German-Iranian Gas Deal Criticized

Germany once again rears its ugly head and assists in cultivating a Jew-hating regime. This is not to be believed, from German-Iranian Gas Deal Criticized:

The Simon Wiesenthal Center on Wednesday urged Chancellor Angela Merkel to block a $156 million deal between Germany's Steiner and the Iranian government to build three gas liquefaction facilities, saying it would "embolden" an anti-Semitic regime.

"It is an outrage that bureaucrats would be allowed to concoct a deal that thwarts the stated policies of the government of Germany," said Rabbi Abraham Cooper, associate dean of the Vienna-based center.

"This deal...helps Iran in this sensitive sector and makes a mockery of the international community's efforts to isolate a nuclearizing Iranian regime."

Hundreds march in Latvia to commemorate Waffen SS unit

It's still my father's Europe. Via IHT:

About 3,000 Latvians marched through the capital Sunday under heavy police protection to honor countrymen who fought in a German combat unit during World War II. The procession, included a few surviving members of the WaffenSS unit known as the Latvian Legion, was met by dozens of jeering protesters as it arrived at the Freedom Monument, in downtown Riga. The two sides were kept apart by some 2,000 police officers deployed to prevent possible unrest at the annual event. The participants sang patriotic songs and waved Latvian flags before laying roses at the base of the monument, flanked by police in riot gear.The protesters chanted "disgrace" and "Hitler is dead" in Russian and blew whistles to drown out the singing. Police reported no incidents.

Soviet forces occupied the Baltic states of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia in June 1940, but were driven out by the Germans a year later. The Red Army retook the Baltics in 1944, and reincorporated them into the Soviet Union. About 250,000 Latvians ended up fighting alongside either the Germans or the Soviets in World War II - and some 150,000 Latvians died in the fighting. Veterans who fought on the side of Nazi Germany say they were simply fighting for their freedom against the Soviet menace.

But many ethnic Russians, who comprise approximately one-third of the country's 2.3 million population, claim that the Soviet army liberated the Baltic state from fascism.

Nearly 80,000 Jews in Latvia - 90 percent of the prewar Jewish population - were killed during the Nazi occupation. Thousands of Russian prisoners of war also died in Nazi prisoner of war camps.Most Latvian Jews were killed in 1941-42, two years before the formation of Latvia's Waffen SS - which some Latvians claim shows the unit could not have played a role in the Holocaust.

But an unknown number of Latvian Waffen SS soldiers may have been involved in the murder of Jews as auxiliary police, years before they entered the front-line unit.

Latvia remained under Soviet control until 1991, when it regained its independence.

Islamists planned attacks across Europe

Reuters likes to call them "Islamist extremists", but that is duplicitous term, because the word "Islamist" already implies "extremist". Regardless, this should come as no surprise to anyone, except of course Islamists, their defenders and apologists. From Islamists planned attacks across Europe:

Islamist extremists were planning attacks across Europe, especially against public transport, before their arrests in Barcelona last weekend, a Spanish paper reported on Saturday, citing a would-be attacker's testimony.

The Al Qaeda-inspired cell planned to attack the Barcelona metro and other targets in Spain, Germany, France, Portugal and the United Kingdom, said the bomber turned police informant.

In testimony that led to the arrest of 14 South Asians last Saturday, the informant told police the group had a preference for attacks on public transport, especially metro systems, El Pais newspaper reported.

Two pairs with explosive-filled bags were to enter separate Barcelona subway stations and other members of the group were to detonate their bombs by remote control, said the witness.

On Friday, Spain's government said the Barcelona cell was preparing to carry out the metro attack either last weekend or in the following 15 days.

Two other pairs of suicide bombers had been assigned targets elsewhere in Spain, another was to attack Germany, three were given objectives in France and two more were to strike Portugal.

The informant said the Barcelona cell had six suicide bombers and other members responsible for preparing explosives and planning attacks in other European states. Four of those arrested have since been released due to lack of evidence.

Al Qaeda was to take responsibility for the Barcelona attacks through Baitullah Mehsud, a Taliban commander the Pakistani government says was behind the assassination of opposition leader Benazir Bhutto, El Pais said.

The Barcelona bombings could have taken place less than two months before Spain's March 9 general election.

Islamic militants attacked Madrid commuter trains days before Spain's last general election in March 2004, killing 191 people and wounding 1,800. They said the attacks were made in revenge for Spain sending troops to Afghanistan and Iraq.

Furthermore, why bother with the term "al-Qaeda" as the name for "Islamist extremism" anyway. Muslims are involved in 25 of some 30 conflicts going on in the world: in Afghanistan, Algeria, Bangladesh, Bosnia, Congo, Cote d'Ivoire, Cyprus, East Timor, India, Indonesia (2 provinces), Kashmir, Kazakastan, Kosovo, Kurdistan, Macedonia, the Middle East, Nigeria, Pakistan, Philippines, Sudan, Russia-Chechnya, Tajikistan, Thailand, Uganda and Uzbekistan. Wouldn't the term "Islamist" be sufficient?

Doesn't this mean that extremist Islam is the norm and normal Islam is extremely rare?

Holocaust scholar: 'Jew' has become curse word among German youth

It will always remain my father's Europe. And Ha'aretz, the leading left-wing rag out of Israel, will make sure it remains that way. From Holocaust scholar: 'Jew' has become curse word among German youth:

German schools are failing in educating students about the Holocaust, a new study by a political education center has found, as German youth, who one historian said use the word "Jew" as a common curse in daily discourse, are increasingly distant from the suffering of the victims of Nazism. According to a study commissioned by the Federal Agency for Civic Education, a political education center known by its German acronym BPB, history courses no longer manage to teach Germany's younger generation of the horrors of the Nazis. In the report, which appeared in the German educational magazine Focus-Shula, teachers are quoted as saying that they are having trouble impressing upon school children the horrors of the Holocaust, and have stated that their tools for teaching about the Shoah are not effective.

The German-Iranian Connection

The Germans will never change. They hate the Jews now as much as they hated them in our father's Europe. From The German-Iranian Connection:

During the Second Lebanon War in 2006, Ali Mobaraki, an Iranian who managed Zenith Rollers Germany, a print roller company in Dusseldorf, orchestrated the transfer of 10 satellite navigation systems to Iran, with the help of his father, who owns Zenith, and a British engineer living in Germany since 1986.

This type of global positioning system (GPS) is routinely found in unmanned aerial vehicles used to survey or attack enemy territory.

FAKT, a German news program, reported last year that navigation systems used in Iranian drones employed by Hizbullah against Israel in the Lebanon war were manufactured by a company in the south German state of Baden-Wurttemberg.

Iran's Defense Industries Organization (DIO), the country's military procurement enterprise, maintained an office in Dusseldorf until 1996-97.

Der Spiegel reported in April 2007 that, "according to a high-level investigator, at least two representatives of DIO are still active on a wider front in Germany."

Exiled head of the Iranian Green party Dr. Kazem Moussavizadeh told Ha'aretz that Iran's ambassador in Germany, Mohammad Mehdi Akhondzadeh Basti, "is responsible for coordinating the secret procurement of nuclear material and logistics from Europe and for the atomic project of the Mullahs."

Moussavizadeh says that "160 diplomats work for Ambassador Basti in Berlin and an additional 650 Iranians are working for the Islamic government across Germany. These are not normal Iranian diplomats; rather, they are preoccupied with military affairs and the nuclear project."

See also Germany Probes 50 Firms that Sold Nuclear Equipment to Iran via Daily Alert:

German customs police have uncovered in recent years 50 German companies that sold Iran equipment to finish building its nuclear reactor at Bushehr. Coordinating this smuggling operation was a Berlin-based front company called Vero, headed by Dimitry Solotarev. The value of the equipment transferred to Iran is estimated at $150 million, Potsdam's public prosecutor told Ha'aretz. Solotarev's company claimed it was supplying the equipment to a Russian nuclear reactor in Rostov.

Islamic Group Plans to Double Number of Mosques in Germany

Some in Germany are uncomfortable about more mosques being built

Germany's Muslim community is planning to more than double the number of mosques in the country over the next few years, according to figures released by an Islamic institute this week.

"We have recorded 184 projects to build new mosques, of which some are already under construction," Salim Abdullah, of the German Institute of Islamic Archives, told the AFP news agency this past week.

"We are talking here about buildings with a dome and a minaret, which are clearly recognizable from the outside, and not the 2,600 prayer areas housed in various buildings throughout the country," Abdullah added.

Of some 1,200 institutions used as mosques in Germany, only 159 are recognizable mosques, serving a community that numbers over 3 million. The remaining are so-called "backyard mosques," meaning they are in rooms in buildings that have other purposes or would not obviously appear to be mosques to unaware passers-by. In 2004, mosques with minarets numbered just 141.

The growth in the construction of mosques over the past two decades has made Germany one of the "best-equipped" countries in Europe for Islamic worship, Abdullah said.

German architect Paul Böhm with a model of the mosque he designed for Cologne

Plans to build one of the biggest mosques in Europe in the western German city of Cologne have been opposed by Christian leaders and far-right politicians.

The mosque is being planned by the Turkish-Islamic Union for Religious Affairs (DITIB), Germany's biggest Muslim group.

The Central Council of Ex-Muslims has also spoken out against the project. Speaking on German public radio, Mina Ahadi, chairwoman of the ex-Muslims group, argued that were already enough mosques in Germany.

"If more mosques are built, then women are put under increased pressure and even more children will be sent to school in headscarves, and become isolated," she said.

While the number of mosques is growing, the doors are slamming shut at Christian churches across the country.

In recent weeks, a church in the Neukölln neighborhood of Berlin was sold for 550,000 euros to the Muslim Association of Intercultural Centers, which plans to turn it into what it calls a "house of peace."

In future, the group says, the building will host prayer services, projects designed to promote integration, social advice services and career guidance.

Among the Believers

h/t to Daily Alert, from Among the Believers:

By the skin of their teeth, German security services, with the help of their U.S. colleagues, prevented earlier this month what might have been the worst terrorist attack in European history. The amount of explosives 28-year-old Fritz G., 22-year-old Daniel S. and Adem Y., a 28-year-old Turkish-German, had prepared in an inconspicuous vacation home would have been many times more destructive than the Madrid and London bombs.

The would-be bombers aren't some neglected immigrants on the margins of society. No, the danger came directly from children of good, solid homes. Fritz G.'s father was an engineer in Munich, his mother a doctor. In the 1990s, the son found support in Islam and became a regular of the "Multi-Kulti-Haus," a German center for fanatical Muslims in the small Bavarian town of Neu-Ulme. Daniel S. from Saarland converted from Catholicism to Islam in 2004 after dropping out from high school. German security services believe he visited a terror camp last year in Pakistan. Even the most alarmist German politician could hardly have imagined so much "home grown" terrorism at once.

The phenomenon of extremist converts should worry us for it shows that Islam can be decoupled from its native religious and cultural background. Al-Qaedism is becoming a universal, radical ideology of protest. Young Westerners in search for the most brutal anti-Western position find bin Laden's ideas seductive. The French Islam expert Olivier Roy writes about the attraction of Islamism: "Only two radical protest movements in the West still claim to be internationalist: the anti-globalization movement and radical Islamists....Al-Qaeda has clearly occupied an existing space of anti-imperialism and protest....Al-Qaeda is a successor to the ultra-left and third-world movements."

Germany arrests 3 Muslims in alleged plot on U.S. sites

From Three Muslims Arrested in Germany Over Airport Attack Plot:

Germany has arrested three men it suspects of planning "massive bomb attacks" on U.S. installations and belonging to a domestic cell of the Islamic Jihad militant group, German officials said on Wednesday. Federal prosecutor Monika Harms said the men, two German nationals and one Turk, had obtained enough materials to make a bomb with an explosive power equal to 550 kg. of TNT and that an attack appeared imminent. Harms could not confirm reports that the accused were targeting the Frankfurt airport and U.S. military base in Ramstein, but said they had been observed scouting out U.S. installations such as discos, pubs, or airports. Earlier this year the accused men acquired 12 vats and a hydrogen peroxide solution used in bomb-making.

Germans protest sale of food from West Bank settlements

This post was moved to SmoothStoneBlog

Terror Threat in Germany

From Terror Threat in Germany:

A combination of intelligence "chatter," a suspicious video, and arrests along the Pakistani border have led authorities to warn that the threat of terrorist attacks in Germany is real. Germany faced an elevated threat of terrorism because of its involvement in Afghanistan, according to officials who said the risk of an attack is as high as it has ever been. "We are alarmed," the normally mild-mannered August Hanning, Deputy Secretary at the Federal Ministry of the Interior, said Thursday. German as well as foreign intelligence agencies have received hints about plans, groups, and individual extremists who may be planning an attack in Germany. "We have moved fully into the target range of Islamist terror," said Hanning.

'YOU JEWISH PIG'

Germany, like Islam, still hasn't evolved. From Spiegel Online:

They were two teams of 14-year-olds. But that didn't seem to matter. Right-wing fans rained anti-Semitic and racist insults down on a youth-league game in Eastern Germany last month. Police are investigating, but it's far from an isolated incident.

The Ascension Day holiday was to be a big day for the football community in Wurzen, a small town of 15,000 near Leipzig in former Communist-ruled East Germany. The local junior league had a match scheduled with a team from the industrial city of Chemnitz, formerly known as Karl-Marx-Stadt and located near the Czech border.

A number of fans had found their way to the stadium and by the time the whistle blew for kick-off, they were in high spirits, swilling beer and chanting supporters' songs. The usual horde of young neo-Nazi skinheads and xenophobes were in the stands, looking for trouble.

Then the taunts began. The fans struck up a welcoming chorus for the visiting junior soccer team: "We'll build a subway from Chemnitz to Auschwitz..." You "Fiji pigs," they yelled at two 14-year-olds who were subbed in. You "foreigner pigs!" They made monkey noises every time they touched the ball. They also targeted the 14-year-old goalkeeper from the visiting team: "Jewish pig, go fuck your Jewish mother," they yelled.

The crowd didn't just target the visitors. A linesman flagged an offside call, earning him a torrent of abuse including: "Get it right, Jew, or we'll come and pull your foreskin off."

Despite a number of attempts by the referees to get the crowd under control, the insults continued.

Click here to read the rest of the article.

Museum Created for Germans Who Hid Jews

From Museum Created for Germans Who Hid Jews:

Barbara Preusch, 76, vividly remembers the day the Nazis searched her Berlin home for hidden Jews - and left without finding Rachela and Jenny Schipper, the mother and daughter her family sheltered from 1943 to 1945. Sixty-two years after the end of World War II, people like Preusch are being honored with a museum in Berlin. Israel has recognized non-Jews who helped Jews escape the Holocaust and honored 443 Germans at the Yad Vashem Memorial as "Righteous among the Nations." But similar honors have been long delayed at home. The "Silent Heroes" museum is to open in 2008 in an old tenement building in the center of Berlin. It will be based in Otto Weidt's former workshop for the blind, where several Jews survived in a secret room during the war. About 1,700 Jews survived in Berlin, and an estimated 20,000 to 30,000 non-Jewish Germans actively hid them, according to historian Johannes Tuchel, the head of the German Resistance Memorial Center which is in charge of the museum.

A Pro-Israeli European Leader

It would be nice if Hillary Clinton, who I abhor, loathe and detest, but who I believe, with great sadness and with a heavy heart, has a decent chance of winning the 2008 presidential election because most Americans are too stupid to vote otherwise, should take some notes. Via Front Page Magazine:

Palestinian Authority officials have accused German Chancellor Angela Merkel of "offending the Palestinians' feelings" during her visit earlier this week to Ramallah, where she met with PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas.

The accusations, the first of their kind against a European leader, were made by top PA officials only hours after Merkel and her entourage left Ramallah on Monday.

"She did everything to provoke the Palestinians during her visit," said one official. "She showed no understanding for the plight of our people. On the other hand, she appeared to be very biased toward Israel."

The official claimed that while Merkel refused to meet with families of Palestinian prisoners held in Israel, she focused during her talks with Abbas on the need to release kidnapped IDF Cpl. Gilad Schalit, who has been held in the Gaza Strip since last June. In addition, he noted, Merkel met with the families of missing IDF soldiers during her visit to Jerusalem.

Read the complete article here.

Muslims in Europe

From Der Spiegel, Special: Muslims in Europe:

A German Judge Cites Koran in Divorce Case: He beat her and threatened her with murder. But because husband and wife were both from Morocco, a German divorce court judge saw no cause for alarm. It's a religion thing, she argued.

German Muslim Groups to Speak as One: Germany's Islamic organizations aren't lacking in number. But coherence has long been a problem. Now four groups are banding together to form an umbrella organization. German politicians applaud the initiative, but warn that it's only one of several on the way to better inter-cultural dialogue. more...

"Not Possible to Modernize Islam": Human rights activists have formed a "Central Council of Ex-Muslims in Germany" to help women renounce the Islamic faith if they feel oppressed by its laws. Its Iranian-born founder Mina Ahadi, under police protection after receiving death threats, talks to DER SPIEGEL about its goals. more...

Islam No Longer Taboo: In light of the Muhammad cartoon scandal in 2006, carnival jokesters in Germany went easy on Islam. This year, Muslim satire will return to at least one parade. By Philipp Wittrock more...

Cartoons 1 : Muhammad 0: A French republication of the controversial Muhammad cartoons from Denmark has led to a fierce legal battle. But France's politicians -- in a year when some of them are running for president -- are clearly on the side of satire. By Stefan Simons more...

Kurnaz Case Continues to Trouble German Foreign Minister: German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier has come under increased fire for his role in preventing the release of Murat Kurnaz, the German-born Turkish citizen who spent almost five years in US prison camps. German papers debate whether the criticism is appropriate. more...

Angst- Ridden Germans Look for Answers -- And Find Them in the Koran: The number of Germans who have converted to Islam has increased fourfold within one year -- despite the negative perception of Islam among the general public. By Lutz Ackermann more...

Muslims in Germany Choose to be Buried Abroad: As the first generation of Muslim immigrants to Germany get older, over 70 percent still plan to be buried in the country of their birth. Is integration a problem even in death? By Michael Scott Moore in Berlin more...

The Muslims Are Coming!: A citizens' group in Berlin turned out this week for a candlelight vigil to protest plans for a new mosque in their neighborhood. It will be the first to be built in the former East Berlin, where almost no Muslims live -- but no one can quite explain why it shouldn't be there. By Michael Scott Moore and Jochen-Martin Gutsch in Berlin more...

Berlin To Stage Controversial Opera: Berlin's Deutsche Oper hasn't had much luck getting sell-out crowds lately. But with politicians, Muslims, international journalists and police turning out for its controversial staging of Mozart's "Idomeneo" -- complete with the decapitated head of the Prophet Muhammad -- the opera house's fortunes could change. By Michael Sontheimer in Berlin more...

Vandals desecrate Jewish cemetery in southern Germany

From Ha'aretz:

Vandals attacked a Jewish cemetery in southern Germany, damaging some 60 grave markers, roughly half of them beyond repair, regional police said Saturday, noting that no politically motivated markings were found. Police from the southern state of Bavaria said the attack appeared to have taken place at the end of January, but was not immediately noticed. The vandals appeared to have scaled the walls to knock over and break grave stones dating back to the1800s, they said. No sprayings or markings of any kind were left behind, leaving authorities to question the motive behind the attack.The cemetery, located in the village of in Bad Windsheim, which also includes a memorial, was cared for by a group of volunteers and has not been used for burials since the 1930s, police said. Local and state officials in Bavaria are offering rewards for anyone able to offer information about the incident.

Holocaust Memorials defiled by neo-Nazis

From Times Online:

The German authorities were preparing for criticism from the Jewish community after it was revealed that a Holocaust memorial in Berlin was being used as a public lavatory by tourists and by neo-Nazi sympathisers.

The disclosure, in a Berlin newspaper, will trigger a new debate about how the Holocaust should be remembered in Germany. One argument against building the monument -- that consists of 2,700 concrete slabs resembling Jewish gravestones -- was that it would become a target of anti-Semitic vandals. The managers of the memorial, which attracts 3.5 million visitors a year, have tried to play down the scandal. 'This just belongs to the teething problems of any new monument", Uwe Neumaerker, of the Memorial Foundation, said.

The German Government has been aware of the problem since the monument was completed in May 2005 but has tried to maintain a silence for fear of encouraging more vandalism. The defacing of Jewish memorial areas in Germany by followers of the far Right has become a widespread problem that is acknowledged rarely. On the eve of Holocaust Day at the weekend a group of youths set fire to a restored railway carriage -- symbolising the deportation of the Jews -- in Lower Saxony.

In the eastern German port of Stralsund, concrete was poured over a memorial for a Jewish family, the Keibel-Cohns. A court in Frankfurt an der Oder, on the Polish border, sentenced three youths to between nine and 14 months jail this month for urinating on a Jewish memorial.

The Master race: alive & well - Study: 15 percent of Germans claim superiority

New study reveals that extreme right-wing ideology, anti-Semitism popular among current German population; 14 percent believe Jews cheat in business; 35 percent express blatant xenophobia; 28 percent believe Germany should regain world status "with force".

With force, folks.

Israel did not fire at German ship

Israeli Defense Minister Amir Peretz stated Wednesday that reports that Israel Air Force jets had fired shots at a German ship were completely untrue. The Germany daily Der Tagesspiegel quoted a junior German Defense Ministry official as telling a parliamentary committee that two Israeli F-16 fighters flew low over a German navy vessel off the Lebanese coast and fired two shots.

Several days ago a German helicopter took off from a warship off the Lebanese coast in an area where, according to agreements, it had to inform Israel of the flight. Since Germany failed to follow this procedure, the Israel Air Force scrambled its fighter jets towards the area, but the problem was solved without confrontation and without any shots being fired, the IDF reported