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Das grüne Feigenblatt
15.05.2008
Unmittelbar vor der gestrigen Unterzeichnung des Biosprit- Abkommens zwischen Deutschland und Brasilien ist die brasilianische Umweltministerin zurückgetreten.

Masterplan
06.05.2008
Die Deutsche Telekom erwägt eine Milliarden- Übernahme in den USA und setzt zum Sprung an die Spitze des Weltmarktes an.

Vorstoß
25.04.2008
Der deutsch- französische Luftfahrt- und Rüstungskonzern EADS stößt mit einem Zukauf in den großen US-Markt für "Heimatschutz" vor.

Kriminalität und Gewalt
23.04.2008
Die Konrad-Adenauer- Stiftung lädt den Verantwortlichen für ein Massaker an Landlosen in Brasilien als Gastredner zum Thema "Kriminalität und Gewalt" ein.

Weltkonzern
15.04.2008
Die Logistiksparte der Deutschen Bahn setzt ihre Expansion im Westen und im Norden Europas fort.

Krösus
18.03.2008
Die Deutsche Telekom steigt beim größten Telekomanbieter Griechenlands ein und wird damit zu einem Dominator in Südosteuropa.

Strategischer Mehrwert
18.03.2008
Der Düsseldorfer Rheinmetall-Konzern stärkt mit einem Zukauf in den Niederlanden sein Rüstungsgeschäft.

Der Kosovo-Effekt
07.03.2008
Die von Berlin forcierte Parzellierung Serbiens lässt weitere Sezessions- konflikte auflodern. Die ersten Toten werden gemeldet.

Streubomben
24.02.2008
Berlin versucht ein weltweites Verbot von Streubomben zu verhindern.

Torpediert
13.02.2008
Die Marktdominanz des deutschen Handelskonzerns Rewe in Österreich droht am politischen Widerstand der österreichischen Regierung zu scheitern.

In The Shadow of Catastrophe (III)
2008/05/12
NAYPYIDAW/PARIS/BERLIN
(Own report) - Under the pretext that Myanmar has refused to accept the conditions for deliveries of relief supplies set out by western nations, Berlin is using the natural disaster in that country for a new attack on international law. Several German ministers have declared that a "humanitarian intervention" may well be carried out, even in violation of Myanmarian sovereignty. Troops could also be deployed, says a leading German international jurist. Natural catastrophes are supposed to justify military operations anywhere in the world. French and US warships are already underway to this former European colony. Berlin is again using a humanitarian pretext to strengthen the German position in this geostrategically important country. Myanmar is of importance to its Asian neighbors because of its coastline. It provides China access to the Indian Ocean. Transit through Myanmar should facilitate trade with Europe and the Middle East, including also Chinese importation of raw materials. Already last year an intervention against Myanmar was being discussed in EU circles.

Transatlantic Front
2008/05/06
BERLIN/KHARTOUM/KIGALI
(Own report) - With new initiatives, Berlin is reinforcing its intervention in Sudan. While sending German police officers to Darfur on mission, and to Africa for preparation training, the German government is preparing new military projects with Rwanda for this west Sudanese region engulfed in civil war. This was reported by the press in Kigali. The German plans are accompanying parallel US activities. The United States is using its military partner Rwanda for the containment of Islamic forces in Africa and therefore is training and arming Rwandan troops. Ethiopia is joining the Transatlantic front by dispatching troops to Darfur. The loser is France, whose attempt to shore up its own influence in this East African zone of conflict through an EU intervention in Chad is doomed to failure. According to high-ranking French officers, there will probably be no prolongation of the mission. Testimony from those involved suggest that a French "aid organization's" kidnapping of Chadian children was part of the power struggle between Berlin and Paris for predominance in determining the Africa policy of the EU.

Nuclear Accord
2008/05/01
ESSEN
(Own report) - The Eon Corp. in Duesseldorf celebrated new milestones at its general assembly on April 30 while ecologists were protesting. The corporation's annual consolidated sales reached nearly 69 billion Euros last year - a new company record, which surpasses the gross domestic products of several smaller EU member states. The protests were particularly directed against the company's energy production, which relies for more than a third of its electrical energy on highly polluting coal power stations and nearly half on high-risk nuclear energy. Eon will extend its engagement in the nuclear sector. Just a few days earlier, the company signed an agreement with Siemens and the French Areva companies, that foresees cooperation in the building of new British nuclear power stations and the servicing of the power stations already in operation. Eon's chances of profiting from French president Nicolas Sarkozy's nuclear offensive are enhanced with this accord. Since taking office last summer, Sarkozy has initiated numerous controversial projects with Arab countries. Germany's Siemens Corp. will also benefit. Siemens still owns one-third of the shares in the Areva NP reactor branch and the German government would like for this to be of long duration.

State Visit
2008/04/22
BERLIN/KIGALI
(Own report) - The German government has announced that it will establish military relations with one of Africa's most controversial military regimes. According to the announcement Defense Minister Franz-Josef Jung will have talks on German activities in Africa with Rwanda's President Paul Kagame, during his visit to Berlin, which began April 22. The discussions will also include future military cooperation. They have a special significance because the leading members of the Rwandan military elite are accused of having been involved in serious war crimes. Investigations carried out in two EU nations have led to indictments, pertaining to gruesome massacres during putsch attempts in Rwanda as well as military invasions into the east of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, costing the lives of more than a million people. Among those being accused is the second in command of the UN/AU troops in Darfur that have been stationed in Sudan at the insistence of Western governments, including Germany. Paul Kagame has been exempted from indictment because he enjoys immunity as president. He will be received with military honors by German President Horst Koehler. Human rights organizations had raised grave accusations of torture and extra-legal executions and other crimes against Kagame and his government already at the time Koehler visited Rwanda in February.

Particularly Manipulative
2008/04/18
LHASA/BEIJING/BERLIN
(Own report) - The west's Tibet campaign is meeting its first signs of opposition in Germany. As the worldwide acts to sabotage the Olympic torch relay continues, German businesses are beginning to worry about their business prospects in China, amounting currently to a turnover in the billions. Policy advisors are warning that if the German government continues to apply "different standards (...) to different countries" it could cause a permanent loss of political credibility in Beijing. German correspondents agree that the presumptuous campaign orchestrated by western former colonial powers to humiliate China is weakening pro-western forces in the country. They report that in the People's Republic, the German media "is seen as particularly manipulative." Experts confirm the propagandist nature of German newscasts on Tibet. In a discussion with german-foreign-policy.com, the sinologist, Dr. Ingo Nentwig, whose work focuses on China's nationality policy, spoke of a blatant "disproportion in the media version." Sports associations and the Protestant Church are now joining the west's mass mobilization against China. They are calling on athletes and Protestant Olympic tourists to use their presence at the Olympic games to reinforce pressure on China.

Exchange of Information
2008/04/16
MUNICH/BERLIN
(Own report) - The Siemens Corp. is tightly enmeshed with German foreign intelligence agencies and is said to have enabled the German Federal Intelligence Service (BND - Bundesnachrichtendienst) to spy on foreign clients. This was gleaned from reports in the press on the extent of corruption in Munich's traditional enterprise. According to these reports, employees of the German companies, which have delivered telephone systems or wire-tapping technology, for example to Arab countries, are using their knowledge to facilitate the BND access to recordings of telephone conversations. During his incumbency as BND President (1998 - 2005), the current Interior Ministry State Secretary, August Hanning, had sought to enhance cooperation between Siemens and German foreign intelligence. These efforts coincided with the comprehensive initiative being taken in the Federal Chancellery under Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder and his chancellery director at the time, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, to broaden the competence of the BND and establish an intelligence oriented "security community" in Berlin. Part of the plans are efforts to link private enterprises more closely to German repressive organs, with the aim of a "situation-oriented exchange of information".

Operations Against China
2008/04/15
LHASA/WASHINGTON/BERLIN
(Own report) - Several front organizations of German foreign policy have for years been supporting the Tibetan exile structures in Dharamsala, India. This includes support for organizational measures enabling the "government in exile" in Dharamsala to orchestrate its activities against the People's Republic of China worldwide. Particularly the Free Democratic Party (FDP) affiliated Friedrich Naumann Foundation and the Heinrich Boell Foundation (affiliated with the Green Party) are cooperating with the "government in exile" and other exile Tibetan institutions. Front organizations of US foreign policy are working toward the same objectives. Already in the 1950s Washington was intervening in Tibet with millions of dollars, at the time, even supporting Tibetan armed uprisings against the People's Republic of China. German organizations took up the question of Tibet around the end of the 80s, at a time when China was beginning its rise to become a global competitor of the west. The current activities are apt to greatly weaken China. These supplement other German-US measures aimed at thwarting the rise of their East-Asian rival.

Colonialist
2008/04/14
ZAGREB/ATHENS/BONN
(Own report) - The Deutsche Telekom's expansion is being met with heavy protests in several south European countries. Fearing mass layoffs, wage cuts and deteriorating standards in working conditions, employees of the Greek Telecom OTE are resisting the takeover of their enterprise by the German company. In March, Croatian trade-unionists had already staged a demonstration in front of Telekom's headquarters in Bonn - because of the decrease in real-income and degenerating structural conditions at Hrvatski Telekom. The Croatian enterprise has been under the control of Deutsche Telekom for years. Berlin is hoping to profit from Croatia's imminent entry into the EU by attaining shares through the privatization of previously state owned Croatian companies. German President Horst Koehler will participate in a German-Croatian economic forum in Zagreb on Tuesday. After their protest in Bonn went unheard, Hrvatski Telekom employees characterized the parent company's methods as "colonialist".

The Olympic Torch Relay Campaign
2008/04/08
LHASA/BERLIN
(Own report) - Conference reports and the research of a Canadian journalist reveal that a German Foreign Ministry front organization is playing a decisive role in the preparations of the anti-Chinese Tibet campaign. According to this information, the campaign is being orchestrated from a Washington based headquarters. It had been assigned the task of organizing worldwide "protests" at a conference organized by the Friedrich Naumann Foundation (affiliated with the German Free Democratic Party - FDP) in May 2007. The plans were developed with the collaboration of the US State Department and the self-proclaimed Tibetan Government in Exile and call for high profile actions along the route of the Olympic Torch Relay and are supposed to reach a climax in August during the games in Beijing. The campaign began already last summer and is now profiting from the current uprising in the west of the People's Republic of China that is receiving prominent coverage in the German media. The uprising was initiated with murderous pogrom-like attacks by Tibetan gangs on non-Tibetan members of the population, including the Muslim Chinese minority. Numerous deaths of non-Tibetans provoked a reaction of the Chinese security forces.

Hundred Thousand Euro Offer
2008/04/07
BERLIN
(Own report) - The board of the Deutsche Bahn AG (DB, German Railroad Inc.) would like to conclude the conflict around the "Train of Commemoration" with the payment of 100,000 Euros. The train with a touring exhibition on the deportations of several hundreds of thousands of children and youth from all over Europe carried out by the Reichsbahn is confronted with the DB's financial demands totaling approx. 100,000 Euros. The Transportation Committee of the German Bundestag (German Parliament) had suggested that the DB neutralize its bills as a donation. The DB's board wants to make a donation - but not to the "Train of Commemoration," which is still faced with the approx. 100,000 Euros bill for the use of the German rail network for its memorial services, "rather than to the 'Train of Commemoration'" one reads in a letter signed by Dr. Werner Mueller, the DB board chairman, the identical amount should be transferred to "a nationally, as well as internationally, renowned Jewish charity institution." The letter, dated April 1, is on hand at german-foreign-policy.com. Nearly simultaneously coinciding with the offer to donate to a "Jewish institution," the DB declared several train stations in Berlin inaccessible to the "Train of Commemoration," thereby rendering the memorial services impossible.

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