GERMAN MULTICULTURALISM ' UTTERLY FAILED' ?
German Chancellor and head of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) party Angela Merkel speaks Saturday at the congress of the youth wing of the CDU, Junge Union, in Potsdam.
POTSDAM, Germany — Germany's attempt to create a multicultural society has "utterly failed," Chancellor Angela Merkel said on Saturday, adding fuel to a debate over immigration and Islam polarizing her conservative camp.
Speaking to a meeting of young members of her Christian Democrats (CDU), Merkel said allowing people of different cultural backgrounds to live side by side without integrating had not worked in a country that is home to some four million Muslims.
Speaking to a meeting of young members of her Christian Democrats (CDU), Merkel said allowing people of different cultural backgrounds to live side by side without integrating had not worked in a country that is home to some four million Muslims.
- "This (multicultural) approach has failed, utterly failed," Merkel told the meeting in Potsdam, south of Berlin.
- Merkel faces pressure from within her CDU to take a tougher line on immigrants who don't show a willingness to adapt to German society and her comments appeared intended to pacify her critics.
- She said too little had been required of immigrants in the past and repeated her usual line that they should learn German in order to get by in school and have opportunities on the labor market.
- The debate over foreigners in Germany has shifted since former central banker Thilo Sarrazin published a book accusing Muslim immigrants of lowering the intelligence of German society.
- Sarrazin was censured for his views and dismissed from the Bundesbank, but his book proved highly popular and polls showed a majority of Germans agreed with the thrust of his arguments.
- She said on Saturday that the education of unemployed Germans should take priority over recruiting workers from abroad, while noting Germany could not get by without skilled foreign workers.
- In a weekend newspaper interivew, her Labor Minister Ursula von der Leyen (CDU) raised the possibility of lowering barriers to entry for some foreign workers in order to fight the lack of skilled workers in Europe's largest economy.
- The German Chamber of Industry and Commerce (DIHK) says Germany lacks about 400,000 skilled workers.
- Yet Horst Seehofer, chairman of the Christian Social Union (CSU), the CDU's sister party, has rejected any relaxation of immigration laws and said last week there was no room in Germany for more people from "alien cultures."
- Source: Reuters
GERMAN MOONER DRAGGED HALF NAKED ALONG THE PLATFORM
BERLIN - A German man mooning at railway staff in a departing train got his trousers caught in a carriage door and ended up being dragged half naked along the platform, out of the station and onto the tracks.
Source: Reuters
- The 22-year-old journalism student shoved his backside against the window of a low-slung double-decker train when staff forced him off in Lauenbrueck for travelling without a ticket, a spokesman for police in the northern city of Bremen said.
- "It's a miracle he wasn't badly hurt," the spokesman said. "This sort of thing can end up killing you."
- Instead, dangling by his trousers, the man got pulled along for about 200 metres, all the while managing to keep his legs away from the wheels of the train.
- The ordeal ended when a passenger pulled the emergency brake. Rescues services were called in, causing rail services between Bremen and Hamburg to be suspended for over an hour, delaying 23 trains.
- The man -- unharmed except for cuts and bruises, now faces charges of dangerous interference in rail transport, insulting the train staff, and may face sizeable a compensation claim for the delays he caused, police said.
- "He was full of remorse when I talked to him," the spokesman said. "And he advised others not to try the same thing."
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