Germany still has a bit to go.
Greek prosecutors last week arrested two more people suspected of having taken bribes from German armaments firms during the last decade.
Tag Archives: Weapons Exports
Greece
Beautiful German weapon sale of the week (this time with extra added bribery).
Because somebody has to admire them.
Swords To Pflugscharen?
You can stop the import of Mein Kampf in Germany, why not stop the export of expensive weapons systems out of Germany?
The Munich Institute for Contemporary History has been working for years on a “scientific edition” of Hitler’s book. In 2012 the state government gave the green light, now it wants to stop the project*.
Meanwhile… On the occasion of his ninety-fifth birthday, Helmut Schmidt has called on the federal government to stop German weapons exports.”It is time to raise an objection,” the former chancellor wrote in the ZEIT. Germany is the world’s third largest weapons exporter and ranks before China, Japan, France and England, directly after the USA and Russia. “A development that displeases me greatly. And one that needs to be stopped by the coming coalition government in Berlin.”
Er habe Verständnis für “die Unlust der heutigen Deutschen”, “Aber ich halte es für abwegig, statt Soldaten Waffen zu schicken.”
* Germany does not ban “Mein Kampf,” but Bavaria has used its ownership of the copyright to block domestic publication until now. Late Tuesday, the state premier’s chief of staff, Christine Haderthauer, said that Hitler’s anti-Semitic memoir amounts to incitement and that the state would file a criminal complaint if anyone tried to publish it in the future. In Germany, copyright expires 70 years after an author’s death.
Israel
Beautiful German weapon sale of the week.
Because somebody has to admire them.
Israel is seeking to buy advanced missile boats from Germany to protect drilling operations in its offshore natural gas fields.
Syria
Beautiful German weapons sale of the week – or between 2002 and 2006, I mean.*
Because somebody has to admire them.
*It was only just a few harmless tons of chemicals (111 tons worth) that could have been used to make sarin nerve gas but it was absolutely perfectly legal so don’t anybody out there get all hot and bothered about this, OK? Thanks. I know you wouldn’t.
“German System” Suffering From Irregularity
But only in other countries where “German system” weapons are being exported to, of course.
“How do these weapons end up in places they should not be?” a distressed Deutsche Welle asks with concerned Kulleraugen (big wide saucer eyes). They clearly don’t have proper gun control laws down there in those awful places. Not like we do here in Germany.
For example, in Mexico, police forces in states which are embroiled in a drug war are considered even by the central government as part of the security problem in their regions – nevertheless they have been issued with German-built G36 assault rifles, which can fire up to 750 rounds a minute. Germany’s Economics Ministry, which is responsible for export clearance, in fact sanctioned shipment of the weapons to Mexico – but not to the restive regions. The State Prosecutor in Stuttgart has launched an investigation into the German manufacturer of the G36 assault rifle, Heckler & Koch. The arms company told Deutsche Welle that individual employees, who have since left Heckler & Koch, were to blame for the irregularities.
Germany prides itself on having “strict, even restrictive regulations” for the export of weapons of war.
Kleinvieh Macht Auch Mist
Literally, “small animals make manure, too.” But of course this German idiom means more. What they’re really saying is “every little bit counts.”
And the Süddeutsche Zeitung just found a whole bunch of manure when it brought out a report about German small arms sales. They hit an all-time high in 2012, at more than double the previous year’s sales.
And Germans are really concerned about this (not). Not at all, really. As a matter of fact, as far as I can tell, the only time Germans seem to get concerned about small arms is when one of those crazy Americans goes berserk and uses one to kill a bunch of innocent people again because there is simply not enough effective gun control legislation in that dang dern US-Amerika country of theirs. Legislation aimed at stopping small arms imports from Germany, I suppose they mean.
Exporting small weapons is a contentious issue as they are used to kill far more people than heavy weapons and major military equipment around the world. Amnesty International estimates that 1,000 people die each day from gunshot wounds inflicted by small arms. Owing to their size, they are also the hardest weapons to keep track of, and circulate with comparative ease in conflict zones.
Literally Hundreds March For Peace Again In Germany This Easter
Literally hundreds of German peace activists spent several hours this weekend in numerous German cities protesting against one or two (or even three) important peace-related issues like…
1) German “killer drones” that don’t exist,
2) Bundeswehr recruitment at German schools and
3) Countries like Mali and Syria that should stop being so warlike already (although everybody knows that Germany will NEVER EVER be involved there militarily in any meaningful way EVER) and just go away and leave us, as in them, alone.
Es ist an der Zeit: Sagt Nein!
Die westdeutsche Friedensbewegung hat ihre Wurzeln im Protest gegen das atomare Wettrüsten während des Kalten Krieges. 1983 erlebte sie ihren Höhepunkt mit Hunderttausenden Demonstranten in Bonn, die gegen die Stationierung von amerikanischen Atomraketen protestierten.
We’re Not Doing Anything Wrong
The following was taken from the aricle “Wir tun doch nix…” in this week’s Die Zeit.
Germany is neither this consistently pacifist country (described beforehand in the article) nor this worldly-wise state dealing in power politics, rather a bad mix of both: A country that strictly refuses to participate in military interventions but makes every effort to export its weapons instead, gladly to dictatoships in crises regions; a country that is very guarded when it comes to criticism concerning human rights issues in China and Russia, a country that has even begun to wonder if democracy itself is always the best answer; and all of this while acting as if it were the world champion of morality at the same time.
No, nobody would want to live in a country like that. Not even the Germans themselves.
Profitieren statt intervenieren. In einem solchen Land möchte man tatsächlich nicht leben.
Observing Hermann 