Category: EU Members

European Council decided to open accession negotiations with Turkey on 17 Dec. 2004

  • Turkey, with help from Germany, to become ‘submarine manufacturer’

    Turkey, with help from Germany, to become ‘submarine manufacturer’

    Special to World Tribune

    INTELLIGENCE BRIEFING

    ANKARA — Turkey has launched a project to produce an advanced naval submarine.

    Turkey’s Defense Ministry and Navy have been working with Germany in the coproduction of four electric-diesel submarines. The coproduction effort has taken place with Germany’s ThyssenKrupp for the Type 214 submarine.

    “This is a huge project that will make Turkey into a submarine manufacturer,” an official said.

    The submarine project was expected to cost about $2.5 billion. Officials said the first platform could be delivered to the Navy in 2015.

    The Navy has been building three of the submarines in Turkey. Officials said Turkey would also help design electronic subsystems for the underwater platforms.

    Turkey has been engaged in several major naval projects. One called for the assembly of up to 11 small frigates in a project estimated at $2 billion.

    http://www.worldtribune.com/worldtribune/WTARC/2010/me_turkey0873_09_08.asp. September 8, 2010

  • Police search Sarkozy party HQ in L’Oreal investigation

    Police search Sarkozy party HQ in L’Oreal investigation

    MP party chief Xavier Bertrand says that police searched the party headquarters in Paris on Wednesday as part of their ongoing investigation into the alleged involvement of Labour Minister Eric Woerth in the L’Oreal scandal.

    French police probing a party financing scandal linked to L’Oreal heiress Liliane Bettencourt have searched the headquarters of President Nicolas Sarkozy’s majority UMP, the party said Thursday.

    Police from the financial investigations squad searched the Paris headquarters on Wednesday afternoon, the party’s leader Xavier Bertrand said, in the latest development of the months-long scandal.

    Several judicial investigations are under way into affairs linked to Bettencourt’s fortune, including allegations of tax evasion and illegal campaign funding that have implicated Labour Minister Eric Woerth.

    The party’s director general Eric Cesari told AFP the police had come to look for “correspondance between Eric Woerth and Patrice de Maistre”, the manager of Bettencourt’s 17-billion-euro (22-billion-dollar) fortune.

    Woerth was previously UMP treasurer and head fundraiser for Sarkozy’s 2007 presidential campaign. He has been accused of a conflict of interest because his wife worked for Maistre, helping manage the billionairess’s estate.

    Woerth denies any wrongdoing but has been politically weakened and the long-running investigation has undermined his and Sarkozy’s attempt to push through pensions reform.

    Cesari said police had announced their visit and spent an hour a half at the headquarters checking archives, but did not take anything with them.

    Police told AFP the search was ordered by a prosecutor in the western Paris suburb of Nanterre who is investigating various aspects of Bettencourt’s affairs and allegations implicating Woerth.

    The magazine Paris Match reported on its website that investigators were searching for a letter sent by Woerth to Sarkozy in March 2007 in which Woerth called for Maistre to receive France’s top state honour, the Legion d’Honneur.

    France 24

  • Merkel honours Danish Muhammad cartoonist Westergaard

    Merkel honours Danish Muhammad cartoonist Westergaard

    German Chancellor Angela Merkel has defended Danish cartoonist Kurt Westergaard, whose cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad caused anger in 2006.

    A depiction of Muhammad’s turban as a fused bomb sparked global outrage when it was published in Denmark.

    Kurt Westergaard (left) with Chancellor Merkel and German politician Joachim Gauck (centre)

    Presenting him with a press freedom award, Mrs Merkel said Mr Westergaard was entitled to draw his caricatures.

    “Europe is a place where a cartoonist is allowed to draw something like this,” she said.

    “We are talking here about the freedom of opinion and the freedom of the press,” Ms Merkel said at the ceremony in the German city of Potsdam.

    The offending cartoon – which led to a groundswell of Muslim anger in many countries around the world – was one of 12 first published by Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten in 2005.

    ‘Place of freedom’

    Mrs Merkel, who grew up in communist East Germany, added that German people clearly remembered the implications of a lack of freedom and should therefore cherish it.

    “It’s about whether in a Western society with its values he [Mr Westergaard] is allowed to publish his Muhammad cartoons, or not. Is he allowed to do it? Yes he is,” Ms Merkel said.

    She described Europe as a place that respects and values the freedom of belief and religion.

    Dozens of people died in violence that broke out in early 2006, months after Jyllands-Posten published the cartoons showing Muhammad in a variety of humorous or satirical situations. Muslims regard the depiction of the prophet as blasphemy.

    The M100 media prize committee praised Kurt Westergaard for what it said was his “courage” to defend democratic values despite threats of violence and death.

    Security was tight at Sanssouci palace in Potsdam where the cartoonist told reporters: “Maybe they will try to kill me and maybe they will have success, but they cannot kill the cartoon.”

    Speaking at the award ceremony Ms Merkel also described as “abhorrent” a plan by US pastor Terry Jones to burn copies of the Koran on Saturday, the ninth anniversary of the 11 September terror attacks.

    She said she found the idea disrespectful and “simply wrong”.

    ‘Risky decision’

    A police sniper near Sanssouci palace in Potsdam, 8 September 2010

    Mrs Merkel’s decision to speak at the event about press freedom has caused some surprise in Germany.

    One newspaper said she was taking “a huge risk”.

    Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung said that the effect of having a photograph taken with Kurt Westergaard was incalculable, describing it as “probably be the most explosive appointment of her chancellorship so far”.

    Germany’s Central Muslim Council (ZMD) criticised Ms Merkel for attending the award ceremony.

    A ZMD spokesman, Aiman Mazyek, told public broadcaster Deutschlandradio that the Chancellor was honouring someone “who in our eyes kicked our prophet, and therefore kicked all Muslims”.

    He said giving Mr Westergaard the prize in a “highly charged and heated time” was “highly problematic”.

    In recent weeks Germany has seen a highly charged debate over immigration, partly set off by the publication of a book by a board member of the German central bank, Thilo Sarrazin.

    In the book Mr Sarrazin, who is also a member of the Social Democratic Party (SPD) attacked what he describes as a failure of Muslims living in the Germany to integrate.

    BBC

  • Turkey Joins Europe, Electrically Speaking

    Turkey Joins Europe, Electrically Speaking

    Turkey may be frustrated in its bid to become part of the European Union, but by the end of September, it will join Europe’s electric grid.

    Most systems in continental Europe have synchronized currents that allow electricity to flow from country to country. Turkey, shown in red, has remained separate but now plans to connect.

    Most electric systems in continental Europe — including those in countries like Poland and Romania — have synchronized currents, allowing electricity to flow easily from country to country. But other nations, including Great Britain, Norway, Sweden, Finland and until now, Turkey, have remained separate.

    Turkey has been trying to connect for 10 years. Like Europe, it uses an alternating current, with the electrons dancing back and forth 50 times a second, but its system has been out of phase with the European grid.

    Now, after extensive work by General Electric to enable Turkey’s system to connect, the country will join up for a one-year trial, according to theEuropean Network of Transmission System Operators for Electricity.

    The synchronization will include careful monitoring of the alternating current around Turkey and the ability to remotely monitor and control power plants — or even to dump electrical load – if Turkey’s phasing strays too far from Europe’s. If the marching bands start to disagree altogether, the systems can separate again.

    Turkey’s electric links run to Bulgaria and Greece, and they have recently been upgraded to carry more energy. A result will be one of the largest interconnected grids in the world, said Luis M. Perez, a General Electric engineer involved in the project.

    The join-up also has potentially positive implications for the environment, Mr. Perez said in a telephone interview from Spain.

    Turkey, he said, has a lot of hydroelectric projects. In a wet year, it may have more hydro power than it can use; now that power can be exported. And as Europe adds intermittent renewable sources, like wind and solar, a hydroelectric system can function as a convenient shock absorber, throttling back or starting up very quickly to offset variations from other power sources.

    Synchronizing with Europe also has positive economic effects, because it will improve the stability of the Turkish grid, according to G.E. The company would not disclose the cost of its work there.

    At some point, a technician will enter some keystrokes on a computer, and some electrical switches will move and make the connection to Europe. G.E. is not saying exactly when that join-up will take place.

    The Newyork Times

  • Germany’s Political Trap

    Germany’s Political Trap

    Aygül Özkan
    by Mike Giglio, Germany
    Cabinet appointments in lower saxony normally don’t receive much attention. But political success is rare for minorities in Germany, and in April, Aygül Özkan—a little-known politician of Turkish descent—was heralded as a trailblazer for becoming the state’s social-affairs minister. Her quick fall from grace shows how calcified Germany’s system remains against candidates of immigrant descent. The tide began turning against Özkan when she told a German magazine that crucifixes (and other religious symbols, such as headscarves) don’t belong in state-run schools, an opinion shared by Germany’s highest court. The statement led to a media firestorm; members of Özkan’s party—Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservative Christian Democratic Union—rushed to denounce the remarks. Then, in July, she caused another PR fiasco by asking journalists to sign a contract promising supportive coverage of her department’s affairs. Her appointment has since been roundly declared a flop.

    The young politician has found herself ensnared in a trap that plagues many minority candidates, says Turkish-German author Mely Kiyak. In addition to letting race and religion (Özkan is Muslim) define her term, Özkan has come across as a neophyte unworthy of her promotion. “There is a cliché, and she made the cliché,” Kiyak says. But Kiyak also criticizes the CDU for hanging Özkan out to dry. Özkan’s appointment was expected to help the party reach out to Germany’s growing segment of ethnic minorities, now 18 percent of the population. Now it has cautiously pulled away its support. “No one is protecting her,” Kiyak says.

    Like minority politicians elsewhere in the EU, such as France’s Rachida Dati—who weathered her own PR storms after receiving a key cabinet post—ethnic Turkish politicians in Germany are often isolated from the pack. During elections, for example, they tend to land in so-called alibi spots—on the party lists somewhere, but out of reach of a seat. Only 21 of the 612 members of the Bundestag have an immigrant background. Two years ago, when veteran pol Cem Özdemir rose to become co-chair of the German Green Party, its leadership denied him an expected Bundestag seat. Özdemir has since kept a low profile. He also keeps his Turkish heritage in the background, addressing hot-button immigration issues such as education in terms of class instead of race—a path ethnic Turkish politicians are too often forced to take.

    https://www.newsweek.com/isolation-germanys-immigrant-pols-71263, August 30, 2010

  • German central banker Thilo Sarrazin echoes Nazis with blatant racism

    German central banker Thilo Sarrazin echoes Nazis with blatant racism

    Thilo Sarrazin sits on the board of Germany’s conservative Central Bank and has worked for the IMF, and so when he makes racist remarks about Jews and Muslims, you can be pretty sure he is making them with the blessing of the entire German power elite.

    nazi gun

    The big guns of the country’s corporate media, Bild and Spiegel newspapers, have devoted acres of print to Sarrazin’s racist views, and his book on „immigration“ and „integratin“ has just been published by Bertelsmann in a fanfare of publicity.

    Caught red-handed trying to inject their own population with toxic swine flu vaccines as well as  wrecking the economy with an engineered financial crisis and now facing an awakening among the German people thanks to the alternative media, the German branch of Bilderberg elite, including their corporate media arm, are desperate to play the race card to divide and conquer and, above all, divert attention away from themselves.

    Sarrazin’s remarks that all “Jews share a certain gene…which make them different from other people” were made in an interview with Germany’s “Welt am Sonntag” this Sunday.

    In the politically correct atmosphere of Germany, the blatant racism of Sarrazin is theclearest sign yet that the German elite are modelling themselves on the Nazis.

    The Nazis also considered Jews to be genetically different – and crucially racially inferior. This alleged racial inferiority was supposed to be the justification for butchering millions of Jews in concentration camps in world war two.

    By positing the existence of a Jewish gene, Sarrazin is only one step away from criminalising it and then punishing it just as the Nazi did.

    Sarrazin regularly launches racist tirades against Muslims and scathing attacks on the millions of Germans impoverished by the bankers scams who are forced to draw the meagre Hartz IV benefits while the bankers get billions if not trillions of tax payer money thrown at them under the pretext of one bailout or another by their friends in government.

    Sarrazins’s views are a chilling echo of the statements of NSDAP Interior Minister Wilhelm Frick, who complained in 1933 about the low birth rate among Germans and the growing proportion of „inferior people“.

    Predictably, Sarrazin’s remarks have met with only luke warm condemnation for the public from Germany’s Bilderberg political elite.

    Helmut Schmidt, the former Social Demcorat Chancellor, said that he would have agreed with much of what Sarrazin said if he had expressed himself more carefully. CDU Chancellor and Bilderberg member Angela Merkel made a half-hearted attempt to appear outraged on television on Sunday.

    But there can be no doubt that Sarrazin is just a puppet of the elite and from his remarks, it is clear the Jews and the Muslims look set to be made the scapegoats again for Germany’s very real decline, which has been caused by the Bilderberg elite and the bankers like Sarrazin.

    It is this global elite that has introduced policies that have led to the decimation of the middle class in Germany, the erosion of the education system and the collapse of social security, the impoverishment of large sections of the population through the euro and financial crisis scam as well as the introducion of a police surveillance state just as has happened in the USA.

    The global “elite’s” agenda for a one world government and police state has been documented by websites such as Infowars.

    To achieve their goal of igniting world war three with Iran in 2011, the German power eilite clearly believe they have to whip up hatred against the Muslims and Jews living inside the country as a first step.

    Cue Sarrazin: the central banker, former finance senator of deeply-indebted Berlin and a top manager of German state railways is wheeled onto the corporate media stage to portray the Muslims and Jews as the „enemy within“. He implies they are racially despoiling the German people with their low „IQs“ and foreign „genes“.

    A false flag (bio?) terrorism incident is all that is needed to provide the pretext for a big internal crackdown as well as for world war three. We can all read the script.

    In the meantime, hardly a day goes by without Bild newspaper showing the Defence Minister Karl Theodor zu Guttenberg – the George Bush of Germany from the pampered Bilderberg elite circle – parading around as a psdeuo patriot, visiting German troops in Afghanistan while placing yet more orders for weapons, which will generate yet more profits for his banker and industrialist friends.

    Aside from engaging in photo opportunities for mass media war mongering, Guttenberg is also pushing plans to scrap military conscription, the last block to Germany engaging in another disastrous offensive war. Conscripts, at least, can only serve on German territory.

    At a time when the German people are increasingly waking up to the fact that it is their own corrupted government and corporations that are their biggest problem, the country’s elite cannot, it seems, divert attention away from their activities fast enough.

    An example of the growing grass roots anger among Germans were the demonstractions against the Stuttgart 21 project: more than four billion euro is to be devoted to plans to build a supermodern, underground station which will benefit only a tiny corporate elite will use the expensive trains.

    Germans from all age groups marched together in Stuttgart to demand an end to the waste of their tax money money on the pet projects of the elite when budgets for schools, hospitals are being slashed and not even the climate conditioners of the trains work.

    State railways manager elite have — with typical disdain for the ordinary people who have to fund their many lavish projects — vowed to press on with their pet hi-tech railway project in Stuttgart and called in the police to guard the station while slashing social budgets to the bone.

    It is not just in Germany but also in Austria that political parties are whipping up racism: the far right Freedom Party is also scape goating Muslims while the OVP Interior Minister Maria Fekter has made insulting remarks about the Roma.

    In France, President Nioclas Sarkozy has ordered police to raid Roma camps and deport Gypsies, sparking protests The Roma were another target of Nazi racism during the second world war.

    The Germans and Austrians have seen this all before, and awakened by the independent media, they will reject the barbaric brew racism and wars being concocted by the Bilderberg elite this time round, and bring this group to court to account for their many financial and other crimes.

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