14 NEWS Best columns: Europe
BULGARIA
Pity our prime minister, said Slavi Angelov. Boyko
Borisov wants Bulgaria to adopt the euro currency,
which would likely benefit the country. But Bulgar-
ians are so used to being cheated and lied to by his
and other governments that they are reflexively mis-
trustful of any directive from Sofia. Since our transi-
tion from communism, ordinary people have had
their pockets picked by oligarchs. First came “mafia
privatization,” when state enterprises were looted
by crooks. Then came successive regimes of corrup-
tion, with episodes of ballot stuffing and bailouts
for failed oligarch-owned banks. Bulgarians “sleep
with one eye open” because of the constant feelingthat “somebody is trying to screw them.” Just last
year, top members of the ruling party were caught
buying luxury apartments from developers at sus-
piciously low prices; many ordinary Bulgarians,
meanwhile, still live in run-down cinder-block flats.
No wonder we are skeptical about the govern-
ment’s claims that joining the euro will improve our
fortunes. Bulgaria is the most corrupt and poorest
member of the European Union. And when you are
barely scraping by, you fear losing your last pen-
nies. Bulgarians might be convinced to accept the
euro—but only if the government is uncharacteristi-
cally honest about its pros and cons.Switzerland’s role in “one of the largest espionage
operations in history” has been revealed, says
Thomas Knellwolf—and the country is reeling.
From 1970 into the 2000s, the Swiss security-
technology company Crypto AG sold encryption
machines to more than 120 nations. But all along,
the firm was secretly owned and controlled by
America’s CIA and its German equivalent, the
BND. The spy agencies had deliberately rigged
the machines, allowing them to read the secret
messages sent by friends and foes. For the CIA,
it was “the intelligence coup of the century.” The
encryption machines reportedly let the Ameri-
cans eavesdrop on Iran during the 1979 hostagecrisis and supply Britain with intelligence about
Ar gen tina during the 1982 Falk lands War. This
“brazen” operation was possible because the
Amer i cans and Ger mans could hide behind Swit-
zer land’s “neu trality” and good name. The worst
part? The Swiss government knew all along—its
own equipment was never tampered with—but it
failed to stop the spy scheme. The story came out
only because of the efforts of a Ger man reporter.
Switzer land must immediately investigate this scan-
dal with radical transparency, disclosing everything
it finds and prosecuting officials who violated the
law. If we don’t, no country that was duped will
trust us again.APA bloody attack has finally persuaded
the German government to take
“right-wing terrorism seriously,” said
Thomas Sigmund in Handelsblatt.
Tobias Rathjen, 43, went on a shoot-
ing spree in the western town of Hanau
last week, killing nine people at two
Turkish-owned hookah bars before
returning home and turning his gun
on himself and his 72-year-old mother.
The terrorist left behind a rambling
24-page manifesto in which he spewed
hate at Germany’s ethnic minorities; all
of those killed in the hookah bars were
from immigrant backgrounds, and some
were German citizens. In the wake of
the bloodshed, outraged Germans poured into the streets to dem-
onstrate in solidarity with Muslims and immigrants. The govern-
ment also leaped into action, stationing police at mosques and Is-
lamic community centers—officers were already standing guard at
synagogues. “Far-right terrorism,” said Justice Minister Christine
Lambrecht, “is the biggest threat to our democracy right now.”Why did it take us so long to wake up to the danger? asked
Andreas Niesmann in the Mitteldeutsche Zeitung. “Hadn’t there
been enough atrocities?” A neo-Nazi gang murdered nine im-
migrant shopkeepers from 2000 to 2007, attacks that police ini-
tially blamed on the Turkish mafia. In 2016, a teenager with rad-
ical right-wing beliefs shot nine people dead at a Munich mall.
Politician Walter Lübcke—who supported the resettlement of ref-
ugees in Germany—was assassinated at his home by a neo-Nazi
last June, and four months later a far-right extremist killed twopeople while attempting to attack
a synagogue on Yom Kippur. After
each attempt, we said never again.
This time, though, Germans seem to
mean it. “The Hanau case marks a
turning point” because it comes on
the heels of a series of shocks. First,
in early February, mainstream parties
partnered with the “fascist” Alterna-
tive for Germany (AfD) to select the
state governor in Thuringia. And
days later, 12 Germans—one a police
employee—were arrested over a far-
right plot to spark a civil war.Some have tried to dismiss Rathjen
as “a mere madman,” said the Nürnberger Zeitung in an edito-
rial. In his manifesto and in a video posted online, the gunman
talked about the voices in his head, the secret agents who were
tailing him, and how U.S. President Donald Trump had stolen his
ideas. Rathjen called for the extermination of Middle Easterners
and Africans and was clearly unhinged. But Hitler was mentally
unwell, too, and that doesn’t excuse his crimes. The scary thing
is, this particular mania is spreading, said Peter Pappert in the
Aachener Zeitung. Racists used to feel ostracized, but now they
can easily find cohorts online and even have a political home in
the AfD, the third-largest group in the Bundestag. AfD lawmakers
routinely give “hate-filled speeches” in which they claim the white
race is being replaced by brown-skinned interlopers and call for
“resistance against migrants.” These extremist words “spark ex-
tremist actions,” and if Germans don’t rise up in righteous rejec-
tion of the AfD, we will head back down “a dangerous path.”Why we
don’t trust our
government
Slavi Angelov
24 Chasa
SWITZERLAND
A solidarity rally in Hanau after the terrorist rampage.The Swiss role
in a global
spy game
Thomas Knellwolf
Tages-Anzeiger
Germany: The growing threat of far-right terrorism