Saturday, July 15, 2017

Hamburg Update Saturday

It's been a week since the G-20 Summit and the Hamburg riots.  Almost everyday....some other piece of the story comes out which makes you shake your head.

Focus wrote up a piece which references a BILD article.  Someone passed an internal police document over to BILD....which says that the city approved a protection plan which said priority was the G-20 Summit meeting and members....with the city population second.

Hamburg's mayor (Scholz) has limited comments over this talk.  It's suggested that he was not even aware of the full plan (which would be odd, having the mayor totally outside of the planning process).  The appearance of Scholz?  You start to think that he's more a figurehead or political guy with no real executive or management background.

According to local news....at least 35 cops are now under investigation for assault upon the protest crowd.  No one says if they are the local cops or visiting cops (probably over 80-percent of the 20,000 cops for the Summit were brought in from other regions).

Some of the 35 cops might be able to talk their way out because the plans drawn up by the leadership weren't comprehensive and they didn't have sufficient numbers to really make a decent protection situation for themselves or the city.  But some of the cops are probably finished with their career and may end up with some jail-time.

Hostility with the public?  One might suggest that the city council (mostly SPD and Greens in the positions of authority) will try to just let this all pass.  But the next big city election is 2020.  I'm guessing that the general population will note little to no progress on the radical side of Hamburg and the Summit damage episode....meaning that the right-of-center to far-right wins at least 60-percent of the 2020 vote.

If that political change did occur....what happens in Hamburg?  I would suggest a mini-civil-war period, with the revolutionary types taking on the new government.  The 2020 to 2025 period in Hamburg might be significant period.

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