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Muslim World Agenda & News Sept 29/11

Posted by Admin on September 30, 2011

http://www.galacticfriends.com/updates/truth-and-growth-education/5789-muslim-world-agenda-a-news-sept-2911.html

Muslim World Agenda & News Sept 29/11

Chancellor Angela Merkel said that Germans have failed to grasp how Muslim immigration has transformed their country and will have to come to terms with more mosques than churches throughout the countryside, according to the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung daily. “Our country is going to carry on changing, and integration is also a task for the society taking up the task of dealing with immigrants,” Ms. Merkel told the daily newspaper. “For years we’ve been deceiving ourselves about this. Mosques, for example, are going to be a more prominent part of our cities than they were before.”

Germany, with a population of 4-5 million Muslims, has been divided in recent weeks  by a debate Over remarks by the Bundesbank’s Thilo Sarrazin, who argued Turkish and Arab immigrants were failing to integrate and were swamping Germany with a higher birth rate.

The Chancellor’s remarks represent the first official acknowledgement that Germany ,like other European countries, is destined to become a stronghold of Islam. She has admitted that the country will soon become a stronghold. In France , 30% of children age 20 years and below are Muslims. The ratio in Paris and Marseille has soared to 45%. In southern France , there are more mosques than churches.

The situation within the United Kingdom is not much different. In the last 30 years, the Muslim population there has climbed from 82,000 to 2.5 million. Presently, there are over 1000 mosques throughout Great Britain – many of which were converted from churches.

In Belgium , 50% of the newborns are Muslims and reportedly its Islamic population hovers around 25%. A similar statistic holds true for The Netherlands. It’s the same story in Russia where one in five inhabitants is a Muslim.

Muammar Gaddafi recently stated that “There are signs that Allah will grant victory to Islam in Europe without a sword, without a gun, without conquest. We don’t need terrorists; we don’t need homicide bombers. The 50 plus million Muslims (in Europe )will turn it into the Muslim Continent within a few decades.” The numbers support him.

I think the Muslims are smarter than the Europeans. Muslims will reproduce like rabbits but the Islamic Countries do not need to feed the Muslims.  Send them to European Countries and let the Europeans feed them and bring them up.  Now who is “smarter”??  . (Folks the Asians have a similar agenda . Each country has the responsibility to take care of there own citizens and economies fairly they should not be allowed to impose and burden other countries with there citizens. It is a legal and moral responsibility of each countries governments to protect there own economic stability by honouring there own citizens first and for most and not allow foreign influences to hold sway in any way over our sovereignty especially dark ET Religious programming treachery Tami)

It is odious treachery that brought them to other countries so it is our responsibility to deport any and all threats to our sovereignty way of life and health and safety of our present and future societies. I have been told that most immigration policies like the banking agenda has been based on fraud and criminality so most immigrants will be deported back to there countries of origin. I am not against other cultures I am against willful attempts to undermine sovereignty of countries and destroy there way of life and economies! Tami

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WHO: Time running out to solve E. coli outbreak

Posted by Admin on June 7, 2011

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110607/ap_on_he_me/eu_contaminated_vegetables_investigation;_ylt=AmPpLvgL3mF190QkHr7fysNvaA8F;_ylu=X3oDMTNkdmRvMjJiBGFzc2V0A2FwLzIwMTEwNjA3L2V1X2NvbnRhbWluYXRlZF92ZWdldGFibGVzX2ludmVzdGlnYXRpb24EcG9zAzYEc2VjA3luX2FydGljbGVfc3VtbWFyeV9saXN0BHNsawN3aG90aW1lcnVubmk-

by MARIA CHENG, Associated Press – 32 mins ago

LONDON – An expert at the World Health Organization says time is running out for German investigators to find the source of the world’s deadliest E. coli outbreak, which has spread fear across Europe and cost farmers millions in exports.

German officials are still seeking the cause of the outbreak weeks after it began May 2. They wrongly accused Spanish cucumbers of being the culprit last week but had to retract when the cucumbers had a different strain of E. coli. On Sunday, they blamed German sprouts, only to backtrack a day later when initial tests were negative. The sprouts are still being tested.

So far, the outbreak has killed 24 people, infected over 2,400 and left hundreds hospitalized with a serious complication that can lead to kidney failure.

“If we don’t know the likely culprit in a week’s time, we may never know the cause,” Dr. Guenael Rodier, the director of communicable diseases at WHO, told The Associated Press in an interview Tuesday.

He said the contaminated vegetables have likely disappeared from the market and it would be difficult for German investigators to link patients to contaminated produce weeks after they first became infected.

“Right now, (Germans) are interviewing patients about foods they ate one to two weeks ago,” he said. “It’s very hard to know how accurate that information is.”

Without more details about what exact foods link sick patients, Rodier said it would be very difficult to narrow down the cause.

“The final proof will come from the lab,” he said. “But first you need the epidemiological link to the suspected food.”

Other experts issued harsher criticism of the German investigation.

“If you gave us 200 cases and 5 days, we should be able to solve this outbreak,” said Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota, whose team has contained numerous food-borne outbreaks in the United States.

Osterholm described the German effort as “erratic” and “a disaster” and said officials should have done more detailed patient interviews as soon as the epidemic began.

The medical director of Berlin’s Charite Hospitals, Ulrich Frei, said it took the national disease control center weeks to send his hospital questionnaires for E. coli patients to fill out about their eating habits.

Osterholm said the Germans should have been able to trace cases of illness to infected produce by now and that tests on current produce won’t be helpful.

“It’s like looking at camera footage of a traffic intersection today to see what caused an accident three weeks ago,” he said.

“This is an outbreak response that is not being led by the data,” he added. “Solving an outbreak like this is difficult, but it’s not an impossible task.”

On Tuesday, the EU health chief warned Germany against issuing any more premature — and inaccurate — conclusions about the source of contaminated food. The comments by EU health chief John Dalli came only a day after he had defended the German investigators, saying they were under extreme pressure.

Dalli told the EU parliament in Strasbourg that information must be scientifically sound and foolproof before it becomes public.

“It is crucial that national authorities do not rush to give information on the source of infection that is not proven by bacteriological analysis, as this spreads unjustified fears (among) the population all over Europe and creates problems for our food producers,” Dalli said.

In outbreaks, it is not unusual for certain foods to be suspected at first, then ruled out. In 2008 in the U.S., raw tomatoes were initially implicated in a nationwide salmonella outbreak. Consumers shunned tomatoes, costing the tomato industry millions. Weeks later, jalapeno peppers grown in Mexico were found to be the cause.

In the current E. coli outbreak, tests are continuing on sprouts from an organic farm in northern Germany, but have so far come back negative. Rodier said that doesn’t necessarily exonerate the vegetables.

“Just because tests are negative doesn’t mean you can rule them out,” he said. “The bacteria could have been in just one batch of contaminated food and by the time you collect specimens from the samples that are left, it could be gone.”

He said food-borne outbreaks are difficult to investigate because they involve multiple industries, government departments and in Germany’s case, several layers of bureaucracy to report numbers.

In Luxembourg, a heated battle erupted Tuesday over compensation payments to European farmers blindsided by plunging demand during the deadly E. coli outbreak, with Spain and France scoffing at the amount proposed by the EU farm chief.

Farm Commissioner Dacian Ciolos suggested the European Union give farmers euro150 million ($219 million) in compensation — about 30 percent of the value of vegetables that cannot be sold.

But Spain and France, traditional vegetable producers, insisted that is not even close to enough, aiming for aid to farmers between 90 percent and 100 percent of the market price for their produce.

The losses to EU farmers have been staggering — in the neighborhood of euro417 million ($611 million) a week.

Germany’s national disease control center, the Robert Koch Institute, on Tuesday raised the number deaths to 24 — 23 in Germany and one in Sweden — and the number of infections in Germany to 2,325. The number of victims with a rare complication that may lead to kidney failure rose by 12 to 642.

Ten other European countries and the United States have another 100 cases.

The institute said the number of new cases had declined — a sign the epidemic might have reached its peak — but added it was not certain whether that decrease will continue.

In a major difference from other E. coli outbreaks, the crisis is mostly affecting women. Most of the victims in Germany are women between 20 and 50 years old, highly educated and very fit, investigators said.

“What do they have in common? They are thin, clean pictures of health,” said Friedrich Hagenmueller of the Asklepios Hospital in Hamburg, Germany.

___

David Rising in Hamburg, Raf Casert in Brussels and Juergen Baetz in Berlin contributed to this report.

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DEMOCRACY IN 19TH CENTURY WESTERN EUROPE

Posted by Admin on January 30, 2011

“How democratic were France, Germany and Britain by 1900?”

Table of contents:

Part I: Summary;

Part II: Outline;

Part III: Limitation of this study;

Part IV: Democracy in France;

Part V: Democracy in Germany;

Part VI: Democracy in Britain;

Part VII: Conclusion.

Part I:

Summary: Just over a century ago, the kind of government that existed in these frontline western European states was a far cry from what is seen today. The political earthquake called the French Revolution had its epicentre in France, but its rumblings were felt through most of the continent, as well as in faraway colonies, leaving the politics of most European countries in a state of flux. But the intended harvest of this revolution, an obliteration of monarchy and the rule of law, the indispensable elements of a democracy, took its time to get ingrained in the political systems of these countries, and evolved as a form of government very differently in each of the three countries taken up in this paper. If the advent of Napoleon affected these three countries, and the Vienna Congress stunted France and Germany’s graduation to democracy, the internal political dynamics in all these countries were different from each other’s. In Britain, whose brand of democracy was mixed, the Reform Acts turned out to be milestones on the road to democracy. Such serious and well-intended steps to democracy were not taken in the other two countries. This is mainly because France kept seesawing between monarchy and autocracy through most of the 19th century, while Germany was a disparate state for most of that century. In sum, in Britain, by the end of the 19th century, a parliamentary democracy, which the nation had been having for a long time, was fairly well established, although under a monarchy. The same was not the case with the other two; in all, Germany enjoyed the least democracy. The reasons for this discrepancy form the backbone of this paper.

Part II:

Outline: This paper takes up separately the extent to which democracy was ushered in into these three countries. In each of these cases, a narration is made of how democracy developed. Since the nature of this paper is analytical, too much detail is not made of this aspect; this explanation is given only to reinforce the thesis question. The starting point for the evolution of democracy in each of these countries is taken up separately. This is for the simple reason that while the French Revolution happened in France, such an event did not take place in the other two countries. For these, appropriate historically important dates or events are taken up.

Part III:

Limitation of this study: While 1789 may be termed a signal event for modern democracy, no event of such importance concerning democracy happened in 1900, the cut off date for this paper. However, since this is the period up to which this paper is concerned, it restricts itself to developments in most parts of the 19th century, in which the major themes were unification for Germany, political uncertainty for France, and the reform of the parliamentary system in the Victorian Era for Britain.

Part IV:

Democracy in France:

France was home to one of the watershed political events of modern Europe, the French Revolution, in which the people rose in revolt with the slogan, war to the châteaux, peace to the cottages. The gravity and repercussions of this event are far too great to bear banal repetition; however, while the essential aim of the Revolution was to bring an end to the autocratic and inept regimes that misruled the nation, (Frey & Frey, 2004, p. 57) the result it sought to instil, democracy, did not have a smooth inception or development, either, suffering from several long and enduring birth pangs.

Strangely, for most part of the 19th century, it seemed as if the great revolution had turned out to be no more than an isolated, standalone event. The dividend the Revolution sought to pay, democracy, had to wait for a seemingly interminable period of time to fructify and get implanted in the nation’s political system, because the succession of governments it brought were anything but democratic. Leading political figures of the day, such as Robespierre feared that the system the revolution put in place was one which had a penchant for forgetting “the interests of the people”, would “lapse into the hands of corrupt individuals”, and worst of all, “reestablish the old tyranny” (Cohen, 1997, p. 130) Later decades showed that his prognosis was not far off the mark.

The decades following the Revolution saw a chain of events, none of which took the country anywhere near democracy, the avowed aim of the Revolution. The years from the Revolution to the Franco-Prussian War saw political fissures of one or another kind, which had no semblance of democracy, starting with the ascent of Napoleon, perhaps the most powerful dictator the country had ever produced. His defeat was followed by the Restoration of the monarchy; this gave rise to the Revolution of 1830, and the rule of Louis Philippe, till 1848. It took another revolution to bring down his regime, this time in 1848. Finally, this heralded the era of the Second Republic, and the tenure of the fickle Napoleon III, leading to another event of seminal importance for the nation, the Franco-Prussian war, to be followed by yet another Republic, the Third. (Haine, 2000, p. 97) This regime, too heavily weighed down by palace intrigues, scandals, wars and renewed national pride in the wake of a highly recharged and resurgent neighbour, Prussia, (Wright, 1916, pp. 2-4) was left with little room or time for democracy. Nothing of import happened in the period till the end of the 19th century to necessitate the emergence of a democracy.

Part V:

Democracy in Germany:

Germany’s tryst with democracy in the 19th century needs to be seen in circumstances that were peculiar and unique to the nation’s history. This was when the German people united as a nation for the first time.  They had been a loosely knit confederation of princely states that owed its allegiance to the Holy Roman Empire by the time of the French Revolution; yet, in about a century of this event, they had been cobbled together almost magically under the Prussian banner. A series of moves replete with uninhibited daredevilry, gamble, deceit and sheer diplomatic astuteness on the part of its Chancellor, Otto Von Bismarck had united the German people, ridding them of the yoke of Austrian domination of its peoples. (Snell, 1976, pp. 3, 4) However, Germany had only been united, resulting in the realisation of a long-lasting and cherished dream of a German nation; this did not in any way mean that a democracy had been put in place. The arrangements the Congress of Vienna made for Europe in 1815 undid Bismarck’s work, setting the clock back on democracy. Even so, the newly-knit entity did not have the prerequisite groundwork for democracy, suffering from a basic flaw –it “was constructed by its princes, not by its people. That important fact distinguished Germany from nations like England, France, and the United States, where the constitutions were designed “with the consent of the governed.” The German Empire was a federation of sovereign states, its constitution created by a treaty among the hereditary rulers of those states. The “wars of unification” were not revolutionary popular movements; they were narrowly focused international conflicts designed by Bismarck to help Prussia eliminate Austrian power within Germany and to create a new Prussian-led German nation within Europe.”  (Turk, 1999, pp. xvii-null22) Whatever spattering of democracy the nation had towards the fag end of the century was limited to social democracy, in which it was confined to labour unions. (Berghahn, 1994, p. 160)

Part VI:

Democracy in Britain: The year 1815 is considered a benchmark for the politics of Britain, as it was for several other European countries, for the simple reason that this year saw the end of the power and influence of one of the greatest nemeses it ever saw, Napoleon. However, while this was the major issue for the nation externally, Britain had its share of internal problems, as well, during this century. The Industrial Revolution brought in its wake dramatic changes which the nation had to ingest, with both the promises and the pitfalls it spawned. Among the most important social effects the Industrial Revolution had on the nation was a near-explosion in population, and the drawbacks of nascent industrialisation, at which it had no forerunners from any part of the world. Thus, the greatest priority at that time was a set of policies that gave the country social solidity and some element of peace. (McCord, 1991, p. 1) With the high rates of population growth and their attendant problems such as high infant mortality being great priorities during the early part of the 19th century, (Brown, 1991, p. 30) the air of politics was abuzz with the question of which of the institutions the British had so assiduously built up over the previous centuries was best suited to give coherence to the society that was changing at a feverish pace. In this milieu, the emphasis for British politics was more over what kind of reform was suited and needed for the society, polity and the economy, rather than which form of government was best suited to carry these changes out. Opinion was sharply divided among the Conservatives and the Liberals about which of its institutions could carry the day for Britain. The unshakable British faith in the monarchy was as firm as ever, not diluting or eroding even slightly on account of these changes. (Park, 1950, pp. 3-5) In essence, the 19th century, during whose most part Britain was under the rule of one of its longest-reigning monarchs, Queen Victoria, saw the emergence of a peculiarly hybridised, yet often contradictory system of governance. Quintessential democratic institutions, such as the parliament, the judiciary, the cabinet and the local government were alive and well, but functioned under a monarchy. On the one hand, fair and free elections, the ultimate identifier of a democracy, were being held with amazing regularity; on the other, it could not be denied that participation in these elections was limited to the handful of rich and powerful. It was to correct this set of imbalances and to draw more people into the electorate that the Reform Acts were passed. The basic intent of these sets of legislation was the promotion of greater democracy, by drawing the excluded and marginalised sections of society into the electorate. (Pugh, 1999, p. 20) The nation went through three Reform Acts, passed in 1832, 1867 and 1884, whose central aim was increasing the numbers of the electorate. (Hammond & Foot, 1952, pp. 212-214) At about the time these Acts were passed, a parallel social and political reform movement, Chartism, was very active. The basic demand of this radical, unionised movement was greater political participation for the working classes, so that the fruits of the Industrial Revolution percolated down to the labour class, too. (Maccoby, 1935, p. 33) However, in the light of the needs of the day, and the priority these Acts had, they met with little success in actually bringing in democracy to the country. What has been said about the Reform Act of 1832, perhaps holds good for the other Acts, too –that they were “…an excellent example of the British skill of muddling through. An aristocracy muddled through to a democracy, taking many of the aristocratic virtues with them; and they muddled through from an age of privilege to an age of numbers. The democratic implications of the act(s) were not in fact revealed for more than a generation…” (Smellie, 1962, p. 164) As a result, through most of the Victorian Era, although efforts were made haltingly towards bringing in more democracy, there was no more than a sprinkling of democracy; even this happened at the grassroots level, being restricted to the municipal level, as a series of Acts were passed at the local government level. (Harrison, 1996, p. 20)

Part VII:

Conclusion: A study of the thesis question throws up a mixed picture. Overall, democracy, so essential a feature of these countries today, had had to make a bumpy and potholed journey. In all these countries, democracy was nebulous and uncertain in the 19th century, albeit in varying degrees. In Britain, a parliamentary democracy was very much in full bloom, but the inherent love and pride of the British people for their monarchy pre-empted a switch to a full-fledged democratic form of government. As a result, these democratic institutions functioned under a monarchy that controlled the largest empire of the day.

In France, the scene was different. In the absence of democratic institutions of the kind Britain had nurtured, the governance the French Revolution brought about vacillated between various kinds, with the result that democracy took a backseat.

In Germany, the struggles inherent in a newly unified nation, coupled with its naivety in running its newly developing imperialism resulted in too many squabbles and bottlenecks for democracy. The nation that Bismarck had welded together had the ingenuity to only work under a newly consolidated empire, not having been inculcated the necessary mindset for a democracy. It was never going to be easy for these fissiparous peoples to be administered a sudden dose of democracy, as by definition they had been inured to centuries of localism. By the end of that century, democracy was nowhere registered in the average German psyche.

Of all these nations taken up for this study, it can be said that Britain had the highest form of democracy by the end of the 19th century; yet, here too, despite the Reform Acts, which could not be termed a great harbinger of democracy, it was nowhere near what may be termed a pure democracy, something that came so naturally to some of its colonies, principally America.

Written By Ravindra G Rao

 

References

 

Berghahn, V. R., (1994), Imperial Germany, 1871-1914: Economy, Society, Culture, and Politics, Berghahn Books, Providence, RI.

 

Brown, R., (1991), Society and Economy in Modern Britain, 1700-1850, Routledge, New York.

Cohen, P. M., (1997), Freedom’s Moment: An Essay on the French Idea of Liberty from Rousseau to Foucault, University Of Chicago Press, Chicago.

Frey, L. S., & Frey, M. L. (2004). The French Revolution /, Greenwood Press, Westport, CT.

 

Haine, W. S., (2000), The History of France (F. W. Thackeray & J. E. Findling, Ed.), Greenwood Press, Westport, CT.

 

Hammond, J. L., & Foot, M. R., (1952), Gladstone and Liberalism, English Universities Press, London.

 

Harrison, B., (1996), The Transformation of British Politics, 1860-1995, Oxford University Press, Oxford.

 

Maccoby, S., (1935), English Radicalism, Allen & Unwin, London.

 

McCord, N., (1991), British History, 1815-1906, Oxford University Press, Oxford.

 

Park, J. H., (1950), British Prime Ministers of the Nineteenth Century, New York University Press, New York.

 

Pugh, M., (1999), State and Society: A Social and Political History of Britain, 1870-1997, Arnold, London.

 

Smellie, K. B., (1962), Great Britain since 1688: A Modern Histor, University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor, MI.

 

Snell, J. L., (1976), The Democratic Movement in Germany, 1789-1914 (H. A. Schmitt, Ed.), University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill, NC.

Turk, E. L., (1999), The History of Germany, Greenwood Press, Westport, CT.

 

Wright, C. H., (1916), A History of the Third French Republic, Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston.

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WELTPOLITIK’ AND ITS CONSEQUENCES

Posted by Admin on January 30, 2011

“Describe the development of Germany‘s Weltpolitik after 1890 and its effect on the Anglo-American relations. Discuss the implications for the general development of the great powers system in pre-1914 Europe”

Table of contents:

Part I: Introduction;

Part II: Aims and development of Weltpolitik;

Part III: Implications of this policy on Anglo-US Relations;

Part IV: Conclusion:

Implications for the general development of the great powers system in pre-1914 Europe:

______________________________________________________________________

Part I:

Introduction: Weltpolitik was the name given to Germany’s foreign policy in the years following its unification at the hands of Otto Von Bismarck. (Carroll, 1938, p. 351) In terms of genealogy, it simply stood for ‘world policy’, and was the word given to denote Germany’s policy abroad. Historians, however, attach to this word a significance that goes beyond just its terminology. It is used to refer to aggressive German diplomacy between 1890 and 1914, and was closely related to colonial and economic interests. The need for imperialism was felt both to bolster Germany’s new identity, and to supplement its industrial expansion. (Smith, 1978, pp. 174, 175) Like its cousin, imperialism, Weltpolitik, too was based on the ‘Social Darwinism’ model of racial superiority; its essence was postulated on the belief that expansion of its territories in other parts of the globe was the true indicator of the nation’s fitness. (Hale, 1940, p. 155)

Weltpolitik signalled a stark departure from the policy that Bismarck had applied in unifying Germany less than two decades earlier. (Dawson, 1915, p. 131) If Bismarck had used the concept of Realpolitik, a notion by which its relationship with other countries guided not by sentiment but by practical and result-yielding politics based on interests (Anderson, 1969, p. 302) to unify Germany, the feeling that now ran in the German political establishment was that the newly unified power could harness its energies to gain a position of pre-eminence in world affairs. (Knoll & Gann, 1987, pp. 61-63) The leitmotif of the unified Reich was the development of a strong navy and imperialism. These two, obviously, brought the country into direct confrontation with the leading naval and imperial power of the time, Britain. Germany was heavily obsessed in particular with naval power as an instrument for exhibiting its might. Its naval ambitions were inspired by American Admiral Alfred Thayer Mahan’s path-breaking work, The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, which was catching the imagination of Europe’s leading nations. (Hale, 1940, p. 155)

Part II:
Aims and development of Weltpolitik: The Kaiser’s newfound zeal towards territorial and naval expansion coincided with Britain’s loss of face following its costly and humiliating win in the Boer War, after which it was keen to reassert itself as a great power on the world stage. With his mischievous Kruger Telegram, he virtually solemnised British hostility, when he sent a telegram congratulating Paul Kruger, the Premier of Transvaal in South Africa for his supposed win over the British. (Ludwig, 1927, p. 189)

Ironically, the Kaiser was a professed Anglophile, since the two countries’ ruling families were closely related by marriage. But this mutual admiration was erratic and patchy, and was not strong enough to override his ambitions. (Wilkinson, 2002) The starting point of the concretisation of hostility with Britain was in the year 1897, when the whimsical Kaiser started a programme of upgrading the nation’s navy to heights that would match that of the British. This was when the policies of the Second Reich took a decisive turn towards militarism. The men he appointed to draw up and direct these policies were the Deputy Chief of the General Staff, Count Alfred Waldersee and the better known naval commander, Admiral Von Tirpitz. (Stapleton, 2003) Tirpitz, in particular, convinced the Kaiser of the need to abandon Bismarck’s policy of appeasement of the British navy and instead challenge the world’s most powerful navy head on, (Stapleton, 2003) with his famous dictum, “[w]ithout sea-power, Germany’s position in the world resembled a mollusk without a shell.” (Hale, 1940, p. 156) The Kaiser’s receptivity to these suggestions gave shape to the idea of Weltpolitik, whose aim was also to supplant Britain’s sea power, at least in Europe. (Stapleton, 2003) The Kaiser, once he got converted to this idea, persuaded the German public with highly dramatised and grandiloquent statements. (Dawson, 1915, pp. 134, 135)

However, challenging the British was problematic, since Britain was Germany’s largest trading partner, and her capital was indispensable for the latter’s burgeoning industry. Germany sought to offset these contradictions by building a strong navy and by growing imperially; it was the truculent way in which it sought to carry this out that made Britain turn hostile towards it. (Smith, 1978, p. 177) But it was a little too late in the day that Germany had embarked upon this old idea. Very few areas of the world were left to be colonised; all that it could set its eyes on were some parts of Central Africa and the Pacific Islands. (Smith, 1978, p. 113)

Part III:
Implications of this policy on Anglo-US Relations:  While Germany’s rising imperial ambitions were cause for some alarm for Britain, its naval expansion started happening at a time when another distant nation was taking giant strides towards becoming the world’s leading naval power –America. The US, by the late 19th century was trying to come out of its self-imposed isolationism and was beginning to flex its muscle on the international stage. This period was the beginning of American ascendancy on the world; it, too, like Germany, sought to develop a strong navy as the chief mechanism to achieve its aim. As America was growing in the western hemisphere to challenge Britain’s naval superiority, an episode showed the taste of things to come – the crisis with Britain over the small issue of the border dispute between Venezuela and British Guinea. The Americans intervened and settled the issue with utmost ease, and mocked Britain for not having the ability to solve its problem by itself. This incident hurt Britain. However, it had to swallow its pride and not risk going to war with the US on this issue, mainly because of the emergence of Germany under the Kaiser’s Weltpolitik. Because of this German policy, countering its rise was a more urgent priority, and left Britain with little time to concentrate on another continent against a much stronger opponent, in a confrontation whose result it would have been unsure of. In a sense, this was a tacit British admission of the emergence of American naval might. Thus, indirectly, Weltpolitik made Britain restrain itself against America, and acknowledge its potential rise as the leading naval and industrial nation of the world, (Dobson, 1995, pp. 8-20) a position that continues to this day.

Part IV:

Conclusion:

Implications for the general development of the great powers system in pre-1914 Europe: The Kaiser’s fascination with ships was imbibed from a young age; in fact, he had even designed a battleship himself, which performed all functions other than floating! (Wilkinson, 2002) Unfortunately, the damage his obsession caused to Europe and its colonies was not so humorous. To neutralise this new power, Britain entered into alliances with France, with whom it had a history of animosity, and with Russia and Belgium. (Fay, 1958, p. 16) Fearing the prowess of this alliance, Germany, under the Schlieffen Plan, set up Austria-Hungary against Russia, with Italy becoming the other part of the alliance, known as the Triple Alliance. This developed into an all out pattern of alliances, by which action by one country would draw all others. (Bond, 1998, pp. 92-95) Eventually, all it took was the shooting of Archduke Ferdinand of Austria on June 28, 1914 to draw the continent into a spiral of chain reactions culminating in the outbreak of World War I. (Scheff, 1994, p. 83) All of these were a result of the system of alliances, of which the Kaiser’s Weltpolitik was one of the root causes.

 

Written By Ravindra G Rao

References

 

 

Anderson, P. R. (1969), The Background of Anti-English Feeling in Germany, 1890-1902, Octagon Books, New York.

Bond, B., (1998), The Pursuit of Victory: From Napoleon to Saddam Hussein, Oxford University Press, Oxford.

Carroll, E. M., (1938), Germany and the Great Powers, 1866-1914: A Study in Public Opinion and Foreign Policy, Prentice-Hall, New York.

Dawson, W. H., (1915), What Is Wrong with Germany? Longman, New York.

Dobson, A. P., (1995), Anglo-American Relations in the Twentieth Century: Of Friendship, Conflict, and the Rise and Decline of Superpowers, Routledge, New York.

Fay, S. B., (1958), “Origins of the World War” In The Outbreak of the First World War: Who Was Responsible?, Lee, D. E. (Ed.) (pp. 16-21), D. C. Heath, Boston.

Hale, O. J., (1940), Publicity and Diplomacy: With Special Reference to England and Germany, 1890-1914, D. Appleton-Century, New York.

Knoll, A. J. & Gann, L. H., (Eds.), (1987), Germans in the Tropics: Essays in German Colonial History, Greenwood Press, New York.

Ludwig, E., (1927), Wilhelm Hohenzollern, the Last of the Kaisers, Mayne, E. C., Trans., New York; G. P. Putnan’s sons, London.

Scheff, T. J., (1994), Bloody Revenge: Emotions, Nationalism, and War, Westview Press, Boulder, CO.

Smith, W. D., (1978), The German Colonial Empire, University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill, NC.

Stapleton, F., (2003), “An Army with a State, Not a State with an Army”: F.G. Stapleton Examines the Role Played by the Armed Forces in the Government of the Second Reich. History Review, Vol. 46, p. 38+. Retrieved April 26, 2006, from Questia database.

 

Wilkinson, R., (2002), “Germany, Britain & the Coming of War in 1914”: Richard Wilkinson Explains What Went Wrong in Anglo-German Relations before the First World War, History Review, p. 21+. Retrieved April 26, 2006, from Questia database.

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Heavy snow, cold disrupt travel across north Europe

Posted by Admin on December 20, 2010

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20101220/ts_nm/us_europe_weather;_ylt=A0wNcwclew9NJY8ApFB34T0D;_ylu=X3oDMTJtN2Y2YWExBGFzc2V0A25tLzIwMTAxMjIwL3VzX2V1cm9wZV93ZWF0aGVyBHBvcwM3BHNlYwN5bl9hcnRpY2xlX3N1bW1hcnlfbGlzdARzbGsDaGVhdnlzbm93Y29s

Aeroplanes are parked at Heathrow Airport in ...
Reuters – Aeroplanes are parked at Heathrow Airport in west London December 19, 2010. REUTERS/Luke MacGregor
By Erik Kirschbaum – 8 mins ago

BERLIN (Reuters) – Snow and frigid temperatures caused disruption across northern Europe for a third day on Monday, stranding travelers, snarling traffic and shutting schools, and the bad weather is likely to run through Christmas.

More than 1,000 flights at German airports in Frankfurt, Munich and Berlin were canceled and more delayed after up to 40 cm (16 inches) of fresh snow blanketed the country. Some 500 stranded passengers slept on cots at Frankfurt airport.

Airlines advised passengers to switch to trains if possible after the new snow added to two week’s worth of accumulation. But rail operator Deutsche Bahn, struggling to cope with packed trains and a crush of passengers, urged passengers to stay home.

Tempers flared as Germans accustomed to timely trains and planes were forced to wait in freezing stations or packed terminals, and the unusually heavy snow delayed millions.

“The trains are always too late now,” said Lothar Ast, 57, a custodian shivering in a Berlin station. “They’re so crowded that you can’t get on and then you have to wait for another.”

Dorothea Fuerst, a Berlin sales clerk, added: “No one knows if the train will come or not. The train never arrives on time. Will it be 15 minutes or half an hour? That’s the question.”

Children’s sledges were sold out in Germany, retailers said.

“This much snow is only fun if you’re a kid,” said Berlin lawyer Katja-Julia Fischer, 42: “It’s getting on my nerves.”

Germany’s most populous state, North-Rhine Westphalia, took the unusual step of banning trucks from motorways in a bid to keep passenger traffic rolling. A rail worker was killed in Berlin, run over by a train while trying to de-ice a switch.

While Britain and Scandinavia were still anticipating temperatures below freezing for much of this week, most of Europe is forecast to warm up in the next days, although a drop back to sub-zero levels may return next week.

MAJOR DISRUPTION

Belgium also closed its motorways to truck traffic after there was a peak of 600 km of traffic jams at the height of the rush hour on Monday morning in the Wallonia region.

In the United Kingdom, British Airways said the severe weather continued to cause major disruption to operations and further travel chaos was possible on forecasts of more snow.

Only one of two runways at London Heathrow, the world’s busiest international airport, was operating after the snowstorm paralyzed the airport over the weekend, stranding thousands.

Brandi Gonzalez, 27, a pre-school teacher from Connecticut, has been waiting since Friday to fly to New York with her husband and son but was stranded at Heathrow on Monday.

“All I’m getting is ‘We will help you as much as we can’. It’s a two-hour wait on the phone to rebook a flight. Today I sat on the phone for two hours to get hung up on. They said ‘We still don’t have another flight’ and I got hung up on.”

Other UK airports were open, but many flights were canceled or subject to long delays, and many passengers spent another night at an airport terminal.

Clarrie Yap, 22, a student from Canada, was flying to Hong Kong via London but has been stuck in London since Friday.

“It’s depressing seeing everyone stay at the airport,” she said. “They could have staff members or crew at the counters so we could ask questions, at least know what’s going on.”

The severe weather has hit retailers at the height of Christmas trading. Britain’s biggest department store chain, John Lewis, said sales fell more than 10 percent on Saturday, while France’s Auchan said its business was being affected.

Some online retailers are not accepting new orders or are cancelling existing ones because of delivery problems, according to industry body IMRG.

Northern France was also covered by heavy snow, disrupting road and rail traffic as Parisians braved clogged highways to reach their holiday destinations.

France’s army deployed blue armored personnel carriers on highways around Paris where they used their horsepower to drag stranded cars out of ditches and back onto the road.

In Paris, whitened lawns in front of the Eiffel Tower delighted children, who made snowmen. Snowboarders even took to the hills of northern Paris, an unusual sight in a city known for its rainy, temperate weather.

Air travel was reduced at Paris’s two main airports, with Orly airport shutting down briefly and stranded travelers still camping out in the waiting areas at Charles de Gaulle.

Train travel between Paris, London and Brussels on the Eurostar line was disrupted, partly because of speed restrictions, the company said on its website, adding that sales were closed for travel up to and including December 24.

Dutch motorists were coping with icy and slippery roads, prompting government authorities to impose speed limits of 50 kilometers per hour on various motorways as a large number of accidents contributed to lengthy traffic jams.

In Poland, hard hit by the cold snap, six people froze to death on Sunday night, raising the death toll to 114 in the last month.

Heavy snow snarled Warsaw traffic again on Monday. Warsaw airport was open but was receiving far fewer passengers than usual because of flight cancellations in western Europe.

(Additional reporting by Olesya Dmitracova and Stefano Ambrogi in London, Nick Vinocur in Paris, Gabriela Baczynska in Warsaw, Ben Deighton in Brussels, Michelle Martin in Frankfurt and Eric Kelsey in Berlin; editing by Tim Pearce)

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GOLIATH IS FALLING DOWN

Posted by Admin on November 15, 2010

Riots at anti-nuclear demonstrations near Gorl...

Previous German Riots

None of the people will be the same again. Germany will surely never be the same again. Their intelligent, creative and effective resistance will never be forgotten.

German protests “a spark from which a new political movement can grow” says academic: Protestors’ heroism wins respect and sympathy of whole country

November 2010 is proving to a watershed. First, the Tea Party Movement in the USA won significant victories in midterm elections; their newly-elected Senator Rand Paul has already started to call for an end to big spending on foreign wars and a soaring national debt and so challenge the Globalist agenda http://www.infowars.com/rand-paul-go…spending-cuts/

And in Germany a protest against the authoritarian Berlin government unequalled in scale and drawing support from all sections of society, has ended with an unparelleled victory. It is true that the nuclear waste which was the immediate focus of the protest finally reached its destination in Gorleben this morning. But what happened in the preceding 48 hours has changed the political landscape.

The Berlin academic Klaus Hurrelmann said the protests were a “spark from which a new political movement can grow.“

How long until a new political movement is born that gives a voice to the people and restores their freedom and rights?

„There is a feeling that those on top just do whatever they want and consider the people to be stupid. We won’t put up with that. We’re going to get involved,“ sociologist Dieter Rucht said, summing up the feeling of the people of Germany.

The police operation against the protestors in Wendland went on for more than two days and night without a break. It took two days and nights for the police to beat clear a path for the transport of nuclear waste to a depot in Gorleben, northern Germany.

The police had to fight for every inch of the railway track, for every inch of the road, for every crossing and for every track through the woods. No one took a step back. And if the police finally cleared the last 4,000 protestors this morning from the road to allow the convoy of trucks laden with Castor containers to trundle into Gorleben depot, it was only because there were a staggering 20,000 police officers, hundreds of police cars, helicopters, mounted police deployed.

But not even the sheer numbers would have been enough in the face of such determined, organised and creative resistance. The police literally had to beat the protestors out of the way and they did so with incredible brutality.

Medical personnel treating injured activists were themselves beaten by the police, reported Gabriele Pelce. Police even stopped medics bringing a woman in Leitstade whose leg had been broken to hospital, forcing her to lie in agony in the freezing cold. Protestors who had climbed a tree where brought down with tear gas and beaten with batons when they fell to the ground. At least 1000 people suffered injuries. The brutality of the police seemed to know no bounds Fingers were smashed with blows. Faces bled from punches to the head.

The police chiefs clearly reckoned that no civilians could or would withstand the assaults with batons, pepper spray and the tear gas, or stand up to such punishment. They thought that the people – school children, students, the elderly protesting on behalf of their children at work– would crack under the relentless harrassment, the threats of arrest and imprisonment, the freezing cold, the tear gas, batons, horses, helicopters, water cannon, dogs as well as the relentless glare of the floodlights that made the wood as bright as day at midnight.

But everyone stood their ground and now the whole country talks about the protestors with deep respsect – a respect that no single politician has been talked about for years.

At stake was not just the nuclear policy of the government, rejected by the overwhelming majority of the people and profiting just a handful of corporations. At stake was the whole issue of whether Germany is still a democracy in which the government follows the will of the people or an authoritarian police state run by corporations and banks for their profit.

As in Stuttgart it was the ordinary people who came out in force to defend democracy. In Stuttgart, it was the students, schoolchildren, the elderly, teachers, doctors, the farmers, lawyers, artists who stood up against particular corporate interests and corrupt politicians.

The protests in Wendland mark another high water mark. Again, ordinary people turned out in force to defend democracy and the principles of freedom with unflinching determination and courage.

The police lashed out wildly at protestors. Yet it was the police who became exhausted and who broke down sooner, their morale in shreds, their nerves worn out. It was the police who ended up discredited for fighting for the coporations like hired mercenaries.

Even Konrad Freiberg from the police union GdP today attacked the decision by Chancellor Angela Merkel to push through the extension of nuclear energy in spite of a legally binding agreement to phase it out as ”a highpoint of fatal political paths of error.”

“It was a huge political error to unilaterally cancel the consensus on nuclear energy that had been formed with so much difficulty,” he said.

Freiberg accused the government of pushing the police into the role of “those who help accomplish the retention of power by politicians.”

He said that the “intransparent, contradictory politics of the government that appears one-sided and favourable [to corporations]” is driving citizens “rightly” onto the streets.

There was something really awe inspiring and amazing in the willingness of so many people from all walks of life to stand together and work together for the common good. Five Greenpeace activists held up the transport by road for hours yesterday by chaining themselves to a steel pipe in the road inside a lorry. Four farmers chained themselves to a pyramid. Every part of wendland, every village, every farm, every inn, every shop became a unit in the line of defence, and bore the brunt of the attack by the corporate-controlled government on the fundamental principles of a democratic state and yet their hearts and nerves did not fail them. 600 tractors skillfully repulsed the advancing columns of water cannon trucks and police cars bringing reinforcements. Other farmers drove sheep and goats onto the road to block the police. The local post office set up a branch close to the main base of the resistance and helped people to send postcards. These were the kind of people that stood in the line of the main attack.

None of the people will be the same again. Germany will surely never be the same again. Their intelligent, creative and effective resistance will never be forgotten.

The protestors showed an astonishing good humour, courage and powers of endurance, singing songs, playing music, sharing food and blankets, buoyed by bonds of solidarity and support from the general public. Thanks to intelligent organisation and logistics, they created in the bleak and muddy woods, turning gold in autumn, an efficient and homely camp with a field kitchen, a pizza oven, and hot soup. There they planned their blockades, pouring over maps, communicating with the world via sms, ready to fight for freedom with an unshakeable committement, incredible resourcefulness and a a readiness for sacrifice that was amazing.

Anyone has had to sleep outside for even one night in subzero temperatures in the rain will understand what spending 48 hours outdoors in the muddy woods of northern Germany means. And then, on top of that, to have to face the massed ranks of the police, see the horses and hear the thuds of the truncheons, the shouts, and with hardly any sleep.

Their protest capturing the imagination and sympathy of the general public has left the government even more isolated and the corproate clique who run the country, whose leading figures belong to bizarre little freemason lodges with eccentric beliefs in some super race that they do not belong to if there were ever such a thing, and who rely on the brute force of the police, and on brainwashing by the the controlled media to push through their agenda in a very precarious position.

The defense of democracy and freedom has come not from the political parties, not from organisation such as Amnesty Internation. This defense againt the globalist totalitarian agenda has come from the ordinary people, who mobilised, who came out onto the streets, and who would not be beaten and intimidated.

The ordinary people were ready to brave the cold and rain, to walk for kilometres through woods, to be beaten by police, and to raise their banners over and over again after they were ripped from their hands, to be assualted with pepper spray, freeze in the night time, sit in blockades, to endure spartan conditions for freedom. Conscious of the risks, knowing the dangers they would face, they had come well prepared, wearing thick clothes, bringing sleeping backs, practising blockades for the time when the police would “lift them”.

The courage and friendly concern of the protestors as they faced the clatter of boots, the thuds of the truncheons, the sound of helicopters high up in the night car, the sirens of police cars has proven so effective that they have brought the police state to its knees. Together these people repulsed the concerted attempt by the corporations to leverage the police forces to ram through their take over of the political structures and economy and establish a Germany where the people are to work and pay taxes, to fight in the armies and kill and be killed for the profits of the corporations and have absolutely no say.

The police know better than anyone how stubbornly the people resisted. The people had to be dragged away into camps, refusing to walk inspite of the fact that they could have walked away and gone home. Thy preferred to spend the night in subzero temperatures out in the open in an improvised prison surrounded by police vehicles than to get to their feet on the orders of the police. They preferred to sleep in the mud and frost in blankets and with no waste or food and suffer hypothermia than to march on the orders of the police. These were people who were ready to endure yet another night in the freezing cold rather than give up to the authoritarian police state.

It is a moot question where so much courage, community spirit and strength was forged. A glance at Tacitus’s book Germania gives a clue. He describes the tribes inhabiting northern Germany in a way that would seem to fit the protestors.

„A region so vast, the Chaucians do not only possess but fill; a people of all the Germans the most noble, such as would rather maintain their grandeur by justice than violence. They live in repose, retired from broils abroad, void of avidity to possess more, free from a spirit of domineering over others. They provoke no wars, they ravage no countries, they pursue no plunder. Of their bravery and power, the chief evidence arises from hence, that, without wronging or oppressing others, they are come to be superior to all. Yet they are all ready to arm, and if an exigency require, armies are presently raised, powerful and abounding as they are in men and horses; and even when they are quiet and their weapons laid aside, their credit and name continue equally high,” Tacitus wrote 2000 years ago.

source

http://birdflu666.wordpress.com/2010…try/#more-3364

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Germany and France examine 'two-tier' euro

Posted by Admin on June 20, 2010

Germany and France are examining ways of creating a “two-tier” euro system to separate stronger northern European countries from weaker southern states.

By Alex Spillius in Washington and Bruno Waterfield in Brussels
Published: 7:00AM BST 19 Jun 2010

Germany and France examine 'two-tier' euro

The creation of a “super-euro” zone would initially include France, Germany, Holland, Austria, Denmark and Finland

A European official has told The Daily Telegraph the dramatic option was being examined at cabinet level.

Senior politicians believe their economies need to be better protected as they could not cope with another crisis on a par the one in Greece.

The creation of a “super-euro” zone would initially include France, Germany, Holland, Austria, Denmark and Finland.

The likes of Greece, Spain, Italy, Portugal and even Ireland would be left in a larger rump mostly Mediterranean grouping.

The official said French and German officials had first spent months examining how to exclude poor-performing states from the euro but decided it was not feasible.

A two-tier monetary system in the 16-member euro zone is being examined as a “plan B”.

“The philosophy is the stronger countries might need to move away from countries they can’t afford to bail-out,” said the official. “As a way of containing the damage, they may have to do something dramatic, though obviously in the short term implementation is difficult.

“It’s an act of desperation. They are not talking about ideal solutions but the lesser of evils. Helping Greece could be done relatively cheaply but Spain they can’t afford to let fail or bail-out.

“And putting more pressure on the people of France and Germany to save other countries is politically unfeasible.”

One option, to protect the wealthier northern European countries and to help indebted southern Europeans, would be for Germany to lead a group of countries out of the existing euro into a new single currency alongside the old.

The old euro would decline sharply against the new German and French dominated currency but both north and southern Europeans would be protected.

Northern economies would be protected from debt contagion and southern countries would be spared the horrors of being thrown out and forced to go it alone.

Angela Merkel, the German Chancellor, has already paid a political price for forcing the rescue plan on a reluctant public, losing her majority in the upper house of parliament in a recent election.

The official pointed out that France held lent £500 billion to Spain and the Germans had lent £335 billion.

Nicolas Sarkozy, the French president, is understood to have been initially cool on the idea but has grown so frustrated with Greece and now Spain that he has allowed officials to explore proposals.

“He would prefer to keep the euro in place but if Spain, Italy and Greece are dragging him down he accepts he may have to cut them loose,” said the official. “They are trying to contain the contagious effect but they don’t have a solution yet.”

The crunch time will come in September, when Spain has to refinance £67 billion of its foreign debt.

“If the markets don’t buy that will trigger a response by Germany and France,” said the official.

Expelling a country from the euro could push the whole region into a slump because European banks are so exposed to debt in southern Europe. The consequences for the exiting country would be even more catastrophic.

“The euro zone debt crisis has a long way to run,” said one senior EU negotiator. “No one knows where it is going to end up. Only one thing is sure, the euro zone will change.”

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