Merkel
apes Killary Clinton
‘Reflection of insecurity?’ Merkel claims ‘Russian hackers’ might derail German elections
RT,
8
November, 2016
Speculation
that Russia could influence elections in a foreign country is
spreading across the Atlantic, with German Chancellor Angela Merkel
claiming that Moscow could try to impact Germany’s general
elections next year through cyberattacks.
Accusations
of Russian involvement in the US presidential race began to surface
this summer after Democratic National Committee (DNC) emails were
published by WikiLeaks on July 22, 2016.
Since
then, US presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s allegations that
Moscow engaged in hacking to damage her bid for the White House have
become a major issue in the ongoing US election campaign.
While
offering no proof, the Democrats accused the Kremlin of hacking into
their computer networks and publishing sensitive information in order
to swing the election in favor of Clinton’s GOP rival Donald Trump.
In particular, Clinton claimed that Russia had supplied the
whistleblower website WikiLeaks with emails hacked from the account
of her campaign chair, John Podesta.
WikiLeaks
has so far refused to reveal its source of the leaks, but a hacker
named Guccifer 2.0 claimed responsibility for the attack. Russia for
its part has repeatedly denied the accusations, asserting that it has
no interest in influencing the US election or any other country’s
political choice.
Yet
on Tuesday, just before the Americans went out to vote, German
Chancellor Angela Merkel who faces massive discontent at home over
her “open door” migrant policy, said that Moscow might “also”
try to influence the German election
Answering a question about whether Germany could experience similar cyberattacks to those which have been reported in the US, Merkel, without a shred of evidence, alleged that Russia’s interference could be a possibility.
“We already know that we have to deal with reports from Russia or also with cyberattacks from Russian sources or even with the reports from which we are confronted to some extent with false information,” Merkel said at a joint press conference with the Norwegian Prime Minister Erna Solberg. “To deal with this is our daily task and therefore it … will also play a role in the elections.”
Merkel,
who still hasn’t declared her candidacy for the September 2017
elections is widely expected to run for a fourth consecutive term
despite growing opposition to her policies.
In
September Merkel and her center-right Christian Democratic Union
(CDU) were trounced in regional elections, particularly her home
state of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania. There Merkel’s CDU finished
in third place behind the second-place anti-immigration and anti-EU
Alternative fur Deutschland (AfD) Party.
The
AfD founded in 2013, made strides over the past 12 months by taking a
hard line against Merkel’s “open-door” policy
on Syrian refugees. As of September 2016, the AfD ed by Frauke Petry
and Jörg Meuthen had gained representation in ten of the 16 German
state parliaments.
Piling
political pressure on Merkel ahead of the election is the EU six
billion euro ($6.61bn) deal with Turkey, which was engineered by the
German Chancellor. But despite an agreement that is designed to curb
the migrants flow into the EU, Germany continues to face a heightened
terrorist threat, with a number of terror attacks rocking German
cities this summer.
To
divert the public’s attention from her party’s shortcomings and
failed policies, Merkel is trying to adopt the tactics used by the
Democrats in the US and create an existential threat in form of
Russia, former German intelligence officer, Rainer Rupp told RT.
Merkel’s
statement on Tuesday ahead of the US election is a “reflection
of her insecurity,” Rupp
says. “It
is a reflection the way her party is dealing [with the loss] in
regional elections.”
“They
[CDU] are in the free fall. So from that point of view it
is much easier to blame it on the Russians. They are the bad guys
anyways,” the
expert added.
In
spring this year, Hans-George Maassen, the head of Germany’s
domestic intelligence agency, warned that German government,
business, and educational facilities were under “permanent
threat” from
Russian cyberattacks.
Without
offering any proof to his claims, the head of the BfV stated that
cyberspace is a place for “hybrid
warfare,” a
platform “espionage
and sabotage” operations
by Russia.
“The
campaigns being monitored by the BfV are generally about obtaining
information, that is spying,” he
said. “However,
Russian secret services have also shown a readiness to carry out
sabotage.”
Maassen
comments which he made in May follow a series of allegations of
Russian hackers involvement in cyberattacks on German state
institutions and political parties. German authorities have pinned
the blame for lower house of parliament, the Bundestag, cyberattack
on Russia. Germany also believes that Russian hackers were behind
cyberattacks on the headquarters of Merkel’s conservative Christian
Democrats.
These “cyberattacks carried
out by Russian secret services are part of multi-year international
operations that are aimed at obtaining strategic
information,” Maassen said without
offering any evidence to the claims. “Some
of these operations can be traced back as far as seven to 11 years.”
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