Global Network Against Weapons and Nuclear Power in Space
http://www.space4peace.org
February 22, 2023

Space Alert interview with German activist Heinrich Buecker

Heinrich Bücker is the founder and operator of Berlin’s Coop Antiwar Cafe, a popular gathering place for leftist activists in the city. He has come under attack by the German government for his criticism of Germany’s role in the war in Ukraine.

In this interview Global Network coordinator Bruce Gagnon speaks with Heinrich Buecker from Berlin. They discuss the following:

• Germany has been in the news a lot lately for giving tanks to Ukraine and also due to comments by Green Party foreign minister Annalena Baerbock who declared that Europe was ‘at war with Russia’. She has since withdrawn the words but the damage from them still remains.
• Pulitzer prize journalist Seymour Hersh recently released a blockbuster article about how the Biden administration was responsible for the terrorist attack blowing up the Nord Stream pipeline. How are the German people reacting to that story?
• How has the shortage of oil and natural gas and inflation impacted life across your country?
• How many American troops are currently deployed in Germany? How would you respond to claims by many people that the US is responsible for forcing Germans into the current anti-Russian hatred?
• Why is it so important for Germans to resist this new wave of anticommunism and Russophobia?
• Were there similar waves of Russophobia in Germany before WW2? 

On June 22, 2022 Heinrich Buecker gave a speech at an event hosted by Berlin’s Friedenskoordination (Peace Coordination) at the Soviet War Memorial in Berlin’s Treptower Park, in which, according to a statement on the antiwar cafe’s website, he said that “… it seems incomprehensible to me that German politics should again support the same chauvinistic and especially Russophobic ideologies on the basis of which the German Reich found willing helpers in 1941. The SS and Wehrmacht used Ukrainian national-fascist organizations as repressive and murderous squads against their own countrymen, including millions of Jewish men, women and children.”

As a result, he is now facing the possibility of up to three years in prison.

Arguing in favor of sending tanks to Kiev, German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock (Green Party) said EU countries were fighting a war against Russia. US and EU officials have previously gone out of their way to claim they were not a party to the conflict in Ukraine.

“And therefore I’ve said already in the last days – yes, we have to do more to defend Ukraine. Yes, we have to do more also on tanks,” Baerbock said during a debate at the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE). “But the most important and the crucial part is that we do it together and that we do not do the blame game in Europe, because we are fighting a war against Russia and not against each other.”

Additional Resources:
US-petition by UNAC: https://unac.notowar.net/drop-the-cha… –

Heinrich speech in Berlin GERMAN: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bshdb…
Statement on the investigation – by Heinrich Buecker / ENGLISH https://bit.ly/3R6jthu
Info and press (German and English) https://kurzelinks.de/strafverfahren
Global Network links: https://linktr.ee/space4peace