LONDON german-foreign-policy.com spoke with Alex Gordon about the growing resistance of British trade unions to the current arms build-up and the threat of war. Gordon was president of the National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers (RMT), the largest rail and transport union in the United Kingdom, from 2010 to 2012 and again from 2022 to 2024. He is also a member of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND), which has been campaigning against nuclear armament since its foundation in 1957. At the end of May, RMT and CND published the Alternative Defence Review, a counter-model to the Strategic Defence Review, the British government's central foreign and military policy strategy paper. The Alternative Defence Review has contributed to a change of course among British trade unions, which shortly after the start of the war in Ukraine supported the arms build-up enforced by the government of Prime Minister Boris Johnson. Today, they have taken a clear stand against the diversion of huge amounts of public money away from the workers and towards the arms industry. Read more

LONDON german-foreign-policy.com spoke with Vladimir Borțun about the rapid rise of the Romanian far right and what it has to do with the dominant position of foreign companies, including German ones, in Romania. Borțun is a political scientist and teaches at St John's College, Oxford University. He points out that the steady advance of foreign companies in Romania is not reducing poverty in the country, but is now putting pressure on growing sections of the local petty bourgeoisie. This class supports the far-right party AUR (Alianța pentru Unirea Românilor, Alliance for the Union of Romanians), whose president George Simion came very close to winning the recent presidential election with 46.4 per cent of the vote. In polls, AUR is currently in first place with almost 40 per cent, well ahead of the social democrats of PSD, which is in second place with 20 per cent. In the European Parliament, the AUR belongs to the European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) – alongside the Fratelli d'Italia (FdI) of Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and the Polish PiS party, whose candidate Karol Nawrocki has been President of Poland since 6 August. Read more

LONDON german-foreign-policy.com spoke with Andrew Feinstein about the role of German arms manufacturers in the international arms trade, about the new wave of militarisation in Europe and about German arms exports to Israel. A former Member of Parliament for the African National Congress (ANC) in South Africa, Feinstein is Executive Director of Shadow World Investigations, a non-profit organisation which undertakes investigations into grand corruption, corporate malfeasance and militarism with a special focus on the global arms trade. Feinstein has authored or edited books like “The Shadow World: Inside the Global Arms Trade” (London 2011), “Indefensible: The Seven Myths That Sustain the Global Arms Trade” (London 2017) and “Monstrous Anger of the Guns. How the Global Arms Trade is Ruining the World and What We Can Do About It” (together with Rhona Michie and Paul Rogers, London 2024). Read more

DUBLIN german-foreign-policy.com spoke with Anthony Coughlan about Ireland’s neutrality, the Triple Lock which is intended to secure neutrality, and the Irish government’s efforts to abolish it. Coughlan is Associate Professor Emeritus in Social Policy at Trinity College Dublin. He has written extensively on nationality questions and the European Union. He is spokesman for the National Platform EU Research and Information Centre in the Irish capital. Coughlan believes that the Irish elite’s plan to abolish the Triple Lock is aimed at enabling them to fully participate in the EU’s measures against Russia, potentially military ones included. The transformation of welfare states into warfare states is progressing in Ireland just as it is in other EU countries. Coughlan expects that resistance to the abolition of the Triple Lock will get stronger as Irish people who are opposed to EU war-mongering, who want to end the Ukraine war and who want to prevent a new Cold War with Russia will not be prepared to abandon neutrality without a real fight. Read more

AACHEN german-foreign-policy.com spoke with Hans-Rüdiger Minow about Polish demands for reparations for the mass crimes committed by the Nazis. Minow is the Spokesperson for the Board of Directors of the "Train of Commemoration." On behalf of the "Train of Commemoration," he had advised Polish and other Eastern European victims' organizations, which had convened in Warsaw in 2010 to quantify their reparations claims. There was a reconstruction of the revenues collected by the German Reich from mass deportations with the "Reichsbahn" railway to forced labor and extermination camps, including Auschwitz. Transport by rail, for the benefit of Berlin's state treasury, had affected three to six million people in Poland. The Federal Republic of Germany owes repayment of these revenues. Read more

LONDON german-foreign-policy.com interviewed John Boyd on the position of the British left towards the EU and the so called Social Europe. John Boyd is Secretary of the Campaign against Euro-federalism (CAEF), an organisation oriented towards the labour movement and trade union movement which has been calling for a withdrawal from the EU since it was founded in 1991. Read more

LONDON german-foreign-policy.com interviewed Lave Knud Broch about how in the Danish elite's EU supporters sought to convince the Danish people in the runups to various EU referendums in Denmark. Lave Knud Broch is a substitute member of the European Parliament for the Danish People's Movement against the EU. Read more

COLOGNE On the occasion of the anniversary of the Nazis' November Pogroms, german-foreign-policy.com (gfp.com) spoke with the chairs of two prominent citizens' initiatives about German commemorative culture and Germany's responsibility for Nazi crimes. They are Hans-Rüdiger Minow spokesperson for the Board of Directors of the "Train of Commemoration" and Christoph Schwarz, spokesperson for the Board of Directors of "Stolen Children - Forgotten Victims." Read more

COLOGNE On the occasion of the anniversary of the Nazis' November Pogroms, german-foreign-policy.com (gfp.com) spoke with the chairs of two prominent citizens' initiatives about German commemorative culture and Germany's responsibility for Nazi crimes. They are Hans-Rüdiger Minow spokesperson for the Board of Directors of the "Train of Commemoration" and Christoph Schwarz, spokesperson for the Board of Directors of "Stolen Children - Forgotten Victims." Read more

LUND german-foreign-policy.com interviewed Per Anders Rudling about the roots that gave rise to the Ukrainian far right within historical mythmaking, initiated by former Ukrainian President Victor Yushchenko. Rudling is an associate professor in the Department of History at Lund University. He has published extensively on nationalism, historical culture, and the instrumentalization of history in various East European countries, especially Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania. Read more