Germany

German Couple Pay Greece £630 ‘War Reparations’

March 22, 2015 Agency France-Presse, www.theguardian.com Create! Germany, Greece, Reparations, War crimes

A German couple visiting Greece walked into a town hall and handed over €875 (£630, approximately $1,000) in what they said were second world war reparations. Dimitris Kotsouros, the mayor of Nafplio, a seaport in the Peloponnese, said: “They came to my office yesterday morning, saying they wanted to make up for their government’s attitude. They made their calculations and said each German owed €875 for what Greece had to pay during world war two.” The mayor of the historic town where the tourists deposited their cheque said the money had since been donated to a local charity. The couple chose his town “because it was the first capital of Greece in the 19th century”, he added. Greek media reports named the pair as Ludwig Zacaro and Nina Lahge. They say Zacaro is retired and Lahge works a 30-hour week. They did not have enough money to pay for two, one paper said.

US Threatened Germany Over Snowden, Vice Chancellor Says

March 22, 2015 Glenn Greenwald, www.firstlook.org Educate! Edward Snowden, Germany, Glenn Greenwald, NSA

German Vice Chancellor Sigmar Gabriel (above) said this week in Homburg that the U.S. government threatened to cease sharing intelligence with Germany if Berlin offered asylum to NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden or otherwise arranged for him to travel to that country. “They told us they would stop notifying us of plots and other intelligence matters,” Gabriel said. The vice chancellor delivered a speech in which he praised the journalists who worked on the Snowden archive, and then lamented the fact that Snowden was forced to seek refuge in “Vladimir Putin’s autocratic Russia” because no other nation was willing and able to protect him from threats of imprisonment by the U.S. government (I was present at the event to receive an award). That prompted an audience member to interrupt his speech and yell out: “Why don’t you bring him to Germany, then?”

Greece: Memory & Debt

March 19, 2015 Conn Hallinan, www.dispatchesfromtheedgeblog.wordpress.com Educate! Debt, Germany, Greece, Reparations, Wars and Militarism

Memory is selective and therein lays an explanation for some of the deep animosity between Berlin and Athens in the current debt crisis that has shaken the European Union (EU) to its foundations. For German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schauble, “memory” goes back to 2007 when Greece was caught up in the worldwide financial conflagration touched off by American and European speculators. Berlin was a major donor in the 240 billion Euro “bailout”—89 percent of which went to pay off the gambling debts of German, French, Dutch and British banks. Schauble wants that debt repaid. Millions of Greeks are concerned about unpaid debts as well, although their memories stretch back a little further. In July, 1943 Wehrmacht General Hubert Lanz, commander of the First Mountain Division, was annoyed because two of his officers had been threatened by civilians in the Western Greek town of Kommeno.

Rage Against The ECB: What’s Blockupy Against?

March 18, 2015 DW, www.dw.de Resist! Banking, Europe, Germany

The Frankfurt-based European Central Bank (ECB) had scheduled Wednesday as a festive day to commemorate the official opening of the 185-meter (202-yard) tall skyscraper that will serve as its new headquarters building - a big glass tower that took five years and 1.3 billion euros ($1.4 billion) to build. But the anti-capitalist Blockupy network has other plans. It's gearing up for a day of protest and blockade, speeches and street theater. Blockupy's goal: To draw attention to ECB policies which, they say, have favored the rich over the poor, the banks over the people, the creditor class over debtors - policies that have amounted to bailing out irresponsible financiers at the expense of ordinary citizens.

Greece Sours German Relations With Demand For War Reparations

March 14, 2015 Helena Smith, www.theguardian.com Educate! Europe, Germany, Greece, History, Reparations

Greece’s strained relations with Germany took a turn for the worse on Wednesday when Athens’ leftist-led government raised the spectre of seizing German assets for war reparations that it claimed Berlin has stubbornly refused to honour. In an address before the Greek parliament, Alexis Tspiras, the Greek prime minister, said Germany had “a moral obligation” to make amends for the atrocities wrought during three devastating years of Nazi occupation. Berlin, he said, had deliberately flouted its duty employing “legal tricks and delay”. “Germany has never properly paid reparations for the damage done to Greece by the Nazi occupation,” the premier told the house as deputies debated establishing a committee to seek war reparations, repayment of a forced loan and the return of plundered antiquities.

Europe And US Divide Over Ukraine Escalation

February 8, 2015 Stephen Brown and Noah Barkin, www.reuters.com Educate! France, Germany, Ukraine, Wars and Militarism

Germany's Angela Merkel said on Saturday that sending arms to help Ukraine fight pro-Russian separatists would not solve the crisis there, drawing sharp rebukes from U.S. politicians who accused Berlin of turning its back on an ally in distress. The heated exchanges at a security conference in Munich pointed to cracks in the transatlantic consensus on how to confront Russian President Vladimir Putin over a deepening conflict in eastern Ukraine that has killed more than 5,000. But she flatly rejected the notion that sending weapons to Kiev, an idea being considered by U.S. President Barack Obama, would help resolve the conflict. "I understand the debate but I believe that more weapons will not lead to the progressUkraine needs. I really doubt that," said the conservative German leader, who has led western efforts to try to resolve the crisis through negotiations and will travel to Washington on Sunday for talks with Obama. U.S. senators Lyndsey Graham and John McCain, both Republican hawks, were withering in their criticism of the German stance, which is supported by other big European countries like France. The French leader, Merkel, Poroshenko and Putin are due to hold a call on Sunday, before the chancellor travels to Washington. "If we don't manage to find not just a compromise but a lasting peace agreement, we know perfectly well what the scenario will be. It has a name, it's called war," Hollande said.

Editor Of Major Newspaper Says He Planted Stories For CIA

February 3, 2015 Ralph Lopez, www.digitaljournal.com Educate! CIA, Germany, Journalism, Media

Becoming the first credentialed, well-known media insider to step forward and state publicly that he was secretly a "propagandist," an editor of a major German daily has said that he personally planted stories for the CIA. Saying he believes a medical condition gives him only a few years to live, and that he is filled with remorse, Dr. Udo Ulfkotte, the editor of Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, one of Germany's largest newspapers, said in an interview that he accepted news stories written and given to him by the CIA and published them under his own name. Ulfkotte said the aim of much of the deception was to drive nations toward war.

First We Take Athens: Europe’s Debt Colony Revolts

January 30, 2015 Heathcote Ruthven, www.roarmag.org Resist! Debt, Europe, Germany, Greece, Spain

In the past four years Greece’s economy has shrunk by a quarter. Child poverty is at 40%. A quarter of a million people are without electricity. Unemployment stands at 26%, and most of these people do not receive benefits. For those in work, job security and wages have been cut and 33% of the population has no health insurance. The list goes on. The story is a familiar one. The Greek state was lent huge amounts by the IMF and Eurozone countries — it is 175% of it’s GDP in debt — in exchange for brutal austerity conditions to be imposed. Syriza want to stop all of this. The newFinance Minister described the bailout deals, with characteristic Greek flair, as “fiscal waterboarding policies that have turned Greece into a debt colony.” He is now aiming to negotiate 50% of their debt to be wiped off (such a thing has happened many times before, including to Germany in 1953).

Germans Are In Shock As New Greek Leader Starts With A Bang

January 29, 2015 Noah Barkin, www.businessinsider.com Organize! Austerity, European Union (EU), Germany, Greece, Left, Russia

In his first act as prime minister on Monday, Alexis Tsipras visited the war memorial in Kaisariani where 200 Greek resistance fighters were slaughtered by the Nazis in 1944. The move did not go unnoticed in Berlin. Nor did Tsipras's decision hours later to receive the Russian ambassador before meeting any other foreign official. Then came the announcement that radical academic Yanis Varoufakis, who once likened German austerity policies to "fiscal waterboarding," would be taking over as Greek finance minister. A short while later, Tsipras delivered another blow, criticizing an EU statement that warned Moscow of new sanctions.

50,000 In Berlin Say No To TTIP

January 22, 2015 Resist! Germany, Protest, TTP

We are hearing more and more news from Europe that the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) is running into stiff head winds, and I had the pleasure of seeing this growing storm of opposition first-hand in Berlin last week. I attended a series of events culminating in the WIR HABEN ES SATT! “We’re Fed Up” march, a massive mobilization of people saying no to industrial agriculture. This year, a special focus was on TTIP and GMOs and demanding new protections for animal welfare. This was the fifth year of the march, and at 50,000 people, the biggest so far. One of the organizers of the march, ARC2020, described the event: “Farmers and beekeepers, tractors and stiltwalkers, samba bands and chanting citizens of all ages made their colourful way from Potsdamer Platz to the Angela Merkel’s chancellery. Their aim? To say no to a broken industrialised globalised food system and yes to an alternative.”

German Cops Kettle Demo & Confiscate Smart Phones

January 19, 2015 Revolution News, www.revolution-news.com Resist! Germany, Police, Protests, Social Media, Surveillance

On Thursday, about 1200 people demonstrated in Leipzig for Khaled Idris Bahray, an Eritrean refugee who was seemingly murdered by neo nazis after a Pegida demonstration. The Dresden police have been implicated in a cover up of his murder, and will soon be under investigation as a result of a complaint filed by a Green MP. During the demonstration, there were some clashes between demonstrators and police, and eventually a smaller portion of the protest was kettled. Police let the protestors go, but not before collecting all of their cell phones. This was seemingly illegal, and police have yet to explain their actions. The clear motive for this is surveillance.

35,000 Germans Rally In Dresden Against Racism & Xenophobia

January 11, 2015 Michael Nienaber and Andreas Rinke, www.reuters.com Resist! Germany, Immigration, Islamaphobia, Racism

A rally against racism and xenophobia on Saturday drew tens of thousands of people in the eastern German city of Dresden, which has become the center of anti-immigration protests organized by a new grassroots movement called PEGIDA. "We won't permit that hate will divide us", Dresden's mayor Helma Orosz said in front of the 18th-century Frauenkirche (Church of Our Lady). Around 35,000 people attended the rally that was jointly organized by the state government of Saxony and the city of Dresden, officials said. The movement Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamisation of the West (PEGIDA) is holding weekly rallies in Dresden with a record number of 18,000 people attending last Monday. Chancellor Angela Merkel has condemned the anti-Muslim demonstrations, urging Germans to turn their backs on the movement and calling their organizers racists full of hatred. A recent survey, conducted before Wednesday's deadly attack on a French satirical magazine, showed that an increasing majority of non-Muslim Germans feel threatened by Islam. The Paris attack has fueled fears that it could boost anti-immigration movements around Europe and inflame a culture war about the place of religion and ethnic identity in society.

Record 17,000 Join ‘Pinstripe Nazi’ Anti-Islam March In Germany

December 29, 2014 Agence France-Press, www.theguardian.com Resist! Germany, Nationalism, Neo-Nazis, Racism

A record 17,000 people have joined the latest in a string of demonstrations against Islam in Dresden, eastern Germany, celebrating the rise of their far-right populist movement by singing Christmas carols. The march on Monday night was organised by Patriotic Europeans Against Islamisation of the West – a group that has grown rapidly since its first protest in October. Politicians from all major parties have been stunned by the emergence of the right-wing nationalists who vent their anger against what they consider a broken immigration and asylum system. About 4,500 counter-demonstrators marched through the city under the slogan “Dresden Nazi-free”, warning that there was no space for racism and xenophobia in the country that perpetrated the Holocaust.

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