Berlin needs to let Vladimir Putin know that it can resist his gas supplies and that it is willing to pay more for NATO’s military defense.
“Suppose they gave a war, and nobody came?” went a 1960s antiwar slogan. Stell Dir vor, es ist Krieg, und Keiner geht hin is the German version. It’s still popular in Germany, a country of peaceniks. Germans’ defeat in World War II and subsequent reeducation by the Allies stripped them of any enthusiasm for war or military things.
The German government has revealed there are about 1,950 potentially violent Islamist extremists in the country.
These people were assessed by the Interior Ministry as both extreme in their beliefs and either known to be violent or showing a willingness to commit violent acts.
They were the most dangerous of the roughly 29,000 people believed to have Islamist extremist tendencies in Germany, who in turn are a minority of the approximately 5.5 million Muslims in the country.
Germany’s refusal to send weapons to Ukraine has puzzled and angered some allies. But the reasons why Europe’s most powerful country is standing back are historical and complex.
There’s a great grassy plain to the east of Berlin where the soil tells terrible stories.
As farmers plough, their blades disturb human bones, weapons; the fragments of one of the most brutal battles of World War II.
It was spring 1945. Hitler was hiding in a bunker in Berlin, his troops in retreat. Soviet forces advanced from the east across the plain but, above them on a hill called the Seelow Heights, the Nazis had taken up a defensive position.
Germany’s upcoming decision on whether to certify the controversial Russian-owned Nord Stream 2 pipeline is rapidly emerging as a key element in high-stakes diplomatic efforts to dissuade Moscow from invading Ukraine.
Delaying or cancelling the $11 billion project would have a significant impact on the Russian economy, depriving it of $3 billion US in annual revenue.
It also could serve to divide Ukraine’s allies as Russia continues to increase the pressure on the former Soviet bloc state.
Germany, the laggard of NATO with a deep conflict of interest regarding Russia, is the weak link.
President Joe Biden’s press conference last week was atrocious, but one of his worst missteps amounted to telling the truth about Germany, if not by name.
Biden said there’d be divisions within NATO over a “minor incursion” by Russia into Ukraine. This is true enough, and the chief cause would be a Germany that is staking a strong claim to being our worst European ally.
Well well well. NATO member will withdraw troops in event of war with Russia – president
Croatian President Zoran Milanovic blamed the US for escalating the crisis and said his country would stay out of a conflict
Putin is winning by not invading. What a guy.
The Roman Catholic Church in Germany on Sunday faced renewed calls for better protection of LGBTQ rights and an end to institutional discrimination against queer people.
Around 125 people, including former and current priests, teachers, church administrators and volunteers, identified themselves as gay and queer, asking the church to take into account their demands and do away with “outdated statements of church doctrine” when it comes to sexuality and gender.
Heidelberg university shooting: Gunman dead after injuring several
A lone gunman is dead after injuring several people inside a lecture hall at Heidelberg University, German police have said.
They said the gunman was in possession of a “long gun”, and that a large operation including emergency services was under way at the university’s campus in Neuenheimer Feld.
It is not yet clear how many people have been injured, or how badly.
Heidelberg is a university town in the southwest of Germany.
Germany is said to be blocking Estonia from providing German-origin military support to Ukraine, US newspaper The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported on Friday.
The report comes after the US State Department gave Estonia the green light to send US-made weapons to Ukraine.
According to the WSJ report, Berlin has refused to issue permits so that the weapons can be exported to Kyiv.
It refuses to provide arms to Ukraine while other NATO members step up to do so.
Fears are rising that Germany is failing to do enough to prevent a Russian invasion and failing to aid Ukraine in the case of an attack amid warnings from the White House that Russian troops could invade at any time.
U.S. officials say there is evidence Russia is planning to overthrow Ukraine’s government and take Kyiv, CNN reported Tuesday. Russia is also deploying troops into Belarus — a development that U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Linda Thomas-Greenfield said Tuesday shows Russia “is making moves that would suggest that they have plans to invade.”
Pipeline politics have undermined Europe’s strategic advantage over Russia
A pipeline of natural gas from Russia to the West is also, in effect, a pipeline of money from the West to Russia. Neither side can cut off supplies to the other side without cutting itself off.
It’s a co-dependent relationship that has helped to keep to peace for decades. Pipeline politics has been especially helpful to the countries between Russia and Germany — and, in particular, Poland and Ukraine.
Pop stars don’t come more quintessentially British than David Bowie. But during his Berlin years, the English icon left a deep impact on Germany too. When Bowie died exactly six years ago, the German Foreign Office tweeted out its farewells and thanked him ‘for helping to bring down the wall.’ Bowie would have been 75 this weekend, giving Germans cause to reflect on the legacy of a much-loved Cold War hero.
Germany’s new chancellor, Olaf Scholz, has had his first telephone call with Chinese President Xi Jinping. Scholz, who succeeded Angela Merkel as chancellor on December 8, pledged to strengthen economic ties with China, but he failed to mention human rights or the destruction of democracy in Hong Kong.
The telephone call will disappoint those who had hoped that Germany’s new government — a three-way coalition consisting of the center-left Social Democrats (SPD), the environmentalist Greens and the pro-business Free Democrats (FDP) — would break with the past and take distance from Merkel’s policy of appeasing dictators and sacrificing human rights on the altar of financial gain.
Two Afghan brothers have been charged in Germany with murdering their sister, whom they allegedly wanted to punish because of her Western way of life.
The men, identified only as Sayed H., 26, and Seyed H., 22, due to Germany’s privacy laws, are accused of luring their 34-year-old sister Maryam H. to a meeting in Berlin on July 13, before choking and strangling her and cutting her throat.
German prosecutors say that the brothers dismembered the mother-of-two’s body and then took a taxi to a train station later that day with her body in a suitcase.
… The Vienna-based Observatory on Intolerance against Christians in Europe (OIDAC), which has compiled a report on anti-Christian hate crime in the continent, says the two main threats come from ‘secular intolerance’ and ‘Islamic oppression’.
… They said: ‘Islamic Oppression can mostly be seen in what we call “hotspot areas” of European cities and suburbs, where they impose unique legal and moral codes, which are often in contradiction to democratic principles and human rights.’
German police revealed on Friday that they prevented a planned Islamist attack in the northern city of Hamburg over the summer.
Andy Grote, top security official for the city, which like the cities of Berlin and Bremen is a state in its own right, said that the plot had been “very, very serious.”
On August 26, police arrested a 20-year-old German-Moroccan man after he tried to buy a firearm and hand grenade on the dark web — unwittingly from an undercover investigator.
