img_0601-copy
The Royal flag flies over the castle while the fog settles in

The Hohenzollern family kicked off Germany’s annual Christmas Market season at their ancestral castle in the Swabian Alps, south of Stuttgart. Although it is not the country’s biggest Christmas Market, the German press is unanimous in saying it is the most beautiful. Over ten thousand people visited the castle in the Swabian Alps the last week end of November and the first week end of December to buy unique handmade gifts and taste regional specialties.

This year the Crown Prince of Prussia, George Frederich, had more to celebrate than the 20th edition of the Royal Weihnachtsmarkt. He also announce the birth of his fourth child, Prince Heinrich. 

img_0719
Happy artisans display their ware (copyright kazolias)

ChocolART held in Tübinghen every December is Germany’s biggest Chocolate Fair.  The eleventh edition of ChocolART saw over 250,000 people flood into the medieval university town for the four day festival to admire the handiwork of chocolate makers from around Europe as well as Africa and Latin America.

The waiting list for those who want to take part grows longer every year,” said the Fair’s manager, Hans-Peter Schwarz. Twelve countries are represented with over 100 stands.

Stuttgart, Germany. What happens when a German court labels as “a foreign terrorist organization” an American backed rebel group in Syria?  The western press basically ignores it.

Was Ambassador Christopher Stevens running guns to Syria for the CIA when he was killed in September 2012 in Benghazi?  New evidence points in that direction. The United States has been repeatedly accused of arming Syrian Islamists, in part with Libyan weapons shipped through Nato to Turkey and then over the border. An interview in Aleppo by a German reporter (1), released this week and given wide coverage in Germany and Russia but little elsewhere , brings further proof to the allegations.  But US complicity with the Islamists goes much deeper.

l1020280Their hair has long turned gray. They have visions of barricades dancing in their heads. They have fire in their eyes and the same determination they had as youngsters in the 1968 revolts. Some 200 veterans of class struggle in France answered the call of the association Friends of the Paris Commune – 1871 on Saturday to celebrate the short-lived People’s Republic which became a springboard for proletarian revolution for a century.

An estimated 1.2 million Muslims in France would prefer Islamic rule to the secular Republic. 28% of the Muslims polled believe Sharia law comes before the laws of France. This is the conclusion drawn from a poll published by the Institut Montaigne which says nearly a third of the estimated four million Muslims in France have “adopted a system of values clearly opposed to the values of the Republic.” That is a large ocean to swim in for the 15,000 potential Jihadists said to be living in the country.

unknown-1A third of the Muslims in France would rather see a hard line Sharia law regime in place of the secular Republic they live in, including half of those aged 15 to 25.

The French weekly, le Journal du Dimanche,  published on Sunday a first of its kind study on Muslims in France which shows that they represent a little over five percent of the population (5.6%) but ten percent of those aged under 25. This means there are some four million Muslims out of a population of 66 million people in the country. What has people anxious is the high number of “extremists” among the youth.

The war which led to the destruction of Libya was unnecessary, launched on false pretense and disastrous. This is the conclusion drawn from reading the UK parliamentary report on the War that destroyed Libya and destabilized a continent.

unknownLast May, the head of the French Domestic Intelligence service, the DGSI, a sort of FBI, told a parliamentary commission he felt “we are on the verge of a civil war.”  Patrick Calver said: “one or more new attacks and the confrontation will come.” He was referring to extreme right wing violence in reaction to terrorism.

UnknownA lot has been made of Donald Trump’s refusal to serve in the military during the Vietnam War. As a wealthy young man, he probably knew much better than we Grunts did, what that war was all about.  At the same time, when Muhammad Ali died this year, little was made in the mainstream media about his refusal to serve when he said: “I got nothing against the Viet Cong. No Vietnamese ever called me nigger.”  1  The major reason for this is the US has never drawn the right conclusions on that war even though the military did.