On Thu, 17 Apr 2008 08:42:59 +0000 (UTC), Its all a bit strange
<strangethinghappen@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
>"Heinrich" <Heinrich@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote in
>news:66og5jF2lpk2jU1@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
>> Germany's main Jewish lobby group has urged politicians considering a
>> bid to ban the far-right National Democratic Party (NPD) to "wake up"
to
>> the threat to German democracy.
>> The Central Council of Jews says the growing respectability of the NPD
>> is fuelling right-wing radicalism more than 60 years after World War
Two
>> and the Holocaust.
>> "Politicians must wake up at last," Stephan Kramer, general-secretary
of
>> the council, told Reuters.
>> "We need a signal to make clear the NPD is trying to destroy Germany
and
>> its democratic principles."
>> Germany's Office for the Protection of the Constitution says the NPD is
>> racist, anti-Semitic and revisionist and that its statements prove its
>> inspiration comes from the Nazis.
>> The NPD has about 7,000 members and has seats in two regional state
>> parliaments, both in the former communist East.
>> NPD officials have praised Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for
>> saying Israel should be wiped off the map. Last year NPD leader Udo
>> Voigt said Hitler's deputy Rudolf Hess, who died in 1987, should get
the
>> Nobel Peace Prize.
>> At a three-day meeting in Bad Saarow, starting on Wednesday, Interior
>> Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble and ministers from Germany's 16 states will
>> discuss a possible second attempt to outlaw the NPD after a first bid
>> failed in 2003.
>> The Social Democrats (SPD), who share power with Chancellor Angela
>> Merkel's Christian Democrats (CDU), have been pushing for a ban, but
>> many CDU lawmakers say there is insufficient proof of illegal activity.
>> "Banning the party is not as easy as the SPD thinks. The hurdles are
>> very high," Schaeuble said this month.
>>
>> Last year, state ministers agreed to try to cut off funding for
>> far-right organisations. As a legitimate political party, the NPD gets
>> over $1.6 million in public funding per year.
>> The government has also boosted funding for education and social
>> projects to tackle the roots of right-wing radicalism.
>> The previous attempt to ban the NPD failed as prosecution witnesses had
>> worked as informants for intelligence agencies.
>> But advocates of a ban say the NPD's public statements prove it is
>> hostile to democracy and give sufficient legal grounds.
>> The party has described the German constitution as a "diktat of the
>> victorious Western powers".
>> In January, NPD General-Secretary Peter Marx said Germany should remain
>> the land of Germans so future generations were not squeezed into
>> reservations by immigration, as Native Americans have been.
>> Kramer argues the NPD is the "tip of the iceberg" of a right-wing
>> movement including perpetrators of racist crimes.
>> "The fact that the NPD is a legal party that has been voted into
>> parliaments gives legitimacy to its beliefs and respectability to its
>> prejudices," said Kramer.
>> A series of racist and anti-Semitic crimes - including an attack on
>> eight Indians that grabbed headlines around the world last year - have
>> heightened worries about Germany's far right.
>> Latest figures show far-right crime rose 15 percent in 2006.
>> Opponents of a ban say it would not solve the underlying problem and
>> that most young neo-Nazis are not
>> in the NPD anyway.
>> The NPD says it is being treated unfairly, and is planning to protest
in
>> Bad Saarow against the attempt to ban it.
>> "The NPD is excluded from the media. Members are hounded and banned
from
>> hotels and their bank accounts are terminated. There is a consensus on
>> the discriminatory treatment of the NPD," it said in a statement.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>
>Oh look, yet another undocumented, unattributed cut and paste job from
the
>dutch pelc.
Shut up, cunt.
Eli
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