Baader-Meinhofs' be released soon ?

by 70's Veteran Mon Feb 12, 2007 15:12

As per usual the media get the name wrong. It is "Fraktion", as in "Roté Arme Fraktion" ( Red Army Division"). Elements in the media concentrated on the use of the word "Faction" for the purpose of belittling them.
Good luck Brigitte.

by pat c Mon Feb 12, 2007 15:49

I am glad that Brigitte is being freed. It worth looking at the career of Schleyer and asking who was the real criminal.

Schleyer joined the Hitler Youth and joined the SS in 1933. He was involved in the Nazi student movement. In the summer of 1935, Schleyer accused his fraternity of lacking "national socialist spirit" because it refused to exclude Jewish members. Schleyer started a career as a leader in the national socialist student movement and, in 1937, he joined the NSDAP. At first he was the president of the student body of the university of Heidelberg. Later, Reichsstudentenführer Scheel sent him to post-Anschluss Austria, where he occupied the same position at the university of Innsbruck.

He served in the SS during WWII but was discharged after an accident and was appointed president of the student body in Prague. (One of those Student Union hacks you cant get rid of..)

Schleyer then came to the attention of Bernhard Adolf, effectively Minister for Industry in Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia. Schleyer soon became his deputy and adviser and was responsible foe organising slave labour to run the factories.

Somehow Schleyer escaped justice at this stage and was merely held as a POW due to his being an officer in the SS.

After the war Schleyer rapidly rose through the ranks of industry to head the Grman employers organisation. He was so aggressive in his approach that even the New York Times described him as a "caricature of an ugly capitalist"

Justuce was delayed but the mass murder of, Jews, Poles, Russians, Communists, Gays finally paid for his crimes when he was executed by the RAF

by Matty Mon Feb 12, 2007 21:17

Christian Klar, said to be involved in nine murders and 11 attempted murders, caused ersatz "outrage" in a television interview in 2001 when he responded to a question about whether he felt remorse: "In the political field, against the background of our struggle, that's not a concept."

by BTK Mon Feb 12, 2007 23:14

They were responsible for acts of Terror including the hijacking of a Lufthansa plane in 1977 and brought it to Yemen before the GSG-9 brought it to an end and shot the hijackers except a woman. They show no remorse for their crimes. Jail them!

by Frank Kelly Tue Feb 13, 2007 00:36

Lest we forget !

Ulrike Meinhof in 1969

Andreas Baader and lover Gudrun Ensslin

Adelheid Schulz

Todesfugue

by LRPA Tue Feb 13, 2007 01:31

Reaction to release
Statement from the LRPA on the pending release of Comrade Brigitte Mohnhaupt

While people must understand that the actions of the Red Army Faction done nothing but damage attempts to spread progressive politics in Europe it must be understood what fired these young people into action. That is the threat of US Imperialism that once more envelops the world. That Brigitte Mohnhaupt has served 24 years in Prisons mainly for the murder of Martin Schleyer, a Nazi killer, says much for the system that she and her comrades opposed. We salute her, and her comrades, and hope they will once more join the anti-Imperialist struggle. To the families of those that died and their wish for apologises we ask why the German working class still awaits an apology from them.

In Solidarity Left Republican Prisoner Association.

by Klaus X Tue Feb 13, 2007 11:13

Some of the heroic actions carried out by Bader Meinhof between 1972 and 1998

11 May 1972 Bombing of US barracks Frankfurt am Main. 1 US soldier executed, 13 wounded

12 May 1972 Augsburg and Munich Bombing of a police station in Augsburg and the Bavarian State Criminal Investigations Agency in Munich. 5 police-officers wounded.

16 May 1972 Karlsruhe Bombing of the car of the Federal Judge Buddenberg. His wife was driving the car and was wounded.

19 May 1972 Hamburg Bombing of the Axel Springer Verlag. 17 wounded.

24 May 1972 Heidelberg Bombing outside of Military Intelligence (G-2), Headquarters, U.S. Army in Europe (HQ USAREUR) at Campbell Barracks. 3 Spies executed (Ronald Woodward, Charles Peck and Captain Clyde Bonner), 5 wounded.

24 April 1975 Stockholm execution of the federal prosecutor-general Siegfried Buback. The driver and another passenger were also killed.

30 July 1977 Oberursel The director of Dresdner Bank, Jürgen Ponto, is executed in his home during an attempted kidnapping.

1977 Palma de Mallorca resp. Mogadishu, Somalia Landshut (hijacking), Lufthansa aircraft that was hijacked as part of the events in the German Autumn of 1977. 3 revolutionaries gave their lives in this operation.

5 September 1977 - 18 October 1977 Hanns-Martin Schleyer, chairman of the German Employers' Organisation, is kidnapped and executed. 3 police-officers and the driver are killed during the kidnapping

June 25, 1979 Mons, Belgium Alexander Haig, Supreme Allied Commander of NATO escapes an assassination attempt

August 31, 1981 Large carbomb explodes in the parking lot of Ramstein Air Base (now a base for US troops on way to Iraq)

September 15, 1981 rocket attack against the car carrying US Army's West German Commander Fred Kroesen

December 18, 1984 Oberammergau, attempt to bomb a School for NATO officers. 10 incidents followed over the next month, against US, British, and French targets

June 6, 1985 Three people are killed by a bomb planted at Frankfurt Airport

August 8, 1985 Rhein-Main Air Base - Mini-Bus explodes in the car park across from the base commander's building. Two US personel were executed in the attack.

9 July 1986 execution of Siemens-manager Karl Heinz Beckurts and driver Eckhard Groppler

30 November 1989 execution of banker Alfred Herrhausen by bomb.

1 April 1991 execution by shooting of Detlev Karsten Rohwedder, chief of the Treuhandanstalt, in his home in Düsseldorf

27 March 1993 Attacks with explosives at the construction site of a new prison

by pat c Tue Feb 13, 2007 16:49

On 18th October 1977 Red Army Faction members Andreas Baader, Gudrun
Ensslin, and Jan-Carl Raspe were murdered in their cells in Stammheim prison
by the German State. Andreas Baader supposedly shot himself in the back of
the head (a neat trick) with a gun he somehow managed to smuggle in to the
prison. Jan-Carl Raspe just shot himself in the temple or so the prison
"authorities" claim. Gudrun Ensslin allegedly hanged herself.

Funny that, prisoners under 24 hour observation not only manage to smuggle
weapons in but commit suicide without any prison officers noticing.

One RAF prisoner survived that night of terror. At first it was thought she
was dead. But Irmgard Möller lived despite being stabbed 4 times in the
chest. Irmgard insists that she was stabbed by an unknown attacker and that
her 3 comrades were murdered.

So, the next time you are protesting about deaths in Garda custody remember
Andreas Baader, Gudrun Ensslin, and Jan-Carl Raspe .

by radical jonny Wed Feb 14, 2007 09:42

I'll grant that the RAF managed to kill a bunch of people. But they never really displayed a disregard for human life on a scale necessary to be taken seriously as a group prepared to run a country.

I know it can be argued that they lacked the money, manpower, and resources to truly wield power on the level of the state. But fair play to them for stepping up and doing their best.

Yet we're still left to ponder: if they'd been able to kill on a larger level, or at least have been able to kill a few more influential people (politicians, judges, etc.) that the German state would have seen that these people had a rulthlessness truly on a state level. The RAF would truly be a power player.

Naturally, post-revolution, with the full apparatus of the state at their disposal, the RAF would have been able to really deal with their enemies and mould the populace into the kind of society that the RAF knew was best for everybody. Like any state, they'd have only meted out violence on those who stepped out of line. But they'd have displayed already that they knew how to keep order, killing only those who got in the way of the status quo.

Then they'd have been a State.

And we'd have to rise up and kill them...

by Learn From The Past Mon Feb 19, 2007 21:17

There is a collection of several dozen statements, communiques, discussion papers, etc. by the RAF and RAF prisoners, all translated into english and online at http://www.germanguerilla.com/red-army-faction/index.html

by gesunder menschenverstand Mon Feb 19, 2007 23:42

it's in german http://www.bettinaroehl.de/index.html
Roehl claimed that her mother's brain was removed from her dead body and that brain abnormalities were present. link in english http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/low/europe/2433563.stm

anyone with an ounce of common sense knows a proper terrorist engaged in war wouldn't think about remorse or apologising. The RAF no matter what the final statement of disbandment claimed about mistakingly not developing a political wing - did not bother with political representation for serious political reasons.
They didn't go for the party, the youth wing, the petitions, the sniveling or snotiness, the togetherness or confrontation. They weren't the most prolific or bloodthirsty, they weren't the most creative or resourceful - they were certainly products of their time (because terrorism is always a product of its time). Somehow you knew where you were with them.
& now they get out of jail. No process. No victory or surrender. No politics. No solidarity or division. No flags and dinky traditional music or clothing at the prison gate. That is how a democratic society based on legal rights works. A good deal of the sample may have shot themselves in the back of the head or tied their sheets together, one brain goes missing, less than a hundred other important enough people to get on a list died (no bystanders no people who forgot to move their car) and now some get out.

some terrorist sympathisers keen and enthusiastic to find a team to support - rush into the whole thing picking their local side or even without thinking just following the family tradition. But if you're a terrorist sympathiser looking for easy to read and understand struggle complete with Kitschy memorabilia, I'd recommend the Baader-Meinhof. Most of the songs have now been taken off the prohibited lists, so if 80's struggle hard core is your kind of thing - hunt round the remainder stores. But never forget people like Joakhim Fischer did the political bit. People bugged his telephone back then. Obviously they stopped later on because he became a german minister and important dude in the Europarliament and never ever mentioned his molotov or scriabin again. Yep. We can all learn from this.

http://www.germanguerilla.com

by Baader-bing Tue Feb 20, 2007 09:41

No, I'm having trouble seeing the parallel between the RAF and the Salvadorean death squads. So far as I know, the RAF never raped women with bayonets and cut off children's heads with machetes. You can criticise the RAF if you like, but nobody's going to take you seriously if you come out with hysterical nonsense like that.

by janis joplin Tue Feb 20, 2007 15:05

sought legitimisation in the emergent left terrorist groupings & not the other way round.
maybe the pondlife forgot that.
this really is a good site by Meinhof's daughter - it explains the myths & gives very interesting coverage of the now establishment figures who hung around with and behind and after the BMG/RAF. But it is in German, & thus will require an extra bit of effort to read - but today we have fairly reliable online translation tools so no-one really has an excuse. The illustration by the way focusses on the type of car favoured by the BM lot in their actions. Janis Joplin quite famously performed her song "lord buy me" when she gigged Germany as part of the "60's" generation thing. A lot of people wrote letters to the newspapers afterwards so shocked were they.

link german
http://www.bettinaroehl.de/Mythos_RAF/mythos_raf.html
link english
http://www.baader-meinhof.com/terminology/terms/bmw.html

"oh lord won't you buy me a mercedes benz. my friends all have porsches I want to make ammends"

by Jerry Cornelius Tue Feb 20, 2007 17:11

You really sound upset today. Too many espressos? I always love your anti-Irish rants, you really are afraid of us aren't you? Reminds me of when Seán McBride died, The Sunday Telegraph had an editorial titled "Death of an Evil man". Even when he was dead they still feared him.

by version 2.1 Tue Feb 20, 2007 19:02

Many people are perhaps too lightweight these days to remember exactly how Janis Joplin introduced her song. So - wrapping it all together for you at this link you'll see a poster to add to your kitsch collection and hear the sound file from it's beginning.http://www.bettinaroehl.de/Die_68er/die_68er.html Now kids, it is alright to take an interest in this stuff now- you don't even have to particularly a "terrorist sympathiser". Especially in Ireland for you abandoned leftwing terrorism a long time ago - and there is little chance of your local garda putting a case together for the DPP especially if you can't count on at least 6 years salary of a precarious worker like a migrant nestling safely under your kitchen sink.

Oh yes Kids - coz 2b very honest- the writing of both Baader and of Meinhof was good.
It was better than good - it approached excellence. I can think of no other terrorist group which had as good writers. Just as long you read this stuff, listen to the music and don't take up arms - everything will be ok.
So a 4 star review from me.

"worked hard all my lifetime, no help from my friends. Oh Lord won't you buy me a colour TeeVee. oh Lord won't you buy me a night on the town, Im counting on you Lord please don't let me down"

by charlton heston Sat Aug 18, 2007 17:00

She's one of the 3rd generation RAF crew and was involved in the assassination of the chairman of Germany's largest aircraft engine design company, which I include in this scantly interesting bit of terrorism news simply because that assassination was carried out in the name of Patsy O Hare who was one of the Hunger Strikers who refused food on an INLA ticket.

Curiously enough the RAF releases which this article seemed to herald stopped just before the G8 meeting in Germany, the same week that the anti-capitalist web hub was destroyed by German police using anti-terrorist powers the president of Germany refused his clemency to one of the 1st generation RAF crew. You have all thier names in a little book and can tell them apart. Of course we're at eating babies to stop airports fueling the climate change these days. & just in case any of out of the loop were wondering : no, Tony Wilson didn't sign the Baader-Meinhof up with Factory records, that was in fact Peter McClaren lest you doubt me look at his photo & tell me you'd trust his wikipedia edits http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_McLaren

no offence meant nor will be taken.

The Baader Meinhof in all their incarnations or generations likewise aren't credited with using airsoft firearms with less than one joule muzzle power in line with current Irish legislation and in keeping with a properly legal gun fetishist off duty Garda's weekend leisure time. It would be a shame to get caught out there.

by Jerry Cornelius Sat Aug 18, 2007 17:45

Congrats to Eva on her Release. I hope she will be able to rebuild her life. Her "crimes" were puny in comparison to those carried out by US Imperialism. Eva carried the struggle directly to the US Armed Forces.

by Sceptic Sun Aug 19, 2007 23:18

Some of the comments on this thread are ignorant and disgraceful apologia for vicious urban terrorism in what was actually a very free and open and liberal society. There was no excuse for the kidnappings and numerous murders of these misguided and radicalised criminals. They had no authority or legitimacy whatsoever to make war on society like that. Weak excuses like - well their crimes killed less people than the neocons - are entirely bogus and do not even have to be refuted. Several of their high profile victims were blameless except for this cultist obsession with law, business and commerce which excuses the murder of people involved it these trades - like Buback, Ponto and Herrhausen and numerous others less well known figures. Schlyer may have had a chequered past, many people of his age did - he was an unformed young man during the war. Regardless of this it is murderous vigilantism to kidnap and kill him - incidentally he was a kidnap victim held as a hostage - not murdered for any other reason. Is it now a capita offence to be described negatively by the New York Times? He was basically in the same position as the Chairman of Ibec is here – a position recently occupied by Brian Geoghan, husband of Mary Harney. Should he have to look out? Schlyer had a reputation for fairness in his dealings with trade unions – he was much admired in labour circles. How causally some people excuse murder, assassination and terror. There is dangerous hate mongering in this thread. Lauding the murderers and defaming the victims – this won’t wash.

by ‰ Sat Dec 06, 2008 00:17

That's an Interesting article and good mix of comments above - I'd like to throw some links to watch the movie together with an anonymous contribution into your network.

Suppose I'm passing through here as a mere droplet of one 21st century information cultural cascade which somehow doesn't get vaporised by special effects, frozen in monumental documentaries or frothed up in a George Clooney advert. I'm just a drop. A piss in the ocean which grows the cod and red herrings your Somalian pirates just to fish. A drop gone to drip long after clothes were hung out, bone dried and caked in pigeon shit.

anyway.

I didn't watch the movie "The Baader Meinhof Komplex" because: it got good really reviews & is likely to win awards & kudos, the Irish Times said it would be a history lesson, I've suffered from The Baader-Meinhof phenomenon which occurs when a person, after having learned some (usually obscure) fact, word, phrase, or other item for the first time, encounters that item again, perhaps several times, shortly after having learned it. This is a specialized version of the effect of serendipity (wikipedia wrote that not me & they're asking for 6 million US$ for their annual server appeal not the paltry 2000€ indymedia ireland is looking for). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baader-Meinhof_Phenomenon or even because my German language skills are up to sitting through a 150 minutes movie which received 6.5 million € in grants from 4 seperate European state subsidised boards of culture. More on that financial angle of shooting terrorist movies below.

------------------Nope.

---------not a bit of it.

The reason I watched that movie is coz somewhere in my darkened soul I know that evolutionary biology alone obliges me to wonder what it would be like to put all the people : I & others - logically and philosophically, analytically and hermeneutically, traditionally and fanatically blame for the torturous penury, ordure & mediocrity, I've only so far managed to understand as *ø* class /*ø*/ ethnically /*ø*/ nationally based

..................................(to put all those people so broadly, generally and specifically thus defined)

Up Against The Wall


& off the leverage of my misery in the name of those whose misery I would : adopt, champion, suffer, articulate, defend, wage war for & pull triggers for.

______________________________________________________________________________

@ least women, girls & womyn had an excuse for that sort of insanity & moody hateful spite back in the 1960's with the magnitude of hormones they were expected to swallow in their birth control pill doses of liberation. They must have been mad. But they still took those pills. More looped and off the rails than Jason Bourne floating in flouride. But what excuse did the lads of the revolutionary sixties and seventies, eighties have? Were they just about avoiding having children and grand-kids? or were they really making sure other people would have a better price on nappies and higher nutrition on breast feeding? They were going to do that by killing so few of the rich?

& no - they never ate a single rich person.

Not one even moderately middle income German citizen did they eat. whatever you've read in a slogan. It took the decadent German capitalist state quite some time after the Bader Meinhof were all banged up doing ocupational therapy and acquainted with toilets without seats, before one person, a confused man indeed, who ate his lover's corpse, another poor eejit who wsa thought to have been a gullible type who was found through an internet chatroom. But By that stage of real cannabilsm politics, not even gender politics came into it at first - It ws just another example of how really weird some people could get. More of us know & care about the Bader Meinhof than Armin Meiwes and his advert "looking for a well-built 18 to 30-year-old to be slaughtered and then consumed" which led to his literal consumption of Bernd Jürgen Brandes in 2001. Armin Meiwes not only ate at least one rich person - he became a vegetarian in prison and joined the German prisoners section of the Green Party. Not only had not a single member of The Bader Meinhof ever got so close to John (the gummy) Gormley, nor changed their eating habits but it is noteworthy that not a single one was worthy of helping out the German state solving problems. Armin Meiwes was recruited "hannibal lector style"
to assist German police in the analysis of two suspected cannibal murders from 1998 and 2000.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armin_Meiwes It being his expertise. But I'm digressing and if you have read this far you might be forgiven for not wanting to make it through these seemingly unrelated sketches and leitmotifs of very komplex zeitgeist which mean you the reader have already imagined Armin Meiwes, the Rotenberg cannibal in the same terms as Anthony Hopkins teasing Jodie Foster's FBI and his political "green-ness" will digest more sweetly in the trivial repetition through which we fill our conversation gaps, drip by drop - then you will convince loved ones or strangers to watch the Bader Meinhof Komplex movie and learn about the real people. How can we excuse such relativism of importance, such solidarity given to causes? How much understanding afforded to the victims?

simple

all excuses wear thin.
even amongst your own kin.

the hard men & the endured women who drive them and fill their snout bags say
never surrender, no step down, that imperial lackey's or slave driver's loss will even a score
they know what they stand for even if their prisoners are now sickened tired of the pay
there's money in websites, peace talks, t-shirts & films but one bullet more..,

will make the old local business men cough up their revolutionary tax.

In this day age - that really seems so............................................................. African.

here's a few places you can read about the movie &/or its reception amongst the popcorn eating classes :-
http://bigscreen.ie/trailers/view.asp?ID=517
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/theticket/2008/1114....html
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/newsnight/review/...film4
The mere mention of the Baader Meingof sends zealous people mad & puts enough postage stamps on mad people to get them in newspapers http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article5172912.ece
http://entertainment.ie/movie_review/Der+Baader+Meinhof...7.htm

Here's a page which offers a few places where you can find ways to watch the movie for free without having to rub shoulders with the wanky types who patronise fringe cinema & know what a trope is. You could even brave putting your ISP on the list of pirates and infringe the copyright and download the product, after all that's anti-capitalism 21st century style and what harm will you be doing anyone? http://streamfun1.blogspot.com/2008/09/der-baader-meinh....html

If you want to watch movies about the IRA consult your local video library or better still be proactive & ask your local ministry of culture for a grant & make an IRA film yourself. Set your sights high and remember the Bader Meinhoff concept could get 43,333.33€ funding for eacfh minute of the movie. It's not as much as a car advert obviously but it's certainly a lot more than you'd earn pumping bullets in someone's head or most people would pay you not to pump bullets in their head. For political or other reasons. You'd know best yourself the answer to that question if of course you knew how many caps you'd get off in a minute allowing for that head moving in the meantime as its face blew off in exit wounds to rub the decent mourning and burial out of the next day. Neither Jean de Menezes nor John Fitzgerald Kennedy ever knew what him them. So it was painless enough even without a recognisable face because we all know what they looked like and read about it in the paper.

But in fairness you probably wouldn't be in that league. Anthony Hopkins and Jodie Foster made their movie and fiction many years before before Armin Meiwes ate Bernd Jürgen Brandes. They based their achievement on a book written even before that. No movie on the IRA, or Bader Meinhof, or whichever little purchaser of arms and purveyor of ideas you'd pick was made so prospectively. Neither movies nor culture get made that way coz there's a lot of time that needs to be put in and justified.

Accordingly we consider 43,333 and a third euros a decent figure for a minute's shooting of cinematic history coz we need to appreciate that each of those final minutes represents literally hours sometimes weeks of effort, labour, worry and slog. That is surely why people want to mention all the little folk behind the scenes when they collect their Oscar.

But it does help if you speak English.
úsáid as an focal Béarla.

If some other bit of class, ethnic or "nationally" based logically and philosophically, analytically and hermeneutically, traditionally and fanatically blamed for torturous penury, ordure & mediocrity is what you're wanting to sort out, wrap up & put in that can - & it hasn't got enough good movies with decent sound tracks yet - then you'd be probably be either too early off the historical mark to do some African or Asian story or sadly, very sadly, perversely tragically - still talking up the poor b-a-s-q-u-e----p-r-o-b-l-e-m.

oh they'd unite all their bits and pieces to have some decent cinematic explanations and flashbacks of how mediocre the ordure got as every step of the way the same three letters got in the way of what they wanted. It's really so hard to put a straight question to a twisted answer nowadays that we love the certainty of accepting which sides we know we say we're on.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Der_Baader_Meinhof_Komplex


who sold you your guns, with so few fingers on cheap triggers,
what flared your nostrils and rubbed your cheeks ruddy Iñaki ???

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