Nathaniel Flakin

1 week ago | leftvoice.org | Nathaniel Flakin

On April 11, 1945, as U.S. troops approached Buchenwald, the resistance groups inside the concentration camp launched an insurrection. The secret leadership committee, made up of prisoners of different nationalities, handed out weapons to the inmates who proceeded to storm the gate house and the guard towers. Most of the SS guards had fled a few hours earlier - the rest were disarmed. When the U.S. army reached Buchenwald, they found a camp under the control of its prisoners.

3 weeks ago | leftvoice.org | Nathaniel Flakin

On March 18, Germany's Bundestag (parliament) held its first-ever trillion-euro-session. The emerging Grand Coalition of CDU and SPD, with the support of the Greens, got the two-thirds majority required to amend the constitution. Three days later, the Bundesrat (federal chamber), also approved the measure by a two-thirds majority. The changes will keep the constitutional "debt brake" in place, which has mandated austerity since 2009. Except now, military spending will be exempted.

3 weeks ago | leftvoice.org | Nathaniel Flakin |Tess Lowery

A jubilant " GUILTY" plastered over Marine Le Pen's face filled the cover of the French centre-left newspaper, Libération, on April 1. Such was the reaction by most left-leaning people to Monday's ruling by a criminal court in Paris that the leader of France's far-right wing party National Rally (RN) was guilty of embezzling European Union funds.

3 weeks ago | leftvoice.org | Nathaniel Flakin

Taking a page from Trump's playbook, the Berlin government of Kai Wegner (CDU) is moving to deport four pro-Palestinian activists. As Hanno Hauenstein first reported in The Intercept yesterday, the four received orders to leave Germany or face deportation by April 21. Shane O'Brien and Roberta Murray are Irish citizens, while Kasia Wlaszczyk is Polish. EU citizens generally enjoy freedom of movement, but this can be revoked in individual cases.

1 month ago | leftvoice.org | Nathaniel Flakin

In 1887, Wilhelm Liebknecht, the founder of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD), put out a flyer for the Reichstag elections: "Not one person and not one cent for militarism!" As Liebknecht explained: "Militarism is incompatible with the freedom and the prosperity of the peoples." For many decades, until 1914, the social democrats refused any support for the government's budget, even when increased social spending was offered as bait.