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Two days ago, on Wednesday, the german government celebrated the 50th anniversary of german's army. All the members of parliament attended this event except for the entire fraction of the newly-formed socialist party [officially formed only a few months ahead of the elections; entered parliament with 8.x% of the votes], some of them declared they would join the "50 years Bundeswehr are 50 too much"-demonstration which was supposed to start in the late evening. Police officials stated that at the beginning, there were about 1,500 people in the demonstration and half an hour later this number had risen to about 2,000 - remember, this was a protest in the middle of the week so many of us didn't have the chance to travel to Berlin like we would have done over the weekend.

What seemed to be a peaceful demonstration should become a nightmare for those in it:
After the spokesperson of a major german pacifist organisation held a speech near the Humboldt University, for a reason no one knows yet, a police squad attacked the demonstration's front line, punching several people into their faces and stomachs. A few seconds later, they retreated just as fast as they had rushed in.

Some hundred meters before the demonstration reached the Paris Plaza, where the final speech was to be held, police once again blocked their way - but this time it was not meant to be peaceful:
The local court had ruled only days before that there was no reason to prohibit this speech and even though the orga team read the court ruling out and asked the police to obey it, they did not clear the road. well, it was a peaceful protest - more peaceful than a gathering of 2,000 people in Berlin usually is. But this should change:

Two bottles flew in the police's direction [official police count - if they can tell that exactly two bottles were thrown I suppose I can rely on this figure; usually they just state that they were being (massively) attacked] and the police's reaction was kind of extreme:

One plain clothes officer pulled out a baton and began clubbing down people who did nothing but peacefully protest [one point in favor of the police: He's being persecuted for assault while serving now], breaking one protester's hand. At the same time, a police squad rushed into the crowd, breaking one arm; another protester's both (!) legs; about 200 people were injured (though not as severe as these three) during the next couple of minutes...


Ouch. I got hit by one of those batons once and it did hurt - even though 'my' cop didn't even hit me hard...

Some video footage:

-> http://de.news.yahoo.com/051026/71/4qo02.html (I couldn't watch this one yet since I'm lacking an appropriate codec; it's said to be about both some people claiming that all of Germany loves the army at the army festivities and about the protest)

-> http://rapidshare.de/files/6866073/Zapfens...media_.avi.html (low quality; from indymedia germany; 8MB)

-> http://rapidshare.de/files/6865972/zapfenstreich.wmv.html (better quality; from interpool.tv (watch that cop from the picture in action - I've never seen anyone swing a baton that fast...; 11MB)

 

 

 

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Wow, why do these things always end in violence? Germany is a democratic country right? I would have guessed this in China in T-square year ago, but not in a country where the courts had approved the gathering.

But there are always two sides to the story, and it's hard being on the "armed side" when you're always in the minority. At what point do you consider the crowd to be getting a little too agressive? When you're out numbered 5-1, 10-1, how many chances can you take? Is one bottle okay, how about give?

Anytime there is a large group of people together, emotions run high and things can get out of hand. Do you remember what happened a few years ago during MTV's big concert(was supposed to be like Woodstock)? There was rioting and burining down of stages and vendors booths. This kind of stuff is hard to predict, and the law is there to try and limit it/prevent it from getting worse.

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well most people in germany still believe in Hitlers way of life and still waiting until another comes along or something like that, but you have to remember how much german beer is flowing around when stuff like this happens, imagine what it wold be like if they had one during Oktoberfest then you really would have some problems happening.

well the woodstock chain of events wasn't supposed to happen the bands said screw and didn't play at all, and then you have alcohol and weed flowing like a river as well.

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yeah, officially we are a democratorship but ask minorities how they are being treated by officials... most won't have anything good to say about them (those immigrants from Africa are somewhat lucky that it's deemed racist to argue with a subsaharaafrican guy [the politically correct way of saying black guy ], Italians, Polands and Greeks aren't that lucky...).



Right, there are always two sides. But: 1250 cops and 600 military police officers were assigned to protect the party. well, since the cops were outnumbered something like 2:1 at the demonstration, they brought their toys along: batons, pepper spray, vans, tanks and two water cannons (scary things, those are ... that actually means 4 water cannons since there are two high-pressure pumps on each of them and they're meant to be able to break bones from a distance of 30-40 meters).
I don't know when a crowd becomes "too violent" but breaking several people's bones and injuring many, many peaceful protesters is nothing that can be justified by 2 bottles when you're denying the people a court-approved right, isn't it? By the way, I've been at somewhat more violent protests where the police did not fight back even though there were some people attacking them in the clear space between the crowd and the police line...
(I'm not trying to justify violence, I'd just like to point out that it seems to be safer to be in non-peaceful protests...)



I was trying to tell why I would yell "No" at the thing with Hitler's way of life but I failed at several attempts to explain why this is not true. It's general consensus that Hitler's antisemitism was bad and that it was also bad that he started WWII - but you seldom hear anything about the years before WWII when there's anyone speaking about how bad the Nazis were.
But one thing I can tell for sure: Those waiting for another guy like that are a minority which is loathed by just about anyone. Unfortunately, there's still a strong notion to obey authorities, no matter how stupid they are...



actually, the experiences in the Netherlands show that legal usage of weed is nothing you have to worry about when you're trying to figure out where violence will occur. Take, for example, the soccer european championship (or was it a world cup? don't ask me, I don't care about socccer) hosted by Belgium and the Netherlands a couple of years ago: In Belgium, weed is completely illegal but beer was sold at and in the stadiums and completely legal everywhere. In the Netherlands, weed is (and, of course, was at this time) completely legal but there was no beer sold at the stadiums and illegal in the public transports to the stadiums. It was peaceful (at least peaceful enough to be called peaceful by the police and therefore by the media) in the Netherlands but during the rioting in Belgium, one cop was killed. Of course, it might have been that there was a general agreement among the Hooligans that they'd all travel to Belgium but I doubt that this is the only reason why it was peaceful in the Netherlands...

 

 

 

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