Arsonists Torch Berlin Porsches, BMWs on Economic Woe

[walnutpie]

Source: Bloomberg

Feb. 27 (Bloomberg) -- When Berlin resident Simone Klostermann returned from vacation and couldn’t find her Mercedes SLK, she thought it had been towed. Police told her the 35,000- euro ($45,000) car had been torched.

“They’d squirted something flammable into the car’s engine block in the gap between the windshield and the hood,” said Klostermann. “The engine was completely destroyed.”

The 34-year-old’s experience isn’t unique in the German capital. At least 29 vehicles were destroyed in arson attacks this year, most of them luxury cars, according to police. The number is already about 30 percent of the total for 2008. The latest to go up in flames was a Porsche, on Feb. 14, two days after a Mercedes was set alight in a public car park.

While youths in Athens protest by throwing Molotov cocktails, in Paris by toppling barricades, and in Budapest by hurling eggs at politicians, protesters in Berlin rage at their economic plight by targeting the most expensive cars -- symbols of German wealth and power.



Read more: http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601109&sid=auZeM63nrgzo&refer=home

[The Stranger]

1. I guess they're not bothering with the Fords and Chryslers?

:shrug:

[tanngrisnir3]

2. Good luck finding a Chrysler in Berlin. LOTS of Fords, though

[Art_from_Ark]

30. So even as "Daimler Chrysler-Benz",

Chrysler still couldn't sell cars in Germany?

[tanngrisnir3]

35. They never tried to sell Chryslers in Germany. Waaaaay too....

saturated a market and the Germans would never have put up with Chrysler's shit-ball quality.

[Art_from_Ark]

37. It's kind of interesting that here in Japan as well

there are a few Fords on the road, but I can't recall ever seeing a Chrysler.

[DS1]

3. Idiots

The people they are after don't drive their own cars.

[Johnyawl]

4. I don't think they're"after" anybody in paticular

They're trying to make a statement by attacking symbols.

[DS1]

6. And they're going after the wrong symbols

being able to afford a decent car isn't an indicator of the real wealth in the world

[Bake]

7. Mercedes and Porsche are not "decent" cars

They are luxury cars, any way you cut it.

Wait until that shit starts happening here.

Bake

[Cessna Invesco Palin]

27. Not all Mercedes are considered luxury cars in Europe.

I've been in many a Mercedes taxi in Germany, and then there's the A class and similar.

[ConcernedCanuk]

5. There is a serious message here - the peasants are revolting again - as they always have

.
.
.

The poor will only put up with the rich so long

then they will rebel

If the uber-rich wanna stay rich - they better hide their wealth

poor people only put up with abuse for so long . . .

then they push back

and unfortunately - some of their targets are not even the ones really responsible for the disparity

but they LOOK like it - Fancy clothes and cars - they could all be on credit

but poor people wouldn't know that

Solution to the problem? -

TAKE CARE OF THE POOR

We don't expect much, - a warm place to live and some food

We read about the uber-rich with jets, multiple million-dollar dwellings, $400 dinners for two -

We get upset eating our Kraft dinner in a dwelling where you have to wear long underwear 24/7

go figure . . .

[NashVegas]

10. Should It Be Noted

These are automobiles long associated with Germany, that merged with US companies.

Anyone torching Trabants?

[muriel_volestrangler]

11. What US companies did Porsche or BMW merge with?

No, it's nothing to do with the US; the common denomination between Porsche, BMW and Mercedes is that they are luxury brands.

[Clintonista2]

14. violence is not the answer

eom

[JackRiddler]

17. It's vandalism, but it's not violence.

[Clintonista2]

18. Vandalism is not the answer

[Skittles]

39. I agree

a message gets lost when violence / vandalism occurs

[Fire_Medic_Dave]

25. It endangers the lives of the firefighters that are called to respond.

[primavera]

29. What is?

While I'm not a proponent of violence, I sometimes wonder what else can get the attention of the powers that be. Millions took to the streets to peacefully protest the shrub's invasion of Iraq and nobody cared; a couple of kids in Seattle threw a few bricks at an IMF conference and a lot of people at least took notice.

[TankLV]

32. Revolutions can be messy like that...

One word: Guillotine...

[primavera]

28. So how do we explain the US?

The income inequality gap in the US is easily ten times greater than it is in Germany, yet there, they're torching cars, here, we trample MalWart clerks when we should be torching the solid gold lear jets of the obscenely wealthy.

[2feeedle2]

8. I guess there is such thing as class envy after all then

[aquart]

9. Envy? Do honest men envy thieves and criminals?

Or do they just get tired of being robbed?

[Seeking Serenity]

12. Everyone who can afford to purchase a Benz or BMW somehow obtained that money throught theft?

Is that what you're saying?

[conspirator]

21. Some may act on envy. Your comment is irrelevant, because most people don't give

a fuck about what you drive. Most people just want to have a roof over their heads and not being exploited like slaves.
That's the core issue, so stick to it.

[Zorra]

13. Are we heading for a worldwide "Bastille Day"?

When people can no longer feed themselves or their families, well coiffed heads are gonna roll.

Literally.

[Gin]

15. heard a football player just signed a 100 million dollar contract....something

is wrong with this picture.

[AndyTiedye]

16. I Wonder How Many of these Are Really Being Torched By their Owners for the Insurance

[w4rma]

19. Just what I was thinking. (nt)

[awoke_in_2003]

20. The smartest thing that

aristocracies did, was to allow just enough wealth to filter down and allow societies to form a middle class. In the old days, you had the wealthy and the peasant. The peasants greatly outnumber the wealthy, and revolted from time to time. With the emergence of the middle class, the poor no longer had numerical superiority. The middle class tends to stay aligned with the wealthy, because they hold the impossible belief that they could someday join the ranks of the rich. The middle class in this country (for the most part, not people like members) either ignore or despise the poor. As the world economies collapse, the middle class will start going hungry. When it happens, it will probably not be pretty.

[reorg]

22. the article seems slightly off the mark

First, it's not a new trend. Luxury cars have been torched in Berlin at least since 2007 with similar frequency. Second, it's not quite clear who is responsible for the majority of these cases. Recently, for the first time, an unknown group took responsibility for 8 incidents, as a protest against the "gentrification" of their neighbourhood. Other torchings targetting DHL transporters were obviously politically motivated - DHL is about to win a large logistics contract for the German army.

Statistics (private website): http://www.brennende-autos.de/

In Berlin, a Gentrifying Neighborhood Under Siege
By Stephanie Kirchner / Berlin

Sirens breaking the silence of the night, cars engulfed by meter-high flames. This is not a scene from the banlieues of Paris, but from the trendy Eastern Berlin district of Prenzlauer Berg, where in recent weeks an ongoing battle against gentrification has intensified. In the past two months alone, 29 cars - mostly luxury brands like Mercedes, BMW and Porsche - have been set ablaze in Berlin (police believe left-wing extremists are to blame). In a letter published online in January, a leftist radical group called BMW (Bewegung fÜr militanten Widerstand, or Movement for Militant Resistance) admitted to having set eight cars on fire, as a protest, the statement said, against the restructuring of formerly low-income neighborhoods, which has led to higher rents and forced out poorer residents. (...)

Prenzlauer Berg has gone from being one of the cheapest neighborhoods in Berlin to one of the most expensive, with rents increasing tenfold. At the weekly Saturday farmers market on Kollwitzplatz Square, a stand offers currywurst (sausage with curry sauce), a local specialty, with 22-karat gold leaf and a side of french fries with truffle mayonnaise.

Hans-Jürgen Bernsee, 66, has lived in the same house in Prenzlauer Berg since 1970. The retired electrician, who now works at a local community center, has experienced the rapid change of his neighborhood firsthand. He talks about how suddenly young academics and artists, "people who like to sleep in in the morning," many of them from the West, began flocking to the formerly working-class-dominated neighborhood. (...) he's not shocked by the recent outbreak of vandalism - despite the fact that only a few weeks ago, a car was set alight right outside his window. "It's nothing in comparison to what happened in the mid-'90s," Bernsee says, referring to a wave of similar incidents at that time. Bernsee remembers a night when a gang of masked leftists stormed his neighborhood - erecting blockades, throwing Molotov cocktails and torching cars and the local supermarket. Given Berlin's track record of leftist violence, which still erupts each year during the traditional May Day demonstrations by left-wing groups, it is unlikely that the conflict over the remaining affordable living space in Eastern Berlin will be settled anytime soon. ...

http://mobile.time.com/detail.jsp?key=416802&rc=to

Article in Der Tagesspiegel (German)

http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2009/01/420475.html

[superconnected]

23. Yeah, I was thinking it sounded like an ELF group.

[TankLV]

33. 2007 is "new" - just sayin...

[reorg]

40. maybe, but the torchings are not a reaction to the recent crisis of the economy n/t

[Cirque du So-What]

24. Assholes they may be...

but, you know what? They don't give a flying fuck what you or I consider to be proper behavior or whether it endangers the lives of firefighters. As this economic collapse worsens, look for even more violent forms of protest against symbols of wealth and power...most likely progressing to human symbols.

Perhaps the ultra-wealthy have the resources to purchase security guards or even raise private armies to protect themselves, but as conditions worsen, even these mercenaries will have to make a choice between protecting their rich overlords and returning home to protect their own families from marauders.

Certain members who hang out mostly in the gungeon have probably been performing a public service by posting reams of stories about homeowners repelling burglars and home invaders these past few months; it's likely prophetic for a larger segment of society than we can even imagine at this point. Difference is, some are likely salivating at the prospect at blowing away intruders with their boomsticks night & day; the thought of it is utterly repulsive to me, however.

[Renew Deal]

26. That puts a new meaning to "hot car"

:nuke:

[TankLV]

31. And so it begins...and I can't say I blame them for the torchings...

when you have nothing to loose, then the revolution can begin...

[tanngrisnir3]

34. How do you know the perps had nothing to lose?

[TankLV]

36. How do you know they didn't?

There are people who make a choice between eating and getting medicine - people who own expensive cars are low on my list - WAY low...

[tanngrisnir3]

38. I don't. But I don't make unwarranted assumptions about people...

especially probable felons, and express sympathy for them before knowing a damn thing about them.

One would think that if someone had a choice between eating and getting medicine, they would be fucking about torching cars.