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Month: January 2024

Franz Beckenbauer, rest in shame

South African memories of German corruption


15/01/2024

Who taught leading South Africa sports officials and politicians world-class corruption; specifically, how to buy hosting rights to the FIFA Soccer World Cup?

One prime suspect is the great mid-fielder Franz Beckenbauer, who passed away on Sunday January 7 in Salzburg, Austria, not far from his native Munich. I saw him play sweeper for the New York Cosmos in the late 1970s when he and other legends like Pele, Chinaglia and Cruyff – seduced by Yankee money (and certainly not the quality of U.S. competitors) – came to Washington, DC, where I then lived, to periodically defeat the Diplomats. The local team soon went bankrupt, twice. But Beckenbauer was a joy to watch, often commanding the whole pitch.

His field of play then widened further, into a leadership role at FIFA, the Swiss-based Federation of International Football Associations that runs the quadrennial World Cup. Sepp Blatter became FIFA chief executive in 1998, only resigning (in disgrace) 17 years later. In mid-2000, as the host of the 2006 World Cup was being chosen, Beckenbauer’s impact on South Africa was profoundly corrosive, prompting then-President Thabo Mbeki to, first, bitterly invoke the term ‘global apartheid’ – and then, when the South African couldn’t beat the world-class cheaters, he along with FIFA Local Organising Committee leader Danny Jordaan joined them, four years later.

The German team’s bidding strategy included bribery of FIFA delegates, using a €6.7 million slush fund set up by Adidas’ chief executive. (Earlier, the same firm’s leading shareholder had bribed French Finance Minister Christine Lagarde to get a large taxpayer bailout. Later, notwithstanding her 2016 conviction, she became leader of the International Monetary Fund and European Central Bank.)

Beckenbauer needed to act fast, because “By early 2000 South Africa seemed to be leading Germany in the scramble for the votes at FIFA’s ExCo,” especially after a round that eliminated Tony Blair’s British bid, according to FIFA’s most prominent critic, journalist Andrew Jennings:

“ One of England’s votes was cast by New Zealand’s Charlie Dempsey. He had been mandated by his regional confederation in Oceania to vote for England and when they dropped out, to back South Africa. Even if Germany picked up the other floating vote, the result would still be a draw, Blatter had to back the Africans. The result was now obvious. See you in Cape Town in 2006.”

German vote buying

But it was not to be, as Jennings recounts: “They voted for a final time: Germany 12 votes, South Africa 11 votes! See you in Munich in 2006. But that was only 23 votes. Somebody had not voted. Who was it? It was Charlie Dempsey. He had walked out between rounds. He was at Zurich airport, catching a plane home. Charlie dodged reporters as best he could but when cornered, babbled about ‘intolerable pressure’ on the eve of the vote.”

Dempsey was bribed $250,000 to abstain, admitted former German football federation president Theo Zwanziger – who along with Beckenbauer and two other German soccer officials, were prosecuted by Swiss authorities from 2016-21. Tellingly, both the criminal probe and an internal FIFA investigation into German corruption were aborted because they took too long, according to authorities, in part because Covid proved disruptive to prosecutors in October 2020.

Just weeks before the vote, Dempsey met Beckenbauer. The subsequent violation of Dempsey’s mandate to support South Africa was considered by New Zealand’s Sports Minister Trevor Mallard such a ‘national disgrace’ – “Mr. Dempsey has damaged the international reputation of our country” – that Prime Minister Helen Clark was compelled to quickly call Mbeki to apologise.

While Beckenbauer and the Germans celebrated, and British Commonwealth countries felt betrayed by Dempsey, according to Jennings, “Blatter had to comfort Africa. The South African Football Association was so angry that there was talk of taking the obviously crooked decision to arbitration. Blatter talked them out of it and promised that in future the World Cup would be rotated through the continents – and Africa would stage the 2010 tournament.”

How had Dempsey been persuaded, and how had other FIFA executive votes gone to Germany?

According to Spiegel magazine in 2015, “the German bidding committee created a slush fund in its effort to land the rights to host the 2006 World Cup. Senior officials, including football hero Franz Beckenbauer, are believed to have known about the fund. In what could turn out to be the greatest crisis in German football since the Bundesliga bribery scandal of the 1970s, Spiegel has learned that the decision to award the 2006 World Cup to Germany was likely bought in the form of bribes.”

The slush fund was, Spiegel insisted, “filled secretly by then-Adidas CEO Robert Louis-Dreyfus” and was “used to secure the four votes belonging to Asian representatives on the 24-person FIFA Executive Committee.” The source of the specific Dempsey bribe is still unknown.

Though he denied explicit bribery, Beckenbauer admitted there was a slush fund: “I, as the president of the organisation committee at the time, carry the responsibility for this mistake.”

South Africans learn to play, the FIFA-Beckenbauer way

Having being taught a sobering lesson about FIFA’s modus operandi, in 2004 Mbeki initiated a $10 million so-called ‘African Diaspora Legacy Programme,’ drawing upon what should have been a FIFA fund to build South African grassroots soccer. And no such programme existed to help African continental soccer because it was well known by then that South Africa’s competitor for the 2010 hosting, Morocco, had already bought too many delegates, who then voted against South Africa in that year’s FIFA vote for 2010 hosting rights.

The secret emerged in 2015. Although Sports Minister Fikile Mbalula then postured incoherently about the attention to his team’s graft, it was obvious that the ‘Diaspora’ fund was meant solely to influence the leader of the Confederation of North, Central America and Caribbean Association Football (Concacaf), Jack Warner, and his U.S. ally Chuck Blazer. The latter received $750,000, but in 2011 began cooperating with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, leading to 2015 prosecutions of FIFA leaders, including Warner.

What had happened, the Sunday Times reported in 2015, citing the words of a FIFA Botswana official who was surreptitiously taped, was that back in 2004, “Warner ‘ditched’ Morocco because the South Africans offered him a bigger bribe.” (The same source, a Botswanan leader within FIFA, claimed that Morocco actually won the vote but Blatter gave it to South Africa anyway.)

At the time, according to reporters from South Africa’s leading investigative journalist network, amaBhungane, “South Africa was acutely aware of the need to get the three votes Concacaf controlled on the Fifa executive and pulled out all the stops to lobby Warner. If there was a secret SA government commitment, as alleged in the US indictment, then it might account for why Jordaan is so angry at being left holding the $10-million baby.”

The profound dishonesty and abuse of public resources for which FIFA became so well known also left smeary reputational damage in its wake. And yet twenty years after South Africa’s bribery of Warner, the three key figures – Mbeki (an often unwelcome political meddler in his own party since his ouster from power in 2008), Jordaan (since 2013, head of the SA Football Association) and Mbalula (since 2021, operational head of the ruling party) – remain influential and extremely controversial, and are still in denial about the implications of spending the $10 million on Warner and Blazer.

Beckenbauer fell ill not long after Spiegel’s 2015 allegations, and then became a recluse, in part because of his son’s painful death but also due to the FIFA scandal. His passing has generated heartfelt, deserved thanks for his on-the-field soccer leadership, and sympathy to be sure – but not enough self-reflection by Germans about his off-field fraud – and about their own role in the world.

Not another genocide?

This was especially evident on January 12, when the Social-Democratic/Green/Liberal coalition government announced it would formally back Israel against South Africa’s genocide charge at the International Court of Justice, becoming the first country to formally join Tel Aviv in the historic case which aims to halt slaughter of more tens of thousands of Palestinians. South Africa’s allies include Brazil, Malaysia, Pakistan, Turkey, Bolivia, Colombia, Jordan and former German colony Namibia – the victim of a 1904-08 genocide. Such open promotion of a Nakba2.0 now occurs in the wake of Germany’s own 1933-45 Nazi extermination of six million Jews and, in South Africa’s next-door neighbour, the near-extermination of the Nam and Herero people.

At a Berlin protest I attended on January 13, several South African flags were waved alongside Palestine’s. One sign asked the obvious question, “Really Germany. Supporting another genocide? How original.”

Likewise, observed South African physician Tlaleng Mofokeng, the UN’s Special Rapporteur on the Right to Health, “The state (Germany) that committed more than one genocide throughout its history is trying to undermine the efforts of a country (South Africa) that is a victim of colonialism and apartheid, to protect another genocide and an occupying nuclear power (Israel).”

Namibian president Hein Gage was furious: “Germany cannot morally express commitment to the United Nations Convention against genocide, including atonement for the genocide in Namibia, whilst supporting the equivalent of a holocaust and genocide in Gaza.”

A culture of corporate greed and corruption

All this reminds how in pre-1994 Apartheid South Africa, prolific profits for West German companies – including military manufacturers Daimler-Benz and Messerschmitt-Bölkow-Blohm, Deutsche Bank, CommerzBank, Hermes Kredit-Versicherungs and Siemens – were remitted to the Frankfurt Stock Exchange, as the country’s core conservative political leadership – especially Helmut Kohl and Franz-Joseph Strauss – openly backed the white fascists into the 1980s. (The East German state was very different, as were progressives in German civil society.)

In the post-Apartheid era, the most decisive German ruling-class attack on South Africans – and the rest of the world – was when Angela Merkel led European opposition to an attempt at the World Trade Organisation to accept intellectual property waivers for Covid-19 vaccines. The campaign, led by Pretoria and backed by more than 100 countries, lasted from October 2020 to June 2022, but in mid-2021 in one showdown in the U.S. Merkel refused to budge, protecting corporate power in general but specifically, as the NGO Health Global Access Project complained in 2021, “she proudly and nationalistically praises Germany’s allegedly homegrown BioNTech and Curvax mRNA vaccines.”

And still today, in the spirit of apartheid profiteering and of Franz Beckenbauer’s role at FIFA, corporate Germany remains rife with corruption, which still regularly leaks into South Africa:

  • Last week, leading German software firm SAPS was successfully prosecuted – and paid $220 million in fines – for bribery of mainly African politicians and officials, including South Africans.
  • The worst-case incident of bribery in South Africa’s energy parastatal Eskom occurred via a ruling-party fundraising firm in 2007, and was coordinated by a German national (Klaus-Dieter Rennert) who still runs Hitachi Power Europe, the incompetent builder of the two largest coal-fired power stations in the world.
  • Auto makers VW, BMW and Mercedes cheated on greenhouse gas emissions during the 2000s, and when this was discovered in 2015 it crashed the platinum price – with South Africa controlling 85% of the metal, used in catalytic converters – leading to a sharp collapse of the mining sector.
  • South Africa’s biggest-ever case of corporate fraud, Steinhoff, reflected the firm’s German roots and founder’s inadequate oversight, as well as German corporate mismanagement during the 2010s.
  • A German facilitator of Israeli genocide in Gaza, military equipment supplier Rheinmettal, still partners with South African arms parastatal Denel, resulting in ongoing ethical controversies and Cape Town production catastrophes.

All these (and other) German firms have caused terrible messes in South Africa, contributing to the local Johannesburg-Durban-Cape Town business elite’s ranking as the world’s most prone to “economic crime and fraud” during the 2010s, according to PwC.

Along with Franz Beckenbauer’s slush-fund legacy and Berlin’s support for Israeli genocide, German elites continually remind the world why such a durable and rancid ruling-class culture deserves, from the rest of us, relentless Red Carding.

German Elites Are Redefining Antisemitism So They Can Be the Victims

Berlin’s cultural senator has announced that public funding for artists will depend on a loyalty oath for Israel. This has nothing to do with fighting antisemitism — it’s actually a smokescreen to cover up for the deep-seated antisemitism of Germany’s establishment.


12/01/2024

On Monday, up to 1,000 artists and cultural workers protested in front of the Berlin parliament. The city’s cultural senator, Joe Chialo of the conservative CDU, has declared that in order to get public funding artists and cultural institutions will need to sign a loyalty oath for the State of Israel, as well as distance themselves from “extremism” and support Israel’s “right to exist.” Chialo believes that the German capital’s cultural scene is full of “hidden antisemitism.” His first action to stop “hidden antisemitism” was shutting down the cultural center Oyoun — they had dared to provide space for an event by the Jewish anti-war group Jüdische Stimme.

This is a disturbing redefinition of the term “antisemitism.” Historically, it has referred to hatred against Jews. According to the German government, however, now any critic of Israel is guilty of antisemitism — just as any supporter of Israel can be a victim of it. This regularly leads to the same bizarre situation: a German politician accusing a Jew of antisemitism. 

I first witnessed this seven years ago. Jutta Dittfurth is a scion of the House of Dittfurth, an aristocratic clan that was heavily involved in the Nazis’ crimes. Today she is an unremarkable right-wing influencer, yet decades ago she was something of a leftist. As recently as 2014, she was speaking at Berlin’s Revolutionary May Day. Not long after that, she declared that the May Day protests had been the site of “antisemitic attacks.” What she meant was that she, a German aristocrat, had defended the State of Israel — and she had been criticized for this by an Israeli Jew. Thus, Dittfurth was “presenting herself as a victim of antisemitism.”

German elites have convinced themselves that they “get” antisemitism in a way that Jews simply can’t. They seem to have gained enlightenment through genocide. An example: When Der Spiegel did a bizarre takedown of Greta Thunberg, the only climate activist in the entire world they could find who didn’t support Palestine was Luisa Neubauer, a leader of Fridays for Future in Germany. Neubauer was ready to accuse the entire climate movement of antisemitism. How does she know? Is she particularly close to Jewish culture? Has she been a scholar of anti-Jewish discrimination? No, the only qualification she referred to is that her great-grandfather from the Reemtsma dynasty was an SS member who donated huge sums to the Nazi party. Inheriting a ton of money from Nazis seemingly offers a unique education in liberal humanist values.

This absurd redefinition now has a basis in German law, since the Bundestag adopted the IHRA definition of antisemitism. More than 100 Israeli and international civil society groups have objected to this standard, and even the author had said it is being inappropriately weaponized, yet the German government claims it understands antisemitism better than anyone else.

You don’t have to be a lawyer to see that the IHRA text is “bewilderingly imprecise.” It defines antisemitism as “a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews.” A “certain perception” could be anything or nothing. Particularly useful to German elites is the idea that antisemitism can be “directed toward Jewish or non-Jewish individuals” (emphasis added).

The IHRA definition is accompanied by eleven examples, some of which are uncontentious: “holding Jews collectively responsible for actions of the state of Israel” or “accusing Jewish citizens of being more loyal to Israel” are two obvious forms of antisemitism. Yet further examples claim that calling the Zionist state racist or undemocratic is equally antisemitic — meaning that Jews around the world protesting on the streets right now are also Jew haters. The IHRA definition describes Israel as the expression of “the Jewish people’s right to self-determination,” thus equating Israel with all Jewish people. Therefore, according to the IHRA definition, the IHRA definition is antisemitic. Given all these logical absurdities, actual scholars of antisemitism have developed a clearer definition that distinguishes between antisemitism and anti-Zionism.

Is the German state simply being overzealous in its crusade against antisemitism? A week ago, a German newspaper revealed that Horst Seehofer supported a revisionist historical association for decades. The ZFI systematically attempted to relativize the crimes of the Wehrmacht and even cast doubt on the facts of the Holocaust. Seehofer, Germany’s former interior minister, is a member of the CDU/CSU, just like Chialo. I reached out to Chialo office’s for comment on this disturbing case of antisemitism. I got no response. As far as I can tell, no politicians have demanded consequences — Seehofer hasn’t even apologized.

The talk of  “hidden antisemitism” is a smokescreen for the deep-seated antisemitism of Germany’s elites. Let’s look at two more examples from the CDU. One of the early leaders of the CDU was Hans Globke, who in 1936 had helped author the Nazis’ Nuremberg Laws. CDU chief Konrad Adenauer protected numerous Nazi war criminals, including Globke. Until today, the party gets big piles of money from the Quandt family, the billionaire heirs of Nazi war criminals. In a very recent scandal, when Nazis and AfD members got together for a secret meeting to plan the “remigration” of millions of people, they were at a hotel owned by CDU member Wilhelm Wilderink, who has provided space for numerous far-right events.

Looking at the list of people affected by censorship and cancellation in Germany, it’s hard to miss the fact that Jewish artists and intellectuals are massively overrepresented. This redefinition of the term “antisemitism” is helping the government attack Jewish life in Germany.

Chialo isn’t interested in antisemitism, whether hidden or open. If he were, he could look at his own party. But this entire campaign is about silencing critics of imperialism, both of German imperialism and its Israeli ally. It’s an attempt to put a liberal veneer on traditional German racism.

Letter from the Editors, 11th January 2024

How we can Stop Apartheid Israel


11/01/2024

Hello everyone,

Our Palestine Reading Group continues tomorrow (Friday). This week, we’ll be trying to answer the question: Who are the Agents who can bring about change? So far, our discussions have been focused on what changes we would like to see in Israel/Palestine, and our vision of what the region could look like at the future. This week we want to be more concrete and ask how we can enforce change. With Palestinians excluded from the Israeli economy and the rulers of the Global North (and elsewhere) actively or passively supporting Israel, how can people who want justice become strong enough to liberate Palestine? As usual, it’s at 7pm in Nansenstraße 2. Follow the link above to find the recommended reading and to register (which helps us know how many people we should expect).

oyoun lives (for now). Tomorrow morning (Friday) at 10pm, there will be a live broadcast in Lucy-Lameck-Str. 32 of South Africa’s genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice. At 2pm, Israelis for Peace have called a demonstration Stop the War at the German foreign ministry, Werdescher Markt 1. At 3pm, students at the FU are live screening a Conversation with Ilan Pappe, at Mosaic Center, Grünewaldstraße 87. And at 7pm there’ll be an mass sit-in for Gaza in Berlin Hauptbahnhof. On Saturday, at 2pm, there’s a demonstration Solidarity with Palestine. Join us and stand up for Palestine! The demo starts at Neptunenbrunnen by Alexanderplatz. On Monday there’s another demonstration Strike is Resistance! Stop the Genocide in Gaza!Join us at the events to help give out leaflets for our coming meeting on Apartheid Israel (see below).

On Saturday, it’s the Rosa Luxemburg Conference, which is held under the motto “Who owns the World?”. This question will reflect the fundamental change in the global balance of power, the upheaval in international relations caused by the rise of the global South – above all the People’s Republic of China as the second largest economic power. It is a shift of hegemony that the previous masters of the world, the US-led NATO states, are trying to counter with increased militarism, the drumming up of war and the instrumentalization of fascism Speakers include Jeremy Corbyn, Mumia Abu-Jamal, and Julia Wright. This year’s conference will be in the larger venue of Berlin’s Tempodrom.

On Sunday morning, it’s the annual Luxemburg.Liebknecht Demo against war and crisis, and for peace and solidarity! Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht were murdered in Berlin on 15th January 1919 by right-wing Freikorps with the approval of the Noskes and Scheidemanns. This is the 105th anniversary of their death. Their fight obliges us to stand up against war and rearmament, against exploitation and social impoverishment. Upholding the legacy of Rosa and Karl – standing up for peace, social justice, the protection of the environment, for internationalism and solidarity – we, leftists of different currents, will jointly and peacefully express our positions and demands on 14th January 2024. The demo starts at 10am at Frankfurter Tor.

We are pleased to announce a third speaker for our meeting on Apartheid Israel. Barbara Schreiner, Executive Director of the Water Integrity Network. Barbara recently reported on visiting Occupied Palestine.  Barbara will be joined by South African activist and academic Patrick Bond, and Palestinian lawyer Nadija Samour. South Africa’s current case against Israel in the International Court of Justice makes the meeting all the more relevant. The meeting is at Café MadaMe, on Mehringplatz 10, just next to U-Bahn Hallesches Tor. It is on Wednesday, 17th January at 7pm. After Barbara, Patrick and Nadija speak, there will be plenty of time for debate. For those of you who can’t make it to the meeting, we will be livestreaming the event at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zBGFvXUUuaY.

There is much more going on in Berlin. To find out what’s happening, go to our Events page. You can also see a shorter, but more detailed list of events in which we are directly involved in here.

This week’s Campaign Of The Week, Arts and Culture Alliance Berlin (ACAB) organised a demonstration this week outside the Berlin Abgeordnetehaus protesting against the Berliner Senat’s decision to refuse funding to any artist who does not support the problematic AHRA definition of antisemitism. This effectively means that any artist in Berlin who criticises Israel risks losing all state funding. ACAB unites artists and their supporters against the recent escalations in the censoring, silencing, defaming, and deplatforming in Germany of those standing up for Palestinian liberation and human rights

In News from Berlin, Berliner Senat denies funding to artists which it accuses of “extremism”, subsidies for Berlin transport are cut because of inadequate service, the state of Berlin uses celebrities to call on people to vote … for a third time, and Berlin teacher fined for comparing COVID shots to the Holocaust.

In News from Germany, Germany’s carbon emissions drop, but experts are cautious, the union for train drivers announces further strikes, large farmers’ demonstration expected in Berlin next Monday, and farmers say that right wingers are not welcome on their demos,

Read all about it in this week’s News from Berlin and Germany.

New on theleftberlin, an interview with former MP Christine Buchholz about the current state of Die LINKE, Phil Butland reports a row of cases of racism in the German Art Scene, we look at the most viewed articles on theleftberlin last year, retired doctor John Puntis defends the NHS, we talk to Majed Abusalama from Palästina Spricht about strategies to build the Palestine solidarity movement in Germany, and we publish a speech by Maria Cofalka from Right2TheCity / Deutsche Wohnen & Co Enteignen from the recent Anmledung für Alle conference.

Last Saturday, the Palestine Museum in the USA had a first screening of the film Germany’s Palestine Problem. Our Video of the Week is the post-screening discussion withe film director Jad Salfiti and a panel of Anna Younes, Sami Khatib, and Maria Fatafta.

You can follow us on the following social media:

If you would like to contribute any articles or have any questions or criticisms about our work, please contact us at team@theleftberlin.com. And please do encourage your friends to subscribe to this Newsletter.

Keep on fighting,

The Left Berlin Editorial Board

News from Berlin and Germany, 10th January 2024

Weekly news round-up from Berlin and Germany


10/01/2024

NEWS FROM BERLIN

Berlin cultural administration introduces anti-discrimination clause

The Berlin Senate Department for Culture and Social Cohesion intends to add an anti-discrimination clause to grants with immediate effect. This measure is intended to strengthen the prevention of discrimination and anti-Semitism. Cultural institutions and funding bodies are responsible for ensuring that no racist, anti-Semitic, queer-hostile or other marginalising forms of expression are promoted with public funds, said Culture Senator Joe Chialo (CDU) in the press release. “Art is free! But not without rules,” he emphasised. All potential recipients of funding should also ensure the funds do not benefit any organisation that is classified as extremist or terrorist. The decision effectively means that any artist in Berlin who criticises the State of Israel could have all state funding removed. Source: rbb

BVG will have subsidies cut after not providing reliable transport services

Transport Minister for Berlin Manja Schreiner (CDU) had announced the Berlin’s CDU-SPD city’s government will withhold almost 9 million euros in subsidies from the Berlin’s public transport association (BVG), due to the transport association’s failure to uphold its side of a contract with the German capital. “As customers we expect the BVG to provide the agreed services”, Schreiner told Berliner Zeitung in an interview. She explained yet that this response is based on two specific disruptions; the atypical timetable and limited U-Bahn services due to a partial-route service on the U6 line. Source: iamexpat

Celebrities should encourage Berliners to vote

In five weeks’ time, on February 11, more than half a million Berliners will be called to vote in the Bundestag election. This day happens also to be the last day of the winter holidays. State electoral officer Stephan Bröchler is concerned about voter turnout and is has launched a campaign. With the help of celebrities, the state of Berlin wants to motivate people to take part in the partial rerun of the Bundestag elections in next February. Bröchler added that there is already an address search function on the state electoral officer’s website “wahlen.berlin.de”. Source: rbb

Berlin teacher fined for comparing COVID vaccines to Holocaust

The Tiergarten Local Court in Berlin court fined a 62-year-old vocational college teacher €3,000 last Thursday for comparing COVID-19 vaccine mandates to the Holocaust. The presiding judge said comparing coronavirus vaccines to the Holocaust “is a trivialisation”. The statement was similar to a ruling quoting a previous decision by the Berlin Higher Regional Court in another similar case. In an online video, the teacher altered the infamous Nazi motto “Arbeit macht frei” for “Impfen macht frei” (“vaccination sets you free.)” Denying the Holocaust is illegal in Germany, as is trivialising the crimes committed under Nazi rule. Source: dw

 

NEWS FROM GERMANY

2023 sees German carbon emissions drop to its lowest level since the 1950s

A study by the energy think tank ‘Agora Energiewende’ revealed 2023 saw Germany’s lowest carbon dioxide emissions since the 1950s. However, experts have said the findings should be looked at more closely. In 2023 Germany emitted 673 million tonnes of carbon dioxide – around 70 million tonnes fewer than in 2022. According to Agora, this brings the country’s 2023 emissions 46 percent lower than in 1990. A reduction in coal-fired power and output by energy-intensive industries were the greatest contributors to the reduction. Source: iamexpat

German rail union plans more strikes

Germany’s GDL train drivers’ union (“Gewerkschaft Deutscher Lokomotivführer“) announced last Sunday further strike action as talks with state-owned rail operator Deutsche Bahn (DB) appeared to be deadlocked. The union had announced a strike in passenger transport starting early Wednesday, Jan 10, and lasting until Friday evening, Jan 12. The two sides have been trying to agree on a deal on working hours, with GDL wanting hours cut from 38 to 35 per week without affecting pay. In addition to shorter working hours, the union GDL is also looking for a pay hike of €555 ($606) per month and an inflation compensation bonus for its members. Source: dw

Farmers take to the streets

The German Farmers’ Association had called for a week of action that will culminate in a large demonstration in Berlin next Monday, Jan 15th. A total of 10,000 participants have been registered, who will in all likelihood arrive in the capital with thousands of tractors. This means that massive traffic obstructions are once again expected in Berlin and surrounding areas. The protests are directed against the traffic light government’s plans to phase out tax breaks for agricultural diesel. The subsidy is to be phased out gradually and will no longer be paid at all from 2026. The federal government launched these plans last Monday. Source: rbb

“We don’t want right-wingers at our demos”

The President of the German Farmers’ Association (“Deutscher Bauernverband” – DBV) Joachim Rukwied has declared the participation of right-wing groups in next week’s farmers’ protests to be undesirable. “We are democrats and political change takes place – if at all – through voting in the polling booth,” said the DBV President. The DBV Association called for this weeks nationwide protests against the federal government’s policies. The farmers’ anger was fuelled by planned cuts in subsidies for the sector in the wake of the budget crisis. Source: tagesschau

Non-Germans, Anmeldung, and Housing Rights

Speech at a recent Anmeldung für Alle conference


Hi everyone, we are from Right to the City, which is the English speaking working group of the Deutsche Wohnen & Co. Enteignen campaign to expropriate the city’s big landlords and socialize housing here in Berlin. 

We started Right to the City because it quickly became apparent that migrants face particular struggles of housing precarity. Our landlords take advantage of us by charging rents well over the market price and leverage other abuses on us because we are often still finding our footing in the completely different legal and linguistic context in this very special place we call Deutschland. 

We also established Right to the City to scandalize the fact that at least 25% of Berlin residents don’t even hold German passports, a necessary prerequisite to vote in the very referendum we were campaigning for. But we migrants are many, and we are determined to be a part of the struggle for housing justice anyway!

And we see the barriers to obtaining Anmeldung-secure living situations as yet another extension of these housing injustices in Berlin. In fact, the difficulties of accessing Anmeldung-possible housing are linked with many of the same issues we are combating through the DWE campaign. 

That’s because multinational corporations like Deutsche Wohnen and Vonovia control the housing market and make their profits by leeching off of us tenants, and these big landlords currently control at least 240,000 flats here in Berlin. They are instrumental in maintaining housing scarcity, hiking rents beyond affordability, discriminating against us migrants, and making it very difficult to secure long term contracts. 

So many of us are pushed into unstable living situations as subletters where Anmeldung is not possible, and increasingly, many more of us are on the brink of homelessness moving from one overpriced, short-term WG to another every couple of months. I’m sure we don’t even have to tell you what this stuff is like to go through, because we’re pretty much all living it! And we have long been thinking about how to address these forms of housing precarity, which is why we are so excited to be included in the planning stages of the Anmeldung für Alle campaign. 

We believe that DWE’s fight for expropriation and Anmeldung für Alle’s fight against these kinds of restrictive bureaucratic hurdles go hand in hand. We also know from DWE’s successful referendum campaign that we are most effective when we stand in the knowledge that we as tenants are united in a common struggle. 

And we will be most successful in taking back our city if we form coalitions that tackle the problem from different angles by mobilizing across all sectors of Berlin’s population – migrants included. Because we ALL have the power – and the right – to shape our city. 

That’s why we are happy to support the Anmeldung für Alle campaign! Thank you ❤️