Dialog International

"Panic Rooms" Made in Germany

The fear-mongering of German Interior Minister Wolfgang Schäuble is proving to be very profitable for the Hannover-based ABC Guard Saftey Systems GmbH, the manufacturer of the Schutz-Bunker, your very own personal back-yard bunker:

Amid growing angst about climate change and terrorism, backyard pre-fabricated "panic rooms" are all the rage in Germany this summer. The shelters can withstand attacks, as well as the increasingly violent weather.

Call it a storm or fall-out shelter, or just an old-fashioned German air-raid bunker. But the government-approved Gartenschutzraum or backyard shelter is just the thing for suburbanites who are tired of Japanese fishponds and garden gnomes.

Sales of these contraptions have skyrocketed this summer after the Federal Disaster Relief Office announced it had approved the shelters following four years of rigorous testing.

The manufacturer, ABC Guard Safety Systems of Hanover, said the underground shelters could withstand nuclear, biological or chemical arms attacks in addition to providing protection against the increasingly violent weather in Central Europe.

It's funny that the company's Web site  mentions Herr Schaueble's "certainty" that a dirty bomb will be detonated in Germany, but also the military defense budget of the United States as a reason for installing the bunker.

Laut stockholmer Friedensforschungsinstitut SIPRI sind die weltweiten Rüstungsausgaben im Jahr 2006 auf Rekordhöhe gestiegen. Rund 900 Milliarden Euro wurden für militärische Zwecke ausgegeben worden. Den größten Rüstungsetat haben die Vereinigten Staaten, auf die allein 42 Prozent aller Militärausgaben fallen. Deutschland liegt auf Platz sechs der Rangliste noch vor Russland. In Asien verwendete erstmals China das meiste Geld für Rüstung. Den Angaben zufolge sind die Mittel in diesem Bereich weltweit in den vergangenen zehn Jahren um ein Drittel gestiegen

But even if you don't believe the US will launch a nuclear war, there are plenty of other reasons to own a Schutz-Bunker: global warming, Muslim mobs, neo-Nazi youths.  The Deluxe Model protects you from every threat:

atomare Kampfmittel

biologische Kampfmittel

chemische Kampfmittel

Kastor-Transportunfällen

Reaktorunglücke

Chemieunfälle etc.

Erdbeben

Wirbelstürme

Lawinengefahren

Handfeuerwaffen und moderne militärische Sturmgewehre
(Panzerung Klasse B7)*

Handgranaten und Sprengwaffen (Panzerung Klasse B7)*

American Stasi

As a teenager I participated in a number of protests against the Vietnam war.  I never truly believed the (mostly older) protest organizers at the time who warned me that our actions were being monitored by the CIA.  Weren't they being just a little bit paranoid? Those were certainly paranoid times; but come on, didn't the CIA have more important things to do, like assassinate foreign leaders and stage coups? Well, it turns out those  older and wiser anti-war protesters knew what they are talking about: this week the CIA released to the public the family jewels - secret papers that document its own illegal activities over several decades.  You can download the 700+ pages of documents at this New York Times Web page. 

"Tom Blanton of the National Security Archive, the research group that filed the Freedom of Information request in 1992 that led to the documents’ becoming public, said he was initially underwhelmed by them because they contained little about the agency’s foreign operations.

But Mr. Blanton said what was striking was the scope of the C.I.A’s domestic spying efforts — what he called the “C.I.A. doing its Stasi imitation"...

What is truly breathtaking is the shear number of American citizens who opposed the war that were spied on by the CIA:

"The C.I.A. undertook a domestic surveillance operation code-named Chaos that went on for almost seven years under Presidents Johnson and Nixon. Mr. Helms created a Special Operations Group to conduct the spying. A squad of C.I.A. officers grew their hair long, learned the jargon of the New Left, and went off to infiltrate peace groups in the United States and Europe. The agency compiled a computer index of 300,000 names of American people and organizations, and extensive files on 7,200 citizens. It began working in secret with police departments all over the United States."

This is not a situation of an out-of-control rogue agency breaking the law at will. Rather, these illegal operations were expressly ordered by the President(s).

Releasing these documents at this time was supposed to wipe the slate clean.  The CIA's current director wants to draw a line between the bad old days, and the a new day, where the CIA acts legally:

"General Hayden drew a contrast between the illegal activities of the past and current C.I.A. practices, which he insists are lawful."

But, as at least one German journalist has pointed out, the CIA today may be operating "legally", only because the Bush administration has gutted the constitution, by "legalizing" torture, extraordinary rendition, and the extensive wiretapping of American citizens:

"Laut Agency-Direktor Michael Hayden ist die Veröffentlichung Teil des »sozialen Kontraktes« der CIA mit der Öffentlichkeit. Sie ermögliche einen Blick »in eine ganz andere Ära mit einer ganz anderen Agency«, womit gesagt werden soll, daß der US-Geheimdienst mittlerweile nur noch legal operiert. Das tut die CIA auch: Folter, Entführung und Verschleppung in Geheimgefängnisse sind laut US-Präsident George W. Bush und dem US-Justizministerium heute legal."

Neocon Cruise to Nowhere

This is hilarious. A group of wealthy Republicans paid $6000 apiece to spend seven days on a cruise ship with their neocon heros from the National Review - you know, those manly men who argue that America needs to bomb more nations, even though not one of them ever wore the uniform of the US military. This time Johann Hari from The New Republic joined them (more or less undercover) and reports on the fun (free registration required to access the article).  Europe was very much on the mind of these super-patriotic Americans; and Hari gives his fellow shipmates something to fume about concerning Germany:

I drop the news that there are moves in Germany to have Rumsfeld extradited to face war crimes charges. A red-faced man who looks like an egg with a moustache glued on grumbles, "If the Germans think they can take responsibility for the world, I don't care about German courts. Bomb them." I begin to cite the Pinochet precedent, and O'Beirne snaps, "Treating Don Rumsfeld like Pinochet is disgusting." Egg Man pounds his fist on the table: "Treating Pinochet like that is disgusting. Pinochet is a hero. He saved Chile." "Exactly," adds O'Beirne's husband. "And he privatized Social Security."

But what really has this crowd upset is the fact that (white) Europeans are not breeding enough; they will soon be outnumbered by the Muslim (terrorist) hordes, who have amazing sexual stamina.  Fortunately none other than the Islamophobe Supremo - Mark Steyn - is on board the ship to provide the necessary demographic "facts":

The table nods solemnly before marching onward to Topic A: the billion-strong swarm of Muslims who are poised to take over the world. The idea that Europe is being "taken over" is the unifying theme of this cruise. Some people go on singles' cruises, some on ballroom-dancing cruises. This is the Muslims Are Coming cruise. Everyone thinks it. Everyone knows it. And the man most responsible for this insight is sitting only a few tables down: Mark Steyn. He is wearing sunglasses on top of his head and a bright shirt. Steyn's thesis in his new book, America Alone, is simple: The "European races"--i.e., white people--"are too self-absorbed to breed," but the Muslims are multiplying quickly. The inevitable result will be "large-scale evacuation operations circa 2015" as Europe is ceded to Al Qaeda and "Greater France remorselessly evolve[s] into Greater Bosnia." He offers a light smearing of dubious demographic figures--he needs to turn 20 million European Muslims into more than 150 million in nine years, which is a lot of humping--to "prove" his case.

But facts, figures, and doubt are not on the itinerary of this cruise. With one or two exceptions, the passengers discuss "the Muslims" as a homogenous, sharia-seeking block--already with near-total control of Europe. Over the week, I am asked nine times--I counted--when I am fleeing Europe's encroaching Muslim population for the safety of the United States.

At one of the seminars, a panelist says anti-Americanism comes from both directions in a grasping pincer movement--"The Muslims condemn us for being decadent; the Europeans condemn us for not being decadent enough." Midge Decter, Norman Podhoretz's wife, yells, "The Muslims are right, the Europeans are wrong!" And, instantly, Jay Nordlinger, National Review's managing editor and the panel's chair, says, "I'm afraid a lot of the Europeans are Muslim, Midge." The audience cheers. Somebody shouts, "You tell 'em, Jay!"

Anway, there is a boatload of fun to be had reading this article, including some surprising new facts. For example, we learn that Saddam Hussein really did have stockpiles of WMDs, but somehow smuggled them into Syria.  What a crowd! Great reporting by Johann Hari and The New Republic.

Two Broders

What irony that two of the most annoying political commentators of our time share the same name.  David Broder is the "Dean" of political pundits "inside the beltway", and Henryk Broder chastises his fellow Germans for appeasing Islamic extremists. 

It's nearly impossible to avoid David Broder's words of wisdom.  His op/ed pieces in the Washington Post are syndicated in regional newspapers around the country, and then nearly every Sunday his face stares back at us on the Sunday talk shows. Broder hates the political polarization that characterizes Washington, and his underlying message is "why can't we all just get along"? Unfortunately, he blames the Democrats for not "getting along" with President Bush and his agenda.  Broder, more than any other comentator, is the source of beltway Conventional Wisdom.  It was precisely this Conventional Wisdom that lulled the media to support the disasterous unilateral invasion of Iraq, and it is Conventional Wisdom that is preventing the immediate withdrawal of US forces, resulting in a SURGE of flag-draped caskets arriving home from Baghdad.  It was Broder's Conventional Wisdom which did not object to the Bush administration of practicing torture, nor criticize the Guantanamo prison camp from operating outside of any known laws.  Scott Horton elaborates in Harper's:

"The Washington Post's David Broder is called the “dean” of the Washington punditry. More recently, he seems to sum up everything that's wrong with the class who brought you weapons of mass destruction, the Iraq war and the ever “resurgent” President Bush. He is the vessel of a received wisdom which keeps the war-president in place, cautioning against criticism and validating war- and fear-mongering at every turn. Rather than provide pearls of wisdom based on a lifetime in Washington politics, Broder dishes out naïve, uncritical appraisals of Bush which often have a sycophantic twist—by contrast, he strings administration critics with malicious attacks which reflect faulty reasoning and imaginary facts."

Henryk Broder delights in being a politically incorrect voice in German political commentary. So Broder goes against the grain of entrenched anti-Americanism in Germany: he praises President Bush and celebrates the Iraq War, disdained by nearly all of his compatriots (and, incidentally, by now nearly all Americans). Unfortunately, his political incorrectness puts him in the same camp as the hate blog Politically Incorrect with its rabid Islamophobia. His provocative pieces in Der Spiegel and elsewhere, where he equates Islam with terrorism, have the desired result.  They provoke strong reactions which Henryk Broder gleefully reprints on his blog as proof of virulent anti-Semitism in Germany. Because of his strong support of American neoconservatism, Broder was the recipient of the presitgious Ludwig-Börne-Preis last week in Frankfurt. Named after the brilliant Jewish journalist, the prize is awarded each year to honor independent journalism. The French writer and Holocaust survivor Alfred Grosser considers awarding this prize to Henryk Broder an insult to humanism:

Helmut Markworts Entscheidung, Henryk M. Broder den Börne-Preis zu verleihen, missachtet diesen Humanismus. Er beleidigt damit jene Grundwerte, aufgrund derer Ludwig Börnes Name 1832 beim Hambacher Fest mit Begeisterung gefeiert wurde. Diese Werte bildeten die Basis der ersten deutschen Verfassung, die 1848 in der Frankfurter Paulskirche beschlossen wurde. Mit der diesjährigen Feier zur Verleihung des Börne-Preises in der Paulskirche wendet man sich von ihnen ab.

See also Thomas Rothschild's excellent piece in Freitag, where he asks: why not just give the prize to Paul Wolfowitz?

Mitt Romney and the Terrorist Decorators of Germany

The other day Mitt Romney - the Mormon candidate for US president who wants to "double Guantanamo" (whatever that means) - gave a powerpoint presentation on Global Terrorism. Western nations, Romney warned, are under attack by Islamo-Fascists, who want to "establish a Caliphate" in Washington DC and "defeat the Modernity" (sic).  To underscore his point, he shows a map of Europe where each country that had more than 10 "terrorist attacks" is in colored red.  Of course, most of Europe - including Germany - is all red. It is a matter of faith among conservative Americans that Eurabia has completely surrendered to Muslim hoardes, who bomb and behead at will throughout the European capitals.  But what were the terrorist attacks in Germany that had so alarmed Mitt Romney?  It turns out that the Good Mormon based his slide presentation on MIPT Terrorism Knowledge Base.  Clicking on the map of Germany you can find a list of all the terrorist attacks, including a serious terrorist incident in December of 1999:

A group calling themselves, "The Autonomous Decorators" claimed responsibility for throwing paint bags at the Thuringian Interior Ministry building. They said the attack was to protest the arrest of three suspected members of the Revolutionary Cells/Red Zora, and they threatened further "purposeful actions against the institutions that support this system."

It is true that this terrorist group does sound rather frightening:

The Autonomous Decorators (AD) is a radical feminist, communist, anti-imperialist, terrorist organization. AD is affiliated with the Revolutionary Cells/Red Zora, which began in West Germany in 1974 and ever since have conducted violent attacks against entities they determined to be imperialist, patriarchal, Zionist, or anti-worker; targets have included multinational corporations, drug companies, and sex shops.

So how many other terrorist attacks in Germany were carried out by this hardened band of terrorists?

The Autonomous Decorators have been quiet since their first, and only, paint attack. The group is believed to be inactive.

So is this the part of the Global Jihad by Muslim terrorists in Germany that Mitt Romney is warning us about, and because of which it is absolutely necessary that we bomb Iran immediately?  Or maybe he was referring to this incident in 2002 carried out by "an unknown terrorist group".

Material damage was caused when unknown perpetrators set a Turkish mosque on fire in Wolfenbuettel. No one was injured in the attack.

Ein Gespenst geht um

"A spectre haunts Europe", wrote Marx.  And today in Germany the ghost of Marx has returned with the official birth of the Left Party (Die Linke). The party has outflanked the SPD on the left, and is attracting new members; some Social Democrats feel betrayed by the policies of the SPD and the Grand Coalition. The Left Party has tapped into several veins of discontent and resentment in both eastern and western Germany: there is frustration with Germany's participation in the NATO mission in Afghanistan; there are concerns about globalization, the erosion of trade unions as a political force in Germany, and continued economic stagnation in the east.  The rhetoric of the Left Party leader Oskar Lafontaine appears to resonate with many Germans:

"I attack the policies of the SPD," new Left Party co-chair Oskar Lafontaine -- and former party chairman for the SPD -- told SPIEGEL ONLINE in an interview last week. "The policies of the SPD are as follows: salary cuts, pension cuts, dismantling the welfare state and participation in wars that violate human rights laws. That is contrary to my political convictions."

Political polls indicate that Lafontaine is not alone. Saturday's official wedding will likely give the party -- a fusion between former East German communists from the Party of Democratic Socialism (PDS) and Western German socialists from WASG -- a boost from the single digits it has been polling since the 2005 election. The two parties ran a joint campaign in that vote, but the promised union was continually delayed as political differences were ironed out.

Already the party is bigger and more powerful than either the Liberals (FDP) or the Greens.  Last week at its annual party convention he FDP spent most of time attacking the Left Party. "Freedom, not Socialism" was the rallying cry of the Liberals. And on the right, the CDU/CSU wasted no time in characterizing the party as a band of dangerous demagogues. The Bavarian interior minister Guenter Beckstein vowed round-the-clock surveillance of the "communist extremists" - which is almost amusing, since the leadership of the Left Party is comprised of old men, who in their own way are very conservative.

Post Script: Veteran Social Democrat Albrecht Müller compares a speech by SPD party chairman Kurt Beck to one by Left Party leader Oskar Lafontaine. His conclusions are not very positive for the SPD.

Group 47's Farewell Tour

Sign and Sight translates an excerpt from a review of an evening in Berlin with Günter Grass, Martin Walser and Joachim Kaiser commemorating the 60th anniversary of the founding of the Group 47.  This legendary group of writers came together in the rubble of the war's aftermath in an effort to revive German literature, which had been destroyed in Germany.  This also meant reappropriating the German language, defiled by war and dictatorship, by reducing it to a spartan vocabulary of about 300 words. Hemingway was the new model; literature would return to its elemental directness; the flowery Innerlichkeit of the past was rejected.  Gruppe 47 was a closed group; the members were left-leaning but democratic.  Right-wing writers like Ernst Juenger were not welcome, nor were the proponents of Inner Emigration, who continued publishing during the NS-period.  On the other hand, the Group was not particularly welcoming of exile writers or of immigrants. The great war novelist Gert Ledig read aloud from his novel Vergeltung at one of the Group's early meetings, but did not feel particularly welcome and never returned.  The greatest of the postwar novelists - Wolfgang Koeppen - is listed as a member, but to my knowledge he never attended any of the meetings, nor did he win any of the annual awards the Group 47 gave out.  Koeppen, the masterful modernist, embraced Joyce and Alfred Döblin as his literary models - not Hemingway.

The true contribution of the Gruppe 47 may be for how it shaped the international perception of postwar German literature, rather than for its influence on German writers. Joachim Kaiser alluded to this at the Berlin event:

Die Gruppe 47, sagt Kaiser, habe dazu beigetragen, dass im Ausland das Vertrauen in die Bundesrepublik gewachsen sei. Das sei eben Dialektik, wenn man draußen als Botschafter einer demokratischen Erneuerung, im Inneren aber weithin noch als Nestbeschmutzer wahrgenommen werde. (trans. Kaiser said that the Group 47 contributed to the growing confidence in the young Federal Republic abroad. That's how the Dialectic works: outside of Germany they were the ambassadors of a democratic renewal while at home they were accused of fouling their own nest.)

By the time of the student unrest of the 1960's, the Group 47 had lost its sense of purpose and pretty much dissolved into internal squabbling.  Grass and Walser went in opposite directions, with Grass throwing his lot in with Willy Brandt and the SPD.  Only Heinrich Böll remained true to the Group 47's original ethos.  But all the acrimony of the past appears to have been forgotten in this one last nostalgic reunion.

Michael Hamburger Is Dead

I was not aware that Michael Hamburger had died until I read this moving tribute by Micahel Braun in Freitag. Hamburger is perhaps best known as a translator of German poetry, although he was a very good poet in his own right.  As a young soldier in the British army he was ordered by his commanding officer to translate a poem by the "enemy".  Was it chance or destiny that Hamburger chose to translate a poem by Hölderlin  - one of the most difficult?  In any event, Hamburger discovered his true calling, and his subsequent Hölderlin translations have become the standard.

As a young student I was wrestling with Hölderlin, and my professor encouraged me to attend a reading by Michael Hamburger in Boston. He did, in fact, read one of his Hölderlin translations; I can no longer recall which one.  But it was something else he read that would have a profound effect on me.  In his soft voice, Hamburger read aloud Paul Celan's Todesfuge - first in German, and then in his English translation.  I had never heard of Paul Celan, who had only recently committed suicide in Paris, but Hamburger read other poems as well from Celan's early collection Mohn und Gedächtnis. It was only later, when I had immersed myself in Celan's poetry, that I was able to understand Hamburger's great achievement in translating this great but difficult - almost hermetic - poet. Without Hamburger, it is unlikely that Celan ever would have become known outside of Germany.

Alhough we honor Michael Hamburger primarily for his gifted translations, he was an accomplished poet who deserves wider recognition for his own work:

                      Ave Atque Vale

Moments remain, the sculpted, painted, drawn
Split second millennia long,
Current word silenced, ambered into song
Where nothing can change, no bee molest these petals
Which, met, undo me, leave me unborn or dead,
Unable to compare,
Let hand, make memory meddle.
Momentous did they seem? Not now, so still.
They are, are, are, are, are, the things I see
And will be when they’re lost, obliterated,
The model passed away.
On this old empty vase glazed patterns dance,
Above it fixed wings beat, the migrant’s flight.

Good morning, present, absent ones, good night.

                 -Michael Hamburger, March 22, 1924 - June 7, 2007

Obituary in the London Times

Gerhard Schröder: Prostitute

Have we reached a new low in political discourse between America and Germany?

"US Democratic Congressman Tom Lantos, who chairs the House of Representatives foreign relations committee, made the remarks at the dedication of a memorial to victims of communism in Washington, DC.

He charged that former German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder's close business ties to Russia's energy sector amounted to "political prostitution" that would even offend people who sell their bodies for money."

Lantos was upset that America had rescued Europe from the tyranny of fascism, yet Germany and France refused to join the United States and the "coalition of the willing" in the invasion of Iraq.

The question Representative Lantos needs to ask himself is: it is better to be Putin's prostitute or Bush's poodle? For all of his faults, former chancellor Schröder remains far more popular than outgoing British Prime Minister Tony Blair.

Bush and Benedict XVI: Opportunity Missed

When Pope Benedict XVI met with President Bush last week at the Vatican, he missed an opportunity to condemn the Iraq War as "unjust" under the Christian doctrine of Just War.  After his meeting with the pope Bush was almost gloating:

"Speaking later to reporters, Bush said the pontiff was worried that Christians in Iraq were being "mistreated by the Muslim majority."The Vatican has been critical of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, but both sides said they did not dwell on those differences Saturday. "We didn't talk about just war," the president said at a news conference with Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi."

This was very unfortunate in several respects.  First, Pope Benedict has been very open in his criticism of the US-led invasion of Iraq and its catastrophic aftermath.  In his Easter address this year, Benedict spoke lamented that "nothing positive comes from Iraq, torn apart by continual slaughter as the civil population flees." Second, Benedict could have used the occasion his meeting with Bush to instruct Christians everywhere on the meaning of "Just War" from a Christian perspective, and how the Iraq Invasion fails the "Just War" test in several respects.  This is all the more important since President Bush has often justified his use of violence in messianic Christian terms, even hinting to reporter Bob Woodward that he had consulted with God on the necessity for launching a unilateral invasion of Iraq in 2003.

Bush's Iraq invasion at the minimum fails the "Last Resort" requirement:  Force may be used only after all peaceful and viable alternatives have been seriously tried and exhausted. And, to most sane observers who have watched with horror the death toll on Iraqi civilians caused by the invasion, Bush's war fails the Proportionality Test: The overall destruction expected from the use of force must be outweighed by the good to be achieved , as well as the Minimun Force Test: This principle is meant to limit excessive and unnecessary death and destruction.

But I sometimes have to question whether Benedict XVI even believes in "Just War".  Last July, just as the war in Lebanon was breaking out and Condoleezza Rice was celebrating the violence as the "birth pangs of a new Middle East", Pope Benedict spoke extemporaneously about How to Be A Force for Peace in the World.  Here is an excerpt:

"The Lord has triumphed upon the cross. He did not triumph with a new empire, with a power greater than the others and capable of destroying them; he triumphed, not in a human way, as we would imagine, with an empire more powerful than the other. He triumphed with a love capable of reaching even to death. This is God’s new way of winning: he does not oppose violence with a stronger form of violence. He opposes violence with its exact opposite: love to the very end, his cross. This is God’s humble way of winning: with his love – and this is the only way it is possible – he puts a limit on violence. This is a way of winning that seems very slow to us, but it is the real way to overcome evil, to overcome violence, and we must entrust ourselves to this divine way of winning."

These words go beyond "Just War" in their rejection of violence; too bad he did not challenge President Bush by repeating them in his presence.