NEW DELHI/BERLIN (Own report) - In view of the Indo-German intergovernmental consultations coming up this weekend, German Chancellor Angela Merkel is calling for "consolidating" Berlin's relations with New Delhi. Economic cooperation, as well as cooperation in foreign and military policy must be intensified, according to government circles. This has also been confirmed by a recent resolution in the Bundestag. Using India's traditional rivalry with China, western powers are seeking New Delhi's help to impede Beijing's rise. While US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has openly declared that US military cooperation with India is aimed at containing the influence of the People's Republic, the German Bundeswehr is also expanding its cooperation with India's armed forces. Nevertheless, Berlin's protracted efforts to enhance the bilateral relations are showing little progress. While German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas is praising common "values", human rights organizations are raising serious accusations against India's government. Read more

BERLIN/TRIPOLI (Own report) - Germany's Foreign Minister Heiko Maas is intervening in Libya, calling for an "end to foreign intervention." On the occasion of his trip to Turkey and North Africa he arrived last Sunday for a brief visit in the country, to prepare an international conference on Libya, which the German government intends to convene soon. With this conference the German government seeks to possibly pacify the country and distinguish itself as a "regulatory force" in North Africa. Maas then traveled on to Egypt, which also is involved in the Libyan war. While the German minister is declaring that the Egyptians should be able "to breathe the air of liberty," Cairo is continuing its brutal repression. Since the military coup in July 2013, more than 1,500 people have disappeared from state custody. While seeking to pacify Libya, Berlin is increasing its "regulatory" activities in an "arch of crisis" extending from North Africa and the Middle East to Central Asia. However, until now, without success. Read more

BERLIN (Own report) - In view of the German defense minister's initiative to set up a Western controlled occupation zone in northern Syria, new demands for the establishment of a German national security council are being raised. "Because of a possible dissolution of the grand coalition by the end of the year" there is currently "little room for ambitious conceptual ideas," according to a recent article in a leading German daily. Germany, nevertheless urgently needs an institution that can guarantee "analysis, strategic projection, and strategy planning" - as a prerequisite for more success in advancing its global policy. The demand to establish a German national security council has been repeatedly raised over the years. In 2006, for example, the establishment of a "center of gravity for a strategic decision-making process" directly within the chancellery had been proposed. The idea was picked up again in March by Defense Minister Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer. Read more

BERLIN/LA PAZ (Own report) - Massive protests have erupted in Bolivia against a German-affiliated lithium mining joint venture for use in E-car batteries. The consortium, in which the German ACI medium-sized enterprise is participating, is being accused of illegally withholding from the communities surrounding the sites of the lithium deposits in Bolivia's highlands, their share of the export returns. Doubts are growing about whether the joint venture ("YLB ACISA E.M.") will actually construct a complete lithium value chain, all the way to the finished car battery, in Bolivia, as President Evo Morales' government had originally demanded. The German project partners' claims to patent rights and the control of the financial flow are nurturing additional suspicion toward the medium-size enterprise from Baden Wurttemberg. The company had been given massive support at the federal level, to prevail in the competition against consortiums from China, Russia and the USA. Read more

BERLIN/PARIS (Own report) - Franco-German power struggles are blocking further EU expansion plans and overshadowing the EU-summit, which begins today in Brussels. Berlin is pushing hard for opening accession talks with North Macedonia and Albania to prevent these two countries from turning their backs on the Union - which brings them little advantage - and turn instead toward other powers such as China and Russia, with whom cooperation promises greater benefits. Paris is rejecting Berlin's demand. As long as the German government rejects French projects, such as a euro zone budget, France is simply unwilling to bow to Germany's wishes, one hears in Paris. The discussion on accession talks with North Macedonia and Albania will be continued at the summit. Whereas the EU remains bogged down, Beijing and Moscow, - but also Washington - are seeking to strengthen their positions in Southeast Europe. Read more

QUITO/BERLIN (Own report) - Current mass protests in Ecuador are directed against Lenin Moreno, Berlin's foreign policy establishment's ray of hope. Shortly after taking office in May 2017, Moreno abandoned the social and educational programs, as well as the independent foreign policy pursued by his predecessor, under whom he had served as vice president for several years. He is again tying Ecuador closer to the USA and, in February, secured for his country an IMF loan, which is forcing him to adopt drastic austerity measures. Moreno is deploying soldiers against the escalating mass protests. Last February, German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier visited Ecuador and promised German support to his counterpart for his policy course. Last week, Moreno was scheduled to come to Berlin for talks with Chancellor Merkel and to canvass billions in investments from German companies. Due to the current protests calling for his resignation, he has cancelled his visit to Germany. Read more

BEIJING/BERLIN (Own report) - A leading German automotive expert is calling for taking a greater "distance to the USA" and turning more toward China. According to Ferdinand Dudenhöffer, Spokesman of the Board of the CAR Center Automotive Research at the University Duisburg-Essen, the German automotive industry is one of the main losers of the current US economic wars. Instead of exacerbating the conflict, Berlin should seek closer cooperation with Beijing. Dudenhöffer declared this after it became known that the People's Republic of China is distancing itself from the German government because of its support for secessionists in Hong Kong. For Beijing, any interference into its domestic affairs is taboo, also because it was the interventions by European colonial powers that caused the beginning of the dramatic decline of the Middle Kingdom. The German Reich had shown itself to be particularly brutal. Thousands fell victim to massacres committed by the German troops in China, during the years 1900 and 1901. Berlin implemented racist concepts in the German colony of Qingdao. Read more

WASHINGTON/BERLIN (Own report) - In the spring of 2020, the NATO power block will hold a war game to test its mobilization against the East, according to a letter from the German Ministry of Defense. With the "Defender 2020" military exercise, the USA and its European allies will be testing the military infrastructure, command structures and supply routes it has been building up over the past few years in Eastern Europe. As in the case of a hot war with Russia, US troops will be rotated across the Atlantic to Europe and advance toward the Russian border. The German government is actively contributing to this exercise, which will further militarize Europe and fuel tensions by positioning Germany as the hub for warfare logistics. Assuming a strategic role as the hub for logistics and command, it is seeking to increase its global power. "Defender 2020" is the largest military maneuver for US forces in Europe in the past 25 years. Read more

BEIJING/BERLIN (Own report) - Since Berlin's ceremonial reception of a secessionist from Hong Kong, the People's Republic of China has been reducing its working relations with Germany. Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi canceled a series of bilateral meetings with his German counterpart Heiko Maas. China's easing customs restrictions for German automobile companies are in jeopardy. Maas recently met with Joshua Wong, General Secretary of the Demosisto party, which is campaigning for a referendum on Hong Kong's secession from China. Germany, which is thus blatantly interfering in the People's Republic of China's domestic affairs and is strengthening those forces, hostile to the Chinese nation’s continued existence, had already been one of those European powers, which, at the turn of the 19th century, had sought to weaken China, to colonially subjugate regions of the country - including Hong Kong - and to plunder the Middle Kingdom. From the outset, German colonial troops had committed massacres of countless civilians, to crush the fierce resistance within the population. Read more