Berlin culture official quits after funding cut backlash
Joe Chialo, from the conservative CDU party, had initially sought to defend the cost-saving measures last year but became a lightning rod for anger during protests over the cuts.
However, he said Friday that extra measures now being planned went too far and could "lead to the imminent closure of nationally known cultural institutions".
Chialo also said discussions about the cuts had become difficult as criticism was increasingly focused on him personally.
"When central political and professional goals can no longer be implemented... it is, in my view, consistent to step aside and place the office in new hands," he said in a statement.
The 54-year-old had been seen as a contender for culture minister at the national level in the incoming CDU-led government of Friedrich Merz.
But on Monday the party announced that Wolfram Weimer, a prominent conservative publisher and journalist, would take up the post.
Chialo was booed when he addressed a rally of hundreds of creative sector workers at Berlin's Brandenburg Gate in November, with techno clubs, classic music venues and theatres all warning the cuts would be devastating.
He was also in the headlines again in February when a report claimed that outgoing Chancellor Olaf Scholz had referred to him as a "fig leaf" figure in the CDU and a "court jester".
Scholz fiercely denied any suggestion that the comments were linked to the ethnic background of Chialo, who has Tanzanian family roots.
Some of Chialo's public events have also been disrupted by pro-Palestinian activists after he repeatedly condemned rising anti-Semitism in Germany amid the Gaza war that was sparked by Hamas's deadly October 7, 2023 attack on Israel.
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
France 24
44 minutes ago
- France 24
US judge extends detention of pro-Palestinian protest leader
US District Judge Michael Fabiarz had issued an order Wednesday that the government could not detain or deport Khalil, a legal permanent resident, based on Secretary of State Marco Rubio's assertions that his presence on US soil posed a national security threat. The order gave the government until Friday to release Khalil. But by Friday afternoon, the Trump administration "represented that the Petitioner is being detained on another, second charge," the judge wrote. The Department of Homeland Security has provided the court with press clippings from various American tabloids suggesting Khalil, who is married to a US citizen, had failed to disclose certain information about his work or involvement in a campaign to boycott Israel when applying for his permanent resident green card, ABC News reported. "The government is now using cruel, transparent delay tactics to keep him away from his wife and newborn son ahead of their first Father's Day as a family," Khalil attorney Amy Greer said in a statement, referring to the US holiday observed on Sunday. "Instead of celebrating together, he is languishing in ICE detention as punishment for his advocacy on behalf of his fellow Palestinians. It is unjust, it is shocking, and it is disgraceful." Since his March 8 arrest by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, Khalil has become a symbol of President Donald Trump's willingness to stifle pro-Palestinian student activism against the Gaza war, in the name of curbing anti-Semitism. At the time a graduate student at New York's Columbia University, Khalil was one of the most visible leaders of nationwide campus protests against Israel's war in Gaza. Authorities transferred Khalil, who was born in Syria to Palestinian parents, nearly 2,000 kilometers (1,242 miles) from his home in New York to a detention center in Louisiana, pending deportation. His wife Noor Abdalla, a Michigan-born dentist, gave birth to their son while Khalil was in detention.
France 24
3 hours ago
- France 24
US adversaries fuel disinformation about LA protests
The findings from researchers at the disinformation watchdog NewsGuard illustrate how foreign adversaries of the United States are exploiting deep divisions in American society as a tactic of information warfare. NewsGuard said Russian, Chinese, and Iranian state-affiliated sources have published around 10,000 posts and articles about the demonstrations that recently erupted in Los Angeles, advancing false claims framing the city as "ground zero in an American apocalypse." Seizing on the political rift between President Donald Trump and Governor Gavin Newsom, pro-China accounts on X and Chinese platforms such as Douyin and Weibo have peddled unfounded claims that California was ready to secede from the United States and declare independence. Meanwhile, Tehran-based newspapers have peddled the false claim that popular Iranian singer-songwriter Andranik Madadian had been detained by the National Guard in Los Angeles, in an apparent effort to portray the United States as an authoritarian state. NewsGuard quoted Madadian, better known by his stage name Andy, as denying the claim, stating: "I am fine. Please don't believe these rumors." Russian media and pro-Russian influencers, meanwhile, has embraced right-wing conspiracy theories, including the unfounded claim that the Mexican government was stoking the demonstrations against Trump's immigration policies. "The demonstrations are unfolding at the intersection of multiple vulnerabilities such as eroded trust in institutions, AI chatbots amplifying false claims about the unrest, political polarization, and a rollback of safety and moderation efforts by major platforms," McKenzie Sadeghi, a researcher with NewsGuard, told AFP. "As a result, foreign actors have a wide-open playing field to flood the zone with falsehoods at a faster rate and fewer barriers compared to previous moments of unrest," she added. The apparent alignment across the three countries was noteworthy, Sadeghi said. "While Russia, China, and Iran regularly push their own unique forms of disinformation, it's less common to see them move in such a coordinated fashion like this," she said. "This time, state media outlets have escalated their messaging to advance their geopolitical interests and deflect attention from their own domestic crises." The disinformation comes on top of false narratives promoted by US-based influencers. In recent days, conservative social media users have circulated two photographs of brick piles they claimed were strategically placed for the California protesters to hurl at police and inflame violence. The photos were cited as proof that the protests were fueled by nonprofit organizations supported by George Soros, the billionaire philanthropist who has long been a bogeyman for the far right. But AFP's fact-checkers found that one photo was lifted from an online marketplace, where a Malaysian hardware dealer uploaded it years ago, while the other was snapped near a construction site in New Jersey. "Every time there's a popular protest, the old clickbaity 'pallets of bricks' hoax shows up right on cue," the Social Media Lab, a research center at the Toronto Metropolitan University, wrote on the platform Bluesky. © 2025 AFP
AFP
3 hours ago
- AFP
Old explosion video falsely linked to Israeli strikes on Iran
"BREAKING: ANOTHER EXPLOSION AT AN OIL REFINERY IN IRAN," says a June 13, 2025 post sharing the visual on X. Image Screenshot from X taken June 13, 2025 The post comes from Sulaiman Ahmed, a self-described journalist who has repeatedly shared disinformation about the Middle East and the war between Israel and Hamas. Similar posts spread across platforms and in other languages, including Spanish and Persian. The image circulated after the Israeli military hit a range of Iranian nuclear sites, in an of Israel's war with the militant group Hamas in Gaza. Oil prices soared in the aftermath of the airstrikes. But analysts told AFP price gains were capped in part by news that there has been no immediate reduction to crude production or supplies, as the strikes appeared to have avoided Iranian oil facilities. Reverse image searches surfaced the photo in Iranian news reports detailing a November 4, 2020 incident at a petrochemical plant in Ilam, Iran (archived here and here). Rokna News Agency posted the photo to Telegram, saying it showed a "massive explosion" at the plant (archived here). Further reports said the plume of smoke was in fact due to a fire in a waste pond that was quickly extinguished with no casualties (archived here, here and here). AFP has debunked other misinformation about the Middle East, here.
