German government censors leftist Internet site

This 19 August 2017 video, from the Jewish Forum for Democracy and Against anti-Semitism in Germany, is about hundreds of nazis marching in Berlin to commemorate Adolf Hitler’s second in command, convicted war criminal Rudolf Hess. German police protected the nazi march. Nevertheless, anti-nazis managed to stop it with road blocks.

In Germany, the extreme right AfD party can call for stopping commemorations of Hitler’s mass murder of Jews without being bothered by the government. The extreme right AfD party can advocate anti-Semitism without being bothered by the government. The extreme right AfD party can advocate killing women and children, refugees from bloody wars, without being bothered by the government.

In Germany, high level elite force army officers do the nazi salute.

In Germany, army officers hatch a plot to murder government officials, seeking to blame Syrian refugees for that.

However, the German government has discovered today who the real enemy is [sarcasm off]. A leftist Internet site.

Today, Dutch NOS TV and Indymedia Germany report that the German government has banned the site linksunten.indymedia.org. That is a site especially for the south west of Germany (linksunten means ‘left below’ geographically), where in principle all people can post messages with not much moderation.

According to the NOS report, the German government did not explain this ban, but it is suspected there is a link to recent confrontations between police and demonstrators against the G20 summit in Hamburg. German minister De Maizière claimed his censorship was not that bad. As only German Indymedia was banned, while Germans would be still be able to read, eg, the Dutch Indymedia site. Herr De Maizière, maybe 1% of Germans can read Dutch, and Dutch Indymedia has few news on Germany.

After the G20 summit, Social Democratic Party (SPD) Justice Minister Heiko Maas called for a “Rock Against the Left” concert to target left-wing “extremists”. The slogan “Rock Against the Left” had previously been associated with neo-Nazi rock bands such as “Freikorps” and “Sturmfront.”

Minister Maas’ wishes became reality soon.

This German 15 Juli 2017 video is about many neonazis doing the Hitler salute and shouting Sieg Heil (illegal in Germany) at a concert in Themar, while police did nothing to stop them.

The irony is that Herr Maas’ Social Democratic Party is, at least on paper, leftist itself. At least, they were a left wing party when they were founded in the nineteenth century. They still were a left-wing party when, in 1912, they decided, jointly with socialist parties in other countries, that governments’ war plans should be stopped by mass strikes and demonstrations. They still were a left-wing party when, in August 1914, they organised demonstrations of hundreds of thousands of people against World War I just before it broke out. And then, most of the party leaders, like some party leaders in other countries, made a sharp rightward U-turn, supporting Emperor Wilhelm II’s bloody war, sowing the seeds for Hitler’s even bloodier World War II.

Germany’s Social Democratic president calls for tougher refugee policy and adaptation to AfD: here.

By Justus Leicht in Germany:

The myth of “left-wing” violence at the G20 summit in Hamburg, Germany

23 August 2017

More than a month after the clashes on the periphery of the G20 summit in Hamburg, Germany, the official portrayal of events by the police, media and political establishment follows a definite pattern.

According to this narrative, Hamburg experienced an unprecedented outbreak of “left-wing violence,” which the police could ward off only using military means. However, it has become clear that the violence stemmed predominantly from the security forces, and that many of the acts described in the official narrative were either extremely exaggerated or completely invented.

For example, no evidence has been found to support the claim that protesters sought to throw stones and Molotov cocktails from rooftops. Even after intensive searches and forensic investigation, the police have not been able to present any such objects. Despite comprehensive video surveillance, they have not been able to definitively document their use. In fact, many of those who were on roofs or scaffolding were found to be film crews or curious onlookers.

An alleged “armed ambush” was cited to justify the use of heavily armed special forces, who deployed armoured vehicles, shotguns and assault rifles.

Because of the disturbances before and during the G20 summit, about 160 investigations are underway and 32 suspects are being held in custody. A clash on Rondenbarg Street in the Altona district stands out prominently. It is the subject of at least 59 investigations, resulting in 13 protesters being taken into custody. At least four of them are still in prison, three men and one woman from Italy.

In the very restrained words of the daily Süddeutsche Zeitung, a police video of the event—which has not been released but has now been seen by the newspaper and broadcaster NDR’s programme “Panorama”—throws “doubt on the previous official presentation by the authorities”.

The footage shows a slow-moving group of demonstrators and a group of police officers in protective equipment. When the two groups are still about 50 metres apart, three “Bengalos” (Bengali flares) fly onto the empty street. All of them land far away from the police officers. The distant bang of a firecracker can be heard.

Although this cannot be construed as an assault, the police unit takes it as the opportunity to attack the demonstrators. As they flee, the protesters are encircled and fired upon from behind with a water cannon. In running away from the police, 14 protesters were injured, some seriously, when they stumbled over a railing and fell 2 metres to the ground.

Immediately following this operation, the deputy commander of the police unit involved gave a completely different account in a “witness statement of the facts”, which the Süddeutsche Zeitung has seen.

“When the crowd was about 50 metres in front of us, we came massively and purposefully under fire from bottles, firecrackers and bengalos,” he wrote. “Stones hit the police officers and the vehicles.” Only the “protective equipment” prevented police officers from being injured. “To ward off the current attacks, the unit ran towards the crowd and the hail of stones continued,” the police report adds.

The police videos show that not a word of this is true.

The State Criminal Investigation Department evaluated the videos in the evening that same day. The next day, the Saturday of the summit, the duty analyst reported to her superiors how little violence on the part of the demonstrators could be seen on the recordings, and that therefore the statement of the deputy unit commander was in doubt.

Even so, contrary to their better knowledge, police officials repeated for weeks that there had been a “massive hail of stones, bottles and pyrotechnics”.

Meanwhile, the Hamburg criminal justice system is proceeding with draconian harshness. For example, 18-year-old Italian worker Fabio V, with no previous criminal record, has been held in custody for more than four weeks. The courts have refused his release, citing crassly arbitrary grounds.

According to the daily taz, the detention order of the Hamburg Higher Regional Court states that “personal acts of violence cannot be attributed to the accused according to the current state of the investigation.”

Instead, the court reports that the 18-year-old is a member of the anarchist scene and is responsible for all the riots: “The accused had caused the civil war-like conditions,” the court writes.

In fact, his arrest had already taken place before the serious disturbances on Friday evening involving the Black Block. The court did not undertake its own analysis of the existing police videos, but relied on statements from the police.

As evidence of his membership in anarchist groups, the court cites the clothes worn by the young man arrested: a black Gore-Tex jacket, a black-white scarf and dark sneakers. The court also holds against the accused the fact that on the left-wing Indymedia website there is a call to send the 18-year-old and all other G20 prisoners solidarity messages.

Even before a trial has been held, the Higher Regional Court judges wrote that the expected prison sentence “cannot be suspended”, according to a report in Die Welt newspaper. “Human dignity, the right to physical integrity and to property” are clearly “without any meaning” for the prisoner, according to the judges.

Furthermore, the Senate of the Higher Regional Court writes that the “discernible ruthless and deeply-founded propensity to violence” were of particular importance. The young man had participated in “the most severe riots”, which illustrates a “character attitude justifying the assumption of guilt”. Later, the Higher Regional Court Senate speaks of the “malicious inclinations” of the accused, and establishes “considerable educational deficiencies, which cause the risk of further criminal offences without the extensive education of the perpetrator”.

Fabio V. himself has not spoken. His Hamburg lawyer, Gabriele Heinecke, has lodged a constitutional appeal.

The fact that this young worker who has not shown any previous involvement in violent acts has been demonised, imprisoned, and threatened with a long term of imprisonment for allegedly belonging to the “left scene”, without any trial and a possibility to defend himself, is a serious warning.

The military rearming of Germany and the pursuit of a great-power role cannot be reconciled with democracy. The ruling class is determined to brutally suppress any political resistance.

The clashes on the periphery of the G20 summit serve as a pretext for speeding up the provision of wider powers to the security forces and a hysterical campaign against “left-wing extremism” by the political establishment and the media.

At the same time, all evidence of the massive, disproportionate use of police violence has been swept under the carpet, especially by the Social Democratic Party (SPD). There was no police violence, the concept alone was impermissible and merely left-wing extremist propaganda, said Hamburg’s mayor Olaf Scholz (SPD). The police were “heroes”, he claimed, and their actions completely justified.

The more the Social Democratic Party (SPD) declines in the polls—the party is running four weeks prior to the federal election at 22 percent, far behind Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU) at 39 percent—the more it lashes out aggressively in its election campaign. In ZDF’s summer television interview on Sunday evening, SPD Chancellor candidate Martin Schulz attacked the German Chancellor from the right on foreign and domestic policy issues: here.

Germany’s Federal Criminal Police (BKA) are illegally storing masses of data regarding supposed “politically motivated crimes.” As broadcaster ARD reported, data on more than 100,000 people accused of such offenses is being held in a database called “Internal Security,” even though in the vast majority of cases, there has never been a charge, let alone a court proceeding. The ARD report suggests that the BKA is operating a “blacklist” of journalists and political activists classified as “left-wing extremists”: here.

The much-hyped televised debate between Chancellor Angela Merkel (Christian Democrats, CDU) and her Social Democratic challenger Martin Schulz on Sunday evening was a disgusting political spectacle. Merkel and Schulz agreed on virtually every issue and appealed, among other things, for a stricter crackdown on refugees, more police, and a more aggressive German and European foreign policy: here.

On September 1, the interior and justice ministers of the conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and Christian Social Union (CSU) adopted a statement on domestic security which reads like a blueprint for dictatorship. The two “Union” parties head the current coalition government in Germany, with the Social Democratic Party (SPD) as a junior partner: here.

The media and political parties have long sought to keep the issues of war and militarism out of Germany’s federal election campaign. But reality is now catching up with them. US imperialism’s aggressiveness towards North Korea, Russia and China, and the Pyongyang regime’s testing of a nuclear weapon have brought the world to the brink of a nuclear war, which calls into question the very survival of humanity. A danger which the Sozialistische Gleichheitspartei (SGP) and International Committee of the Fourth International has been warning of for some time is now being openly discussed: here.

On October 1, the Network Enforcement Act took effect in Germany. Under the cover of a fight against “fake news” and “hate speech,” it creates a legal framework for censorship of the Internet: here.

The German Network Enforcement Law (NetzDG) went into effect on January 1. The law, drafted by Social Democratic Justice Minister Heiko Maas and passed by the outgoing Grand Coalition with the Christian Democrats, is a massive attack on free speech. Under the guise of fighting “fake news” and “hate speech”, it enables the state to regulate and censor the Internet: here.

German Interior Ministry attacks press freedom: here.

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