Latest news with #GermanParliament
See - Sada Elbalad
21-06-2025
- Politics
- See - Sada Elbalad
Mass Protests Erupt Across Europe Demanding End to Gaza Genocide
By Ahmad El-Assasy Mass protests erupted across major European cities on Saturday, as tens of thousands rallied in solidarity with Palestinians and demanded an immediate end to Israel's ongoing war on Gaza, which demonstrators described as a campaign of genocide. Major demonstrations took place in London, Berlin, Rome, Stockholm, and several other cities including Stuttgart and Aarhus. Protesters waved Palestinian flags and held signs reading 'Stop the Genocide in Gaza' and 'End the War on Iran,' reflecting broader fears of escalating regional conflict. In London, tens of thousands gathered, calling on the UK government to halt arms sales to Israel and to take a firmer stance against the humanitarian crisis unfolding in Gaza. Many voiced deep concern over a broader Middle East escalation amid the ongoing Israel-Iran conflict, now entering its ninth day. 'It's getting worse in Gaza under the watch of the entire world,' said one demonstrator. 'It's vital we avoid another full-scale war in the region.' In Berlin, a large demonstration unfolded outside the German Parliament (Bundestag), with some protesters waving Iranian flags and calling for sanctions against Israel and a ban on weapons exports. The protests were described by Reuters as some of the most visible expressions of discontent in the German capital. In Rome, a massive pro-Palestine march called for an end to the bloodshed in Gaza and the West Bank, while other rallies took place in Stuttgart, Germany, and Aarhus, Denmark, with images shared widely by the European Palestinian Media Center. In Stockholm, hundreds gathered to denounce what they described as Israeli war crimes in Gaza. Organized by various civil society groups, the protest included signs that read 'Stop the genocide by the Zionist entity' and photos of Palestinian children killed in Israeli airstrikes. Swedish activist Janine O'Keefe told Anadolu Agency that demonstrators were demanding an immediate end to what they called 'genocide carried out by Israel in Palestine.' These coordinated protests come as Israel's military assault on Gaza—launched on October 7—enters its ninth month. According to health authorities in Gaza, the war has killed or injured over 187,000 Palestinians, the majority of them women and children, with more than 11,000 still missing, hundreds of thousands displaced, widespread famine, and entire neighborhoods reduced to rubble. read more Gold prices rise, 21 Karat at EGP 3685 NATO's Role in Israeli-Palestinian Conflict US Expresses 'Strong Opposition' to New Turkish Military Operation in Syria Shoukry Meets Director-General of FAO Lavrov: confrontation bet. nuclear powers must be avoided News Iran Summons French Ambassador over Foreign Minister Remarks News Aboul Gheit Condemns Israeli Escalation in West Bank News Greek PM: Athens Plays Key Role in Improving Energy Security in Region News One Person Injured in Explosion at Ukrainian Embassy in Madrid News China Launches Largest Ever Aircraft Carrier Sports Former Al Zamalek Player Ibrahim Shika Passes away after Long Battle with Cancer Lifestyle Get to Know 2025 Eid Al Adha Prayer Times in Egypt Business Fear & Greed Index Plummets to Lowest Level Ever Recorded amid Global Trade War Arts & Culture Zahi Hawass: Claims of Columns Beneath the Pyramid of Khafre Are Lies News Flights suspended at Port Sudan Airport after Drone Attacks Videos & Features Video: Trending Lifestyle TikToker Valeria Márquez Shot Dead during Live Stream News Shell Unveils Cost-Cutting, LNG Growth Plan Technology 50-Year Soviet Spacecraft 'Kosmos 482' Crashes into Indian Ocean News 3 Killed in Shooting Attack in Thailand
India Gazette
06-06-2025
- Politics
- India Gazette
We understand the necessity of why India took action: Jurgen Hardt
Berlin [Germany], June 6 (ANI): In a key diplomatic engagement, an Indian All-Party Parliamentary Delegation led by BJP MP Ravi Shankar Prasad held wide-ranging discussions in Berlin with members of the German Bundestag and representatives from leading think tanks, deepening strategic cooperation and mutual understanding. One of the standout voices during the dialogue was Jurgen Hardt, Member of the German Parliament and Spokesperson for Foreign Policy of the CDU/CSU parliamentary group, who strongly addressed regional threats emanating from Pakistan and the need for peaceful conflict resolution. 'We see the terror threat coming from Pakistan and we have asked the Pakistani government to eliminate terror groups in their country. We hope for a peaceful solution. We encourage the Indian government to do it diplomatically. Hopefully, the conflict between India and Pakistan can be calmed,' Hardt stated. Referring to the April 22 terrorist attack in Pahalgam, he added, 'It was a terrible attack on several people. I hope India finds a way to install a mechanism to resolve such conflicts peacefully, but we understand the necessity of why India took action.' The meeting with German lawmakers, including Armin Laschet, Ralph Brinkhaus, Hubertus Heil, and Omid Nouripour, reaffirmed the growing convergence between India and Germany on regional security and counterterrorism. Armin Laschet, Chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the Bundestag, expressed solidarity with India and called for the preservation of peace and dialogue. 'We also discussed the brutal 22 April terrorist attack in Pahalgam. I'm deeply shocked. Germany stands with India in the fight against terrorism. Now it's vital the ceasefire holds and dialogue continues. Peace serves us all,' Laschet said in a statement. The Indian Embassy in Germany confirmed the series of engagements, noting that the delegation 'conveyed India's unwavering united stand for Zero Tolerance for Terrorism and outlined its resolve to not give in to nuclear blackmail.' The embassy also noted that leaders on both sides 'recognised momentum in the India-Germany Strategic Partnership and joint role in ensuring global Peace and Security.' Vice President of the German Bundestag, Omid Nouripour, also hosted the delegation and highlighted the need for stronger cooperation amidst current global challenges. He acknowledged India's rising role in ensuring security and appreciated the delegation's outreach. Reflecting on the significance of the meetings, BJP MP Ravi Shankar Prasad remarked, 'A very good meeting with Vice Chairman of this majestic Parliament. We exchanged views on terrorism, he was very forthright. Terrorism is a global curse and also appreciated India's efforts to give security to its people and globally, we need to work together in the field of terrorism and also good economic cooperation between these two great countries. Germany is a big economic powerhouse in the world. India is a big economic powerhouse in the world.' With high-level participation across parties and institutions, the visit reinforced the shared values and mutual trust that underpin the India-Germany relationship. From counterterrorism and nuclear restraint to economic engagement and geopolitical dialogue, both sides signalled a clear commitment to a rules-based global order and a collaborative future. (ANI)
Yahoo
14-05-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
A former chef declared himself King of Germany. This week Germany arrested him
As dawn broke over Germany's eastern state of Saxony on Tuesday morning, heavily armed police massed outside a property in the picturesque village of Halsbrücke and prepared to smash down its front door. It was 6am, and inside the house was a declared enemy of the state. But this was no ordinary criminal, but a monarch, a self-described one at least. Peter Fitzek, a 59-year-old former chef and karate instructor, has spent more than a decade denying the legitimacy of the Federal Republic of Germany and advocating for a return to the borders established during the Second Reich of 1871-1918. Following his arrest, it now seems likely that 'Peter I's' political aspirations as 'King of Germany' will meet a similarly ignominious end to those of his hero, the Kaiser. 'This is illegal and unlawful,' he told reporters on Tuesday as he was ushered into a police car. According to the rules of his own self-proclaimed seat, the so-called Kingdom of Germany, he may have been right. The son of a digger driver, Fitzek was brought up in East Germany. Having failed to secure elected office, either as a mayor or member of the German Parliament, he felt he had no choice but to proclaim an independent kingdom from the grounds of a former hospital in the city of Wittenberg. Fitzek filmed his own coronation in 2012, adorned in ermine robes and holding a mediaeval sword. No stranger to publicity, he has continued to be the subject of bemused profiles in media outlets from New York to Tel Aviv to Sydney in the years since. Life under a king, he told one interviewer, was 'the natural state of the German people'. The country's borders should, he argued, expand to reclaim countries like Poland 'if the people there wanted it'. His own constitution 'came through God – I just dictated it'. And he, himself, was, of course, the reincarnation of the Archangel Uriel. For all the attention he generated, Fitzek and the disparate grouping of nostalgic, anti-state conspiracy theorists who made up his following were largely dismissed as harmless eccentrics prior to the Covid pandemic. But after purchasing a 300-acre estate in Saxony in 2022, he boasted that his kingdom was 'now two and a half times the size of the Vatican'. As his influence grew, there were plenty of signs that the divine right of Peter I to rule small pockets of eastern Germany risked coming into conflict with the secular rights of the federal German authorities. In 2017, Fitzek was convicted of embezzlement of £1.2 million, although a higher court overturned the verdict the following year. He has subsequently been convicted for driving without a licence (the court didn't recognise the one issued by his own kingdom), running his own health insurance programme and assault, a district court taking a dim view of his attempt to claim immunity as a head of state. By 2022, he had claimed 5,000 'citizens', many of them refusing to send their children to school, which is illegal in Germany, or pay tax, which is illegal almost everywhere. Instead, some of his subjects joined his 'system drop-out' seminars, priced at £295 and payable in 'Engelgeld' (angel money), his own currency. Despite Fitzek's protestations that his kingdom simply stands for a 'willingness to take responsibility', it was designated an extremist organisation in 2022 by the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV), Germany's domestic intelligence agency. Three years of close observation culminated in this week's raids involving 800 security personnel in seven states. After being arrested along with several other senior 'subjects', Fitzek was accused by Alexander Dobrindt, German's interior minister, of 'undermining the rule of law' and spreading 'antisemitic conspiracy narratives to back up their supposed claim to authority'. His organisation, the Kingdom of Germany, has been banned. 'Today, a significant blow was struck against the so-called Reich Citizens and Self-Governors,' Dobrindt wrote on X. 'With the so-called 'Kingdom of Germany,' the largest association of this scene, which has been growing for years, was banned.' Dobrindt's tweet is a reminder of the strange, overlapping world of extremist German nostalgics. Abutting the Venn diagram of Fitzek's 'subjects' is the much larger circle of some 25,000 Reichsbürger ('Reich Citizens') who also deny the legitimacy of the country's 1949 constitution and want to re-establish a monarchy that was deposed in 1918. They have been under observation by the BfV since 2016, when one of its members shot dead a police officer during a raid at his home. The Covid lockdown in 2020 swelled their ranks – and their extremism. 'People spent a lot of time in isolation, in front of computers,' explains Jakob Guhl, an expert in far-Right extremism at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue. 'Chat forums, such as Telegram, which are [largely] unregulated, saw a huge inflow of anti-vaccine people and far-Right groups. Part of that mix was Reichsbürger, and there was suddenly a far larger audience.' According to German government figures, Reichsbürger committed 1,000 extremist criminal acts in 2021, a twofold increase from the previous year. Officials estimate that 10 per cent of its members are potentially violent and five per cent Right-wing extremists. 'The ideology of rejecting state authority and holding historical revisionist ideas, many of them anti-Semitic, always had the potential to unload itself very badly,' says Guhl. As Covid ebbed and flowed, this first manifested itself in protestors attempting to storm the parliament building in Berlin in August 2020, while waving the pre-1918 flag of the German Empire. The following April, the police foiled a plot by a group calling themselves United Patriots, a subset of the Reichsbürger movement, who wanted to kidnap the health minister, foster a civil war and overthrow the democratic system. Four men aged 46 to 58 and a 77-year-old former teacher were jailed in March this year. The most infamous manifestation of the Reichsbürgers' violent, revisionist intentions was an attempted coup in December 2022, foiled by 5,000 police officers operating in 11 of Germany's 16 states, the largest such operation since 1945. The plot contained many farcical elements, notably a belief that Elizabeth II was part of a global, child-abusing elite and a cast of conspirators that included minor aristocrats, a chef and an opera singer. However, its deadly intentions were apparent from the discovery of 380 guns, 350 bladed weapons and more than 148,000 rounds of ammunition. Its alleged members, whose trials started last year and are still ongoing, included a former AfD member of the Bundestag and a founding member of the German special forces. Interviewed by the BBC shortly after the attempted coup, Fitzek said he had no intention of doing something similar himself (although he did describe the German state as 'destructive and sick', adding he had 'no interest in being part of this fascist and satanic system'). It is, however, interesting to note that some of the conspirators espoused the same historical views as the 'Kingdom of Germany', notably the self-proclaimed Heinrich XIII, a 73-year-old prince from the House of Reuss, who was alleged to have been central to their plans. Prince Reuss, whose family ruled parts of Thuringia until 1918, has recorded videos complaining that his '1,000-year dynasty' had been unjustly usurped. His co-conspirators allegedly shared a vision of returning Germany to elements of its Bismarckian constitutional settlement – a sentiment which enjoys a low but substantial level of support across Germany. Recent polls have shown that almost 10 per cent of the population would like to see the return of the monarchy, a figure that doubles for those under the age of 34. 'The Second Reich is a bit less problematic than harking back to the Nazis,' explains Guhl. 'It doesn't have the same level of toxicity attached to it. The symbols don't tend to be banned; the flags won't necessarily get you into trouble. It's a past that's easier to idealise for movements that want an idealised version of the past.' But this idealised version of the Second Reich ignores the reality of a new country riven by political and cultural divisions and destroyed in the First World War by the Kaiser's ham-fisted Weltpolitik. And as Dobrindt, the interior minister said of Fitzek's arrest this week: 'We are not talking about a group of harmless nostalgics, as the title of the organisation might suggest, but about criminal structures and a criminal network.' There is also an argument that these German nostalgics, however ill-intentioned, would benefit from a better grasp of the historical period they claim to fetishise. The Kaiser died unhappily in exile in 1941, rejected by his own people. Even at the start of the second Reich, a mere Prussian aristocrat knew how to put minor royalty in its place. When Bismarck, the German chancellor, was unifying Germany in 1870, he placated the reluctant King Ludwig of II of Bavaria by offering him his own separate postal service – and little else. Broaden your horizons with award-winning British journalism. Try The Telegraph free for 1 month with unlimited access to our award-winning website, exclusive app, money-saving offers and more.
The National
07-05-2025
- Politics
- The National
Newly-elected German Chancellor Friedrich Merz
Mr Merz sits down for talks with Mr Macron at the Elysee Palace, one day after being elected Chancellor. He was voted in by the German parliament in a second round, after suffering a surprise defeat at the first attempt. Getty Images
Yahoo
01-04-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Germany can co-finance European nuclear deterrence
With Donald Trump's open support for Russia and his turning away from Europe and NATO, the question of the credibility of the American nuclear promise has taken center stage. Unlike during Trump's first term in office, however, this time Europe has recognized the dramatic nature of the situation and developed ideas to strengthen the British and French nuclear deterrent. Both European nuclear powers want to intensify their nuclear consultations and, in addition, French President Emmanuelle Macron has once again called for a dialogue between nuclear and non-nuclear states in Europe. Germany is open to such a dialogue. The German British Defence Agreement (Trinity House), concluded in autumn 2024, already explicitly provides for an exchange on nuclear issues. Friedrich Merz, Germany's designated chancellor, also spoke out in favor of the nuclear dialogue proposed by Macron at an early stage. The idea of such talks is to send a signal of commitment and determination not only to Moscow, but also to Washington. This is not (yet) about replacing the American 'extended deterrent' with a European version as it is far from certain that Washington will close the nuclear umbrella over Europe, especially as the damage to the USA itself would be considerable. The goal of nuclear non-proliferation, which America has always pursued, would be jeopardized and new nuclear states could emerge in Eastern Europe or Asia, for example. However, the Trump administration is not known for taking the negative consequences of its own impulsive actions into account in advance. What could Germany bring to such talks, and what would be its contribution to strengthening a European nuclear deterrent? There's certainly nothing along the lines of Germany attempting to develop its own nuclear weapons. Germany has repeatedly and formally renounced this option and, apart from a few academics, there is no politically serious voice in Berlin that would want to change this – not to mention the enormous costs of such a project. Even the conceivable possibility of stationing French nuclear weapons on German soil – similar to the U.S. nuclear bombs in deployed in Germany – is currently only a theoretical one. Paris has not yet abandoned its long-standing skepticism towards the idea of a nuclear umbrella for non-nuclear allies and sees nuclear weapons as a strictly national matter. Furthermore, France only has around 40 nuclear cruise missiles and the same number of land-based, nuclear-capable Rafale fighter-bombers. The rest of the approximately 290 French nuclear warheads are intended for use at sea – either from submarines or with Rafale bombers from the aircraft carrier 'Charles de Gaulle.' The British nuclear arsenal is stationed exclusively on submarines. What Germany can offer London and Paris, however, is to contribute to the considerable costs of both countries' nuclear capabilities. Back in May 2017, the Scientific Service of the German Parliament analyzed the co-financing of foreign nuclear weapons potentials from the federal budget in a publicly accessible report. This assessment was commissioned by parliamentarians because the question of the reliability of the American nuclear commitments had already arisen during President Trump's first term in office. The report concluded that the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), which has been binding for Germany since 1975, does not contain a ban on support or funding from non-nuclear states for nuclear powers. Nor can such a ban be derived from the Two-Plus-Four Treaty, in which Germany's non-nuclear status is enshrined, or from general international law. Only some international treaties on 'nuclear-weapon-free zones' contain indirect prohibitions on assistance. However, Germany is not a party to such treaties. Apparently, Germany has not yet provided such nuclear co-financing, even though there were occasional rumors that the Federal Republic had provided financial support for the development of Israel's nuclear weapons potential in the 1950s and 1960s. However, such rumors have never been substantiated. What follows from all this is that financial support for British or French nuclear deterrence is possible in principle. Of course, this would only take place if a direct link were established between the nuclear weapons potential of both countries and the security of Germany and Europe. The corresponding benefits and counter-benefits would have to be set out in legally binding bilateral agreements. It is worth noting that the German Federal Ministry of Finance has already created a branch called 'Geo-Economics and Security Policy' in order to assess the various financial implications of the new security challenges – this branch could conceptually assess the implications of such an agreement. If Germany were to include such an option in the planned dialogue between nuclear and non-nuclear states, the talks would immediately be elevated to a politically concrete and presumably mutually beneficial level. It would also be an example of a strategically forward-looking German security policy – something that has not often been the case in Berlin in the past. Karl-Heinz Kamp is an associate fellow of the German Council on Foreign Relations and was president of the Federal Academy for Security Policy.
