German militarism kills wildlife, threatens health, homes

This March 2018 German video is about the German peatland nature reserve near the Dutch border.

This area is home to special flora and fauna; rare plants. 280 bird species live here. And moor frogs. And reptiles, like adders and common lizards. These are now burning to death because the German government wants to prepare colonial wars in Africa and elsewhere. So, the Bundeswehr, the German armed forces, played war games there. Causing a wildfire disaster they are unable to control.

This 21 September 2018 video is about the big peat fire in Germany.

Translated from Dutch NOS TV today:

State of emergency because of peat fire in Germany that has been going on for over two weeks

The regional authorities have declared a state of emergency in Germany because of a large peat fire in a nature reserve near Meppen, just across the Dutch border at Emmen. The fire department cannot manage to extinguish the fire.

The fire started on 3 September during a military war game, when missiles were fired from a helicopter. The fire is now raging over an area of ​​8 square kilometers, or more than a thousand football grounds. 1300 firefighters from all over North Germany have been deployed to extinguish the fire. The fear is that the fire will spread even further because of the strong wind.

Possible evacuation of 2 villages

According to regional administrator Reinhard Winter, people may have to be evacuated. It is about the villages Groß – and Klein Stavern, he said to the German broadcaster NDR.

According to the NDR report, a third village, Sögel, is threatened as well. 8,500 people may have to be evacuated.

Those places are located about 35 kilometers east of Emmen. Winter calls on people to prepare their important documents to take them out of their homes and on those who take medication to already have it at hand. Whether or not there will be really evacuation depends on the weather conditions and on how quickly the fire will spread.

Meanwhile, there is a lot of criticism of the army, because during a drought there was a military war game with missiles. The army is also said not to have communicated the seriousness of the fire well enough to the Ministry of the Interior of Lower Saxony state. As a result, help from outside only came later.

Eleven days too late, Dutch NOS TV said today.

The German Bundeswehr armed forces deny that the smoke of the fire is dangerous to human health. However, German doctors specialised in pulmonology say it is dangerous indeed.

In Hambacher Forest near Cologne, occupied by protesters seeking to prevent the forest being razed to the ground, a journalist was killed this week when a suspension bridge between two tree houses broke and he fell 15 metres to his death. The 33-year-old blogger died at the scene of the accident, although rescue workers had tried in vain to resuscitate him. According to activists, he was about to hand over a memory card to another journalist accompanied by the police when the disaster struck in a part of the forest already cleared by the police: here.

On December 6 [2018], the German defence minister, Ursula von der Leyen, announced the deployment of a new tank battalion. “Today is a good day for the troops of the tank division,” she declared at the Munster army training ground in Lüneburg Heath. The backdrop was warlike. The official army (Bundeswehr) video shows von der Leyen addressing her troops in front of an armada of battle tanks and soldiers: here.

Two German air force fighter planes collided over the Mecklenburg Lake District in east Germany on Monday in an incident that could have had catastrophic consequences. Angry residents of the area are demanding an end to all air force combat practice flights: here.

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is currently locked up in a UK high-security prison. He faces possible life imprisonment or the death penalty in the United States for making Washington’s war crimes public. This has not prevented the German media from remaining silent or even slandering him. In line with the US and British media, they are doing their utmost to denigrate the journalist and justify this frontal attack on press freedom. The basic motivation is the intimate symbiosis between the media, government and big business interests. They also cannot forgive Assange and WikiLeaks for exposing crimes committed by German imperialism. German war crimes—as revealed by WikiLeaks: Back in 2009, WikiLeaks published an internal Bundeswehr (German army) field report on a massacre in the Afghan province of Kunduz, which resulted in the deaths of up to 142 people, including “children and adolescents.” The bombardment of two fuel trucks was the bloodiest military action by the modern Bundeswehr, and marked a turning point in German post-war history: here.

Germany’s budget for 2020: Billions for rearmament and war: here.

In his opening speech at this year’s Munich Security Conference, Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier (SPD) stressed that the ruling class in Germany is determined to promote the return of militarism by all means: here.