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PhotographyThe German government has not yet survived a year, and is very close to an end.
(1) The coalition has been disagreeing on major issues for months now, and the three parties are fighting each other openly now.
(2) The German Federal President (from the Christian Conservatives) resigned for weird reasons two weeks ago. The new candidate from the Conservatives would have no problems to get elected if the whole coalition voted for him, but it currently looks like many electoral delegates from the Liberals are considering to vote for the candidate nominated by the social democrats and the green party. This would be a disaster for the government.
(3) A couple of days ago, the government announced how they want to counter the global financial crises in Germany: they decided take away money from disabled and unemployed people as well as seniors (there are other cuts as well, but this is actually the biggest one).
The protest against the government has never been that big, the Liberal party is down to 3% (from 15% at the elections), and in a re-election the current coalition would not stand a chance.
Today, there was a big demonstration against the government in Berlin. It would have been great to see 20.000 people on the streets.
But it was not.
Because stupid ******** started throwing stones, bottles and even self-made bombs at policemen. Two policemen were severely hurt and had to be operated. It is not yet sure if they will survive.
(EDIT: this seems to be wrong – the police obviously wasn’t publishing adequate information. My point, however, remains, no matter if police officers were severely hurt, killed, or only injured.)
STOP IT.
You are destroying everything we, the people of Germany stand for. We are a peaceful people, and have proven this again and again recently, e.g. when the USA went to war in Iraq and Germany stood up against this war. Most people don’t agree with your violence, and you are ridiculing 20.000 people who went on the street to protest social cuts today. The police has nothing to do with this!
You are taking away our voice by taking illegal and inhuman actions. You offered the government the chance to pretend that only leftwing-radicals on their usual anti-capitalism campaign protested today, which is simply not true.
If you want to throw rocks at people, please feel free to go into some forest and through rocks at each other. Or bottles, or bombs. Noone cares.
Just get it over with.
June 13th, 2010 at 14:00
instead of reproducing media propaganda about “self made bombs” and
“severe injured policeman” just check out some photos of the demonstration
where poor robocop policemen are attacking unprotected demonstrators (as usual)
none of your beloved uniformed hooligans had to be afraid for his or her life yesterday
(in contary, this was the case with many participants of the demonstration)
apart from your whole bild brainwashing report you could also explain
what do yoh mean with “ideals that we people in germany stand for” and when you decided that you represent them
in this demonstration there were many people who knew that the current crisis is not the result of mismanagement, corrupt politicians or bad luck but a “collateral damage” of the capitalistic society..
friendly,
jessica
June 13th, 2010 at 14:28
I don’t believe that evolution is made up by a conspiracy of thousands of scientists. Neither do I believe in mass media propaganda in Germany. And it’s not like I use BILD or WELT as news-portal.
I have been to quite a few demonstrations before. And since I live in Berlin (that’s 12 months now), I have been on most of the major demos as well (e.g. Tempelhof, “freedom instead of fear”, big education demo last year). Now, obviously a few policemen took illegal action and go to demonstration in order to … physically engage with demonstrators. And that is completely illegal and must be very severely punished. I was with the Chaos Computer Club car who filmed the illegal police action at the freedom instead of fear demo last year – the video went through the media. It was outreageous behavior, and everybody agrees that this is *not ok*!
But only a small minority of policemen think (or act) like that, and after the changes to police uniforms in Berlin, they can and will be more easily identified now.
But this is not a police problem. You have at least the same percentage of left-radicals who come from all over Germany to big demonstrations in Berlin in order to run around in black masks and throw stones at the police – for the fun of it. I talked to many of those within the last years (e.g. at the first of May demos in Leipzig), to understand what’s going on in their minds. Not much, I have to say. Most of them could barely spell anarchy or communism…
And when I talk about the German people, I know that the big majority is peaceful. The German people very strongly oppose violence. It is not appropriate.
About the idea of the demonstration: the government decided on severe social cuts, which are inhuman and must be opposed. It is good to see that the German people stood up. But you can destroy all this by blurring the message of the demonstration.
When the United States went to war in Iraq, many people in Germany protested this. They went to the streets in great numbers and opposed the war. But very few individuals – radicals again – burned American flags on these demonstrations, and that is what was shown in the news. Burning flags. So less and less people went to protest, because they did not want to be part of this crowd of hate. They did not want to be seen on a demonstration with this message. They did not oppose America in general, they were not ok with burning flags and spreading hate. They had one major issue, and that was the war in Iraq.
Same here – the social cuts were the reason for the demonstration. If you guys prefer to have anti-capitalism meetings, well, there you go. But if you want to actually achieve something, if you want to HELP the seniors and children and disabled people who are going to get even less money from the government, you better have one clear message: “we oppose the social cuts”, and don’t cloud them by anti-capitalism tra-ra. Because that’s what the media will portray, and you just help politicians by enabling them to portray the whole issue as left-wing propaganda, and not the voice of the German people.
I’m as unhappy as you are with the situation – I find it outrageous. But we have to stand together now, we have to be credible and strong. And we will not achieve this with violence.
June 15th, 2010 at 17:14
“you are ridiculing 20.000 people who went on the street to protest social cuts today”
_______
I think you already named the reason there. It is probably not everybody in the Black Bloc, but I bet that decisive elements are in there for that very reason – sinister Divide and Conquer with agent provocateurs.
As for the bomb: It was BILD hype. It is strange though that youtube videos that clearly showed the (not that spectacular) bomb were taken down pretty fast. I was also shocked at first when I heard of a bomb going off, but now that several witnesses explained how it was, I highly doubt the “official” version transported by BILD and others that jumped the bandwaggon.
It is very remarkable, too, that many news outlets decided to focus on this issue. Every newsman knows that people will stop attending demonstrations when you brand them as violent. It is the most effective thing to do if you want no future demonstrations that could create impact. It would be weird if they did not report on it at all, but the very focus impressed me. All the more because I heard several accounts of high police violence that found no representation in the media.
I am as concerned as you are, but not that mad at the anticapitalistic movement. They annoy me due to their dogmatic approach that focuses on utopia instead of slight improvements. And of course violence is not an option. But I bet that even most of them know that.
June 17th, 2010 at 13:10
Federal prosecutor calls media hype around alleged bomb “bullshit”: http://www.taz.de/1/politik/deutschland/artikel/1/ein-dumpfer-knall-mit-folgen/
There was no threat to life at all (concerning “will they survive”). Watch the video to be completely sure. I will not defend violence at all, but media lies like calling it a “frag bomb” with dozens injured drive me nuts.
June 17th, 2010 at 15:08
The state uses violence to fight the demonstrations and the protesters defend the policemen? something is going wrong here…
I think in Germany it is very easy for the government to carry out massive social cuts as the current SPARPAKET.
There is almost no resistance in the public, and if there are somewhat bigger protests everybody starts complainig that the protests are too lound, too strong, too whatever and they destroy the german peace…
June 21st, 2010 at 15:07
@ Franz:
Thanks. Sorry for the late reply, I was travelling. The media obviously fooled me, I’m surprised once again that the police actually lied in an official statement at a press conference.
EDIT: I just saw the news on ZDF, they showed the video from the “bomb” and said 16 (sic!) policemen were injured, 2 of them severe.
ô_ô
Doesn’t look like 16 injured policemen in the video.
@ Camo:
I disagree, naturally. First, quite a lot of people went out to protest the social cuts. 20.000 in Berlin alone, that is something. And second, regarding “everybody starts complaining that the protests are too lound, too strong, too whatever and they destroy the german peace”: feel free to give references for this. I don’t see any people complaining. Maybe you misunderstood my posting? The idea was to clearly state out that violence is not an option when you want to achieve something in a democratic state. It doesn’t help. It gets the public against you. It’s stupid and inhumane.
June 24th, 2010 at 13:58
I won’t blame you. The propaganda is deafening. Even the ZDF fell for it, you name it. I hope that these protests survive the media lies shitstorms that try to kill the momentum. We badly need resistance against these social cuts. And agree, we need _humane_ resistance against inhumanity. Fighting fire with fire usually ends with too much stuff burnt.