[Nettime-bold] DE: At least 7500 demonstrating against the war

[till@tillwe.de (Till Westermayer)]

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . till we *) . . .

Hi nettime-l,

some news from Germany: this weekend there were at least 7500  
demonstrating against the (coming?) war in Berlin, Köln and Freiburg (and  
maybe more in other cities I don't know of). Opinion polls suggest that a  
(small) majority of the population says yes to a German military  
contribution. Whereas normally the Bundestag has to agree for using the  
Bundeswehr (army) out-of-area, it seems that in this case the Bundestag  
will be informed and called to vote on this issue only *after* the actual  
military raids, because of the 'special situation'. On the other hand  
there seems to be a big majority in Bundestag parliament for military  
attacks with German 'help'; the opposition partys Christian Democrates  
(CDU) and Free Democrats (FDP) will vote for hard, militarian politics  
(and demand more money for the Bundeswehr), so the governing Social  
Democrats (SPD) and chancellor Schröder will have enough votes in the  
Bundestag, even if the smaller government party, The Greens, won't give  
all their votes to a german contribution to the war. The leftist  
opposition party Socialistic Democrats (PDS) will say no. At the moment,  
the Greens are discussing this issue very intensly -- coming from a  
pacifistic movement as well as from an ecological movement, a lot of long- 
time party members don't feel well with a military answer on terroristic  
attacks; some of the green parliament members voted no or absent alrady to  
an declaration of solidarity with the US which included military help. The  
state Green parties in two of the 16 Bundesländer (Berlin and Rheinland- 
Pfalz) declared they are against any military action, as well as many  
members of the party. And even the majority in the party, who isn't  
against any military action, won't support carpet bombings, etc. There are  
speculations that this decision will either end the red-green coalition  
government or force a splitting of the Green party.

Till Westermayer, 2001-09-22
 __ .
 / / / /                            ... Till Westermayer - till we *)
. .
  . mailto:till@tillwe.de http://www.westermayer.de/till/index.htm
  . Habsburgerstr. 82 . 79104 Freiburg . 0761 55697152 . 0170 9554960
  . . . . .


_______________________________________________
Nettime-bold mailing list
Nettime-bold@nettime.org
http://www.nettime.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/nettime-bold