Outrage as Elon Musk claims ‘only AfD can save Germany’

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Outrage as Elon Musk claims ‘only AfD can save Germany’

German health minister calls US billionaire’s intervention weeks before election ‘undignified and problematic’

《 Kate Connolly in Berlin Fri 20 Dec 2024 The Guardian UK 》

Elon Musk has caused outrage in Berlin after appearing to endorse the far-right, anti-immigrant Alternative für Deutschland.

Musk, who has been named by Donald Trump to co-lead a commission aimed at reducing the size of the US federal government, wrote on his social media platform X: “Only the AfD can save Germany.”

He reposted a video by a German rightwing influencer, Naomi Seibt, who criticised Friedrich Merz, the leader of the conservative Christian Democrats who has the best chance of becoming the next German chancellor, and praised Javier Milei, the libertarian president of Argentina.

The German health minister, Karl Lauterbach, called Musk’s decision to wade into the German political debate weeks before the snap election “undignified and highly problematic”.

Europe’s largest economy is expected to go to the polls on 23 February after the collapse last month of Olaf Scholz’s centre-left coalition. The AfD is running in second place in opinion polls. Elements of the party have been classed as rightwing extremists by Germany’s domestic intelligence services, and mainstream parties have vowed to refuse to work with the AfD at national level.

The German government issued only a perfunctory response to Musk’s post, noting that it had registered it, but a spokesperson refused to add any further comment.

At a press conference in Berlin, Scholz responded indirectly to the post, saying: “We have freedom of speech here. That also applies to multimillionaires. Freedom of speech also means that you’re able to say things that aren’t right and do not contain good political advice.”

The German former MEP Elmar Brok dismissed Musk’s comment as “the world domination fantasies of the American tech kings”.

Late on Friday, after at least two people were killed and scores wounded in a suspected terror attack on a Christmas market in the German city of Magdeburg, Musk doubled down, tweeting: “Scholz should resign immediately. Incompetent fool.”

Lauterbach accused Musk of election interference and called for authorities to “keep a close eye on the goings-on on X”.

 

He said: “It is very disturbing, the way in which the platform X, which I use very intensively myself, is increasingly being used to spread the political positions and goals of Mr Musk.”

The most direct response to the Musk tweet came from Christian Lindner, the head of the pro-business Free Democrats (FDP), who was sacked as finance minister by Scholz over deep disagreements around fiscal management.

Lindner wrote on X: “Elon, I’ve initiated a policy debate inspired by ideas from you and Milei. While migration control is crucial for Germany, the AfD stands against freedom, business – and it’s a far-right extremist party. Don’t rush to conclusions from afar. Let’s meet, and I’ll show you what the FDP stands for. CL”.

In May, the AfD was expelled from a pan-European parliamentary group of populist far-right parties after a string of controversies, including a comment by the senior AfD figure that the Nazi SS were “not all criminals”.

The ID group, which includes France’s far-right National Rally, Italy’s Lega, Austria’s Freedom party, Geert Wilders’ Dutch Freedom party and Vlaams Belang in Belgium, said it “no longer want[ed] to be associated” with such incidents.

Musk has previously expressed backing for other anti-immigration forces across Europe, including the UK’s Reform party and Italy’s prime minister, Giorgia Meloni.

He has also previously voiced enthusiastic support for Milei, who in his first year as Argentina’s president has cut public spending and axed tens of thousands of public sector jobs, and plunged many households into economic despair.

Alice Weidel, the head of the AfD, who is standing as its candidate for chancellor, reposted Musk’s comment, writing to him: “Yes! You are perfectly right @elonmusk!”

Referring to a recent interview she gave on Trump with the news organisation Bloomberg, Weidel said Musk should note “how socialist [Angela] Merkel ruined our country, how the Soviet European Union destroys the country’s economic backbone and malfunctioning Germany”. She wished Musk and Trump a happy Christmas and “all the best for the upcoming tenure”.

Last year Musk criticised the German government and its struggle to tackle illegal migration, one of the main topics on the election campaign agenda. He has also fired off personal jibes against Scholz and his economics minister, Robert Habeck.

This week Nigel Farage, the Reform UK leader, posted a photograph of himself and the party’s treasurer meeting Musk at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence in Florida and claimed Musk was prepared to provide financial support to bolster his party’s chances of entering government.⍐

Note: Illustrations ENB

“Nowadays, many people wondering how even to celebrate Christmas and find their daily meals,” Cardinal

Speaking to the media ahead of Christmas on Dec. 19, the cardinal urged Catholics to remember the less fortunate this Christmas, encouraging families to open their homes and embrace the poor during the holiday season.

“Nowadays, many people living in our country are wondering how even to celebrate Christmas and find their daily meals,” - Cardinal 

《 By UCA News reporter : December 20, 2024 》

“I request all our Catholic families to invite a poor family in your neighborhood to your home this Christmas and share a meal,” Ranjith said.

Cardinal Malcolm Ranjith of Colombo.
(Photo: Ishara Kodikara/AFP)

He suggested they could provide lunch to a family or books and clothing for the children of the poor.

The Catholic Bishops' Conference issued a special Christmas message that said the problem of poverty can only be alleviated by creating a fair economic structure.

“Creating this environment in our country requires the sincere commitment of every individual,” the bishops said in their Dec. 18 statement.

Meanwhile, the Coconut Development Authority announced that Cardinal Ranjith will subsidize the government's purchase of coconuts from church-owned plantations in response to the national shortage and high coconut prices.

Suranimala Gunawardena, a rights activist campaigning against political corruption, said former politicians had misused millions of rupees from the President’s Fund.

Nalinda Jayatissa, the chief government whip and Minister of Health and Mass Media, revealed this in Parliament on Dec. 17.

He said 36 former parliamentarians had received millions of rupees from the President’s Fund from 2005 to 2024.

"This is the fund for people with critical illnesses, such as those needing heart surgery or cancer treatment. It is very difficult to raise 100,000 rupees [$347] for a patient, but former politicians have taken millions from this President's Fund," Gunawardena told UCA News.

He said those in power and with resources were receiving favorable treatment and often evading the consequences of their actions.

"The less fortunate face harsher punishment for similar offenses, and this disparity undermines justice, perpetuating a sense of unfairness,” Gunawardena said.

He said the law must be applied equally to all, regardless of wealth or status.

Rights activists emphasized the need for a fair economic structure to ensure equality, as true progress requires equitable resource distribution.

“Corruption and lawlessness have spread throughout the country due to the wrong economic practices” of previous governments, Ranjith said, and hoped the new government “would bring about a positive transformation.”

Cardinal Malcolm Ranjith has called for a Sri Lanka free from corruption and lawlessness, emphasizing the urgent need for systemic change.⍐

German far right brings political edge to Magdeburg attack site

People leave candles and floral tributes to the victims near the site where a car rammed into a crowd at a Magdeburg Christmas market in Magdeburg, Germany December 21, 2024. REUTERS/Christian Mang

German far right brings political edge to Magdeburg attack site

• Summary

• Five killed in car-ramming attack at a Christmas market
  Political tensions in Germany over immigration
  Popularity of far-right AfD party has been rising

 《 MAGDEBURG, Germany, Dec 21 (Reuters) 》

A spontaneous memorial created by grieving families and local residents at a church overlooking Magdeburg's Christmas market evolved during Saturday into something more politically charged.

The changing tone at the site of a car-ramming attack on Friday in which five people were killed and more than 200 injured reflected political tensions in a country racked by arguments over immigration and over the surging popularity of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD).

Authorities arrested a Saudi man with a history of anti-Islamic rhetoric but said the motives for the attack were not yet known.

At first, as people laid flowers outside the church in the early morning, there were just expressions of sorrow and grief.

Andrea Reis, 57, arrived with her daughter Julia, 34, and reflected on a narrow escape.

It was only because her daughter wanted them to keep walking round the market rather than stop to eat that they were not in the path of the car that ploughed through the market, she said.

Far-right demonstrators, Magdeburg, December 21, 2024. REUTERS/Christian Mang

"It was the terrible sounds, children calling 'mama, papa,', 'help me' - they're going round in my head now," Reis said, a tear trickling down her cheek.

Another young woman sobbed, bent double with grief as an older couple embraced her.

Initially, the attack drew comparisons on social media to an Islamist-influenced immigrant's deadly attack on a Berlin Christmas market in 2016.

Later it emerged that the suspect, a psychiatrist who had lived in Germany for 18 years, had criticised Islam and expressed sympathy for the far right in past social media posts. This prompted damage control by the far right.

Martin Sellner, an Austrian popular with Germany's far-right, posted on social media that the suspect's motives "seemed to have been complex", adding that the suspect "hated Islam, but he hated the Germans more".

As the day passed, politicians, including Chancellor Olaf Scholz, came to lay flowers at the spontaneous memorial.

By the time Tino Chrupalla, the AfD's co-leader, came, the crowd was filled with young people who had responded from all round east Germany to calls by the party's youth wing on social media to attend a vigil.

The party, particularly strong in eastern Germany, came first or second in three regional votes this autumn, and hopes for more success in a national election in February.

Many of the gathered supporters wore symbols associated with neopaganism and other mystical movements associated with the far right.

One young man, who said he was from the AfD's youth wing, wore an amulet depicting the hammer of the Norse god Thor.

"I'm a believer in the old gods," he said, declining to give his name.

Interior Minister Nancy Faeser expressed concern that the attack could be exploited by the far right, but said little could be done to prevent seemingly coordinated gatherings.

"We have freedom of assembly in this country," she said, touring the scene of the attack. "We have to do everything possible to make sure the attack isn't misused by either side."⍐

Palestinian Authority, seeking Gaza role, takes on West Bank militants

Palestinian Authority, seeking Gaza role, takes on West Bank militants

The Palestinian Authority and the militants who control Jenin camp are locked in a rare, open battle.

Palestinians react during clashes between Palestinian Authority security forces and the militants who control the Jenin refugee camp Monday in the Occupied West Bank. (Photos by Heidi Levine for The Washington Post)

《 

By Miriam Berger

, 

Heidi Levine

 and 

Sufian Taha The Washington Post

 》

JENIN, West Bank — The black-clad militants of Jenin refugee camp raced through sewage-filled alleyways to dodge gunfire echoing all around. “Quickly,” a Palestinian fighter urged as they weaved through a network of armed patrols and improvised barricades. “Watch out,” another warned at a juncture where an improvised explosive was being set.

The action witnessed by Washington Post reporters on Monday could have been the response to an Israeli military raid on this northern West Bank city, the epicenter of a new generation of Palestinian militancy.

But for the past two weeks, the militants of Jenin have been locked in a rare, open battle with an internal foe: the Palestinian Authority.

In Jenin, the authority, which is backed by the West, has launched its largest and most heavily armed operation in its three decades to thwart a growing West Bank insurgency against the Palestinian leadership and Israeli occupation. It’s trying to prove it can manage security in the limited areas of the West Bank it controls as it seeks to also govern a postwar Gaza Strip.

Authority vehicles block the camp entrance.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has ruled out the authority’s return to Gaza. Key figures in his far-right coalition have pushed to annex part or all of the Palestinian territories. But in the latest round of ceasefire negotiations, Israel has agreed to let the authority take over administration of the Rafah border between Gaza and Egypt for a short period, according to a former Egyptian official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive matter.

The authority launched Operation Protect the Homeland this month to retake control of Jenin camp by targeting “outlaws” and those “spreading chaos and anarchy and harming civil peace,” security forces spokesman Anwar Rajab told The Post. “All these actions and policies undermine the work of the PA, and these groups give Israel an excuse to implement its plans in the West Bank.”

The operation’s “achievements” have included arresting more than two dozen wanted militants, wounding others, dismantling dozens of explosives and “advancing on important axes” into the refugee camp, Rajab said. Security forces have killed three people: a fighter, a 19-year-old passerby on a motorcycle and a 14-year-old boy.

Authority security personnel take up positions to prevent protesters from entering the camp.

Both sides appear to be showing relative restraint. Israel’s days-long raid in Jenin in September killed at least 21 people, according to the authority’s health ministry, which does not distinguish between fighters and civilians. The Israel Defense Forces said it killed 14 militants.

🌎 

Anger against the Palestinian Authority is growing

  Followi

The authority also clashes periodically with militants; security forces have killed 13 Palestinians, including eight in Jenin, since Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, according to local reports.

“We don’t want to see a single drop of blood being shed,” Sabri Saidam, an adviser to PA President Mahmoud Abbas and a member of Fatah’s central committee, told The Post. “What we would like to achieve is a state of calm, to sit down with different factions and agree on the way forward.”

Abbas has decided that the PA “will impose its authority and there is no turning back,” said a Palestinian official close to the president who spoke on the condition of anonymity to disclose private discussions.

But two weeks into the crackdown, militants still roam freely in the Jenin camp. Gunfire rings out day and night. The U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees has suspended schools. Businesses are shut. In the Damaj and Hawashin neighborhoods, heavily damaged in the Israeli raid in September, some families have been without electricity and water for days.

Camp militants.

Masked authority security forces patrol the Jenin governmental hospital at the camp’s edge and snipers are positioned on the roof to prevent militants from entering to hide, according to a hospital official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive matter.

Post reporters heard what sounded like gunfire coming from the roof. Bullets have hit the emergency entrance and pierced an office window, he said, and patients and staff are too afraid to come.

Women and children hold Palestinian flags and wear face masks against tear gas.

Anger at the security forces in the West Bank is already high. Hemmed in by the Israeli occupation, they operate in ever-shrinking territory and, under security agreements, may not intervene to stop Israeli settler violence or deadly military raids. Many Palestinians see the forces as Israel’s subcontractors and Abbas’s tool for corruption and suppressing internal dissent.

“The people want ‘law and order’, but apply the law right and people will stand with you,” said Arwad, 35, who spoke on the condition his last name be withheld out of concern for reprisal from Palestinian and Israeli authorities. “When the Israeli soldiers and jeeps come here, where is the law?”

Arwad’s brother and father are in an Israeli jail, he said, and other relatives have been killed fighting Israeli forces. Even if the authority arrests wanted militants, he said, “the resistance will continue. Twenty-four hours later there will be someone new in their place.”

Authority security personnel.

Anger against the Palestinian Authority is growing

The security forces are among the last threads holding together the Oslo accords, signed in the 1990s to create a Palestinian state out of the Israeli-occupied West Bank, Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem. In the decades since, Israel has expanded and entrenched its control of the West Bank, eroding the authority’s jurisdiction.

The last time Palestinian factions faced off in the streets was 2007, when Hamas, Fatah’s Islamist rival, ousted the authority in Gaza and set up its own government. Since then, the United States and the European Union have invested heavily in reforming and training the Palestinian security forces. Former militants were offered positions in the security forces if they turned in their guns.

Nonetheless, the security forces remain chronically underfunded and ill-equipped to take on the responsibilities that Washington envisions for the West Bank and postwar Gaza Strip.

A masked militant sits behind sandbags and a tank trap.

New militant groups attracting poor and politically disaffected men have cropped up in West Bank cities and refugee camps in recent years. They fight back against Israeli raids and attack Israeli soldiers and civilians. Some have ties to Iran-backed Hamas and the smaller Islamic Jihad.

Israel’s war on Hamas, launched after the militant group killed more than 1,200 on Oct. 7, 2023, has devastated Hamas’s fighting and governing force. Israeli attacks in Gaza have killed more than 45,000 Palestinians, according to the health ministry there.

In Gaza, public anger is growing against Hamas, too. But its popularity in the West Bank, where people are fed up with Abbas and the occupation, has risen.

Indentations made by bullets pepper the wall around a poster of physician Abdullah Abu Tin near the government hospital at the edge of the camp.

The Jenin operation, Rajab said, was aimed at suspects wanted for criminal charges, including shooting at hospitals and preparing explosive devices. But it escalated when militants stole and burned two security forces vehicles and a car bomb exploded near a police station.

Community leaders, including fathers of Jenin fighters killed by Israeli forces, tried to mediate a truce between the fighters and the security forces, according to Firas Abu al-Wafa, the secretary general of Fatah Jenin, but the authority refused to compromise.

Saidam said talks continue but “the security apparatus is adamant to impose law and order.”

Wafa called Jenin “the start and the finish.”

“If the situation in Jenin stabilizes, then the whole West Bank will be stable,” he said. But if it doesn’t, “there will not be stability across the West Bank.”

Palestinians mourn Islamic Jihad militant Yazid Jaayseh, killed by authority security forces, during a funeral procession through the camp on Tuesday.

Shedding blood

For a few hours on Tuesday, the guns in Jenin fell silent.

Shortly before 2 p.m., the PA and Jenin Brigade agreed to a pause in fighting. Authorities released the bodies of the militant Yazid Ja’aysa and 14-year-old Mohammed Amer, both killed on Dec. 14. Men carried the bodies of Ja’aysa, shrouded in the flag of Islamic Jihad, and Amer, in the Palestinian flag, to a cemetery adorned with oversize portraits of fighters, most of them killed in clashes with Israeli forces.

As the sun set, gunmen emerged from the alleys to resume positions.

Mourners carry the bodies of Yazid Ja’aysa, 29, and Mohammed Amer, 14, also killed in the clashes, to the cemetery.

Hamas, Islamic Jihad and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine called on the authority Saturday “to immediately halt the security campaign in Jenin, which serves only the Israeli enemy.”

Tahani Mustafa, a Palestine analyst with the Brussels-based International Crisis Group, said the operation “will definitely delegitimize the PA and its grassroots Fatah” base, but the authority’s existence isn’t threatened, because it relies on the West, not its people, for funding.

Jenin is unique, she said, because there are no illegal Jewish settlements in the immediate vicinity. Elsewhere, she said, “you have pockets of Palestinian populations but no place to physically mobilize [the security forces] in mass clusters. …

“It is very unlikely Israel will allow this to escalate.”

Women wave flags and chant in protest of the authority crackdown.

The militants racing through the camp Monday were headed toward a standoff with security forces.

Two security forces vehicles stood at one end of a road. They fired sound bombs in warning. Then they switched to live fire. An Israeli drone hummed above.

Militants and camp residents gathered at the other end. Women, many dressed conservatively in black, and cheering children waved Palestinian flags. They wore face masks. The sting of tear gas lingered.

“We hope that the security forces leave the camp, because it’s forbidden to shed blood,” said Kifah Al Amouri. Both her children were fighters, she said; one was killed by Israel soldiers.

The militants, she said, were “defending their country.”⍐