29 October, 2012 — The Real News Network
Refugees from all over Germany converged on Berlin to demand the stopping of deportation (inc. transcript) Continue reading
Tag: berlin
Greece: Turning Despair Into Hate By Shaun Harkin
24 October 2012 — The Bullet • Socialist Project E-Bulletin No. 715
Greece is in a grueling downward economic spiral with massive political and social ramifications. Aspects of Greek society are literally falling apart at the seams. Across the whole eurozone – the countries that use the euro as a common currency – unemployment is at a record high of 18.2 million people without work in August. Across the 27-nation European Union, the number of jobless has climbed to 25.5 million. In Greece last May, unemployment reached 23 per cent for the total population and a staggering 55.4 per cent for youth. Continue reading
The EU is not a “Person”: Granting the Nobel Prize to the European Union is in Violation of Alfred Nobel’s Will By Prof Michel Chossudovsky
13 October, 2012 — Global Research
This year’s Nobel Peace Prize was granted to the European Union (EU) for its relentless contribution to “the advancement of peace and reconciliation, democracy and human rights in Europe.” Continue reading
NATO behaving like a law unto itself By M. D. Nalapat*
7 March 2012 — China Daily
The impunity with which NATO personnel have killed and injured civilians in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya has resulted in a sense among its personnel that they are “superior” to the people of these countries, all three of which are outside the charmed circle of those countries NATO considers “civilized”
Book Review By Eric Walberg: Guided missives
15 February 2012 — Eric Walberg
Ard ard (Surface-to-surface): The story of a graffiti revolution
Sheif Abdel-Megid
Egyptian Association for Books 2011
ISBN 978-977-207-102-9
Graffiti — the art of the masses, by the masses, for the masses — has existed since ancient times, with examples dating back to ancient Greece, the Roman Empire, and arguably to Pharaonic Egypt. Sherif Abdel-Megid, a writer who works for Egyptian television, boasts that Egypt‘s revolution and the explosion of popular art that followed it finds its roots in the decay of the Sixth dynasty in Egypt‘s Old Kingdom, following the reign of Pepi II (2278-2184 BC), credited with having the longest reign of any monarch in history at 94 years (Mubarak, eat your heart out). His own decline paralleled the disintegration of the kingdom and it is thanks to Pharaonic graffiti that we know about it. Continue reading
Videos: Sun Ra and his Solar Arkestra Live in Berlin 1986
According to Sun Ra we must all learn to travel the spacewaves if we want peace in this world. Both videos recorded in 1986, one in the former East Berlin and the other in former West Berlin.
The Anti-Empire Report By William Blum: Arguing Libya
28 July, 2011 — www.killinghope.org
On July 9 I took part in a demonstration in front of the White House, the theme of which was “Stop Bombing Libya“. The last time I had taken part in a protest against US bombing of a foreign country, which the White House was selling as “humanitarian intervention”, as they are now, was in 1999 during the 78-day bombing of Serbia. At that time I went to a couple of such demonstrations and both times I was virtually the only American there. The rest, maybe two dozen, were almost all Serbs. “Humanitarian intervention” is a great selling device for imperialism, particularly in the American market. Americans are desperate to renew their precious faith that the United States means well, that we are still “the good guys”.
Media Lens: Avalanche! Media Hyperbole On News Corp, The ‘Free’ Press And A ‘Berlin Wall Moment’
14 July 2011 — Media Lens
‘The world is changing’, declared the Guardian in a ‘revolutionary week’. ‘This is our <strong class=’StrictlyAutoTagBold’>Berlin Wall moment’, tweeted Guardian columnist George Monbiot. ‘Our democracy is stronger’, proclaimed the Independent. For BBC political editor Nick Robinson, it was an ‘avalanche’ that was ‘still moving’. ‘Gravity’, he intoned, ‘cannot be defied for ever.’ Someone at this very moment may well be writing the script for ‘Avalanche!’, the next blockbuster movie from a major Hollywood studio (but probably not 20th Century Fox.)
William Blum: Anti-Empire Report, Number 74 Ridding the world of the sickness of pacifism
29 September, 2009 — Anti-Empire Report, Number 74
Picture the scene: Afghanistan, two hijacked tankers filled with highly inflammable fuel, surrounded by a crowd of Afghans eager to syphon off some for free … What’s the last thing you want to do? Right — drop bombs on the tankers. That’s what a German military commander signaled an American drone airplane to do September 4. Kaboom!! At least 100 human beings incinerated. This incident has led to a lot of controversy in Germany, for Article 26 of Germany’s post-war Grundgesetz (Basic Law/Constitution) states: ‘Acts tending to and undertaken with intent to disturb the peaceful relations between nations, especially to prepare for a war of aggression, shall be unconstitutional. They shall be made a criminal offense.’
But NATO (aka the United States) can take satisfaction in the fact that the Germans have put their silly pacifism aside and acted like real men, trained military killers; although prior to this incident the Germans had engaged in some aerial and ground combat, there hadn’t been such a dramatic and publicized taking of civilian lives. Deutschland now has more than 4,000 soldiers in Afghanistan, the third largest contingent in the country after the US and Britain, and at home they’ve just finished building a monument to fallen members of the Bundeswehr (Federal Armed Forces), founded in 1955; 38 members (so far) have surrendered their young lives in Afghanistan.
In January 2007 I wrote in this report about how the US was pushing Germany in this direction; that circumstances at that time indicated that Washington might be losing patience with the pace of Germany’s submission to the empire’s needs. Germany declined to send troops to Iraq and sent only non-combat forces to Afghanistan, not quite good enough for the Pentagon warriors and their NATO allies. Germany’s leading news magazine, Der Spiegel, reported the following:
At a meeting in Washington, Bush administration officials, speaking in the context of Afghanistan, berated Karsten Voigt, German government representative for German-American relations: ‘You concentrate on rebuilding and peacekeeping, but the unpleasant things you leave to us.’ … ‘The Germans have to learn to kill.’
Media Lens: Obama – Wiping The Slate Clean
13 November 2008
MEDIA LENS: Correcting for the distorted vision of the corporate media
November 13, 2008
Appearance And Reality In The Relaunch Of Brand America
In 1997, the British media filled with talk of “historic” change. Blair’s victory that year “bursts open the door to a British transformation,” the Independent declared. (Neal Ascherson, ‘Through the door he can begin to create a freer land,’ The Independent, May 4, 1997)
A Guardian leader saluted the nation: “Few now sang England Arise, but England had risen all the same.” (Leader, ‘A political earthquake,’ The Guardian, May 2, 1997)
The editors predicted that, by 2007, Blair’s triumph would be seen as “one of the great turning-points of British political history… the moment when Britain at last gave itself the chance to construct a modern liberal socialist order.” (Ibid)
The Observer assured readers that the Blair government would create “new worldwide rules on human rights” and implement “tough new limits on arms sales.” (www.antiwar.com/orig/pilger.php?articleid=5063)
Anti-Empire Report #49, September 11, 2007 by William Blum
11 September 2007 — Anti-Empire Report
The world is very weary of all this and wants to laugh again
Okay, Bush ain’t gonna get out of Iraq no matter what anyone says or does short of a) impeachment, b) a lobotomy, or c) one of his daughters setting herself afire in the Oval Office as a war protest. A few days ago, upon arriving in Australia, “in a chipper mood”, he was asked by the Deputy Prime Minister about his stopover in Iraq. “We’re kicking ass,” replied the idiot king. Another epigram for his tombstone.
The New Dark Age 