There's a part of me that is proud of the fact that a person of jewish ancestry could rise to the highest office in the land that also had the Dreyfuss affair.Raju wrote: http://www.ajn.com.au/news/news.asp?pgID=3162
Igorr wrote:Indian visitors attacked in Eastern Germany
By Judy Dempsey
Published: August 20, 2007
BERLIN: Dozens of young Germans attacked a group of Indian visitors to a village in the eastern state of Saxony over the weekend, chasing them through the streets and smashing up the restaurant where the Indians had taken refuge, the local police confirmed Monday.
The incident, which took place Saturday in Mügeln, about 45 kilometers, or 28 miles, east of Leipzig, was witnessed by a large crowd, which apparently did not take any action to stop the attack against the eight Indians. The Saxony police did not release news of the attack until late Sunday. "We are not ruling out a xenophobic motive," said the police chief of Saxony, Bernd Merbitz.
Saxony has a small but growing far-right movement that supports the National Democratic Party. The party has been represented in the regional legislature since the 2005 elections. Brandenburg, another eastern state, also has a far-right movement that is represented in the regional legislature.
According to the police in Saxony, more than 70 police officers were needed to stop the violence. In addition to the Indians, four Germans, including two police officers, were injured. Other details about the Indians were not immediately available. The authorities have called for an investigation. As yet, there have been no arrests.
The cause of the attack on the Indians, who had been invited to a festival, is unclear. Late Saturday, a scuffle broke out in the festival tent and about 50 youths chased the eight Indians, chanting racist slogans, according to the Leipziger Volkszeitung, a regional newspaper. Reinhard Bottcher, chief of the local police, said he could not confirm whether the mob had shouted racist insults.
When the Indians fled to a pizzeria, the Germans smashed windowpanes and damaged the pizzeria owner's car. "If the police had not come, something much worse might have happened," the Leipziger Volkszeitung quoted the owner as saying.
Gotthard Deuse, mayor of Mügeln, was quoted by the paper as saying that the incident had been racially motivated and that rightist slogans had been chanted. Bottcher said he thought alcohol might have played a role.
There is growing concern on the part of some German politicians about the increasing number of attacks by rightists. Two months ago, some actors were beaten by skinheads in Brandenburg, an incident in which the police were sharply criticized for not having responded quickly enough.
During a debate in May in the Bundestag, the lower house of Parliament, politicians called on Chancellor Angela Merkel's coalition government of conservatives and Social Democrats to do more to curb extremism. The debate coincided with a similar debate in Saxony's regional legislature after Holger Apfel, a legislator belonging to the National Democratic Party, vented racist insults against foreigners.
http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/08/20/ ... ermany.php
!!.It was a usual bar brawl that the media built up into an 'attack on foreigners' because foreigners were involved. The Muegeln town was having some kind of festivity and there was this bar in the town where a bunch of Indians had a table all for themselves. They were armed with knives and after getting drunk they started misbehaving and molesting girls. When someone complained about this behaviour they threw a tantrum and hurled glasses and bottles. Soon after there was a brawl and in that a few got injured including a German who was severely injured.kshirin wrote:How can we allow ourselves to get chased around like this? Dont these pathetic countries get it - we are the future. They risk chasing us out at their own peril. Maybe its just as well, we'll stay at home and make our country strong.
Unacceptable.
Hmmm...Guess we 've got carried away with our own feel-good, thinking this cant happen to our kind anymore, we're so cool and feeling great about ourselves with the tide lifting all of us (yes yes I know mostly the top 20% dont make me qualify everything).Lalmohan wrote:according toDer Spiegel...
i think this is a case of wrong place wrong time - any foreigners would have acted as the catalyst for this incident. the mob were shouting 'foreigners out' and something like 'the resistance rules this region' - which is aimed more at the german gov't than indians per se
in the recent past a few african students have been murdered in eastern germany and there have been many low level violent incidents. something which is very rare in western germany.
ndia may have increasingly been on the radar of successive German governments in recent years, but it's been a mere blip compared to China's overpowering presence. That is likely to change as German Chancellor Angela Merkel heads to Delhi and Mumbai on her first official visit.
Last week, members of Merkel's center-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU) called for a shift in focus of the government's Asia policy, saying there had been an overemphasis on China at the expense of other rising Asian economies.
Berlin's relationship with Beijing is currently strained after China objected to a meeting between Merkel and the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama in September.
"The rise of India has come as a surprise to Germany," said Joachim Beck from the Institute for Asian Studies at the German Institute of Global and Area Studies. "It has been so accustomed to seeing India as poor, as an unstable, multifaceted country. The German government never thought India could become a world power in economic and political terms."
In recent years, Berlin has moved to correct its relative neglect of the rising south Asian power by pursuing bilateral business and trade with Delhi.
Angela Merkel with Manmohan SinghBildunterschrift: Großansicht des Bildes mit der Bildunterschrift: Merkel with Singh at the Hanover trade fair last year
India is now Germany's fourth largest trading partner in Asia -- after China, Japan and South Korea. Bilateral trade stands at roughly 10.6 billion euros with German exports to India last year surging by more than 50 percent. Germany is the fourth largest investor in India and newly-confident Indian companies are also increasingly making acquisitions in Europe's largest economy.
Sat, 10 Nov 2007 02:09:30
French President Nicholas Sarkozy
A report reveal French President Nicolas Sarkozy worked long years as an asset for Israeli intelligence long before he was elected president.
French daily Le Figaro said last week the French leader once worked for the Zionist regime as a sayan -Hebrew for helper.
Ex-Mossad agent Victor Ostrovsky says sayans, who perform many roles, are Jewish citizens of other nationalities assisting Mossad.
Le Figaro claimed even before the presidential election, French police officials managed to keep secret a letter, which exposed Sarkozy's past participation in espionage activities on behalf of Mossad.
The letter fixed Sarkozy's alleged spying activities as far back as 1983.
In the immediate aftermath of Le Figaro's exposé, the Zionist regime's Prime Minister Ehud Olmert was on a state visit to France to discuss Iran's nuclear program, which raised more questions about the report.
Analysts believe since Sarkozy took office in May, he has taken every opportunity to pledge his allegiance to the United States and the Zionist regime.
"Sarko the Sayan" has also followed in the footsteps of the White House by choosing a hostile approach toward Iran and its peaceful nuclear activities.
Is this right? The wheel has turned?The mess in Belgium today is something like in Rawanda of 90s minus the genocide . And it's not something that's highlighted these days by West for all their chest-beating about strifes/poverty worldwide. For about 5 months there's been no govt in Belgium. There's a huge internal strife between French speaking Beligians in South versus the Dutch speaking Flanders in North. French speaking areas live in abject poverty with unemployment as high as 20% while rest of country is doing extremely well.
It's a region to be watched.
VILLIERS-LE-BEL, France - Youths rampaged for a third night in the tough suburbs north of Paris and violence spread to a southern city late Tuesday as police struggled to contain rioters who have burned cars and buildings and — in an ominous turn — shot at officers.
A senior police union official warned that "urban guerrillas" had joined the unrest, saying the violence was worse than during three weeks of rioting that raged around French cities in 2005, when firearms were rarely used.
Bands of young people set more cars on fire in and around Villiers-le-Bel, the Paris suburb where the latest trouble first erupted, and 22 youths were taken into custody, the regional government said. In the southern city of Toulouse, 20 cars were set ablaze, and fires at two libraries were quickly brought under control, police said.
Despite the renewed violence, France's prime minister said the situation was calmer than the two previous nights. About 1,000 officers patrolled trouble spots in and around Villiers-le-Bel on Tuesday, he said.
The government was striving to keep violence from spreading in what was shaping up as a stern test for new President Nicolas Sarkozy. The unrest showed anger still smolders in France's poor neighborhoods, where many Arabs, blacks and other minorities live largely isolated from the rest of society.
The trigger was the deaths Sunday of two minority teens when their motorscooter collided with a police car in Villiers-le-Bel, a blue-collar town on Paris' northern edge.
Residents claimed the officers left without helping the teens. Prosecutor Marie-Therese de Givry denied that, saying police stayed on the scene until firefighters arrived.
Rioting and arson quickly erupted after the crash. The violence worsened Monday night as it spread from Villiers-le-Bel to other impoverished suburbs north of the French capital. Rioters burned a library, a nursery school and a car dealership and tried to set some buildings on fire by crashing burning cars into them.
Officials have pledged tough punishments for rioters: Eight people were convicted Tuesday in fast-track trials and sentenced to 3-10 months in prison, the regional government said.
Police reinforcements were moved into trouble spots north of Paris on Tuesday. Helicopters flew overhead, shining powerful spotlights into apartment buildings to keep people from leaving their homes.
"The situation is under control," said Denis Joubert, director of public safety for the region surrounding Villiers-le-Bel.
Prime Minister Francois Fillon, who was briefed by police in Villiers-le-Bel, said things were "much calmer than the previous two nights, but we feel that things are still fragile, and we need a large preventative force on the ground so that what happened last night does not happen again."
Patrice Ribeiro of the Synergie police union said rioters this time included "genuine urban guerrillas," saying the use of firearms — hunting shotguns so far — had added a dangerous dimension.
Police said 82 officers were injured Monday night, 10 of them by buckshot and pellets. Four were seriously wounded, the force said. Police unions said 30 officers were struck by buckshot.
One rioter with a shotgun "was firing off two shots, reloading in a stairwell, coming back out — boom, boom — and firing again," said Gilles Wiart, No. 2 official in the SGP-FO police union.
Youths, many of them Arab and black children of immigrants, again appeared to be lashing out at police and other targets seen to represent a French establishment they feel has left them behind.
"I don't think it's an ethnic problem," Wiart said. "Most of all it is youths who reject all state authority. They attack firefighters, everything that represents the state."
Suspicion of the police runs high among people in the drab housing project where the two teenagers died in the crash. The boys were identified in French media only by their first names, Lakhami, 16, and Mouhsin, 15.
There have long been tensions between France's largely white police force and the ethnic minorities trapped in poor neighborhoods.
Despite decades of problems and heavy state investments to improve housing and create jobs, the depressed projects that ring Paris are a world apart from the tourist attractions of the capital. Police speak of no-go zones where they and firefighters fear to patrol.
"The problem of bad relations between the police and minorities is underestimated," said criminologist Sebastian Roche.
Sarkozy, speaking from China, appealed for calm and called a security meeting with his Cabinet ministers for Wednesday on his return home.
Sarkozy was interior minister, in charge of police, during the riots of 2005 and took a hard line against the violence. He angered many in housing projects when he called delinquents there "scum."
The rioting youths "want Sarkozy — they want him to come and explain" what happened to the two teenage boys, said Linda Beddar, a 40-year-old mother of three in Villiers-le-Bel. Beddar woke Tuesday to find the library across from her house a burned-out shell.
The violence two years ago also started in the suburbs of northern Paris, when two teens were electrocuted in a power substation while hiding from police. The government is keen to keep the new violence from spreading.
In Villiers-le-Bel late Monday, arsonists set fire to the municipal library and burned books littered its floor Tuesday. Shops and businesses were also attacked, and more than 70 vehicles were torched, authorities said.
Rioters even rammed burning cars into buildings, trying to set the structures on fire, authorities said. Police reported six arrests.
Several hundred youths organized in small groups led the rioting in Villiers-le-Bel, and incidents were also reported in five other towns north of Paris, the regional government reported.
It refused to give specific figures on injuries among the police, rioters or other civilians, or the numbers of cars and buildings set on fire, saying it feared that doing so would encourage youths to try to wound more officers and destroy more property.
New Delhi: France is all set to import a dash of glamour to India’s Republic Day this year. Paris has indicated that French President Nicolas Sarkozy could be bringing along with his girlfriend Carla Bruni.
Sarkozy, on a four-day state visit from January 24, is the chief guest for Republic Day parade. The former supermodel and headturner has recently travelled with the president to Italy and Egypt.
But the Indian government is not used to hosting presidential companions and is in a fix as to what kind of protocol to accord to Bruni as she is not a First Lady.
If Bruni is not classified as a spouse, she would not be entitled to be with the President during banquets and other official engagements. But she can be given privileges meant for a delegate accompanying the President.
Though the list of the President's delegation is yet to be finalised, both sides have already held talks on this issue.
The couple may also visit the Taj Mahal.
DW TV and Journal TV had few reports on Belgium.ramana wrote:X-Posted
Is this right? The wheel has turned?The mess in Belgium today is something like in Rawanda of 90s minus the genocide . And it's not something that's highlighted these days by West for all their chest-beating about strifes/poverty worldwide. For about 5 months there's been no govt in Belgium. There's a huge internal strife between French speaking Beligians in South versus the Dutch speaking Flanders in North. French speaking areas live in abject poverty with unemployment as high as 20% while rest of country is doing extremely well.
It's a region to be watched.
Acharya wrote:http://www.hindu.com/2007/12/17/stories ... 791100.htm
The six-month campaign to encourage more kinderfreundlichkeit (child-friendliness) in a country better known for its kinderfeindlichkeit (animosity towards children) is being led by ambassadors from the world of sport and media, such as model Eva Padberg and the former Wimbledon tennis champion, Michael Stich.
“Germany is not a child-friendly land, and we want to change that,â€
Quite a late response to the post, but better late than never.ramana wrote:X-Posted
Is this right? The wheel has turned?The mess in Belgium today is something like in Rawanda of 90s minus the genocide . And it's not something that's highlighted these days by West for all their chest-beating about strifes/poverty worldwide. For about 5 months there's been no govt in Belgium. There's a huge internal strife between French speaking Beligians in South versus the Dutch speaking Flanders in North. French speaking areas live in abject poverty with unemployment as high as 20% while rest of country is doing extremely well.
It's a region to be watched.
If you had gone to the cops, your colleague could have been in very serious trouble and possibly even ended up losing custody of the kid. Child-friendly or unfriendly, laws are usually very stringent when things become physical.mayurav wrote:I have personally seen a East German collegue of mine slap his 9 month baby extremely hard at the dinner table for crying and not eating. I was stunned! The baby turned completely red and I was speechless. Didn't know what to say since I was at his place for the first time and had known him only for a month.
Abject poverty?! I think people who know even relative poverty would be offended.ramana wrote:X-Posted
Is this right? The wheel has turned?The mess in Belgium today is something like in Rawanda of 90s minus the genocide . And it's not something that's highlighted these days by West for all their chest-beating about strifes/poverty worldwide. For about 5 months there's been no govt in Belgium. There's a huge internal strife between French speaking Beligians in South versus the Dutch speaking Flanders in North. French speaking areas live in abject poverty with unemployment as high as 20% while rest of country is doing extremely well.
It's a region to be watched.