Germany riot in Frankfurt targets new ECB headquarters

[Bosonic]

Source: BBC

Dozens of people have been hurt and some 350 people arrested as anti-austerity demonstrators clashed with police in the German city of Frankfurt.

Police cars were set alight and stones were thrown in a protest against the opening of a new base for the European Central Bank (ECB).

Violence broke out close to the city's Alte Oper concert hall hours before the ECB building's official opening.

Thousands of "Blockupy" activists were due to take part in a rally.

Read more: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-31938592

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[Yo_Mama]

1. Link to more pics at FAZ

http://www.faz.net/aktuell/rhein-main/blockupy/liveticker-blockupy-proteste-bei-ezb-eroeffnung-frankfurt-13481094/offene-konfrontation-in-13490567.html

It seems to have been rather organized. FAZ calls it "Blockupy". Traffic in the city center was extremely disrupted. Three officials injured, multiple demonstrators.

Spiegel:
http://www.spiegel.de/politik/deutschland/blockupy-protest-tausende-in-frankfurt-erwartet-a-1024115.html

7 police vehicles set on fire, barricades built, public transport deeply impacted. In the interior of the city around the new ECB offices, Spiegel reports that all intersections had either burning trash containers, burning vehicles or burning barricades of tires.

Nach Angaben von Blockupy werden 60 Busse aus 39 europäischen Städten und ein Sonderzug mit Demonstranten erwartet. Die Polizei hat Teile der Innenstadt abgesperrt. "Wir wollen einen lauten, aber friedlichen Protest", sagte Ulrich Wilken, einer der Organisatoren der Demonstration. Der Protest richte sich gegen die EZB als ein Teil der sogenannten Troika, die die Arbeit der griechischen Regierung behindere. "Wir wollen ein Ende der Sparpolitik."

Blockupy said that 60 buses from 39 European cities and a special train with demonstrators was expected. The police blocked off parts of center city. "We want a loud but peaceful protest," said Ulrich Wilken, one of the organisers of the demonstration. The protest was aimed at the ECB as part of the socalled Troika, which is stalling the work of the Greek government. "We want an end to the politics of austerity."

[ColesCountyDem]

2. 'Germany riot'?

Who writes these headline? Does the BBC not proofread any longer?

[fasttense]

3. Blockupy is an anti-austerity coalition of left wing groups

They are the organization that planned the protest of $1.6 billion castle, errr new building, for central bankers.

One of their protest complaints: They want capitalism without democracy. We want democracy without capitalism.

[Joe Chi Minh]

5. The equation is scarily simple, isn't it?

The ultra-rich, even the rich, can never have enough, so that, as we are witnessing, the end product of capitalism, i.e. sytematized greed, is corporatism/fascism, itself, finally, leading to polarization of the planet's wealth, far beyond First World/Third World, until we face, as we seem to now, one almighty economic crash. The consequences of which, are bound to be far worse than those of the so-called Great Depression.

The Germans, with their Rhineland capitalism, had been doing very well, until the degeneracy of runaway corporatism of the US/UK began to infect them. Since WWII, they are a shriven people, while our crypto-fascist leaders have grown old in their sins and, with bought and paid-for media, led us, as per usual, up the garden path.

Austerity is a ludicrous misnomer. They only mean more austerity for those already afflicted by it, since Lady Cardboard and Reagan came to puppet-power. The monied people have no intention of being reduced to a life of economic austerity.

Unfortunately, while secular Communism might have survived, it was a very poor option for most of the world. A mixed economy, welfare state, with the common good as the unassailable first priority, seems to beckon. That is assuming we find a source of energy as practicable as oil, without which there must surely be a fragmentation of our countries, and a return to a simpler, less industrialized world, as the likes of Orlov and Kunstler predict - which might well be beautiful, given a spiritual renewal Christians expect in the quite short-term.

[fasttense]

7. Wow, you said a mouthful

and you said it very eloquently.

[candelista]

8. I didn't like it.

Boring status quo apology.

[Joe Chi Minh]

11. I'm baffled. I thought it was the opposite. eom

[WillyT]

4. K & R !!!

[MissHoneychurch]

6. There weren't 350 arrests

they checked the ID's of those people. Only 15 people got arrested so far.

90% of the protesters are peaceful. And those who think they need to burn cars and trashcans are here to get into fights with the police and get a kick out of the violence.

I am working downtown Frankfurt.

[Blue_Tires]

10. Good to see you

I was about to check to see if you were all right

[MissHoneychurch]

12. Thanks Blue_Tires

In the morning it was a slight uneasy feeling to be in the city with the riots going on. But around noon it was quiet and stayed quiet. I didn't have any problems getting out of the town to get home. We all had a live ticker we checked regulary in case the riots were spreading. But fortunately it calmed down.

[uhnope]

9. Those deluded idiots are trashing the wrong bank

If the demonstrators -- and rioters -- in the streets of Frankfurt Wednesday actually meant these slogans, they were seriously deluded. The ECB is the most democratically governed central bank in the world, and it has nothing to do with austerity.

It's not just that the 45-story ECB office tower is far from austere, plagued as it was by unfair tender scandals and cost overruns. The euro area's central bank, with its huge quantitative easing program, is now the world's biggest money printer and government bond buyer, contributing more to the demise of fiscal austerity in Europe than any single government, including the financially squeezed, powerless one in Greece.

By continuing to fund Greek banks, in fact, the ECB props up Syriza and prevents a total financial meltdown in Greece. The central bank is not yet buying Greek bonds as part of its QE program, but it will probably start to, as soon as Athens repays previous bonds that Greek banks have unloaded on the ECB. So far, according to ECB President Mario Draghi, the central bank has lent Greece the equivalent of 68 percent of its economic output.

Throughout Europe, the ECB is doing all it can to enable governments to spend more and companies to profit from euro devaluation. It's hard to imagine how it could be even more lax.

"As an EU institution that has played a central role throughout the crisis, the ECB has become a focal point for those frustrated with this situation," Dragi said at the opening of the new office. "This may not be a fair charge -- our action has been aimed precisely at cushioning the shocks suffered by the economy."

A more meaningful place for the leftist protesters to burn tires and cars would be outside the Bundesbank, whose president Jens Weidmann steadfastly opposed QE, or the German Finance Ministry, whose head Wolfgang Schaeuble has described QE as "not the solution, rather the cause" of economic problems. Weidmann and Schaeuble didn't get their way because they were democratically outvoted by other European central bankers on the ECB governing board.

"The alliance's chorus of 'Shame on you, ECB' is as bizarre as the scenes playing out in Ostend," Tim Bartz commented in Manager Magazin, referring to the neighborhood in Frankfurt where the new ECB building stands. "That the euro area still exists and Greece hasn't quite fallen to the level of a third world country is only thanks to ECB and Draghi."

To use a line from an old song, the Blockupy protesters are so far left they've been left behind. Austerity is no longer a popular buzzword among European politicians and policy makers. Draghi didn't use it in his speech Wednesday, but instead spoke of reconciling "those who feel left out, including many of the protesters gathered in Frankfurt this week.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/sns-wp-blm-news-bc-ecb-comment18-20150318-story.html

[freshwest]

13. Thanks, found another link: 'Blockupy' Protests at ECB Are Absurd

http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2015-03-18/-blockupy-protests-at-ecb-are-absurd

Just a bit easier on my browser. No use jumping the gun for the anarchists.