Archive for the Category 'Germany'
The flow of people from the Brandenburg Gate to the Victory Column in the heart of Berlin seemed truly endless. On 24 July, up to 200,000 people came to Berlin’s central park, the Tiergarten, to hear a speech by U.S. presidential candidate Barack Obama. As with the “fan mile” for the European Cup, which had been in the same place on month earlier, there were jumbotrons alongside the countless beer and sausage stands. »»»»
read comments (0)
About 8,000 school students left their classes on May 22 and demonstrated through the center of Berlin to the school administration building. The protest was directed against classes being cancelled, the lack of teachers, and also against Germany’s three-tiered school system which discriminates against the poor and immigrants. The strike, the third in the last two years, had been organized by the school students’ initiative “Tear down the blockades in education!” »»»»
The BILD is Germany’s biggest right-wing tabloid, well known for its frenzied attacks against immigrants and the left. The day after the Anti-G8 demonstration in Rostock its headline screamed: “Do you want dead, hooligans?” (no one “died” as it happens, afterwards it transpired there were only two “seriously” injured police officers). But on Monday (January 14, 2008), BILD reported that; “more than 10.000 demonstrators from (across) Germany, Italy, Spain, Austria” participated in the demonstration to commemorate the three L’s (Rosa Luxemburg, Karl Liebknecht and Vladimir Lenin). »»»»
Revolution is magnificent. Everything else is nonsense.* (Rosa Luxemburg)
– Everything sucks! There’s not nearly enough apprenticeship positions… school is extremely annoying… university – if you even have the chance – is only about money… there’s more and more work for less and less money for some people … for the others there’s the unemployment office… deportations into the states of bloodthirsty dictators… Nazis hunt down “un-German” people… worldwide 24,000 people die of hunger every day and countless more die in wars… add to this smiling faces in the executive suites of the big corporations, who make record profits every year – it sucks! »»»»
Between June 6-8, the heads of state of the world’s eight most power states met behind barbed wire and high fences for the latest G8 summit in Heiligendamm near Rostock, Germany. The security costs of the summit topped 130 million euros (£88 million) but all the gigantic fortifications – a 12-kilometer fence, 16,000 police and 1,000 soldiers – could not protect the G8 from mass protests. Tens of thousands of activists participated in demonstrations and blockades against the G8 summit. »»»»
The protests against the G8 summit in Heiligedamm in north-eastern Germany are less than three weeks away. On May 9th, 900 police searched 40 left-wing projects across Germany, including the bookshop “Schwarze Risse”, the house project “Bethanien / New Yorck 59”, the photo archive “Umbruch Bildarchiv”, the left-wing store “Fusion”, the internet server SO36.net (all in Berlin), the cultural center “Rote Flora” (in Hamburg) and a number of offices and private apartments. »»»»
At the beginning of June, the heads of state and government of the eight most powerful countries will meet up for a summit in Heiligendamm in Northeastern Germany. Even though these are supposedly the eight most powerful people in the world, they have to meet in a remote luxury hotel to be shielded from protests. Almost 100 million euros will be squandered in order to keep demonstrators away from the summit. The “Group of 8”, G8 for short, is hated, because their summits are a symbol for misery in the world. »»»»