14 August 2019 — MROnline
Sorry, readers, this update is again longer than planned, and not at all jolly. I hope the next Berlin Bulletin will be pleasanter. And again I want to mention that my book A Socialist Defector: From Harvard to Karl-Marx-Allee with descriptions, reflections, conclusions, plus many anecdotes and some jokes, is now available.
1 July 2019 — The Electronic Intifada
Khaled Barakat (No One Is Illegal Vancouver)
German authorities barred Palestinian-Canadian journalist Khaled Barakat from speaking at a Palestine solidarity event in Berlin, claiming his “anti-Semitic” speeches posed a threat to public order and could undermine relations between the country and Israel.
28 June 2019 — WSWS
Stephen Ernst, the assassin of CDU politician Walter Lübcke, acted as part of a neo-Nazi network with close ties to the right-wing terrorist National Socialist Underground. Despite efforts in the aftermath of the assassination to promote a lone gunmen explanation, information that links Ernst to a vast right-wing terrorist network is emerging.
19 June 2019 — WSWS
The death of Walter Lübcke, the local German politician who was targeted by the extreme right after speaking out in defense of refugees, has exposed the dirty secret of German politics: the systematic promotion of right-wing extremist forces by the state and the ruling elite.
31 May 2019 — WSWS
The German government is preparing to provide military support for a US-planned “safe zone” in northern Syria. The zone is intended to protect the Kurdish militias, which fought against the Islamic State (IS) on the side of the US, from both Syrian and Turkish troops.
19 May 2019 — Moon of Alabama
During the last days a right wing politician in Austria was taken down by using an elaborate sting. Until Friday Christian Strache was leader of the far right (but not fascist) Freedom Party of Austria (FPOe) and the Vice Chancellor of the country. On Friday morning two German papers, the Sueddeutsche Zeitung and Der Spiegel published (German) reports(English) about an old video that was made to take Strache down.
19 January 2019 — Socialist Project
One hundred years ago this month, on January 15, 1919, the great revolutionary thinker and anti-war activist, Rosa Luxemburg, was murdered in Berlin by the Freikorps paramilitary group, with her body dumped into the Landwehr Canal. Her comrade in opposition to the Social Democratic Party of Germany support for German involvement in World War 1, and in splitting from the SPD to eventually form the Communist Party of Germany, Karl Liebknecht, was also murdered in the course of the same events. Luxemburg occupies a special place in the traditions of the global left for her powerful political interventions and ceaseless invocation of revolution to break the hammerlock of capitalism on democracy and development, and for her major economic text, The Accumulation of Capital (1913), linking capitalist development to dispossessions, imperialism and militarism. Her searing critique of capitalist democracy was central to a political strategy that combined an insistence on the capacity for revolt and self-organization of the masses with recognition of the role of the socialist party in education, agitation, and parliamentary representation and struggle in the interests of the working classes. One hundred years on, Luxemburg remains a source of political inspiration and integrity for socialists around the world.
We reprint here her call (published in December 1918) for political control of the state and socialization of the economic system in the midst of the German revolts of 1918-1919. “While we are enlisting fighters for the revolution, we are creating Socialist workers for the future, workers who can become the basis of a new social state…. There is still an old world to be overthrown. A new world must be built!”
15 January 2019 — Strategic Culture Foundation
This time the outspoken US ambassador in Berlin may have gone too far to be ignored. The German government has denounced as a “provocation” letters that the American envoy sent to companies involved in the Nord Stream 2 project warning them of possible US sanctions.
31 December 2018 — Oriental Review – The Indian Punchline
A German-French joint statement on Friday regarding Ukraine condemned Russia and demanded the immediate release of the sailors detained following the so-called Kerch incident in November. Moscow hit back in equally strong language summarily rejecting the Franco-German demand.
27 October 2017 — Mongabay
21 November 2018 — Open Democracy
The approval and performance of politically-motivated violence has been a core element of fascist or antisemitic activism for a century.
German Democratic Republic stamp commemorating the murders of Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxembourg, 1949. Wikicommons. Some rights reserved.
13 November 2018 — Asia Times
The Elysee Palace protocol was implacable. Nobody in Paris would be allowed to steal the spotlight away from the host, President Emmanuel Macron, during the 100th anniversary of Armistice Day marking the end of World War I.
