Here is a nice little "victory" - if that is what it is? - in Germany, a country that continues to be as browbeaten and subservient to its masters as any I can think of in the Western hemisphere.
It was reported by Imre Karacs in Berlin (no other source given) posted November 22, 2000 under the title "Berlin fails to ban extremists' rally". Zundelsite comments gleefully supplied:
Karacs:
For only the second time since the war, a far-right party is to march through the Brandenburg Gate and past the site earmarked for the Holocaust memorial.
To the consternation of the German government, which is trying to ban the National Democratic Party of Germany (NPD), attempts to outlaw the demonstration failed yesterday.
Zundelsite:
This is indeed a strange development, especially in Germany where courts regularly rubber-stamp the ruling oligarchy's wishes!
Karacs:
An estimated 1,500 NPD supporters plan to parade in the German capital on Saturday, winding their way slowly for six hours, and stopping off for speeches in front of the anti-war monument of the Neue Wache and at the Brandenburg Gate. The NPD had planned to rally in Munich, but was told by the local authority there that it could only meet in the centre and not march anywhere. The organisers then abruptly switched their protest to Berlin.
Zundelsite:
This, too, is odd - almost as if somebody in authority needed a high profile event to speed along the "banning" process!
Karacs:
The authorities immediately sought a ban, but were overridden by the courts. All that Eckart Werthebach, the official in charge of law and order in the city government, has been able to forbid is the open display of Third Reich flags. "It is intolerable that this party should demonstrate in the vicinity of the Holocaust memorial," declared Peter Strieder, a Social Democrat member of the local government. All the more galling, for the rally's slogan is: "Germany will not allow itself to be banned."
Zundelsite:
This is nonsense! The showing of Third Reich flags has been forbidden since the day the Allies conquered Germany on May 8, 1945. Every German, old and young, knows that!
To show any flag, symbol, pin, even a decal on model planes, would risk between 2 and 5 years in prison. Werthebach did not need a court to forbid that! Why stress it?
Karacs:
The demonstration signals a change of tactic from the NPD, which in August pledged to hold no provocative demonstrations while the government was pondering measures against the far right.
Zundelsite:
Precisely! Why did they apply for a permit to march in this historic area - and were granted it by the courts, who are super-sensitive to such events? Again: Did someone need an incident?
Karacs:
Earlier this month Chancellor Gerhard Schröder's Cabinet applied to the Constitutional Court for a ban on the NPD. Parliament's upper house has endorsed the move, with the lower house due to follow suit within a week. The Constitutional Court could take up to two years to reach its verdict.
Zundelsite:
Some democracy this is! Forbidding parties who have been no threat for 40 years - only to be used as whipping boys and bogey men! Why this frantic effort now?
Inquiring minds want to know.
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Thought for the Day:
"Like one that on a lonesome road
Doth walk in fear and dread,
and having once turned round, walks on
and turns no more his head.
Because he knows a frightful fiend
doth close behind him tread."
(Samuel Taylor Coleridge)
Back to Table of Contents of the Nov. 2000 ZGrams