Neo-Nazi Cafe Welcomes Germany's Far Right; Extremism Gains A Voice In Germany; Monsoon Rains Turn Deadly, Spark Landslides; Syria Faces Complicated Reconstruction As War Nears End
GORANI: A site many had prayed they'd never see again in Germany. The far-right is gaining visibility and so are those dreaded symbols of hate. Some groups have found ways to get around Germany's hate speech laws which are some of the toughest in the world, as you know. One cafe though is proudly selling not so veiled neo-Nazi merchandise. Our Atika Shubert went to see it firsthand.</s>ATIKA SHUBERT, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Schnitzel topped with a fried egg is the special at the Golden Lion, but you don't need a menu to see what this place is all about.</s>TOMMY FRENCK, OWNER, THE GOLDEN LION: I buy the guest house because we didn't -- we can't go in out to guest houses. Every time the police come or the government or some organizations from them or the leftists, and say don't let the right-wings in, don't let the Nazis in.</s>SHUBERT: Proprietor Tommy Frenck wears his politics on his skin. The word Aryan tattooed around his neck, yet he denies he's a Neo-Nazi.</s>FRENCK: I'm proud of my nation. I'm proud of my heritage. That's the thing in Germany. If you're proud of your heritage, you are a bad guy.</s>SHUBERT: At the back of the restaurant, Frenck shows us his other business, right-wing extremist merchandise. Germany has some of the toughest hate speech laws in the world. It's, for example, illegal to display a swastika and that's led to a kind of coded language like this. 88. That might not mean much to somebody looking at this, but to somebody who knows, H is the eight letter of the alphabet. This means HH or Heil Hitler. And if that's too subtle for you, well, there's merchandise like this for sale. Frenck won't explain what his t-shirts mean and denies that he is spreading Nazi ideology, but he claims that his sales have grown by 10 percent in the last three years, echoing the rise of far-right politics across Germany, like the alternative for Germany political party that he voted for, Frenck wants to ban Islam in Germany and stop immigration. That party, the AFD, won nearly 13 percent of the national vote.</s>FRENCK: Most important for me is that German government make politics for German people and not for the European Union and not for refugees in Africa. They have to be for the German people.</s>SHUBERT: He's not a white supremacist, he claims, pointing to his world map of travels. He just doesn't like globalization. You make it?</s>FRENCK: The thing is, they want to make from all these nice cultures, one big nonculture, you know what I mean?</s>SHUBERT: So you don't want that mixing basically?</s>FRENCK: No. I didn't like the mixing.</s>SHUBERT: These are some of his clientele. This summer, Frenck helped to organize a concert of right-wing rock bands and political speeches by the local AFD. Under the watchful eyes of police. But police say they know Frenck as a right-wing extremist. Stefan Herdigan (ph) is using a long lens to zoom in and identify concert goers. He's an activist who keeps tabs on the growth of Neo-Nazi activity in the area. Tommy Frenck is less of an important Neo-Nazi and more of an entrepreneur of the Neo-Nazi scene, he tells me. Superficially, some of the t-shirts try to be funny. They are not funny. They are serious, because they promote Nazi ideas to people and that is dangerous, he says. So, we've got some heavily armed police coming in with us because they're worried that there could be some violence, even with media coming in. Let's see how it is. No punches thrown, just a few glares, one concertgoer had a message for us after learning we were CNN. This is a typical rock concert against foreign infiltration into Germany happening here, he says. More and more illegals, criminals coming in. The U.S. should be careful too. Better build your wall to Mexico, he says. At the restaurant, Frenck is busy serving beers to concertgoers. He chides us for attending the concert without him. That, he says, is why we didn't get a friendly reception.</s>FRENCK: The media can talk over me what I want. It doesn't matter for me, because all people, they know me. They know I'm a normal person.</s>SHUBERT: Exactly what some fear, that what Frenck is selling may be accepted as normal. Atika Shubert, CNN, Themar, Germany.</s>GORANI: Well that cafe owner certainly was comfortable enough talking about it to CNN and displaying all that merchandise. Remarkable. Now, utter devastation in India. At least 164 people are dead after a monsoon rain sparked severe flooding and landslides in the southern state of Kerala. The official say the rains are as much as 50 percent worse than in previous years and they're still coming, unfortunately. Look at that torrent. Look at that -- it looks like a river. As always, where there is tragedy, there are stories of rescues and bravery. Chad Myers has that.</s>CHAD MYERS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: They're being rescued by helicopter, by truck, by boat, and many are being carried to safety. The death toll keeps rising and tens of thousands of people have been displaced after unprecedented monsoon rains led to widespread flooding and landslides in the southern Indian state of Kerala. Authorities and residents alike tried desperately to reach those stranded in the floodwaters. Weather experts are calling it worst flood in almost a century.</s>UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE (through translator): The water has gotten into both floors of our house. We went to our neighbor's place and stayed on the second floor of their house. All of our things have been destroyed by the water. They are destroyed.</s>MYERS: India's national disaster response force has deployed 53 teams across the state. The country's army, navy, and coast guard have all been called in to help. Even local fishermen have been asked to assist. Over 1,000 personnel from military and disaster authorities are now involved in the rescue mission. The Indian navy shared dramatic video of a pregnant woman being rescued by helicopter. She later gave birth to a healthy baby boy. A reporter from CNN-News 18 describes the flooding in one district.</s>UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: As you can see behind me, this is the situation. This place is completely inundated. This entire town is under water.</s>MYERS: Flooded out roads and bridges and railway shutdowns are hampering emergency efforts. Over 100,000 residents have sought shelter in relief camps.</s>UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE (through translator): They're providing us with clothes and other things. We've been given clothes, cots, and blankets as well as food.</s>MYERS: Monsoon rains are common at this time of year but experts say these have been abnormally heavy. And with more rain expected in the coming days, the situation could go from bad to worse. Chad Myers, CNN.</s>GORANI: The Indian meteorological department has issued a warning for heavy rainfall in the state for the coming days. Let's get over to Allison Chinchar. She's live at the CNN weather center. So, is it going to rain even more there?</s>ALLISON CHINCHAR, CNN METEOROLOGIST: Yes, unfortunately, it is. And you're likely going to see what we call bursts, these heavy pockets of rain that just keep coming over the same areas. And you can take a look at the paths. You can see not only some showers in the southern region, but we've also have rain elsewhere. The main concern, however, has been in the extreme southern portion of India, especially that southwestern region. That's where you have that state, the main state of Kerala that we've been talking about. Look at some of these rainfall amounts. Kochi, for example, 259 millimeters in just the last 72 hours. Again, while monsoon rains are normal for this region, it is uncommon to get these heavy bursts one after another after another for these long periods of time. Now, overall, for India, in general, so far, the monsoon season is about up eight percent below average up to this point, but specifically for the state of Kerala, we're about 11 percent above average. So just this one particular state has seen an inundation of those rains. And one of the districts in that state, every single road is covered in water, which makes it almost impossible for travel, not only for the people to get out but for aid and supplies to get in. So keep that in mind. The forecast again continues to bring more rain. Here, you can see pretty much almost the entire western coastline has additional rainfall coming in in just the next 48 hours. That's going to be the short-term. The long-term aspects are how many more of these bursts can these people take in terms of the rainfall? Because the amounts that they're expecting are still likely, Hala, to be between about 50 and 100 millimeters total of rain, and that's just in the next couple of days.</s>GORANI: Allison Chinchar, thanks very much for that update. In the U.S. State of Georgia, unbelievable story, police tased and arrested an 87-year-old grandmother who was picking dandelion. And now her lawyers says she's considering legal action. The pensioner was spotted holding a knife to cut the flowers. Her daughter-in-law says the woman didn't understand police commands. But the police chief is defending his staff. Kaylee Hartung has that story.</s>KAYLEE HARTUNG, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Hala, Martha's Al-Bishara's granddaughter says this elderly woman has been known to wander into the woods near her home, go looking for dandelions and cut them with a kitchen knife. But her most recent outing to do this to go very unexpected turn, when this 87-year-old woman was taken down to the ground when she was tased by a police officer and then arrested. The actions of the officers from this small rural community in Georgia are under intense scrutiny. Listen first to the 911 call they received last Friday.</s>UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: 911, what's your emergency?</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Hey, I'm at Boys and Girl's club. I'm a staff here. There's a lady walking on the bike trail, she has a knife. And she won't leave. She doesn't speak English. It looks like she's walking around looking for something, vegetation to cut down or something. She has a bag big.</s>UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: But she came at someone with a knife, though, right? Or did she just have it?</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: No, she's just bringing the knife onto the property with her hand. She didn't try and attack anybody or something.</s>HARTUNG: You hear the caller say he didn't see this woman as a threat. But police officers must have felt differently. They say that they reputedly asked Al-Bishara to drop the knife. She didn't respond, she didn't comply. They say she even had a calm demeanor when they had their guns out and the taser out. The police chief, who was among the responding officers, he continues to defend his officer's actions saying he believes they were justified. We've since learned from Al-Bishara's granddaughter that the woman is originally from Syria. She speaks only Arabic and she has dementia. And yet the police chief says nearly everyone should understand the universal command for stop. Hala, this woman is being charged with trespassing and obstruction and she's expected in court next month.</s>GORANI: Thanks, Kaylee Hartung. Don't forget you can get all the latest news, interviews and analysis from the show online, facebook.com/halagoranicnn. Check me out on Twitter, @HalaGorani. Now, Syria's war has been brutal and horrifying, but in the country many are trying to look forward in some parts of the nation. But the momentous task is proving to be complicated. Russia says it wants financial help from western nations. But the U.S. and its allies are hesitant to back anything having to do with the Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad who, of course, Russia has propped up and helped retake parts of the country. He's been accused of course of war crimes, and crimes against humanity. CNN's Fred Pleitgen has been accompanying the Russian military in parts of Syria.</s>FRED PLEITGEN, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: The territorial gains that the Russian military has helped the Syrian government forces achieve are really are quite impressive. The Russian military has driven us on this trip from the southern border of Syria all the way up here to Homs. That's several hundred kilometers, without having to make way for any sort of area still controlled by opposition forces. At the same time, you do see a lot of the problems that Syria still faces. You look at the city that we're in right now, Homs. There's still so much reconstruction that needs to be done. We're in the central part of the city. Of course, people are trying to rebuild. You see some scaffolding. You see people cleaning up, but a lot of money and a lot of resources are needed. Homs' governor says the city is doing its best with what it has.</s>GOV. TALAL BARAZI, HOMS, SYRIA (through translator): In May 2014, rebels have abandoned the old city of Homs leaving behind major damages. The very next day when fighters left, we allowed people to come back to the old city.</s>PLEITGEN: One lighthouse project, Homs' historic market has just reopened after being almost totally destroyed in the fighting that raged here. This is what the market looked like four years ago when CNN was on hand as Syrian government forces retook the old town of Homs from rebels. Some reconstruction is going on in Syria, like this bridge in the town of Rastan. But hundreds of billions of dollars will probably be needed to get the country back on its feet. And Moscow wants western nations to pitch in.</s>MAJ. GEN. IGOR KONASHENKOV, RUSSIAN ARMY (through translator): Of course it's very hard because the scale of damage is large, and people no doubt need help, especially those who are coming back to their homes. They need help to get back to normal life and make the economy work.</s>PLEITEGN: Western countries are reluctant to provide reconstruction help with both the Assad government and its Russian backers accused of war crimes and crimes against humanity, claims they vehemently deny. The Russian army took us to a military food and medical aid station, handing out rations to Syrians still struggling just to get by and uncertain who will provide aid to repair the massive damage this war has caused. Fred Pleitgen, CNN, Rastan, Syria.</s>GORANI: A lot more to come this evening. Family members in North and South Korea are preparing to see each other, in some cases, for the first time in decades. The emotional story is coming up.