Recently in Germany Category

This is horrible, but it does seem that anyone, no matter how careful, can have an accident. A silver lining, of a sort, is that this new anti-virus is finally getting human tests.

I hope this Frau gets better. One, even a clumsy genius is still deserving to live. Two, I really hope that the vaccine works and can save even more lives. Three, no one deserves to have Ebola. It is one nasty bug!

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,511096,00.html

BERLIN -- It's a nightmare scenario worthy of a sci-fi movie script: A scientist accidentally pricks her finger with a needle used to inject the deadly Ebola virus into lab mice.

But in this case, it really happened -- to an unidentified 45-year-old woman in Germany.

Within hours of the accident on March 12, several of the scientist's colleagues held a trans-Atlantic telephone conference to map out a way to save her life.

Within 24 hours, an experimental vaccine -- never before tried on humans -- was on its way to Germany from a lab in Canada.

Within 40 hours, the at-risk scientist was injected with the vaccine.

So far, so good. If the woman is still healthy on April 2, she can consider herself safe.

It's not a 100 percent certainty the researcher was actually infected with Ebola.

If she doesn't become infected, scientists may not know if it was the vaccine, or luck.

The Nazis have been trying to regain power since they had their butts kicked all those years ago. The failure of socialism to cure the woes of Eastern Europe after communism collapsed has only exasperated the issues that caused the rise of National Socialism in the first place. Something has to give soon or the West will collapse. I pray that we can survive that.

http://uk.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idUKTRE5231M820090304

BERLIN (Reuters) - German police have launched a nationwide search of more than 200 homes and businesses of people suspected of belonging to the country's extreme right, the Federal Crime Office (BKA) said Wednesday.

"The primary aim of the concerted action by crime fighting authorities is to seize and confiscate prohibited items like music in order to move effectively and extensively against the spread of right wing extremism," the BKA said in a statement.

More than 60 years after World War Two and the Nazi Holocaust, right-wing radicalism is still a problem in Germany, particularly in the former communist eastern part of the country where unemployment is nearly double the rate in the west.

The BKA said last year that neo-Nazis appeared to have shifted their tactics and stepped up violent attacks. Government figures show anti-Semitic crimes rose at the end of last year.

The BKA said the search began earlier Wednesday and was being carried out in all 16 federal states. A BKA spokeswoman could not say for now if any arrests had been made.

So, the unrepentant terrorist gets released early and gets moved to a quiet location where his neighbors won't know to watch his murderous and evil soul as he plots new attacks. Sounds reasonable.

I know I would be worried about people being upset at having a murderer housed near them and their family instead of in a jail where he belongs. I think the best place to keep him is in the home of the lawyer's kids who defended him. Obviously, the defenders will enjoy housing these guys and having the State provide funds for this care while the "innocent" guys finds honest work. Like blowing up a school or church.

In Liberal lands, like Europe and most of North America, a killer like this is allowed to live with hidden among our families to protect the killer from the vengeance of those he has mocked and slaughtered. In Conservative lands, like most of the world, especially the poor areas, scum like this are allowed to live long enough to load a new clip in the rifle. The US is divided about which way to go, but the Liberal side is winning.

I think we need to find a way to keep these unrepentant criminals from ever being able to rejoin society. We can either do it with prisons or deaths. I know which seems cheaper, easier and less likely to have an escape. Is there a better way?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/dec/19/christian-klar-red-army-faction-germany

German terrorist leader freed after 26 years Christian Klar, who killed nine people as head of the Red Army Faction, was taken to a secret location

* Kate Connolly in Berlin
* guardian.co.uk, Friday 19 December 2008 13.31 GMT
* Article history

A former leader of the Red Army Faction (RAF) - the far left organisation that launched terror attacks across Germany in the 1970s and 80s - has been freed from prison after 26 years.

Christian Klar, 56, was released from Bruchsal prison close to the southern city of Karlsruhe, in the early hours of today to avoid media attention.

His lawyer, Heinz-Jürgen Schneider, said Klar had been taken to a secret location. "It's now up to him to decide what he does and where," Schneider said. But he added that speculation Klar would now "do the rounds" of Germany's chatshows was "absurd".

Klar was convicted in 1985 for his involvement in nine murders in 1977, including the killings of bank head Jürgen Ponto, industrialist Hanns-Martin Schleyer and federal prosecutor Siegfried Buback. He was sentenced to six life terms to run concurrently and served longer in prison than any other RAF terrorist.

His release comes several weeks earlier than expected, in lieu of holidays accrued while he worked in the prison.

The families of Klar's victims have long called for him to show repentance for the killings, although this was not a condition of his release. They have also appealed for him to reveal details of the killings committed in the name of the RAF - also known as the Baader-Meinhof gang after its first generation of leaders - which grew out of German student protests against the Vietnam war, and only disbanded in 1998.

But Hanns-Eberhard Schleyer, whose father was shot dead by the RAF, said he did not expect Klar to show any remorse.

"The RAF terrorists were horrible criminals ... Even if they showed repentance, you wouldn't be able to accept it from people who treat others in such a brutal and contemptuous way," he said.

Following Klar's release, the only remaining RAF terrorist still behind bars is Birgit Hogefeld, 52, who has been in prison since 1993 for her involvement in the murder of a US soldier in a bomb attack on the US air base in Frankfurt in 1985. Germany's president, Horst Köhler, refused to grant her early release last year amid a huge public protest.

Klar's life after his release has been the focus of much speculation. But it is considered likely that he will take up a post as a backstage hand at the Berlin theatre's Berliner Ensemble, following an invitation by its chief director, Claus Peymann.

Last year former terrorist Brigitte Mohnhaupt, who was released after 24 years, went to work at a petrol station in Karlsruhe. Other former RAF terrorists have become teachers, writers and accountants.

You really need to go and read the full story and follow the links that Linda has on her site. This made me almost cry and I don't do that!

Just go read it. It would be sullied by my attempts to add to it.

http://www.lindasog.com/archives/2008/11/it_came_from_within.html

Seventy years ago, on November 9, 1938, Nazis looted and burned synagogues as well as Jewish-owned stores and houses in Germany and Austria in what became known as "Kristallnacht."

The term "Kristallnacht" ('Night of Broken Glass") refers to the organized anti-Jewish riots in Germany and Austria, November 9-10, 1938. These riots marked a major transition in Nazi policy, and were, in many ways, a harbinger of the "Final Solution."