Once the water recedes over the weekend, not only will the damage become visible, the politics will too
There is an interesting history to the politics of floods in Germany — and a possibility that history might be repeating itself. The official death toll in Germany has risen to 93 this morning, but 1,300 people are still reported missing in the region of Ahrweiler, in western Germany. This is without a doubt the most extreme natural disaster that has hit Germany in living memory.
Police in the German state of Hesse searched multiple locations in connection with investigations involving suspected “Islamic State” extremists, local authorities said Wednesday morning.
Ten search warrants were executed across the state “on suspicion of terrorist financing and the preparation of a serious, state-endangering act of violence” early Wednesday.
The accused included eight men and two women between the ages of 20 and 51, according to a statement by the public prosecutor’s office in Frankfurt am Main and the Hessian State Criminal Police Office.
German federal prosecutors arrested and charged a semi-retired think tank head Tuesday on suspicion of spying for China.
The political scientist, identified as Klaus L., 75, under German privacy laws, ran the Hanns Seidel Foundation in Munich according to broadcaster ARD since 2001 before later establishing the Institute for Transnational Studies.
The foundation is associated with the Christian Social Union (CSU), a sister party of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s party the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), in Bavaria.
The former head of Germany’s intelligence agency has criticised the country’s leader Angela Merkel over her immigration policies, saying that they are leading the country into a decline.
Hans-Georg Maassen previously ran the Office for the Protection of the Constitution in Germany for six years before being forced out in 2018 after publicly contradicting the chancellor’s claims that foreigners had been ‘hunted’ in the city of Chemnitz during civil unrest in the area.
The 58-year-old’s remarks at the time, which questioned evidence of such ‘hunts’, caused a huge scandal and rocked Mrs Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU).
The German Parliament has amended Germany’s Criminal Code to ban the flag of Hamas, the terrorist group that rules the Gaza Strip.
The move comes after the green and white flags of Hamas, which seeks the destruction of Israel, featured prominently at pro-Palestinian rallies across Germany during the Gaza conflict in May. Some of those rallies ended in anti-Semitic violence in German cities and towns.
German lawmakers said that banning the Hamas flag was aimed at sending “a clear signal” of support “to our Jewish citizens.” Others, however, dismissed the ban as an empty gesture aimed at silencing critics of the German government’s pro-Islamist foreign policy ahead of upcoming federal elections this September.
A knife attack in the German city of Wuerzburg in which three people died and six were injured had an Islamist motive, prosecutors have said. The attacker, a young Somali man, was shot and arrested by police.
“An Islamist background for the crimes is likely,” the Munich Prosecutor’s Office said in a joint statement with Bavarian police on Tuesday, describing Monday’s rampage. The perpetrator shouted “Allahu Akbar” at least two times during the incident.
Abdel-Hakim Ourghi has written books including “You Don’t Have to Wear a Headscarf” and “Reform Islam: 40 Theses.” His application to train other Islamic teachers was turned down for vague reasons.
A German Islamic scholar has had his teaching license rejected because of his “liberal theological convictions,” one of his peers told a newspaper on Saturday.
Islam expert Susanne Schröter spoke out in support of Abdel-Hakim Ourghi, who headed the Islamic Theology department at the University of Freiburg for nearly a decade.
Last month, the 53-year-old Ourghi had his “ijaza” (license to train Islamic teachers) denied by the Stiftung Sunnitischer Schulrat (Sunni School Board Foundation), based in Stuttgart.
I’m shocked! There must be some mistake!
Three people were killed in an attack in Germany on Friday by a Somali immigrant, who officials said was placed under compulsory psychiatric treatment days earlier.
The suspect was identified as a 24-year-old Somali immigrant, who was shot in the leg by police and arrested after the Friday afternoon attack in Wurzburg, Germany. Police said his life was not in danger and he was being questioned in hospital.
The knifeman killed at least three people and wounded at least five others in the street rampage at Barbarossaplatz in Wurzburg’s downtown area, according to local media reports.
As German federal elections approach on September 26, the candidates hoping to succeed Chancellor Angela Merkel are reiterating the need to thwart far-right extremism, particularly neo-Nazism, in Germany. In fact, the largest far-right extremist group in Germany is Turkish, not German, according to a new intelligence report on domestic threats to Germany’s constitutional order.
The Turkish neo-fascist movement Ülkücü (Turkish for “Idealists”) — popularly known as Grey Wolves — now has at least 11,000 active members in Germany, according to the new annual report (Verfassungsschutzbericht 2020) by Germany’s domestic intelligence agency (Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz, BfV).
All parties in Germany’s grand coalition government have agreed to ban the flag of Palestinian Islamic fundamentalist group Hamas, the Welt am Sonntag newspaper said in a report published Sunday.
The move comes after several antisemitic incidents occurred last month in Germany during anti-Israel rallies.
One year after Germany banned Hezbollah from operating on its soil, the Iran-backed, Lebanon-based Shiite terrorist group’s presence in Germany is stronger than ever.
In the twelve months since the ban entered into effect, Hezbollah’s propaganda and fundraising activities in Germany have continued apace; the number of its followers in the country has increased; and the Hamburg mosque which serves as Iran’s main base of operations in Germany has gained in influence.
… President Joe Biden and Secretary of Antony Blinken reversed course, however, and sought to prioritize smooth relations with Berlin. On May 19, 2021, Blinken announced that the United States would wave sanctions on Nord Stream 2 AG, its chief executive officer Matthias Warnig, and its corporate officers even though Blinken insisted the U.S. opposition to the Russian-backed pipeline was “unwavering.” Blinken explained the logical dissonance of the move as an effort to fulfill “the President’s pledge to rebuild relationships with our allies and partners in Europe.”
The logic behind this calculation, however, is tenuous. Put aside the irony that Biden and Blinken have now promoted pipelines for the Taliban and Russia while killing those from which the United States could benefit. If climate change were truly the “greatest threat to America” as Biden told U.S. troops during his visit to Europe, then he would increase his opposition to Nord Stream 2, not green light its completion.
The Office for the Protection of the Constitution, the domestic intelligence agency for the German state of Lower Saxony, revealed on Thursday in its new report a dramatic increase of the number of members and supporters of the Lebanese terrorist organization Hezbollah.
According to the German language intelligence report reviewed by The Jerusalem Post, the number of supporters and members rose from 1,050 in 2019 to 1,250 in 2020.
Denmark’s secret service helped the US National Security Agency (NSA) to spy on European leaders, including German Chancellor Angela Merkel and President Frank-Walter Steinmeier, a European media investigation published on Sunday revealed.
The disclosure that the US had been spying on its allies first started coming to light in 2013, but it is only now that journalists have gained access to reports detailing the support given to the NSA by the Danish Defense Intelligence Service (FE).
Hamburg – Was it the act of a mentally ill person or a terrorist attack?
Major alarm with a fatal outcome on the corner of Hebebrandstrasse and Sengelmannstrasse: a man keeps walking down the road with a knife, threatening motorists.
He damages vehicles with his gun, shouts “Allahu Akbar” several times! Then he goes off on alerted police officers.
A patrol officer shoots. The knife man collapses bleeding on the sidewalk. An emergency doctor and a paramedic take care of him. But despite resuscitation, he dies on site.
