Berlin Car Burnings are a 'Precursor to Terrorism'

[The Northerner]

Erhart Körting, in charge of security matters in Berlin, isn't known as a careless man, but on Wednesday he uttered a sentence that may call his sanity into doubt. "I still park my car on the street in front of my house," he said.

The center-left Social Democrat obviously wanted to make a point -- that Berlin authorities won't be cowed by a rash of seemingly random car burnings in the German capital. But the numbers are alarming. After the senator for interior policy spoke on Wednesday night, nine cars were torched around Berlin. Thirty were damaged or destroyed by flames on Monday and Tuesday, about 15 per night, and authorities have made no arrests.

"We need hard deterrent measures," said Rainer Wendt, head of DPoIG, the country's second-largest police union, according to the mass-circulation Bild on Thursday morning. A security expert for the Social Democrats, Dieter Wiefelspütz, told the paper that automobile arsons were "a precursor to terrorism."

No one has been hurt so far, and no one has claimed responsibility. But burning upscale cars is a form of left-wing protest in some German cities, particularly Berlin and Hamburg. Authorities say 300 cars have been torched in Berlin since the start of 2011. The number of arsons over the last three days has been disproportionate, however, and authorities say the targets are not just luxury cars but also vans and delivery trucks.

Berlin's mayor, Klaus Wowereit, called the burnings "deranged vandalism" and said they amounted to "unacceptable crimes that must be prosecuted to the fullest extent."

Read more: http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,780965,00.html

[villager]

1. the "deranged vandalism" is what corporations are doing to the planet

...and what militaries do during war.