Tag: Germany

Record crowd turn up for PEGIDA rally

‘Today Paris, tomorrow Dresden,’ read one sign. Another’s message was: ‘Better to stand tall for Pegida today than to be on your knees for Mecca tomorrow’

The latest mass-rally of the self-styled “Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamisation of the West” came just hours after the chancellor Angela Merkel said that “Islam has a place in Germany.” German politicians previously called on Pegida to cancel their weekly march.

But in Germany, citizens are increasingly worried, with 57% of non-Muslims seeing Islam as a threat.

Overall, 61 percent of Germans say Islam isn’t compatible with life in the West, up from 52 percent three years ago. The country has 4 million Muslims out of a population of 81 million.

“There’s deep frustration over the silent Islamization taking place in Germany,” said Gerd Medger, 67, who advises companies seeking business contacts in Brazil and attended the Dresden rally waving a German flag. “If our governments let such violent people into Europe then we shouldn’t be surprised at these acts of violence.”

PEGIDA has said on its Facebook page that the killings at Charlie Hebdo in Paris confirmed its own views.

“The Islamists, which PEGIDA has been warning about for 12 weeks, showed France that they are not capable of democracy but rather look to violence and death as an answer,” it said.

The supporters of the populist movement claim solidarity with victims of the Paris attacks, with some of them carrying signs that read “They can’t kill our freedom” and “Je suis Charlie.”

According to the police estimates, some 25,000 people gathered in an anti-immigration rally in Dresden.

Besides Dresden, which serves as a central city for the movement, marches are organized in several other cities, including Berlin, Munchen, and, for the first time, Leipzig.

The number of people protesting against PEGIDA is also growing every week.

Monday’s rallies come ahead of a planned vigil for “tolerance and openness” in Berlin,which is set for Tuesday.

Germany’s Muslim leaders, with Chancellor Angela Merkel as well leaders of Germany’s Jewish community will attend.

“Politics cannot ignore this: they have to do something even if it’s only symbolic on immigration or security,” Joerg Forbrig, the senior program director at the German Marshall Fund of the U.S., said by phone from Berlin.“The CDU must take this seriously. They have to preempt the AfD otherwise there will be a stronger momentum building behind the party.”

Swiss activists have founded a local branch of the popular German anti-Muslim PEGIDA movement. The group is boasting a fast growth in supporters and plans to hold a demonstration next month.

The Swiss branch of PEGIDA (Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamization of the West) was launched two days after the attack on the Charlie Hebdo satirical magazine.

The PEGIDA group’s Facebook page calls on potential supporters to come to a demonstration planned for February 16 at an as yet undisclosed location.

The spokesman for Swiss PEGIDA is Ignaz Bearth, current head of the Swiss Direct Democracy Party, a small party with links to France’s Front National party, according to AFP. He is also a former member of the far-right Swiss Nationalist Party.

Arson attack on German newspaper

A Hamburg daily that reprinted satirical cartoons from French newspaper Charlie Hebdo was hit by arsonists at the weekend, raising security concerns in Germany on the eve of a planned mass rally against Islam in the city of Dresden.

Islamist militant attacks on Charlie Hebdo and a kosher deli in Paris this week that killed 17 people have fuelled fears of similar assaults in other European countries and prompted a warning from German Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere.

“I am very concerned about well-prepared perpetrators like those in Paris, Brussels, Australia or Canada,” he told the newspaper Bild am Sonntag. There were about 260 people in Germany regarded as dangerous Islamists, he said.

Bild am Sonntag said US intelligence agencies had tapped conversations of senior Islamic State (IS) members in which they said the Paris attacks were the start of a series in Europe.

In Hamburg, two people were arrested after an incendiary device was thrown into a building of the Hamburger Morgenpost daily, setting some documents on fire, police said.

Source: Reuters

Germans rally against Islam

Protesters marched in several German cities again on Monday against higher levels of immigration and what they see as the growing influence of Islam, in defiance of an appeal from Chancellor Angela Merkel to spurn rallies she views as racist.

The rallies, organized by a new grassroots movement known as PEGIDA, or Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamization of the West, have become an almost weekly event in the east German city of Dresden in recent months.

Some 18,000 people, the biggest number so far, turned out in Dresden on Monday but similar rallies in Berlin and the western city of Cologne were heavily outnumbered by counter-protesters who accuse PEGIDA of fanning racism and intolerance.

The PEGIDA protesters waved Germany’s black, red and gold flag and brandished posters bearing slogans such as “Against religious fanaticism and every kind of radicalism”.

One poster in Cologne called for “potatoes rather than doner kebabs”, a swipe at ethnic Turks who at around three million represent Germany’s largest immigrant community.

Germany has some of the world’s most liberal asylum rules, partly due to its Nazi past. The number of asylum seekers arriving in Germany, many from the Middle East, jumped to around 200,000 last year — four times as many as in 2012.

In her New Year address last week, Merkel urged Germans to shun the anti-Muslim protesters, saying their hearts were full of hatred.

“We need to … say that right-wing extremism, hostility towards foreigners and anti-Semitism should not be allowed any place in our society,” Merkel said on Monday in the eastern town of Neustrelitz.

In Cologne, home to a large Muslim population, there were 10 times as many counter-demonstrators as PEGIDA protesters. In similarly multi-ethnic Berlin, some 5,000 counter-demonstrators swamped around 400 anti-Muslim protesters, local police said.

“Germany is a country where refugees are welcome and the silent majority must not remain silent but rather go out onto the streets and show itself,” Justice Minister Heiko Maas said at the Berlin counter-demonstration.

Cologne Cathedral, one of Germany’s most famous landmarks, switched its lights off to protest against the anti-Muslim rallies. Berlin’s Brandenburg Gate turned off its floodlights in a similar gesture of solidarity.

PEGIDA has unsettled Germany’s political establishment and at first looked likely to help the Euroskeptic party Alternative for Germany (AfD). But the party, already suffering an internal power struggle, is split over how to deal with the movement.

Source: Reuters

Cyber attack on Merkel’s aide

The German chancellor’s office has fallen victim to a hacking attack, according to a German newspaper. The Regin malware in question has been linked to British and US spy agencies.

The complex spying malware arrived via a USB stick to the work computer of the unit head in the Department for European Policy, where it was picked up by virus scanning software, according to Monday’s edition of the German newspaper Bild.

According to the report, the staff member, who works in close contact with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, had written a draft of a speech on her work computer, which she then took home using a USB stick at the end of the day and worked on it using her private laptop.

She later saved the document again on her private USB stick and brought it back into the office, to use on her work laptop. A virus alert went off and it was detected that the USB stick was infected with the spying software Regin. Checks of all other high-security laptops in the Federal Chancellery revealed no additional infections.

The cybersecurity company Symantec first warned of the highly-sophisticated malware at the end of November. According to them, the Regin spying software can make screenshots, control the mouse cursor, steal passwords, monitor data traffic and restore deleted data.

According to US news website “The Intercept,” which was co-created by Edward Snowden confidant Glenn Greenwald, Regin was deployed to steal information from governments, companies and research institutions. According to them, the British spy agency GCHQ and the United States spy agency NSA were involved in the development of the sophisticated spying software, which is particularly difficult to detect.

Source: AFP, dpa

Austria mulling gold repatriation

The Austrian state audit court says the central bank should address the concentration risk of storing 80% of its gold reserves with the Bank of England, Standard reports, citing draft audit report.

The court has advised the central bank to diversify storage locations, and contract partners, Bloomberg reported.

The Austrian central bank is currently reviewing gold storage concept, and doesn’t rule out relocating some of its gold from London to Austria.

Standard cited unidentified central bank officials.

The gold reserves of the Oesterreichische Nationalbank (OeNB) and their deposits in the UK and in Switzerland are a recurring theme in political discussions.

Especially after the example of the Deutsche Bundesbank the Austrians are serious about bringing gold home.

Given the “high concentration of risk in the Bank of England” the bank is also reviewing the “actual spread of the storage locations”.

Austria has 280 tons gold reserves, according to 2013 annual report, but only a small part (17 percent) is kept in Vienna, while 80 percent of the reserves are located in London, and three percent in Switzerland.

In comparison, the German Bundesbank has 3400 tons of gold, about half of it in the United States.

The decision was taken to resettle half of the gold to Germany.

Germans take to the streets against Islam

Anti-immigration protest is sweeping across Germany, as thousands take to the streets against what they say is the growing “Islamisation” of the country.

Demonstrators have adopted the old rallying call of the protests against the East German communist regime that brought down the Berlin Wall 25 years ago, “Wir sind das Volk”. They say they want to preserve Western culture.

The protests come as Bavaria’s ruling Christian Social Union (CSU) is seeking to distance itself from a draft proposal for its party conference which said that immigrants should speak German not only in public, but at home as well.

Germany is now the second most popular destination in the world for migrants, after the US, and the country is struggling to cope with an unprecedented influx of asylum-seekers.

Thousands have defied sub-zero temperatures to join weekly marches each Monday in Dresden under the banner of Patriotic Europeans against the Islamisation of Europe, or Pegida.

The protests were started by a local man, Lutz Bachmann, with no background in politics. When he called his first demonstration in October, only a few hundred turned up, but the movement has snowballed, and last week 7,500 came.

Pegida has inspired similar movements across Germany. Though the numbers have not been as high as in Dresden so far, marches have been called in cities from Düsseldorf to Munich.

Bachmann has been at pains to stress that he is not opposed to genuine political refugees, only to economic migrants who “take advantage” of the German system, and has no problem with Islam but is worried about erosion of German culture.

Concerns for the German culture plunged Bavaria’s ruling CSU into its own controversy, after a draft proposal for the opening motion at the party conference called for immigrants to speak German at home.

“Whoever wants to live here permanently should be encouraged to speak German in public and within the family,” the draft said.

After a storm of criticism, including the Twitter hashtag YallaCSU, Arabic for “Let’s go, CSU”, and questions over how such a policy could possibly be enforced, Andreas Scheuer, the party’s general secretary, sought to limit the damage.

Auf Deutsch bitte!

The rise of immigration in Germany is prompting one of the parties in the government coalition to seek a requirement that would oblige all foreigners to speak only German in public and at home. The proposal has caused a wave of criticism.

A comrade in the coalition led by Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU), the Christian Social Union (CSU), is due to approve a party draft policy paper proposal on Monday, requiring immigrants to practically abandon the use of their native tongue.

In the paper, as quoted by Reuters, the CSU says: “People who want to remain here on a permanent basis should be obliged to speak German in public and within the family.”

CSU argues that “social interaction works only when all speak the same language”, and says that all foreigners who enter to remain will be offered a language training course.

It was not immediately clear how the party proposes to enforce such a rule without invasive surveillance of immigrants’ homes.

Wolfgang Bosbach, a member of Merkel’s conservative CDU, agrees with the CSU proposal, arguing that speaking German is crucial for the immigrant integration process.

“Language skills are of paramount importance for good integration opportunities. Therefore, it is important to speak with children at home also in German,” Bosbach told Bayerische Rundfunk.

Yet the new proposal was swiftly denounced by the other parties in Merkel’s government, including a senior official from the chancellor’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU).

The latest data released by Germany’s statistics office show record immigration last year, with most of the new arrivals coming from European Union countries like Poland, Bulgaria and Romania in search of employment. The influx of 1,226,000 people to Germany in 2013 shows an increase of 13 percent from 2012, the highest on record since 1993.

“It is not the business of politicians whether I speak Latin, Klingon or Hessian at home,” Peter Tauber, general secretary of the CDU, said on Twitter.

Yasmin Fahimi, for the Social Democrats (SPD), called the proposal “totally absurd”.

“The state has no role to play in deciding what language people speak within the walls of their own home,” Fahimi told German newspaper Bild.

Deficit spending and money printing: A German point of view

The leading macroeconomic Nobel-laureates, the central bankers as well as most politicians have reduced their economic judgment on how to get the economies in Europe and Japan back to sustainable growth on just two recipes: public investments in infrastructure to be financed by additional public debt and, second, an expansive money market policy based on printing more money and reducing interest rates to zero or even beyond zero to negative rates!

And if the capital markets don’t swallow additional public debt, then the Central Banks will step in eagerly as investors – regardless if this is in line with their statutes!

The expected results, backed by the leading macroeconomic wisdom, should be to kick-start economic growth, to induce private industry to invest and banks to lend to private investors, and thereby to reduce unemployment, and get deflationary tendencies back to an inflation rate that is now officially regarded as ideal if it oscillates around 2 % p.a. When and why this “two-percent” benchmark was introduced for the first time I can’t remember, but everybody today takes it for granted and repeats it like as an undisputed target of Central Bank’s money market policy. Included in this assumption is ever more public debt as the guarantor for lasting GDP-growth!

I never understood why macroeconomics should be regarded as an academic discipline if it is in practice reduced to these rather simple theories of how to handle a recession or even deflation! Maybe Alfred Nobel was just as clear-sighted as I am, and consequently never introduced a Nobel-prize for economics. That was done after his death by the Central Bank of Norway, which also contributed the required funds. It still does so, and not the Nobel foundation!

My personal advice is to stop handing out any more Nobel-prizes for economics to any more American professors on any new theory how to steer economic development and sustainable economic growth, because none of them has ever worked.

There is a lot of blame offloaded onto Maynard Keynes by critics of the present ruling opinion of more deficit spending by governments. But I don’t believe that Keynes would approve any of today’s Nobel-Laureates who saw no other way out of recession than by money printing in unlimited amounts and years of deficit spending by already over-indebted economies. According to Keynes public investment on deficit could be regarded as an “ultima ratio” to re-kick-start a slow economy, but he would never have advised any government that is already highly indebted to increase this debt even more!

In his theory, deficit-spending should be a limited action in time and amounts, and directly afterwards this debt should be repaid by the additional tax income from the stronger revenues of industry and private individuals who have profited from the intervention of the State.

But what our economists and central bankers are recommending nowadays is completely different from “short-term-kick-starts” – our systems are so full of the sweet drug of government deficit spending that (like a drug-addict) it constantly needs heavier doses of the same drug!

It was not long ago that the American Treasury Secretary publicly blamed Germany for not using its remaining credit standing for another round of deficit-spending in order to help Italy, France and other Southern European countries. As if more public debt and burning straw in Germany would have any impact on the southern countries’ economies without any serious political and economic reforms in those countries themselves to fight the weakness at its real source!

As long as our “economy doctors” don’t know anything better than to prescribe more drugs instead of getting the patient off the needle and help him to abandon the ever increasing drug doses, we will never get our economies “back to normal”!

We should never forget that at least the European economies had no real problem as long as the public debt to Gross National Product ratio remained within the Maastricht limits of 60% and before liquidity in the banking sector was multiplied without limit, thereby creating big bubbles in the financial assets of the banks which finally led to the financial crisis of 2008.

Japan is the very best example to prove that the therapy of deficit spending and money printing is dangerously wrong: it is now 25 years since Japan has adopted this cure. If anybody needs proof that the prescription was unprofessional and ineffective, he should look at the results to the Japanese economy and its public debt. Although hundreds of billions of Dollars have been spent during this period on programs to stimulate the Japanese economy the effect was that Japan fell from one recession into the next depression and the public debt ratio to GNP has meanwhile reached the astronomic bench mark of 230% (!!), which is double that of Greece and four times higher than the Maastricht criterion!

I am certain that Maynard Keynes would turn in his grave if he knew to what extent his theory was misinterpreted and misused! Of course it’s a big temptation for every politician to utilize the sweet but toxic medicine of deficit spending and more public debt rather than to introduce hard reforms on public budgets, on social spending and other benefits to their voters.

It’s also a big mistake that European governments have disregarded the traditional role of the European Central Bank as the watch-dog against inflation. In creating the ECB, Germany never consented that it should have more responsibilities and more authority than the Deutsche Bundesbank ever had.

It’s just like with deficit spending Keynes had recommended under certain conditions: it may be acceptable if the Central Bank acts as “Lender of last resort” in case of actual liquidity crisis. But this should be strictly on short-term basis. What we experience today is completely contrary to the German (maybe not the U.S.) understanding of the role of the Central Bank. The ECB has now assumed a role not only to protect the value of our common currency against inflation but also to take action as if it is responsible to create economic growth and full employment with instruments like money printing, zero interest rates and unlimited investments in bonds which the free market is rejecting.

We pay a high price for the chimera that we need constant economic growth and that it is a stigma if our GDP-growth is only 1.5% p.a. Can’t we accept that after 50 years of undisturbed peace and continuous prosperity we have reached a certain degree of personal satisfaction where we don’t need a new car every year, another cell-phone, additional furniture, more TV-sets, more laptops etc, etc. Why do we insist upon economic growth, if we don’t actually need the products which are additionally produced every year?

Is it really worth it to increase the already heavy burden of public debt, which our children must service someday, by accepting even more debt in a vain effort to increase public demand? Let’s instead be happy with zero GDP growth, zero inflation and zero growth of public debt! That could be a more rational solution. Why don’t we consider it?

By Dr. Ulrich Salzer, German economist and banker, Munich

Open letter to Angela Merkel from Otto von Bismarck

My dearest Angela:

You know, I have always disagreed with ladies’ presence in public affairs and to this day have not changed my view on this. I’ve been lucky twice in life: First, I lived when ladies were absolutely barred from politics. Second, I was born on April Fools’ Day, and did justice to that fact by becoming a diplomat.

So, mein beliebt Frau Bundeskanzlerin, I have been watching you rule the country from the family vault and my patience is finally exhausted. You have to listen to what I tell you from my estate in Friedrichsruh. A pity you never visit my grave to seek my counsel. It does seem as though I did the right thing sending the grenadiers to give the Poles a rough ride because no one else in Europe deserved a good thrashing more than they. Yes, you got it right, I mean your grandfather, a Pole by origin. He inherited the national traits of his tribe and made you inherit them too.

Now I’d like to make you remember the rules I introduced for German diplomats a century and a half ago. Breaking them boded ill for the nation.

This is the first rule, Angela: Stupidity is a gift of God that should not be used.

To put it bluntly, a stateswoman should not be more stupid than her loving citizens. The most serious form of stupidity is to believe that you are smarter than they. Think then say—how many Germans endorse your alliance with the Anglo-Saxons? How many of our people approve of your enmity to Russia? Are you sure you see the difference between a big political game and a woman’s intrigue?

Let me remind you the second rule of German politics so that you would not get confused: The only sound basis for a large state is its self respect, not fiction.

Where is our country’s pride in your policy? Is it in your commitment to kneel to the US President? What hope against hope. Whatever you sacrifice to placate Obama, it will bring bad luck to Germans. Americans have a reason to stir up trouble in Europe, do not help them. Do not forget the third rule of German politics: Whatever is at rest should not be set in motion. A government must not waver once it has chosen its course. It must not look to the left or right but proceed straight ahead.

Germany has once chosen Ostpolitik and that was the best choice. But after the collapse of the Soviet Union you fell victim to greed. You wanted Russia to be pushed furtherand further. Now you and the Americans are turning Europe into an armed camp.

Germany’s dear soldiers stepped on inoffensive Serbia. You forgot what I said: “The whole of the Balkans is not worth the bones of a single Pomeranian grenadier. One day the great European War will come out of some damned foolish thing in the Balkans.”

You spent billions on Kosovo. The first thing I would do being in your shoes is to hang those Albanian murderers that you brought to power. There is nothing to expect from them but deceit and plunder.

Finally, you messed with the Russians having forgotten the main secret of German politics: Keep the peace with Russia.

You should read my memoirs and learn by heart what I said in my time: “Never fight the Russians. All your cunning will be answered with their unpredictable stupidity. This inviolable state of the Russian nation is strong in its climate, its spaces and the scarcity of its needs.”

You should also take into account, Angela, that a Russian harnesses his horse slowly but drives fast. Putin’s patience has its limits. If he does react you’ll be in a deep trouble. Cease colluding with Anglo-Saxons. Nothing could be more stupid.

Those dangerous fools cannot grasp that Yeltsin’s Russia is gone. A new Russia has appeared headed by Putin. It’s not weak and pliant any more. Today’s Russia is strong again and ready to stand up for itself. You should realize who you deal with. Read once again what I wrote: “Do not expect that once we have taken advantage of Russia’s weakness, we will profit forever. Russians always come for their money.” And when they come—do not rely on agreements signed by you, trusting girl. They are not worththeir paper. Therefore, with Russians you play fair or do not play.

Angela, perhaps you opted to provoke them into the Ukraine mire because you remember my words that in order to deprive Russia of its power, you need to separate it from Ukraine? Please! You cannot formulate a concrete goal if it is based on flawed speculation. Many European politicians say that without Bavaria Germany will become a weedy castrate, but nobody is going to try it, no matter how many idiots are dreaming of secession from Germany.

You follow Anglo-Saxons who don’t think about depriving Russia of its imperial status. They want to destroy it. Do you really believe Germany would benefit if there were no Russia in Europe? Do not buy the baloney about European values and common interests. Remember I was rebuked for not forming coalitions. A French newspaper said I had nightmares over Germany becoming part of a coalition. True, I was afraid of coalitions because I could not sleep at nights scared my partners would steal our possessions. I was also accused of creating a secret fund to bribe the press and of calling journalists semi-literate alcoholics and poisoners of wells. You know what I thought of them. A journalist is someone who has mistaken his calling. They persecute people because of inferiority complex. I bribed them to make German wells safe for drinking. These creatures have poisoned German minds, as well as yours I’m afraid.

No need to take seriously those diplomatic dumbbells trying to reshape the world so it would look like a Christmas tree in a Prussian barracks. Believe me, the world wants no reshaping, and there is no need to do so. Politics is the art of the possible, the attainable—the art of the next best no matter how abhorrent it may seem. In Russia I learned the word nichevo, “it is nothing”, used when they face really hard times. This word connotes with great wisdom and patience the qualities you yourself should acquire, Frau Reichskanzler, and that would be my last advice to you.

Love always,

Your Otto

Source: The Strategic Culture Foundation

ISIS supplies run through NATO country

Germany’s international broadcaster published a video report of immense geopolitical implications.

This is possibly the first national broadcaster in the West to admit that the so-called “Islamic State” (ISIS) is supplied not by “black market oil” or “hostage ransoms” but billions of dollars worth of supplies carried into Syria across NATO member’s borders.

Every day, trucks laden with food, clothing, and other supplies cross the border from Turkey to Syria. Turkey is a NATO member.

It is unclear who is picking up the goods, Deutsche Welle reports.

The haulers believe most of the cargo is going to the “Islamic State” militia.

Oil, weapons, and soldiers are also being smuggled over the border, and Kurdish volunteers are now patrolling the area in a bid to stem the supplies.

NATO has feigned a desire to defeat ISIS but has failed to expose and uproot ISIS’ multinational sponsorship and more importantly, has refused to cut its supply lines – an elementary prerequisite of any military strategy.

The geopolitics of South Africa’s puppet scandals

To say that popular singer Steve Hofmeyr and author Dan Roodt are targeted by the South African media monopoly, is putting it mildly. They are hounded and smeared daily by paid employees on social media.

With senior staff now openly revolting against Media24, most journalists are searching for new horizons in a job market reeling from the internet.

The only other paying jobs that are not in newsprint are websites flush with Soros money. It thus pays to be a basher of anything sane and conservative.

So sharing deep thoughts with local neo-cons whose articles, full of wishful thinking, are just as short-lived as the latest “racist scandal” editors dream up in an effort to cover up the inevitable decline.

The current malaise is linked to BRICS of which South Africa is a member. Neo-cons tell their stooges in the media giant that America and China will reshape the world order, but only last week China picked Russia and officially recognized the Crimean referendum.

Media24’s official Russia-basher Leopold Scholtz, reporting from the EU, was again refuted by developments in Germany just days ago. He keeps pretending not to notice the earth moving beneath his feet.

So the Steve-and-Dan smear campaign has gained momentum in order not to tackle the large elephant in the room.

A pock-faced jester was even hauled out to spout libel and vile insults, taunting the two Afrikaners in the latest desperate attempt to incite racial animosity or whatever it is that will not dig the printed news hole deeper.

As readers also found out last week, Merkel’s Brisbane speech may actually bring in a major shift in German politics. Afrikaners adore Germans, even though they hate Nazis. A shift from a long phase of Merkel’s undisputed leadership to one where she gets increasingly challenged by furious industrialists, is afoot.

Scholtz – his father was historian to the architect of Apartheid Verwoerd, ironically – has become accustomed to framing Afrikaners as Nazis in tendentious articles, a distinctly anti-German and Atlanticist pastime. But failing to find actual evidence, he has had to invent it with the help of a devious editor from one dwindling sheet called Beeld.

A recent Der Spiegel cover on the G20 read “Summit of Failure: How the EU lost Russia over Ukraine”, making Scholtz’s task all the more difficult to paint Afrikaners as Nazis and rant on about Russian aggression.

Signed, in an unprecedented move, by Spiegel Staff as a whole – hence indicating an overall editorial stance – the leading article refused to blame Putin for the Ukraine crisis. It instead blamed Merkel, Scholtz’s darling.

Just as Merkel’s political opponents smell victory, Germany’s leading weekly equates Merkel’s faults to Putin’s. But the turn-around will not be smooth for Media24, a blind neo-con sycophant.

And just a week earlier, ARD had given 30 minutes of airtime to Putin, who was finally able put forward his views in full before a major Western audience. ARD’s editorial decision was also unprecedented.

Meanwhile senior German politicians endorsed the Russian annexation of Crimea.

The Anglo-American media retaliated at full tilt, screeching with indignation: “Why Angela Merkel is saying farewell to Ostpolitik”.

Had they been interested in journalism, and reporting instead of Russia-bashing and race-baiting, they would have asked some pertinent questions about South Africa, BRICS and Europe.

Scholtz, who fancies himself as an honorary re-educated German, is strangely mum, pointing to the fact that there is no editiorial independance from neo-con manipulation in South Africa.

From the English press in the country Atlantic subservience is a given and a constant, but Afrikaners thrive on anti-colonialism and independence.

The big cheeses in Media24 would rather like to forget that fact and concentrate on ad hominem tags.

How more subservient to the US, and deaf to their own readers and businesses, can a media monopoly become? Especially when Afrikaner farmers are killed by the thousands and white crosses dot the countryside marking their torture and demise.

The resentment that Media24’s stubborn Atlanticism and anglophilia arouses among ordinary Afrikaners is thus an old story from our concentration camp past from Aliwal North to Bethulie, Balmoral and the long list of wanton destruction, rape and war crimes by Englishmen.

The news is that even senior politicians and business leaders are now getting tired of Atlanticism, and this may eventually lead to Media24’s downfall.

In their eagerness to bad mouth Steve and Dan, factual errors are overlooked, and outright lies told. Ordinary Afrikaners inundated the media with complaints, calling their reports inadequate, one-sided and biased. But this has strengthened Media24’s resolve to find a “racist” scapegoat or two and save their Atlanticist neo-colonial project.

They also attack the increasingly economically fragile Afrikaners and accuse them of militaristic nationalism.

In their deluded, scapegoating mood, nobody in the crumbling edifice wants to address the real issues. That alone may go down as a major shift in geopolitics.

German mom to sue Kiev over MH17

The mother of a victim killed in the Malaysian plane crash in eastern Ukraine has started legal proceedings to sue the Ukrainian authorities in the European Court of Human Rights, demanding about $1 million for pain and suffering.

The mother of “Olga L.”, a German citizen, submitted her case against Ukraine to the European Court of Human Rights last week. She is demanding €800,000 (roughly $1 million) for negligent homicide, reports the German newspaper Bild am Sonntag.

The woman insists that Ukrainian authorities should have shut the country’s airspace to civilian flights due to the heavy fighting between Kiev troops and militias in the country’s east.

She argues the Kiev government failed to do this because they didn’t want to lose out on overflight fees. According to Bild, around the time of the disaster about 700 flights were crossing Ukrainian territory daily, accruing several millions of euros in revenue a month.

The victim’s mother is being represented in court by Elmar Giemulla, a professor of aviation law. Giemulla is also acting for other German families of MH17 victims, who announced in September that they are also planning to sue Kiev in court.

“Each state is responsible for the security of its air space,” Giemulla said in September. “If it is not able to do so temporarily, it must close its air space. As that did not happen, Ukraine is liable for the damage.”

Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 was apparently shot down on its way from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur over eastern Ukraine on July 17. Four German citizens were among the 298 victims of the plane crash.

A preliminary report into the disaster delivered by Dutch investigators on September 9 said that the MH17 crash was a result of structural damage caused by a large number of high-energy objects striking the Boeing from the outside.

However, in November the Dutch government refused to reveal details of a secret pact between members of the Joint Investigation Team (the Netherlands, Belgium, Australia and Ukraine) examining the downed Flight MH17. If the participants, including Ukraine, do not want information to be released, it will be kept secret.

Western countries have repeatedly tried to blame Russia without any evidence to back up their claims.

Russia has meanwhile expressed surprise with the lack of new evidence presented in the report. Moscow suggested the UN should appoint a special representative to monitor the investigation into the shooting-down of flight MH17.

Moscow made radar surveillance data of the incident public which show the involvement of Kiev in downing the Malaysian plane.

As Dutch move gold out of US, French and Swiss call to follow

The financial crisis in Europe is prompting some nations to repatriate their gold reserves to national vaults. The Netherlands has moved $5 billion worth of gold from New York, and some are calling for similar action from France, Switzerland, and Germany.

An unmatched pace of money printing by major central banks has boosted concerns in European countries over the safety of their gold reserves abroad.

The Dutch central bank – De Nederlandsche Bank – was one of the latest to make the move. The bank announced last Friday that it moved a fifth of its total 612.5-metric-ton gold reserve from New York to Amsterdam earlier in November.

It was done in an effort to redistribute the gold stock in “a more balanced way,” and to boost public confidence, the bank explained.

“With this adjustment the Dutch Central Bank joins other banks that are keeping a larger share of their gold supply in their own country,” the bank said in a statement. “In addition to a more balanced division of the gold reserves…this may also contribute to a positive confidence effect with the public.”

Dutch gold reserves are now divided as follows: 31 percent in Amsterdam, 31 percent in New York, 20 percent in Ottawa, Canada and 18 percent in London.

Meanwhile, Switzerland has organized the ‘Save Our Swiss Gold’ referendum, which is taking place on November 30. If passed, it would force the Swiss National Bank to convert a fifth of its assets into gold and repatriate all of its reserves from vaults in the UK and Canada.

“The Swiss initiative is merely part of an increasing global scramble towards gold and away from the endless printing of money. Huge movements of gold are going on right now,” Koos Jansen, an Amsterdam-based gold analyst for the Singaporean precious metal dealer BullionStar, told the Guardian.

France has also recently joined in on the trend, with the leader of the far-right National Front party Marine Le Pen calling on the central bank to repatriate the country’s gold reserves.

In an open letter to the governor of the Banque de France, Christian Noyer, Le Pen also demanded an audit of 2,435 tons of physical gold inventory.

Germany tried and failed to adopt a similar path in early 2013 by announcing a plan to repatriate some of its gold reserves back from the US and France.

The efforts fizzled out this summer, when it was announced that Germany decided to leave $635 billion worth of gold in US vaults.

Germany only keeps about a third of its gold at home. Forty-five percent is held in New York, 13 percent in London, 11 percent in Paris, and only 31 percent in the Bundesbank in Frankfurt.

Frankfurt: First European direct settlements in Chinese yuan

European companies now have the opportunity to settle trading accounts in Chinese yuan. The Bank of China in Frankfurt has become the first to operate European yuan clearing. Trading costs will be cut as there will be no dollar exchange first.

More than 10 German regional and international banks including Deutsche Bank, Commerzbank, DZ Bank AG, and Landesbank Hessen-Thueringen Girozentrale, have opened accounts at Bank of China in Frankfurt.

In June the People’s Bank of China chose Bank of China Ltd. to clear payments in the eurozone. The last five months were spent building the settlement infrastructure before the official start of clearing Monday.

Yuan clearing in Frankfurt “will increase the share of German SMEs using the renminbi for their trade with China to well over the current 10 percent,” Frank-Oliver Wolf, divisional head of cash management and international business at Commerzbank told Bloomberg.

Frankfurt is the first European financial center to conduct transactions in yuan. Germany and China agreed to establish a settlement center for the yuan in March. The agreement was concluded by the Bundesbank and the People’s Bank of China during the state visit of Chinese leader Xi Jinping to Germany.

The yuan is “gaining traction as a trade currency and has in my opinion already reached the level of an investment currency,” Joachim Nagel, a board member at the Bundesbank, said Monday in a speech in Frankfurt. “It is only a matter of time before the renminbi [yuan-Ed] becomes an international reserve currency,” he added.

“It’s clear from our observations in the course of 2014 that the yuan is no longer an emerging market currency,” Sven Juergensen, head of forex sales for corporate clients at HSBC Holdings Plc in Germany, said in a Bloomberg interview on November 14. “Trades can be conducted at any point in time at adequate spreads.”

China has reduced control over the yuan exchange rate and is gradually moving towards making it a global trading currency. Other financial centers, including Hong Kong, Taipei, Singapore, Seoul, Paris and London, have also signed similar agreements with China.

Another step in this direction has already been made in China. The Hong Kong and Shanghai Stock Exchanges a have created a mechanism for cross-trading – Shanghai-Hong Kong Stock Connect.

It allows investors access to the largest stock market on China’s mainland and vice versa.

In recent years China has been promoting its currency. It has concluded swap agreements with a growing number of countries. In some countries China helps companies to issue yuan denominated bonds. Establishing a yuan clearing service in Europe is an essential to create a new reserve currency.