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Berlin ‘robber-losers’ wanted winnings without winning!

Thursday, March 11th, 2010

 

Berlin  10-03-2010

The growing awareness of the travesty of our corrupt financial institutions is slowly taking away all incentive to invest in traditional markets. For that reason perhaps poker, specifically Texas Hold ‘Em is quickly becoming the new game of the new century.

 At least this way you know what your odds are and have equal chances to win, as opposed to playing the market against Goldman S(ucks)achs where we the public seem to lose every time.

If we follow this to its logical conclusion the events of Saturday’s robbery of the European Poker Tournament at the Grand Hyatt Hotel at Potsdamer Platz in Berlin are refreshingly old fashioned, hearkening back to kinder gentler times, when we at least knew who the criminals were!

Four suspects are wanted in the brazen daylight robbery and the possibility of two more accomplices is also being looked into. 

Considering the security and amount of cameras which are to be found in and around the hotel it was pretty loose playing for this quartet to imagine an all in bet like this would pay off. 

The robbery took place at 14:15 as the four entered the tournament armed with a machete and handguns. The target was the safe behind the registration table whose contents, by some accounts, held over 4 million Euro.  Though it was over in a matter of minutes there was nothing smooth about it.

As the suspects were fleeing a security guard took down one of the robbers in a choke hold forcing his accomplices to come back to his rescue, threatening the guard with a machete.  More embarrassing still a hotel intern managed to wrestle away one of the bags of money limiting the pot that the robbers “won” to 250,000 Euro.

Over 900 players took part in the tournament and the buy ins were between 300 Euro all the way up to 10,000 Euro for the high roller game.  Seven people were injured in the incident but no one seriously. 

The police believe they have a good chance of apprehending the four considering aforementioned video footage and the number of witnesses.  

The caper caused the Tournament to pause for a few hours but the players eventually returned to the game.

contributed by Mr B. Brahms

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Berlin and Brussels criticize Israel over East Jerusalem

Wednesday, March 10th, 2010

 

Berlin  09-03-2010

The German government – along with the EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton- has criticized the Israeli decision to build more Jewish homes on occupied Palestinian land saying it would hinder planned ‘peace talks’.  

The German Foreign Ministry on Wednesday voiced sharp criticism of an Israeli decision to approve the building of new homes on occupied land in East Jerusalem.

Germany  supports Israel’s right to exist and feels a special responsibility to it in light of the Holocaust and  has been very reluctant and  unwilling- many would say too reluctant and unwilling- to criticize the country over its relations with the Palestinians. However good friends should be critical in important matters – and this is very important.

The decision to build the homes, in a strongly Jewish Orthodox neighborhood near to a Palestinian village was announced on Tuesday – a day after the announcement that indirect Israeli-Palestinian peace talks, brokered by US Vice President Joe Biden, had been agreed.

It has been revealed that the US envoy was so enraged by this personal affront that he ended up being 90 minutes late for a state dinner hosted by Netanyahu, the bellicose Israeli PM and no friend of the Obama administration.

Israel had previously called a Moratorium on building any homes in the occupied West Bank.  

However, this did not include East Jerusalem which Israel seized by force in 1967   and later ‘annexed’ [permanently stole] in a move that no one internationally has recognized.

Relations between Israel and the EU, never very close, were recently strained even more after a murder in Dubai of a Hamas official – for which forged passports from EU countries including Germany were used. 

There is a strong and credible link leading to the Israeli secret service ‘Mossad’ as the perpetuator of this crime.

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Police still looking for ‘cocky’ Berlin Poker-bandits

Tuesday, March 9th, 2010

 

Berlin  09-03-2010

Berlin police were left hunting yesterday for four hooded bandits who stormed a poker tournament in the city centre of Berlin Potsdamer Platz and stole about 210,000 Euro in a brazen and cocky daylight robbery.

Four armed men ran into the 1000 player ‘European Poker Tour’ event at the Grand Hyatt Berlin -two of the four men were armed, one with a machete and one with a revolver, police have said, and they were not part of the kitchen staff.

The police were analyzing some camera footage taken during the crime, and one of the surveillance cameras outside the hotel caught one robber without his mask, but only from behind.

Based on this masterfull evidence the police are now looking for “ a man with dark hair, wearing a leather jacket, pants and shoes” – which describes about ¼ of Berlin.

 The police have faulted organizers for not hiring enough guards but also admitted that this type of crime is very seldom in Berlin.

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Berlin + Paris Propose EMF – ‘ European Monetary Fund’

Tuesday, March 9th, 2010

 

Berlin/Paris    09-03-2010

Germany and France are proposing the creation of a European Monetary Fund which would mirror the activities of the International Monetary Fund, but then only for the European Union.

The EMF  proposal comes on the heals of the financial crisis EU-member Greece is experiencing – a deficit which is estimated at 12 percent of the country’s gross domestic product this year.

Fears of a default caused by Greece’s debt has caused the value of the Euro to decline by almost 5 percent in recent weeks.

Having an EMF would limit disruption caused by default of any single Euro zone member through the issuance of new debt backed by the fund – in laymans terms it is the EU’s way of saying “ currency speculators piss-off’!

A supporter to the EMF proposal thus far is the IMF head Dominique Strauss-Khan and Jean-Claude Junker PM of Luxembourg.

There has been a deafening silence from “The City” London and Wall Street – the two neighbourhoods where most of the scavenger-speculators operate- who have the most to lose from a unified Euro zone.

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Sinsiter Auschwitz-Birkenau Gate sign Is Stolen

Saturday, December 19th, 2009

Berlin 18-12-2009 

Polish police have said that the iron sign over the gate to the Auschwitz-Birkenau memorial with the  now famous humiliating phrase ‘Arbeit macht frei’   has been stolen.

The police believe it was taken between 3 a.m. and 5 a.m. in the early morning and yet do not know whether it was a result of vandalism with a political motive or just the more stupid, mind-less random type of youth vandalism.

The local authorities have launched an intensive search and because of the huge international attention to the occurrence the pressure will be on to find the perpetrators.

The cynical and ignominious sign in English, ‘Work will mean freedom’  -was supposed to make prisoners think that it was anything but a death-camp.

It was put up in May 1940 when the camp was built and more than a million people who walked under it later died during its 4 ½ years of existence.

Its victims were mainly Jewish – men, women and children. It also included scores of Polish and Soviet political prisoners,  homosexuals, people with disabilities,  and Roma.

The camp was liberated as was most of Poland by the Red Army in January 1945.

Recently an agreement had been reached in Berlin to pay for up to 60 million Euro to the Auschwitz-Birkenau Foundation to help maintain the memorial and its museum on the site.      

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German finance minister Schauble warns of fiscal crackdown – Tax Cut Plan of Merkel’s Government not well recieved – Greece’s problems make Germany look good

Friday, December 18th, 2009

Berlin  18 –12 –2009

Wolfgang Schäuble, Germany’s finance minister, has warned of a severe fiscal crackdown after the immediate effects of the economic crisis are over, and has said that combating a budget deficit in these times could not be done using old conventional means.

Experts have been sharply critical of the planned tax cut legislation by Germany’s coalition government of conservative CDU and the pro-business FDP.

Mr Schäuble presented his draft 2010 federal budget which predicts a   federal deficit of 86 billion Euro. This is somewhat less than had been predicted but almost previous record high of 1996.

The Merkel government faces a severe challenge from 2011 onward because of fiscal rules which it itself had enshrined into the German constitution and will force it to cut spending every year until 2016. [ouch!]

Fighting this deficit will require a great effort the finance minister has said and comes during the government’s declared determination to prepare the public for unpopular spending cuts that could even erode Germany’s generous welfare system.

Hopefully the billions being wasted on a futile Afghani Nato mission with no future,- including paying compensation in millions of Euros for German caused civilian deaths- will recieve as close scrutiny as domestic cost cutting.

It is still not sure if this particular tax package could obtain the majority required in the upper house of parliament in which Germany’s 16 regional ‘Lander’ governments are represented, to become law.

By comparison, Germany’s government finances have not been hit as hard as some of other EU members by the international economic crisis.

Misery loves company, and as a small comfort, Greece provided it.

By comparison the fiscal problems in Greece are even worse than the German ones and the German finance minister has advised Greece to take a hard and difficult line to implement public austerity programs.

Greece has been struggling with a rising public budget deficit that is forecast to reach 13% of GDP for 2009. This is a record for countries in the euro zone and well above the 3% budget deficit limit set by the EU budget rules.

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Very Surprisingly… Hertha Berlin qualify for European League

Friday, December 18th, 2009

 Berlin    18-12-2009

Hertha Berlin football club came from the very depths of the Bundesliga – to everyone’s’ dismay – yesterday and defeated Sporting Lisbon 1-0 to become one of the last 32 teams remaining in the Europa League.

The only goal and the winner came in the 70th minute from Hertha midfielder Nicu who passed into the box where Kacar put it easily into the Lisbon net at very close range.

Hertha was able to sit on this slim lead until the end of the game to seal its place in the rest of the Europa League. Lisbon already qualified for the knockout round.

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A400M military transport makes its first flight

Wednesday, December 16th, 2009

Berlin 11-Dec-2009

The EADS/Airbus A400M military transport  took off for the first time today in Seville Spain, a good sign that Europe’s largest defence  project is literally off the ground.

The A400M was launched in 2003 with an order for 180 planes from seven governments and is now 4 years late. partly because of engine-development issues.There is a risk that the program may be cancelled  after Airbus/EADS missed  contractual deadlines to fly the plane earlier this year, which has now given the governments the right to cancel the program.

Such a move would be a disaster for EADS/Airbus which might have to repay 6 billion Euros  it has already received from the governments.

Over the past few months EADS/Airbus and the governments have met twice in Berlin to renegotiate the terms of the original contract, but with so much at stake, no one is yet commenting on the results.

Watch this space.  

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Air Strike Blunder continues to stalk Merkel government

Monday, December 14th, 2009

A disagreement over a deadly airstrike in Afghanistan this September hangs heavily over the newly elected coalition government of German Chancellor Angela Merkel. It may yet prove to be the undoing of her previously held support to meet a US request to send more German troops.

Germany presently has 4,500 soldiers in the country.

The botched airstrike on two fuel trucks – which had been hijacked by Taliban insurgents – killed circa 100 people including 40 to 50 civilians.

Ms. Merkel’s government is under severe pressure by the press and opposition politicians to come clean, following newly leaked revelations about the airstrike in Kunduz, northern Afghanistan. Her government is being accused of covering up its role in the airstrike during the German election.

It is an unwelcome mess dropped onto the lap of the new Defense Minister Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg. He is a rising star of German conservatism who justified the attack until last week but now has changed his view after recent Nato leaks.

These have proved that the German military knew all along of the civilian casualties but pretended not to have known.

It has also been revealed today that Germany wants to pay compensation to the families of victims of the US airstrike which a commander in the German army had ordered in Afghanistan. The government says it has opened negotiations to deal with claims by 78 Afghan families. This at time of stringent cutbacks in public spending domestically and this at time when the whole involvement of Germany in Afghanistan is being repeatedly questioned.

The “Christian Social Union”, the CSU, itself a coalition partner, has also recently come out against sending more troops to Afghanistan.

Germany’s involvement in Afghanistan has always been and remains controversial and unpopular.

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Berlin publisher wants to get paid for newspapers on–line content

Sunday, December 13th, 2009

Berlin 09-12-2009

Axel Springer AG , based in Berlin released its first fee-based online products yesterday, the publisher announced.

The internet has become a double whammy for classic print-newspapers because they are losing print subscribers to their on-line sites, at the same time most people reason that online news should be free and remain  free.

Springer, which publishes the largest selling daily in Europe – Bild –  along with other newspapers in Germany, is attempting to do the impossible and get newspapers to get paid for newspaper web-sites on the Internet.

Rupert Murdoch, owner of ‘News Corp.’ has been calling for “pay walls” for his newspapers’ web sites. Other large English papers  like the ‘New York Times’ – owner of the in Paris published ‘International Herald Tribune’- have indicated they might consider charging for online access.

While these large monopolies presently continue to dominate news distribution, by restricting their products on-line, they face the very real danger – and to them deadly -challenge of smaller local on-line competitors taking them on.

The Springers and the Murdochs don’t much like this trend  of smaller competitors gaining a foothold in their territory- competitors they will not be able to control.

The slogan “power to the people” -in this sense a real democratization of news-media -is anathema, a bane, a real curse to them.

By trying to squeeze even more profits out of their present monopolistic empires, they may in fact be creating the circumstances for their own downfall - which is long overdue.

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