http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2011/11/in-germany-neo-nazi-murders-surface-a-contradiction/248414/

Germans are widely hostile to far-right groups, but opposition to multi-culturalism is on the rise — and getting violent

The murders of about ten Germans between 2000 and 2007 are back in the public eye. That’s because police have now found two handguns, as well as the bodies of two suspects, which link the murders to neo-Nazi groups.

The details of the original murders are no less ugly than the recent discovery. The victims were largely of foreign origin, including ethnic Turks, an ethic Greek, and a policewoman. The BBC provides extra background for those who are unfamiliar with the case, but the lingering image is a haunting one: kebab store owners shot in the face in broad daylight.

It’s hard to think of a country that would be blasé about neo-Nazi-perpetrated murders. But there are extra reasons for the furor here, in which stories on the murders have quickly shot to the top of the most-read, most-commented, and most-recommended lists on the major German papers’ sites: this case treads on very sensitive ground for Germany.

The German far-right is about as marginalized in Germany as it possibly could be. Skinheads are treated with a mixture of scorn and disgust, and though free speech is protected in the country, there are a number of exceptions, including hate speech and Holocaust denial. It is not uncommon in some German cities to see an extremist passing out pamphlets with a disgruntled-looking policeman standing guard. The officer isn’t just there to monitor the pamphleteer, I’ve had several Germans suggest to me on such occasions: he or she is also there to make sure that some passer-by doesn’t become so enraged by the sight of a neo-Nazi as to start a fight. In a country where even Scientology, widely ignored in the U.S., is seen by many as a threat to democracy and Tom Cruise’s role in Valkyrie is an affront, neo-Nazis provoke a lot of anger. That neo-Nazis could carry out these murders, and that the extent of the perpetrators’ network is not yet known, gets people pretty worked up.

The other deeply delicate element of this case involves the victims. Though right-wing extremists get little sympathy in Germany, foreigners — Muslim immigrants in particular — haven’t been getting much sympathy either, recently. Last fall, debate raged over a book by Thilo Sarrazin, then-director of Germany’s central bank, arguing that Muslim immigrants pose an existential threat to the country. Unintegrated, poor, and fertile, so the argument went, the spread of African and Middle Eastern immigrants needs to be combated, ideally by well-educated Germans out-breeding them. Though many found the argument horrendously offensive and dangerous, over 30 percent of survey respondents at the time, the BBC reported, “believed the country was ‘overrun by foreigners.’”

That October, German Chancellor Angela Merkel declared “multiculturalism” a failure, noting that many immigrants to the country remained unintegrated, arguing that it was time to demand more integration effort from the immigrants themselves. Turkish immigrants in particular can at times be treated with distrust by Germans wary of Muslim extremism — or those wary of Turkish teenage gangs, one of which had members convicted in 2003 of violence against German classmates.

What Germans are thus finding themselves confronted with right now is a shockingly extremist manifestation of German-immigrant tension, perpetrated by the deeply hated neo-Nazis. They want to know how it happened. “Take the brown threat seriously, now!” exclaims an op-ed in the Süddeutsche Zeitung, arguing that for too long leftist extremists have been seen as “intelligent and dangerous” while right-wing extremists have been seen as moronic, one-off wingnuts. A rash of articles are dedicated to the topic of Germany’s Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, which monitors extremists of many stripes (including Scientologists). Have officials, the articles ask, underestimated right-wing extremists? Is this a new form of right-wing terrorism? To what extent were the three suspects of the cell part of a larger network? And how did they remain undetected for so long?

These are all questions that Germans are raising, and not just in a philosophical post-mortem. The latest annual report from the Office for the Protection of the Constitution shows that, from 2009 to 2010, crimes with a right-wing extremist background fell, neo-Nazi groups gained roughly 600 members, and set a new record for number of demonstrations: 240.

But there’s a still more poignant — and completely unintentional — illustration of the tensions in this case up on the agency’s site. It’s the tip box, where the agency encourages readers to click and “Call to act against terrorism and violence!” The tip line instruction is written in three languages for the benefit of potential informers: German, Arabic, and Turkish. Turns out, though, reporting a rogue imam wasn’t the worst those kebab store owners had to worry about.

Secret Report on Investigators’ Failures
How Neo-Nazi Terror Cell Gave Authorities the Slip

By Sven Röbel, Holger Stark and Steffen Winter for DER SPIEGEL

A secret report on the neo-Nazi terror cell which allegedly killed at least 10 people reveals a series of serious mistakes by Germany’s law enforcement agencies. The authorities had the group under surveillance and could have stopped the murder spree before it even began, if they had only acted.

Part 1

The photo was taken from a safe distance, from the other side of the street, opposite number 11 in Bernhardstrasse in the center of the eastern German city of Chemnitz. The man in the picture is wearing a black T-shirt and jeans. His hair is cropped short, with only the top a few millimeters longer, almost giving him the look of a punk with a Mohawk hairstyle. It could be Uwe Böhnhardt, but the officers weren’t sure.

For several hours, agents of the Office for the Protection of the Constitution, Germany’s domestic intelligence service, had been following a group of neo-Nazis from one mall to the next, and finally to Bernhardstrasse.

The address was known to be a safe house used by three neo-Nazis who had been in hiding for years: Uwe Böhnhardt, Uwe Mundlos and Beate Zschäpe. Two of their supporters lived there.

The photo shows the man who could be Böhnhardt in three-quarter profile. He’s carrying a number of unidentifiable objects under his left arm. The date was Saturday, May 6, 2000. Four months later, the men would murder their first victim.

A Catalog of Failure

The picture can be found among a series of documents currently being evaluated by German investigators. Together they read like a catalog of failure. May 6, 2000 marks the low point in the investigation into what would later become the Zwickau cell. Rarely had the authorities made so many mistakes.

On that fateful Saturday 11 years ago, police officers and intelligence agents could have prevented an escalation of the violence that would eventually claim the lives of eight people of Turkish descent, a Greek man, and one female police officer, all allegedly shot by Böhnhardt and Mundlos between September 2000 and April 2007. The case, which came to light in early November after Mundlos shot Böhnhardt and himself in a recreational vehicle in Eisenach following a botched bank robbery, has shocked Germany. Now it turns out that the authorities could have stopped the killing spree of the National Socialist Underground (NSU), as the group dubbed itself, before it really got going.

But the officers didn’t take action when they discovered that Böhnhardt, Mundlos and Zschäpe were hiding in Chemnitz. The neo-Nazis were observed, but not arrested. They were therefore free to plan their murderous attacks.

The Office for the Protection of the Constitution detailed the failure of the surveillance operation in Chemnitz and other similar blunders in an around 30-page confidential report that was sent to the German government, the relevant committee of the German parliament and the federal states shortly before Christmas. In the document, which SPIEGEL has obtained, intelligence agents describe in detail the hunt for the three neo-Nazis. They list who collected money, who was responsible for procuring weapons, and who had contact to the underground. And they describe how the intelligence agency managed to get an informer close enough to the cell that he was eventually able to establish direct contact.

Lack of Trust

The classified report and research subsequently conducted by SPIEGEL in Saxony and Thuringia show that the authorities were very well informed about the fugitive neo-Nazis up until 2001. In fact the security services knew far more about the neo-Nazi trio than has been admitted to date. They even had evidence to suggest the neo-Nazis planned to carry out armed attacks once they had gone into hiding. The document also shows there was no truth to the claim that the German authorities hadn’t kept a close enough eye on right-wing extremists.

Worse still, it paints the picture of a country whose security apparatus has failed. Information wasn’t passed on to the relevant authorities soon enough, if at all, while the police, the intelligence agency, regional and federal authorities often simply didn’t trust one another.

The state derives its monopoly on the legitimate use of force from the promise to protect its citizens. In the case of the nine immigrants and the police officer Michèle Kiesewetter who were allegedly murdered by the neo-Nazis, the state failed to keep its promise — albeit out of incompetence rather than criminal intent. There is no evidence so far of any collusion between the intelligence services and the neo-Nazis.

Jörg Ziercke, the head of the Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA), admits that public confidence in the rule of law has been “shaken to the core” by the killings. Interior Minister Hans-Peter Friedrich even worries about the “highly political” consequences for “Germany’s image in the world.” A central memorial service will be held for the victims, and people suspected of aiding and abetting the murderers are to be put on trial. The classified report submitted to parliament is only the first attempt to address the official blackout.

Suitcases with Swastikas

For all their mistakes, the authorities’ instincts appear to have been good at the very outset. In the fall of 1997, Böhnhardt deposited several suitcases with swastikas on them and containing explosives somewhere in the eastern state of Thuringia. On Nov. 24 of that year, intelligence agents in Thuringia began their first surveillance operation. For a week they watched as Mundlos, Zschäpe and Böhnhardt carried pipes out of an apartment and purchased rubber rings and 2 liters (about half a gallon) of methylated spirits. Were they making a bomb?

The trio then surreptitiously transported the materials to a garage at a sewage treatment plant in the city of Jena. Böhnhardt parked his red Opel car a block from the garage and walked the rest of the way, constantly looking over his shoulder as he went. In official jargon, such excessive caution is known as “shaking,” and Böhnhardt “shook” so hard that a single agent was able to follow the trio unnoticed all the way to the garage.

The files contain a hand-drawn sketch of the complex of garages in which the intelligence agency suspected the neo-Nazis had stashed a bomb. An arrow points to the relevant garage door. The findings were reported to the police, who searched the garage on Jan. 26, 1998 and discovered 1.4 kilograms (3 pounds) of explosives and ready-to-use pipe bombs. But the neo-Nazis themselves managed to flee.

Whereas the responsible prosecutor’s office in the city of Gera underestimated the importance of the find and refused to recognize any reason to suspect terrorist activity, the intelligence agency launched an in-depth investigation, dubbed Operation Drilling. Agents began searching for more clues, but although the intelligence agency and detectives at the State Office of Criminal Investigation (LKA) cooperated, the two remained wary of one another. The Office for the Protection of the Constitution was aided by a high-level source whose identity it refused to divulge to the police: Tino Brandt, codename “Otto,” the head of a far-right militant group called Thüringer Heimatschutz (“Thuringian Homeland Protection”), which numbered up to 170 members.

With his curly blond hair and square schoolboy’s glasses, Brandt looked like a harmless kid. But he had charisma and the necessary ruthlessness to not only lead the local neo-Nazi scene but also betray it to the authorities at the same time. He knew Böhnhardt, Mundlos and Zschäpe personally.

Links to NPD

It appears the three neo-Nazis were primarily supported by former associates from the Thüringer Heimatschutz and another right-wing extremist group called Kameradschaft Jena (“Jena Comradeship”), including Ralf Wohlleben — a Heimatschutz activist who later became an official in the far-right National Democratic Party (NPD) — and André K., the head of the Kameradschaft Jena. Investigators now know that Wohlleben and K. played a key role in the history of the Zwickau cell.

On Feb. 12, 1998, two weeks after the trio went underground, K. allegedly traveled to Berlin where, according to “Otto,” he met Frank Schwerdt, a member of the NPD’s national executive. They apparently discussed addresses abroad where the trio could hide. That information is crucial because if it is true it would suggest a link between the NPD’s leaders and the NSU’s support network. Today, Schwerdt recalls that K. asked him to help the fugitives, but insists he turned the request down. “I neither wanted to, nor could have done so,” Schwerdt says.

K. allegedly had another rendezvous in Berlin, this one with a far-right official who rented out recreational vehicles. Later on, Böhnhardt and Mundlos frequently fled in an RV after their murders or bank robberies. So was the idea for this hatched in February 1998?

K. was clearly one of the trio’s earliest supporters, and probably the most important man in the months after they disappeared, especially in the attempt to help them escape abroad. In April, three months after the three neo-Nazis went into hiding, K. allegedly approached Claus Nordbruch on the sidelines of a conference organized by the far-right Society for Free Journalism. Nordbruch is a German citizen who now lives in South Africa, where he owns a farm. He has an illustrious reputation in the far-right scene.

The intelligence agency believes K. may also have spoken to him “about a possible hiding place on the farm.” Indeed André K. and another right-wing extremist from Thuringia flew to South Africa on Aug. 8, 1998 for four weeks.

Read the rest and parts 2 and 3 here at this link:

http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,806449,00.html

From Tunisia to Egypt, Islamists are gaining the popular vote. Far from threatening stability, this makes it a real possibility
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/nov/27/islamist-arab-spring-west-fears?newsfeed=true

Ennahda, the Islamic party in Tunisia, won 41% of the seats of the Tunisian constitutional assembly last month, causing consternation in the west. But Ennahda will not be an exception on the Arab scene. Last Friday the Islamic Justice and Development Party took the biggest share of the vote in Morocco and will lead the new coalition government for the first time in history. And tomorrow Egypt’s elections begin, with the Muslim Brotherhood predicted to become the largest party. There may be more to come. Should free and fair elections be held in Yemen, once the regime of Ali Abdullah Saleh falls, the Yemeni Congregation for Reform, also Islamic, will win by a significant majority. This pattern will repeat itself whenever the democratic process takes its course.

In the west, this phenomenon has led to a debate about the “problem” of the rise of political Islam. In the Arab world, too, there has been mounting tension between Islamists and secularists, who feel anxious about Islamic groups. Many voices warn that the Arab spring will lead to an Islamic winter, and that the Islamists, though claiming to support democracy, will soon turn against it. In the west, stereotypical images that took root in the aftermath of 9/11 have come to the fore again. In the Arab world, a secular anti-democracy camp has emerged in both Tunisia and Egypt whose pretext for opposing democratisation is that the Islamists are likely to be the victors.

But the uproar that has accompanied the Islamists’ gains is unhelpful; a calm and well-informed debate about the rise of political Islam is long overdue.

First, we must define our terms. “Islamist” is used in the Muslim world to describe Muslims who participate in the public sphere, using Islam as a basis. It is understood that this participation is not at odds with democracy. In the west, however, the term routinely describes those who use violence as a means and an end – thus Jihadist Salafism, exemplified by al-Qaida, is called “Islamist” in the west, despite the fact that it rejects democratic political participation (Ayman al-Zawahiri, the leader of al-Qaida, criticised Hamas when it decided to take part in the elections for the Palestinian legislative council, and has repeatedly criticised the Muslim Brotherhood for opposing the use of violence).

This disconnect in the understanding of the term in the west and in the Muslim world was often exploited by despotic Arab regimes to suppress Islamic movements with democratic political programmes. It is time we were clear.

Reform-based Islamic movements, such as the Muslim Brotherhood, work within the political process. They learned a bitter lesson from their armed conflict in Syria against the regime of Hafez al-Assad in 1982, which cost the lives of more than 20,000 people and led to the incarceration or banishment of many thousands more. The Syrian experience convinced mainstream Islamic movements to avoid armed struggle and to observe “strategic patience” instead.

Second, we must understand the history of the region. In western discourse Islamists are seen as newcomers to politics, gullible zealots who are motivated by a radical ideology and lack experience. In fact, they have played a major role in the Arab political scene since the 1920s. Islamic movements have often been in opposition, but since the 1940s they have participated in parliamentary elections, entered alliances with secular, nationalist and socialist groups, and participated in several governments – in Sudan, Jordan, Yemen and Algeria. They have also forged alliances with non-Islamic regimes, like the Nimeiri regime in Sudan in 1977.

A number of other events have had an impact on the collective Muslim mind, and have led to the maturation of political Islam: the much-debated Islamic Revolution in Iran in 1979; the military coup in Sudan in 1989; the success of the Algerian Islamic Salvation Front in the 1991 elections and the army’s subsequent denial of its right to govern; the conquest of much of Afghan territory by the Taliban in 1996 leading to the establishment of its Islamic emirate; and the success in 2006 of Hamas in the Palestinian Legislative Council elections. The Hamas win was not recognised, nor was the national unity government formed. Instead, a siege was imposed on Gaza to suffocate the movement.

Perhaps one of the most influential experiences has been that of the Justice and Development Party (AKP) in Turkey, which won the elections in 2002. It has been a source of inspiration for many Islamic movements. Although the AKP does not describe itself as Islamic, its 10 years of political experience have led to a model that many Islamists regard as successful. The model has three important characteristics: a general Islamic frame of reference; a multi-party democracy; and significant economic growth.

These varied political experiences have had a profound impact on political Islam’s flexibility and capacity for political action, and on its philosophy, too.

However, political Islam has also faced enormous pressures from dictatorial Arab regimes, pressures that became more intense after 9/11. Islamic institutions were suppressed. Islamic activists were imprisoned, tortured and killed. Such experiences gave rise to a profound bitterness. Given the history, it is only natural that we should hear overzealous slogans or intolerant threats from some activists. Some of those now at the forefront of election campaigns were only recently released from prison. It would not be fair to expect them to use the voice of professional diplomats.

Despite this, the Islamic political discourse has generally been balanced. The Tunisian Islamic movement has set a good example. Although Ennahda suffered under Ben Ali’s regime, its leaders developed a tolerant discourse and managed to open up to moderate secular and leftist political groups. The movement’s leaders have reassured Tunisian citizens that it will not interfere in their personal lives and that it will respect their right to choose. The movement also presented a progressive model of women’s participation, with 42 female Ennahda members in the constitutional assembly.

The Islamic movement’s approach to the west has also been balanced, despite the fact that western countries supported despotic Arab regimes. Islamists know the importance of international communication in an economically and politically interconnected world.

Now there is a unique opportunity for the west: to demonstrate that it will no longer support despotic regimes by supporting instead the democratic process in the Arab world, by refusing to intervene in favour of one party against another and by accepting the results of the democratic process, even when it is not the result they would have chosen. Democracy is the only option for bringing stability, security and tolerance to the region, and it is the dearest thing to the hearts of Arabs, who will not forgive any attempts to derail it.

The region has suffered a lot as a result of attempts to exclude Islamists and deny them a role in the public sphere. Undoubtedly, Islamists’ participation in governance will give rise to a number of challenges, both within the Islamic ranks and with regard to relations with other local and international forces. Islamists should be careful not to fall into the trap of feeling overconfident: they must accommodate other trends, even if it means making painful concessions. Our societies need political consensus, and the participation of all political groups, regardless of their electoral weight. It is this interplay between Islamists and others that will both guarantee the maturation of the Arab democratic transition and lead to an Arab political consensus and stability that has been missing for decades.

Drowning In Hypocrisy

By Paul Craig Roberts

There is no question that Bush/Cheney/Obama have trashed the US Constitution, US statutory law, and international law. But Washington, having overthrown justice, has established that might is right. No foreign government is going to send its forces into the US to drag the war criminals out and place them on trial.

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The US government is so full of self-righteousness that it has become a caricature of hypocrisy. Leon Panetta, a former congressman who Obama appointed CIA director and now head of the Pentagon, just told the sailors on the USS Enterprise, an aircraft carrier, that the US is maintaining a fleet of 11 aircraft carriers in order to project sea power against Iran and to convince Iran that “it’s better for them to try to deal with us through diplomacy.”

If it requires 11 aircraft carriers to deal with Iran, how many will Panetta need to project power against Russia and China? But to get on with the main point, Iran has been trying “to deal with us through diplomacy.” The response from Washington has been belligerent threats of military attack, unfounded and irresponsible accusations that Iran is making a nuclear weapon, sanctions and an oil embargo. Washington’s accusations echo Israel’s and are contradicted by Washington’s own intelligence agencies and the International Atomic Energy Agency. Why doesn’t Washington respond to Iran in a civilized manner with diplomacy? Really, which of the two countries is the greatest threat to peace?

Washington sends the FBI to raid the homes of peace activists and puts a grand jury to work to create a case against them for aiding a nebulous enemy by protesting Washington’s wars. The Department of Homeland Security unleashes goon cop thugs to brutalize peaceful Occupy Wall Street demonstrators. Washington fabricates cases against Bradley Manning, Julian Assange, and Tarek Mehanna that negate the First Amendment by equating free speech with terrorism and spying. Chicago mayor and former Obama White House chief-of-staff, Rahm Israel Emanuel, pushes an ordinance that outlaws public protests in the City of Chicago. The list goes on. And in the midst of it all Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and other Washington hypocrites accuse Russia and China of stifling dissent.

Washington’s grotesque hypocrisy goes unremarked by the American “media” and in the debates for the Republican presidential nomination. The corrupt Obama “Justice” Department turns a blind eye while goon cop thugs commit gratuitous violence against the citizens who pay the goon cop thugs’ undeserved salaries.

But it is in the War Crimes Arena where Washington shows the greatest hypocrisy. The self-righteous bigots in Washington are forever rounding up heads of weak states whose countries were afflicted by civil wars and sending them off to be tried as war criminals. All the while Washington indiscriminately kills large numbers of civilians in six or more countries, dismissing its own war crimes as “collateral damage.” Washington violates its own law and international law by torturing people.

On January 13, 2012, Carol Rosenberg of McClatchy Newspapers reported that Spanish judge Pablo Rafael Ruz Gutierrez re-launched an investigation into Washington’s torture of prisoners in Guantanamo Prison. The previous day British authorities opened an investigation into CIA renditions of kidnapped persons to Libya for torture.

Rosenberg reports that although the Obama regime has refused to investigate the obvious crimes of the Bush regime, and one might add its own obvious crimes, “other countries are still interested in determining whether Bush-era anti-terror practices violated international law.”

There is no question that Bush/Cheney/Obama have trashed the US Constitution, US statutory law, and international law. But Washington, having overthrown justice, has established that might is right. No foreign government is going to send its forces into the US to drag the war criminals out and place them on trial.

The War Criminal Court at the Hague is reserved for Washington’s show trials. No foreign government is going to pay Washington several hundred millions of dollars to turn Bush, Cheney, Obama and their minions over to them in the way the US bought Milosevic from Serbia in order to create the necessary spectacle at the War Crimes Tribunal to justify Washington’s naked aggression against Serbia.

No government can be perfect, because all governments are composed of humans, especially those humans most attracted by power and profit. Nevertheless, in my lifetime I have witnessed an extraordinary deterioration in the integrity of government in the United States. We have reached the point where nothing that our government says is believable. Not even the unemployment rate, the inflation rate, the GDP growth rate, much less Washington’s reasons for its wars, its police state, and its foreign and domestic policies.

Washington has kept America at war for 10 years while millions of Americans lost their jobs and their homes. War and a faltering economy have exploded the national debt, and a looming bankruptcy is being blamed on Social Security and Medicare.

The pursuit of war continues. On January 23 Washington’s servile puppets — the EU member states — did Washington’s bidding and imposed an oil embargo on Iran, despite the pleas of Greece, a member of the EU. Greece’s final ruin will come from the higher oil prices from the embargo, as the Greek government realizes.

The embargo is a reckless act. If the US navy tries to intercept oil tankers carrying Iranian oil, large scale war could break out. This, many believe, is Washington’s aim.

It is easy for an embargo to become a blockade, which is an act of war. Remember how easily the UN Security Council’s “no-fly zone” over Libya was turned by the US and its NATO puppets into a military attack on Libya’s armed forces and population centers supportive of Gaddafi.

As the western “democracies” become increasingly lawless, the mask of law that imperialism wears is stripped away and with it the sheen of morality that has been used to cloak hegemonic ambitions. With Iran surrounded and with two of Washington’s fleets in the Persian Gulf, another war of aggression seems inevitable.

Experts say that an attack on Iran by the US and NATO will disrupt the flow of oil that the world needs. The crazed drive for hegemony is so compelling that Washington and its EU puppets show no hesitation in putting their own struggling economies at risk of sharply rising energy costs.

War abroad and austerity at home is the policy that is being imposed on the western “democracies.”

Submitters Website: http://www.paulcraigroberts.org/

Submitters Bio:

Paul Craig Roberts was an editor of the Wall Street Journal and an Assistant Secretary of the U.S. Treasury. His latest book, HOW THE ECONOMY WAS LOST, has just been published by CounterPunch/AK Press. He was awarded the Treasury Department’s Meritorious Service Award for “his outstanding contributions to the formulation of United States economic policy.” Roberts is listed in Who’s Who in America and Who’s Who in the World.