On Thursday police in Stuttgart attacked demonstrators protesting about construction that they claim would cause massive environmental damage in the area. There have been a number of large protests over this in recent weeks, but this is the first to have been so heavily attacked.
Protesters were gassed, beaten and sprayed by water cannons which left, according to Taz, literally hundreds wounded. Britta Haßelmann, a Parliamentary spokesperson for the Greens condemned the attacks warning that the police actions had dangerously escalated the situation.
Dagmar Enkelmann, for the Left Party, said that after the images of so many wounded had come out that we could not continue "with business as usual". The SPD (Labour) spokesperson made a rather strange comment that I'm finding difficult to interpret where he said he felt sorry for the police, although condemned their "Rambo-politics".
Protesters were gassed, beaten and sprayed by water cannons which left, according to Taz, literally hundreds wounded. Britta Haßelmann, a Parliamentary spokesperson for the Greens condemned the attacks warning that the police actions had dangerously escalated the situation.
Dagmar Enkelmann, for the Left Party, said that after the images of so many wounded had come out that we could not continue "with business as usual". The SPD (Labour) spokesperson made a rather strange comment that I'm finding difficult to interpret where he said he felt sorry for the police, although condemned their "Rambo-politics".
Germany is currently being rocked by large scale environmental protests including over proposals to extend the use of nuclear power as well as issues like that of the 'Stuttgart 21' construction.
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3 comments:
"Stuttgart 21 kann man nicht mit Gewalt durchknüppeln", sagte der Geschäftsführer der SPD-Fraktion, Christian Lange. "Mir tun die Polizisten leid, auf deren Rücken diese Rambo-Politik ausgetragen wird"
Isn't he saying that Stuttgart 21 cannot be hammered through with violence, and that he also feels sorry that the police have been dragged into this by the gung-ho attitudes of the politicians.
In other words, he's blaming the ruling CDU for behaving like assholes (what's new?) and provoking this whole confrontation.
Coming from another politician, that's rich. Is he any better?
I wasn't sure whether he was accusing the police of rambo-politics... but you could well be right as that makes more sense with the feeling sorry for the cops line.
I'd be interested in how the SPD handled protest in the past as I doubt they were better - certainly their green record wasn't that great.
Thanks for drawing attention to this development, Jim.
This Stuttgart 21 issue looks all of a piece with these "global cities jamborees and olympic-size World FuCups that are continuously going on nowadays.
By artificially stimulating such rabid competition between urban areas, the powers that be can ratchet up the pressure on the public, guaranteeing themselves perpetual excuses for turning citizens lives upside down, evicting us from our homes, concreting over our green spaces and totally re-engineering our environment just exactly as they want it to be. At the same time they hoard up ever huger piles of money for themselves (the real minority); ever more money and ever more power.
And anyone who dares to object is branded a killjoy and someone “standing in the way of progress and plenty for all”.
Clever huh?
http://www.globalcityforum.com/default.aspx
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