Elon Musk has commented in support of these bills, as recently as last week.
While this new X change is only for those users looking to claim a cut of the advertising revenue that X makes from their posts and is not yet enforced for all users, it is a large step towards the normalizing of online digital ID verification.
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Employee Sues Hospital That Fired Her for Reporting COVID Vaccine Injuries to VAERS
A physician’s assistant is suing a New York hospital system, alleging it violated the federal False Claims Act by failing to complete mandatory reporting of injuries associated with the COVID-19 vaccine to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS).
Deborah Conrad worked at United Memorial Medical Center, part of Rochester Regional Health (RRH), until October 2021, when she said she was fired for reporting vaccine-related adverse events.
Conrad filed the lawsuit in May 2023, but the complaint wasn’t unsealed and made publicly available until February, TrialSiteNews reported last week.
She is seeking job reinstatement and back pay for herself and civil penalties on behalf of the U.S. government.
Most importantly, Conrad told The Defender, she hopes the lawsuit will lead to changes in how vaccine adverse events are reported.
“How can anybody trust the vaccine program when medical professionals are not adhering to the reporting requirements of the one system we have in place that is meant to assure us that these things are safe?” she asked.
“I want policy change. I don’t care about the money, the vindication. I want to be able to trust the health system,” Conrad said.
Under the False Claims Act, whistleblowers can file a lawsuit on behalf of the federal government against an entity they allege profited from taxpayer funds by defrauding the government.
False Claims Act cases are initially sealed while the government investigates the cases and determines whether it will intervene and take the case on itself, or allow the whistleblower to proceed with the action.
The government decided not to intervene in the case. It is now unsealed and moving forward with Conrad as the “relator,” who gives evidence to the court on behalf of the U.S. government.
She told The Defender the evidence she is submitting to the court is substantial — she meticulously saved every email, patient file and recorded conversations with supervisors and other hospital staff.
United Memorial Medical Center, like all institutions in the U.S. that administered the COVID-19vaccines, signed the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) COVID-19 Vaccination Program Provider Agreement, according to the complaint.
The agreement stipulated that organizations providing the shots and received compensation for doing so from the federal government were required to “report moderate and adverse events following vaccination” to VAERS.
By not doing so, Warner Mendenhall, the attorney representing Conrad, told The Defender, they were out of compliance with the agreement. And, he added, the agreement clearly stipulates that non-compliance violates the False Claims Act.
The hospital not only failed to report cases, it blocked Conrad from submitting approximately 170 reports of serious adverse events to VAERS between May 27 and Oct. 6, 2021, Conrad said.
The hospital system also failed to report over 12,000 adverse events, the complaint alleges.
Mendenhall said they estimated that number based on the number of people vaccinated at one of the healthcare facilities or another nearby clinic who then presented at the hospital for treatment for an injury that was likely linked to the vaccine.
The complaint contains several examples of such cases.
On behalf of the U.S., Conrad is seeking damages that fall into what Mendenhall described as “three buckets.”
First, he said, each entity was paid an administrative fee — approximately $40 — for each injection. The suit seeks a refund of that money to the government for the thousands of shots administered.
Next, for every failure to report, there is a mandatory penalty of at least $20,000. For 12,000 cases, that would total more than $240,000,000.
Finally, the “third bucket” of damages would be the cost of the treatment that people had to pay for their vaccine injuries. By failing to meet their obligations as a vaccine provider, he said the hospital failed to provide people with the proper necessary treatment they ought to be entitled to and those costs should be reimbursed.
If Conrad prevails in court, the hospital will go bankrupt — but that isn’t the intent, Mendenhall said.
“We don’t want to bankrupt community hospitals,” he said. “That’s not what we are about. We want them to do their job, to do what they are supposed to do and file the reports,” he said. “And we want Deb Conrad rehired to run the program.”
Conrad is suing only one hospital system, but there are roughly 2,800 systems in the country, Mendenhall said. “As far as I know, not a single one of them met their obligations under the vaccination program participation agreement. And they all signed it.”
The False Claims Act, “is a way for us as a people, if we want to hold these providers accountable for their wrongdoing, we actually can do it,” Mendenhall told Trial Site News. “There’s a very clear pathway here. It’s outlined here, and they all agreed to it.”
Ray Flores, staff attorney for Children’s Health Defense, told The Defender the case represented a “bold effort to hold those who allegedly defrauded the people of the United States accountable.”
In detailing the ways the hospital precluded providers from reporting to VAERS, “the allegations in the complaint solve part of the mystery of why only 1% of vaccine injuries are reported,” he said.
Mendenhall also represents Pfizer whistleblower Brook Jackson, who sued the drugmaker under the False Claims Act.
Conrad: ‘I kept getting gaslit and made fun of and told I was crazy’
When the COVID-19 pandemic began, Conrad had been a physician assistant for nearly 20 years. She spent most of that time as a hospitalist, working in inpatient medicine and the intensive care unit in the same hospital.
At United Memorial, she was director of Advanced Practice Providers, sat on the medical executive board, saw patients and was the first non-physician to receive the Physician Excellence award.
When the COVID-19 vaccine came out, her whole life changed, Conrad said. As she had done throughout her career, she reported to the hospital the safety issues and new trends in illness that she was seeing, such as elderly vaccinated people hospitalized for COVID-19 or young people with blood clots.
In researching whether providers in other places were witnessing the same issues, Conrad discovered VAERS — which she said she and her colleagues had never been told about, despite claims later made by the hospital — and began reporting cases.
She volunteered to take on this reporting role for the hospital, reporting all of the adverse events that came into the facility.
As the number of adverse events grew, the reporting became too onerous, so Conrad asked the hospital to develop a plan to efficiently complete the reports, to protect patients and to remain in compliance.
Instead, the hospital informed her it would be auditing her work.
The hospital accused Conrad of over-reporting and being “antivaxxy.” This was a problem, the hospital informed her in an email included in the complaint, because “we are very much advocating for patients to receive the vaccine.”
She was forbidden from filing reports for any patient she was not directly caring for, even though her leadership role meant she oversaw all patients, Conrad said.
If she had other concerns, they said she could register them in the hospital’s internal email system, “Safe Connect,” which she did. However, those reports weren’t going anywhere.
Concerned the events weren’t being reported and that the hospital was out of compliance with the agreement it had signed, Conrad began reaching out to the CDC, the FDA, the New York State Department of Health and the hospital accreditation board.
Rather than receiving support, Conrad said:
“I kept getting gaslit and made fun of and told I was crazy.
“Then I got called into a meeting and they threatened to report me to the state for spreading misinformation, saying that basically doing VAERS reports and talking to patients about their potential side effects is misinformation, and that I was spreading vaccine hesitancy, and that’s not allowed.
“And they said if it continued they were going to report me to have basically my license taken away. Wow. So at that point, I knew I was in real trouble.”
She contacted a lawyer and went public with her experience on The Highwire and in The New York Times. She also started a GoFundMe campaign, anticipating her possible firing.
The hospital threatened to report her to the New York State Society of Physician Assistants for spreading vaccine misinformation. Just a few months earlier, the same organization had nominated Conrad for a seat on the New York State Office of Professional Misconduct.
In what Conrad called “direct retaliation,” on Oct. 6, 2021, she was publicly surrounded at her workstation by human resources staff and escorted to a room where she was interrogated about her public comments.
“They basically told me, are you going to leave quietly or are we going to walk you out?” she said.
Conrad said the firing was very public and humiliating, which she thought was meant to scare others. “As a result of me being publicly fired, it’s my understanding that now no one [at the hospital] is reporting to VAERS,” she said.
Providers aren’t trained to use VAERS
The VAERS system is the primary public reporting system for flagging vaccine safety issues. For members of the public, it’s a voluntary system. However, healthcare professionals are required to report certain events.
Yet, Conrad said, she never learned about VAERS in her medical training and the hospital never offered training for the system. She said they never mentioned the system to staff until she complained publicly.
“We come out of school knowing every side effect for every drug known to man, because they have no liability shield, but we are never taught there could be anything wrong with vaccines,” she said.
“We didn’t even know there’s a reporting system. Why is that? Why do we have a liability shield for vaccines if they’re so safe? Why would we need it when we don’t have it for drugs that we know are not always safe? None of it makes sense,” she added.
Conrad said this “flawed” and “fraudulent” system is responsible for the rise in “vaccine hesitancy.” “They blame people like me for this hesitancy,” she said, “but they are the ones who created the issue by not enforcing” safety and injury reporting.
Instead, she said, the public health agencies normalized previously unthinkable ideas, such as it’s normal for vaccines to make people sick, or that reused cloth masks would protect from infectious disease and much more.
Healthcare is about safety, she said. “First, do no harm. That’s the oath I took when I graduated. But they’re using the doctors to harm patients unknowingly and not teaching them about the safety mechanisms we put in place.”
Conrad said she hopes the lawsuit will help change that. Now that it is unsealed, she said, “We’re able to go back out there and start talking about things because the public cannot forget. We cannot forget what has been done. Otherwise it’ll happen again.”
Mendenhall said he expects a response from the hospital system next week. He predicts they will submit a motion to dismiss, which he intends to contest.
“This is the first case of its kind,” he said. “I predict we will succeed in defending any motion to dismiss because Deb did such a good job with the evidence and her story is very compelling.”
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Pedophile Advocacy Group Praises Germany’s New Law Softening Punishment for Child Pornography
(LifeSiteNews) — In 2010, Jan Flesichhauer and Wiebke Hollersen penned a chilling essay for Der Spiegel titled “How the Left Took Things Too Far.” “One of the goals of the German 1968 movement was the sexual liberation of children,” they wrote. “For some, this meant overcoming all sexual inhibitions, creating a climate in which even pedophilia was considered progressive.”
That climate involved discussions about whether sex with children might be healthy for the children and musings that this could be part of kindergarten programs: “The educators’ notes indicate that they placed a very strong emphasis on sex education. Almost every day, the students played games that involved taking off their clothes, reading porno magazines together and pantomiming intercourse.”
As Fleischhauer and Hollersen concluded: “The members of the 1968 movement and their successors were caught up in a strange obsession about childhood sexuality.”
READ: Coddling rapists who pretend to be female is turning public opinion against the transgender movement
The conservative backlash to the sexual revolution roiling the West failed to roll it back – but it did manage to stop the attempt to sexualize childhood – at least until recent years, when “Drag Queen Story Hour,” explicit, instructional sex education, and the transitioning of children became the norm. Indeed, in Germany several pro-pedophile campaigners are celebrating after the Bundestag (Germany’s Parliament) voted to decriminalize the possession of child pornography.
The bill, which passed on May 16, removes the section of the German Criminal Code that designated possession of child pornography a federal crime. When it comes into effect in three years, the law will reduce minimum sentences for possessing child sexual abuse material and the crime will be “downgraded” to a misdemeanor. Minimum sentences are now reduced to a mere three months for possessing or acquiring child pornography, and a farcical six months for distributing child pornography.
The previous mandatory minimum sentence was one year, introduced when possession of child pornography was classified as a crime in 2021. As Genevieve Gluck at Reduxx reported, the move faced stiff opposition:
Responding to the passage of the bill, chairman of the association ‘German Children’s Aid – The Permanent Children’s Representation’ (Deutsche Kinderhilfe – Die ständige Kindervertretung), Rainer Becker, pointed out that Germany could violate a directive from the European Union that classifies any child pornographic media as a serious criminal offense with the change to the law.
A statement of opposition was released by the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) Christian Social Union of Bavaria (CSU). ‘The distribution, possession and acquisition of child pornography must, in principle, remain classified as crimes,’ reads the declaration.
‘Even if the increase in the penalty range in Section 184b of the Criminal Code in 2020 has led to practical problems in certain cases, a blanket reduction in the penalty range is the wrong solution. A change should be limited to the problem cases and solve them effectively. Scientific findings show that if the penalty framework shifts downwards, the penalties imposed in practice also tend to be lower.’
The justification for downgrading possession of child pornography to misdemeanor itself was an example of how thoroughly pornography has poisoned Western societies. According to the bill, the parents and teachers who find themselves in the possession of child pornography upon finding the material on the phones of their children or students, must be considered. From Article 1 of the new law:
Such cases have occurred particularly frequently among parents and teachers of older children or young people who found child pornography on them and passed it on to other parents, teachers or the school management to inform them of the problem. A downgrade to a misdemeanor is also urgently required in order to be able to respond appropriately and with the necessary flexibility to the large proportion of juvenile offenders. Here, too, the perpetrators generally do not act in order to be sexually aroused by the child pornography content, but rather out of a drive typical of the adolescent stage of development, such as naivety, curiosity, thirst for adventure or the desire to impress.
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Critics of the bill noted that exceptions for such cases could quite easily have been carved out without an across-the-board reduction in minimum sentencing for child pornography offences, and as Gluck pointed out, this move was praised by pedophilia activists, including the “notorious German pro-pedophile activist group… Krumme-13, or K13.” The group is “described as a ‘self-help’ organization for ‘pedosexuals,’” and released a statement on May 17 advising their readers being prosecuted for child pornography to have their lawyers “submit applications for stays of proceedings on behalf of their clients in ongoing proceedings” in order to secure a lesser sentence three years hence.
Krumme-13, Gluck reported, was founded by Dieter Gieseking, who has spent years racking up child pornography charges and has served multiple prison sentences as a result. Gieseking has followed in the footsteps of many of the 1960s sexual revolutionaries in calling the reduction or elimination of the age of consent. “The taboo of pedophilia must finally be broken at all levels of society,” he said in 2014. “If a pedophile can come out without fear of exclusion or even demonization, then this is the best prevention against child abuse… From a sexual policy perspective, an age of consent of 12 is appropriate and long overdue in today’s enlightened society. There are boys and girls who take the initiative in a friendly and sexual relationship with a pedosexual.”
Krumme-13 also wants the elimination of all laws on child pornography, and sees this latest move by the German Bundestag as a step in the right direction. That should be deeply, deeply concerning – especially as the sexualization of children, halted by the social conservative backlash to the sexual revolution during the 1970s and 1980s, has been coming back with a vengeance over the past decade.
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Say Goodbye to Cloud Anonymity? New US Regulations Demand User Identification
The US Department of Commerce is seeking to end the right of users of cloud services to remain anonymous.
The proposal first emerged in January, documents show, detailing new rules (National Emergency with Respect to Significant Malicious Cyber-Enabled Activities) for Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) providers, which include Know Your Customer (KYC) regulation, which is normally used by banks and financial institutions.
But now, the US government is citing concerns over “malicious foreign actors” and their usage of these services as a reason to effectively end anonymity on the cloud, including when only signing up for a trial.
Another new proposal from the notice is to cut access to US cloud services to persons designated as “foreign adversaries.”
As is often the case, although the justification for such measures is a foreign threat, US citizens inevitably, given the nature of the infrastructure in question, get caught up as well. And, once again, to address a problem caused by a few users, everyone will be denied the right to anonymity.
That would these days be any government’s dream, it appears, while the industry itself, especially the biggest players like Amazon, can implement the identification feature with ease, at the same time gaining a valuable new source of personal data.
The only losers here appear to be users of IaaS platforms, who will have to allow tech giants yet another way of accessing their sensitive personal information and risk losing it through leaks.
Meanwhile, the actual malicious actors will hardly give up those services – leaked personal data that can be sold and bought illegally, including by those the proposal says it is targeting.
Until now, providers of cloud services felt no need to implement a KYC regime, instead allowing people to become users, or try their products, simply by providing an email, and a valid credit card in case they signed up for a plan.
As for what the proposal considers to be an IaaS, the list is long and includes services providing processing, storage, networks, content delivery networks (CDNs), virtual private servers (VPSs), proxies, domain name resolution services, and more.
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