NEWS FROM BERLIN
CDU wants to put Berlin’s Left Party under surveillance
The CDU in Neukölln considers that parts of the Berlin Left Party should be monitored by the Office for the Protection of the Constitution due to purported Israel hate and antisemitism. The Left Party had already been monitored by the Office for the Protection of the Constitution for several years in the past. The current trigger was a report in the Tagesspiegel: the newspaper showed how closely the Neukölln left-wingers are interwoven with the pro-Palestinian movement. In addition, the district association openly sympathises with Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood. Source: bz
Berlin’s cultural scene defends itself with actions against cost-cutting plans
Berlin’s cultural scene organised a day of action last Wednesday to warn of impending budget cuts and their dramatic consequences. Numerous institutions – including theatres, museums and libraries – expressed their protest with red and white fluttering tape, banners or interrupted performances under the motto #BerlinIstKultur. The Deutsche Theater, the Volksbühne, the Zentral- und Landesbibliothek Berlin (ZLB), the Berliner Ensemble, the Schaubühne, the Deutsches Technikmuseum and the Friedrichstadtpalast, among others, took part in the day of action, by cancelling performances or showing empty shelves outside public libraries. Source: rbb24
Finally online Anmeldung in Berlin
Anyone who has moved to Berlin is familiar with the struggle of getting an appointment at the Bürgeramt in time to meet the two-week deadline for the address registration. The newly introduced online process, however, is about to change that. Since last week, e-registration has been available. With more than 500,000 applications each year, registering a new apartment is one of the most frequently used administrative services offered by the German capital. The new online service is free of charge and only requires a user account and an online ID card. Source: theberliner
Cycle path dispute in Berlin escalates
Hundreds of residents in Berlin’s Kantstraße are threatened with losing their homes. The background to this is a long-running conflict over the pop-up cycle path, which was installed in 2020. Christoph Brzezinski (CDU), the district councillor for Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf, announced that the building inspectorate would begin delivering letters announcing a ban on use from 1 November. All residents from the third floor upwards will be affected. The reason: the current division of the road is obstructing the fire brigade. The parking lane between the cycle lane and the carriageway means that ladders cannot be set up safely in an emergency. Source: welt
NEWS FROM GERMANY
Boost in arms export licences to Israel
In the past eight weeks, the German government has authorised arms exports worth around 31 million euros for Israel. This is more than twice as much as in the first seven and a half months of the year. It is unclear whether the authorised goods include weapons of war. The Ministry does not provide any information on this, citing the confidentiality of decisions made by the Federal Security Council. The report does mention categories of goods including ammunition, bombs and warships. However, instead of licenses for arms deliveries, these may also be licenses for the delivery of spare parts. Source: msn
U-turn in German policy towards Turkey
Arms exports to Turkey have long been a taboo subject for the German government. But when Federal Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD) appeared before the press last Saturday together with President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, he acted as if such concerns had never existed. “Turkey is a member of NATO, and that’s why we always make decisions that result in concrete deliveries,” he said at the Dolmabahçe Palace in Istanbul. The Turkish newspaper Yeni Şafak reported that a team from the consortium that manufactures the Typhoon Eurofighter arrived in Turkey for around three weeks of technical talks. Source: faz
Germany inaugurates new NATO HQ on the Baltic Sea
Germany launched a new multinational naval tactical headquarters in Rostock. From there, the Command Task Force (CTF) Baltic headquarters will coordinate naval activities for all NATO allies on the Baltic Sea. There is an existing command staff at the Rostock Naval Command, which already works together with various countries but will in the future perform additional tasks for NATO according to the German Ministry of Defense, Boris Pistorius (SPD). The facility’s establishment underlines the importance of the Baltic Sea for NATO after relations with Russia worsened following the Ukraine war. Source: dw
At the centre of the shitstorm
A week ago, the Israeli army bombed a tent city on the grounds of a hospital in the centre of Gaza. Images of patients burning to death in their beds went around the world. The US organisation Jewish Voice for Peace shared a picture of this horrific scene on social media with the polemical comment: “This is Zionism.” SPD politician Aydan Özoğuz subsequently shared this post on Instagram. Since then, she has been at the centre of a storm of outrage that refuses to die down, despite calls for her resignation from the CDU/CSU, the FDP and the Bild newspaper. Source: taz
