Chaos In Germany, Frankfurt In Flames: Anti-Austerity Rally Turns Violent

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Barricades and cars were set on fire, almost 100 cops were injured, and fire-fighters, a police station and the Old Opera House were attacked by aggressive anti-austerity protesters in Germany. Police used water cannons to disperse the angry protesters near the new headquarters of the European Central Bank (ECB) in Frankfurt, arrested five for violent acts against police and detained another 500 for questioning.

Thousands of anti-capitalist protesters, marching under the banner of leftist alliance Blockupy (named after the Occupy Wall Street movement in 2011), a coalition of more than 90 groups from across Europe, were targeting ECB headquarters, the newly built billion-dollar 185-meter skyscraper, as a symbol of capitalism and for its role in restrictive austerity measures, like lowering government spending and other debt-reduction methods, in financially-troubled countries that has resulted in increasing unemployment and stunting economic growth.

The protest comes as Greece’s new government, led by the anti-austerity party Syriza, struggles to negotiate a reform deal with the rest of the eurozone, which is a prerequisite to unlocking further financial aid to the country. The activists in Frankfurt blamed ECB for enforcing policies that are impoverishing parts of Europe, including Greece.

Organizers accused the police of sparking the violence saying they set up a “civil war type scenario” to provoke protesters. “This is not what Blockupy planned,”spokesman Hendrik Wester said. “Blockupy is clearly against violence. Obviously, there are people that go against what we intended for this day. It is not what we planned, but it shows people are very angry about the austerity policies,” Frauke Distelrath, a Blockupy spokeswoman, added. Germany ECB President Mario Draghi addressed the demonstrators in his speech at the opening ceremony. “European unity is being strained. People are going through very difficult times. There are some, like many of the protesters outside today, who believe the problem is that Europe is doing too little. But the euro area is not a political union of the sort where some countries permanently pay for others. It has always been understood that countries have to be able to stand on their own two feet – that each is responsible for its own policies. The fact that some had to go through a difficult period of adjustment was therefore not a choice that was imposed on them. It was a consequence of their past decisions”. Germany2 According to noted Economist Thomas Piketty, European countries tried to get rid of their deficits too quickly, resulting in a situation where “their citizens have suffered the consequences in the shape of austerity policies. It’s good to reduce deficits, but at a rate that’s commensurate with growth and economic recovery, but here growth has been killed off”.

He pointed out that at the end of the Second World War, France and Germany’s debt was 200% of GDP, “when there was no such thing as public debt”. “It’s incredible. It’s an act of historical amnesia to tell southern European countries that they have to pay all their debt, down to the last cent, with zero inflation,” Piketty added.

Economist Richard D. Wolff has stated that instead of cutting government programs and raising taxes, austerity should be attained by collecting from non-profit multinational corporations, churches, and private tax-exempt institutions such as universities, which currently pay no taxes at all.

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12 COMMENTS

  1. the pictures with the smoke are fake.
    I was on top of one of the tallest buildings in frankfurt today and I also saw a lot of the “riots” / protests.
    get better sources, please.

    • Looks like Anonymous has communists, oh sorry I meant “Anti-Austerity” supporters((Was there really a need to be polite about it?)). Police aren’t all evil you know anonymous? There will always be a rotten banana in the bunch but that doesn’t mean they are all bad. Spreading fake pictures to help your cause? Your as bad as the governments now. I guess hope in organizations like this is only false…

      • If a small group wearing all blue is walking down the street, your good officers accuse them of being gang related with no evidence other than wearing all blue. they’re charged, harassed, beaten or even shot for standing up for they’re rights to accumulate in any coordinating fashion by this charge “Guilty by association” When your officers claim to be the BIGGEST GANG IN OUR NATION! PUT ON THAT UNIFORM AND YOUR GUILTY BY ASSOCIATION! ALL THESE GOOD POLICE YOU SPEAK OF; ALLOW THE EXTORTION, THE MURDERS,

  2. Actually, many of the “news” seems to be wrong or “spiced up”…

    1. Many of the news states that US is THE badest land in the world…
    2. Many of the news states that drugs is good.
    3. Many of the news states that Russia / Putin is great.


    I think that the anonymous as a “movement” is great, but I beleive (but do not hope) it will suffer and in time die out by itself, because:: there is some “lunatics” and they tend to be more visible then the sane ones.

    Other questions one might ask is:: Where do all the money come from? Who pays for this server? Who report in the news? Is the reporters working for free?

    I can see that my adblocker is blocking some ads, some money in perhaps, but is it enough?

    It might even be so that this site is funded by for example Russia with a great deal of saying…

    Then it is perhaps not so strange that we see news that: promote Russia and say that Ukrain is the bad guy, dragging US down in the trash, reports of chaos in EU, promote the use of drugs – resulting in people over time loosing jobs and turn into chriminal activity to fund further drugs, thus creating chaos… A long term goal to create chaos from an unfriendly state?

    I am not saying that US or EU is the good guys, but for sure they is not the badest either.

    • We could now demonize you as a ‘comspiracy theorist’ as most media website would do. But we kindly invite you to join our team, if you have any experience or are qualified as an author, journalist, video editor, graphics designer, proofreader or content manager. Our authors all are getting paid by us, and we are financed indepedently through ads from google, yahoo etc, no sponsor. And we have an open discussion within ALL our team member making everything transparent.

      Kind regards,

      AnonHQ Team.

  3. Ugh communists. Way to be polite and say “Anti-Austerity”. Is Anonymous promoting communism now? If you want a example of communism look at Russia, big, bad, and saying “Hey we are all equal but some of us are more equal than others! Haha sucks to be you!”

    • In the last centuries we saw the extremes of communism, and we saw that it was bad. Now we see the extremes of capitalism, and we see that it is bad.

      Now, what these two things have in common is that ANY SYSTEM at its extremes is a potential force of horror. The system itself is irrelevant.

      Anonymous is not promoting anything and if it IS, then it would be this:
      STOP WITH ALL THIS FUCKING EXTREMISM.
      (and be excellent to each other)

      This includes your comment.

  4. So… all that people on streets are wrong? and here are… 100 post about being comunist??? aha… you want a change but you need others to do it for you.

  5. Could be a CIA site for sure. I was the #1 fan of this ‘idea”, but your losing me quick; Could anonymous be the “sheep in wolf’s clothing” Not sure anymore. Really sad.

  6. I think they are only against Opel, because on that very first picture only Opels are on fire. Mercedes is not on fire.

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