Dialog International

Junge Freiheit Wades into the "Brown Swamp"

Recently there have been alarming reports right-wing violence in Germany.  Most of the most vicious attacks on foreigners have taken place in eastern Germany, but the west has hardly been immune. Last week we learned of an incident in the eastern German town of Mügeln: a mob of 50 extremists viciously attacked eight Indian men while shouting right-wing slogans. The major media outlets sent out reporters to report on the "brown swamp" (brauner Sumpf) of neo-Nazism and right-wing extremism that is evidently thriving in the eastern provinces. There has been much hand-wringing in the German press about what appears to be an intractable problem.

Meanwhile the neo-fascist weekly Junge Freiheit sees the terrible events in Mügeln as an opportunity to gain a new readership.  This week the Junge Freiheit reporters fanned out in Mügeln and environs and discovered that there is absolutely no right-wing violence to be found.  The problem, according to Junge Freiheit is the "liberal media" and the "left-wing political cabal" that conspire to vilify the good peaceful Germans who live there.

"Es geht nicht um Tatsachen und auch nicht um die „acht Inder“. Mügeln wird als Fanal gebraucht. Ein politischer Feldzug soll in Schwung gehalten werden, der auf eine umfassende Bewußtseins- und Gesellschaftsveränderung abzielt. Wir erleben das Wetterleuchten eines me­dialen Bürgerkriegs!"

The crack reporters of Junge Freiheit uncovered what really happened (missed by the rest of the press and local police): the dark-skinned Indian men were harassing a German girl. When some brave and honorable German men came to her defense, one of the Indians "pulled a knife", so the brutal beating of the eight Indian men was actually a "case of self-defense".  The "left-wing German press" has deliberately distorted the facts in order to advance the myth of right-wing extremism in a peaceful German town.

What really attracted attention, though, is Junge Freiheit's interview with the clueless (FDP!) mayor of Mügeln, Gotthard Deuse who is completely baffled by the events in his town and is goaded by the newspaper into making unfortunate statements such as "Ich bin stolz ein Deutscher zu sein " (I'm proud to be a German) - innocuous enough, but given the context pretty horrible.  Already the mayor's interview with Junge Freiheit is making life difficult for him.  According to Der Spiegel , there is a growing chorus of voices demanding his resignation or removal:

Der Mügelner Bürgermeister habe das Problem des Rassismus noch immer nicht begriffen, stellt Sachsens Grünen-Fraktionschefin Hermenau heute fest. Dafür sei das Interview ein weiterer Beweis. Ihre Bundeskollegin Renate Künast fordert Deuses Rücktritt: "Der Bürgermeister von Mügeln muss weg." Auch SPD-Innenpolitiker Sebastian Edathy legt Deuse den Rückzug nahe. Die sächsische Linksfraktion nennt ihn "untragbar".

Shameful Legacy

The worst Attorney General in the history of the United States has resigned.  The departure of Alberto Gonzales was accompanied by words of condemnation in the US and world press.  In Germany, Peter Mühlbauer in Telepolis summed it up nicely:

Gonzalez hinterlässt einen Rattenschwanz an Skandalen, der immer länger wurde. Zuletzt war er so untragbar geworden, dass sogar Republikaner seine Entlassung forderten.

A "rat's tail of scandals" is indeed the legacy of Alberto Gonzales.  Josh Marshall of TalkingPointsMemo put together this farewell video of Alberto Gonzales' most famous lies.

For me, two aspects of Gonzales' career stand out: 1) his fast-tracking of death penalty cases while Attorney General of Texas, so that his boss - George W. Bush - presided over more executions (153) than any governor in US history; and 2) his efforts as President Bush's counsel to build a legal case for torture and trashing the Geneva Conventions.

As the journalist Max Böhnel writes, Gonzales is gone, but his shameful legacy remains:

Wie Michael Ratner, Leiter des »Center for Constitutional Rights« in New York, betonte, gebe es erst dann etwas zu feiern, »wenn wir die gesamte Bande, die für unzählige illegale Praktiken verantwortlich ist, losgeworden sind, einschließlich Bush und Cheney«. Amtsenthebungsverfahren und Strafrechtsverfolgung seien ein Imperativ. Denn, so Ratner, »Guantanamo geht weiter«, es gebe nach wie vor Folter, Abhörmaßnahmen, geheime CIA-Gefängnisse und illegale Gerichte.

Tucholsky on Sacco and Vanzetti

Last week marked the 80th anniversary of the execution of Sacco and Vanzetti. The trial and subsequent execution of these two Italian immigrants remains controversial today, and back then sparked huge protests around the world.  It is estimated that more than 50 million people took part in protests both in the US and abroad.  The case was closely followed by writers and political activists in Germany. In April of 1927 Kurt Tucholsky sent a letter to the American ambassador.  I don't believe it has ever been translated into English, so I've taken the liberty of translating it  The German original can be found here.

Your Excellency:

It is my honor to present you with the following:

As is well-known in political circles, the Supreme Court in Boston has refused to take up the case of the workers Sacco and Vanzetti, so there is now nothing in the way of carrying out the death penalty. As the publisher of a weekly magazine that for years has stood for freedom and justice, I would like to make you aware that a large segment of intellectuals and members of the working class strongly protest the planned executions of these two men. In doing so, I in no way want to interfere in the domestic politics of the United States. But as a part of a nation that is very familiar with errors of justice and much worse I just ask you to consider how the reputation of a nation - including the United States - can be damaged by such events.  Even if Sacco and Venzetti did commit crimes that are punishable under American law - which judging by the quality of the witness testimonies and the commentary of the American press was not the case - my friends and I believe that they have suffered long enough under the fear of death and that should more than compensate for their actions. I would respectfully like your Excellency to be aware that the sympathies of all politically active and engaged Germans are completely on the side of the accused. This violation of the most basic human rights must be corrected; the very least that we expect of the American government is a pardon of both men. We protest in the strongest possible terms the intended execution of Sacco and Vanzetti.

I would like to add that I will be reprinting this protest in the next issue of my magazine.

Respectfully, and with the highest regards to Your Excellency,

Tucholsky

Nick Brauns describes what happened in Germany when word came of the executions of Sacco and Vanzetti:

In den frühen Morgenstunden des 23. August protestierte die KPD mit Agitprop-Lastwagen gegen den Justizmord. Ruhrbergarbeiter hielten Belegschaftsversammlungen in Zechen ab, und die Arbeiter der Mannheimer Benz-Werke traten in einen 15minütigen Streik. In Halle galoppierten berittene Polizisten gegen die Demonstranten. In Leipzig und Hamburg schoß die Polizei in die Menge, es gab Tote und Verletzte. Eine mächtige Trauerkundgebung mit bis zu 150000 Teilnehmern im Berliner Lustgarten, zu der die KPD am 24. August aufgerufen hatte, gehörte zu den größten Massendemonstrationen der Weimarer Republik. (In the early morning hours of 23rd of August the KPD protested with agit-prop trucks against the executions and th travesty of justice. Coal miners in the Ruhr region held spontaneous meetings at the mines, and the workers in the Benz factories in Mannheim went on a 15 minute strike. Policemen on horseback rode into crowds of demonstrators in Halle. In Leipzig and Hamburg the police fired into the crowd, killing and injuring protestors. In Berlin the KPD organized a massive memorial rally of up to 150,000 people in the Lustgarten. It was one of the largest mass demonstrations of the Weimar Republic.)

Cool Cities and Un-Cool Countries

I picked up the current issue of Der Spiegel on "Europe's Cool Cities" while in New York City (un-cool, according to Spiegel) this week. London and Paris are out. Amsterdam, Barcelona, Dublin, Copenhagen, Tallinn and Hamburg are in. What makes these cities so cool?  According to Der Spiegel they are magnets for the cultural creatives - young, talented people with brainpower and spending-power who are attracted to other young talented people. Here Der Spiegel is picking up on something I wrote about over two years ago. Richard Florida, in his book The RIse of Creative Class. wrote about the 'Three T's" - Technology, Talent and Tolerance - as the necessary ingrediants for attracting and keeping cultural creatives. Somewhat new in the report by Der Spiegel (available only in print edition) is the emphasis on "Second Cities": while the mega-cities contend with fiscal crises, insufficient infrastructure, and skyrocketing real estate prices, the Second Cities have a better chance of creating the space for a sustainable creative culture:

Die Krise der Mega-Citys ist die Chance der Second Citys. Von Manila dürften die allerwenigsten behaupten, das sei eine coole Stadt. Cool sind Städte überschaubarer Grösse, die Sicherheit bieten, Aufstiegschancen gewähren und eine identifizierbare Elite haben, die innovativ genug ist, um für ökonomischen Fortschritt un für Wohlstand zu sorgen.

One thing that Florida stresses is that in a globalized "flat" world there are few barriers preventing the  creative class from moving to next cool city, if they see better opportunities or living conditions.  Here the EU definitely has advantages in terms of cultural mobility. After 9/11 the US has thrown up numerous barriers, and the global creative class has stayed away. But it may not matter anyway to the creative class: America is no longer cool.  Adam Gopnik touches on this in his article on Nicolas Sarkozy in the New Yorker:

Now, for the first time, it’s possible to imagine modernization as something independent of Americanization: when people in Paris talk about ambitious kids going to study abroad, they talk about London. (Americans have little idea of the damage done by the ordeal that a routine run through immigration at J.F.K. has become for Europeans, or by the suspicion and hostility that greet the most anodyne foreigners who come to study or teach at our scientific and educational institutions.) When people in Paris talk about manufacturing might, they talk about China; when they talk about tall buildings, they talk about Dubai; when they talk about troubling foreign takeovers, they talk about Gazprom. The Sarkozy-Gordon Brown-Merkel generation is not unsympathetic to America, but America is not so much the primary issue for them, as it was for Blair and Chirac, in the nineties, when America was powerful beyond words. To a new leadership class, it sometimes seems that America is no longer the human bomb you have to defuse but the nut you walk away from.

So in a period of just six years America has transformed itself in the eyes of the creative class from the cool older brother who cound initiate you into what is new and exciting to the crazy drunk uncle, who you have to humor in order to minimize the damage he might cause.

Googled into Prison

Be very careful what words you use when you publish content on the Web. Just using the word "Gentrification", for example, could be grounds for arrest in Germany. Anti-terrorist agents in Germany arrested the urban sociologist Andrej H. after they googled some key words and were linked to his research (HT Dr. Dean):

Dabei stellte sich heraus, dass BKA-Beamte mit einer Google-Suche nach den Begriffen "Gentrification" und "Prekarisierung" auf den Stadtsoziologen aufmerksam wurden. Die Tatsache, dass der Soziologe zu den Begriffen forschte, die für die Aufwertung oder Abwertung von Stadtvierteln benutzt werden, genügte offenbar den BKA-Beamten, um eine Verbindung zur "militanten Gruppe" herzustellen. "Das reichte für die Ermittlungsbehörden für eine fast einjährige Observation, für Videoüberwachung der Hauseingänge und Lauschangriff".

Some of the words used by Andrej H. were also found in communications used by a "militant group" in Berlin that is suspected of arson. The actions of the German prosecutor's office have unleashed a international protest by academics:

In two open letters, more than 100 academics from Britain, Canada, Germany, the Netherlands, the United States and other countries have called on German Federal Prosecutor Monika Harms to release sociologist Andrej H. from a Berlin prison. They fear the Humboldt University researcher is being charged with membership in a terrorist group on the basis of his work.

"We strictly oppose the use of violence as endorsed and practiced by the 'militant group,'" one of the letters reads. "At the same time, however, we strongly object to the notion of intellectual complicity adopted by the federal prosecutor's office in its investigation. …Such arguments allow any piece of academic writing to be potentially incriminating," the letter goes on to say.

What is the lesson here?  Never publish ANYTHING on the Web; you might use a word that could be considered support of terrorism. George Orwell never dreamed of a tool like Google.

Bamboozled?

Philosopher Ernst Tugendhat on the success of German academicians at American universities:

Here there's a lot of mudslinging in universities. In England and the USA, people have a different way of approaching questions, particularly with me, because my style of thinking is rather Anglo-Saxon. Many German colleagues have it easier in America because there people think, oh, that's some German profundity that's so profound that it can't be understood anyway.

Could that explain the phenomenal career of Henry Kissinger?

By the way, these are dark days for the German University system. In the recent Shanghai ranking of the top 500 universities in the world, the top Germany univesity - LMU Muenchen - placed only at number 53. The nuber one university in the world?  Harvard, which just announced its endowment increased to $33 billion.  The rich get richer....

The Stasi Shoot-to-Kill Order

Last week Marianne Birthler, head of the Stasi Document-Authority, released a 1972 directive from a Stasi officer which was supposed to the "smoking gun" many had been searching for: irrefutable proof that the East German SED ordered  guards to kill anyone fleeing over the border. Der Spiegel has a photocopy of the 7-page directive - written in the most abominable, semi-literate "Stasi-speak" - on its Web site.  The publication of this document has unleashed strong emotions; I have been following the developments with interest all week.

On the one hand, the document was considerably less important than what Frau Birthler first maintained. It was not typed on any official letterhead, and it was issued by a fairly low-level officer.  Upon closer reading, it refers to the shooting of deserting guards and officers, not to the indiscriminate killing of civilians. Then Der Spiegel discovered that the "sensational" document had been displayed in the Authority's museum for years, so there was nothing really new about it. The fact that Frau Birthler publicized the shoot-to-kill order on the anniversary date of the construction of the Berlin wall was viewed with a great deal of skepticism. Was she merely trying to preserve her job, and with that the relevance of the Authority?  There are now calls to shut down the Authority altogether and transfer the Stasi files to the Federal Archive, where they can be open to the public.

Some in the German media have to used this affair to point out that Germany suffers from historical amnesia 18 years after the collapse of GDR.

Volker Kauder, the parliamentary leader for Germany's governing Christian Democratic Union (CDU), told the Berliner Zeitung on Thursday that his party would take steps to raise awareness about eastern Germany's communist past."We have worked enormously hard to deal with the past of the Third Reich's terror system and continue to do so, but we've done much too little when it comes to dealing with the GDR dictatorship," he said. "When looking at the alarming lack of knowledge about the GDR past among the younger generation, we should use the current debate to clarify who was responsible."

Reinhard Jirgl, writing in the NZZ, compared the GDR to Nazi Germany, and wants those responsible at all levels to be put on trial:

"Not only are the perpetrators at all levels of responsibility comparable [with those in the Nuremburg Trials] but also their respective systems - the Nazi and the Stalinist systems, which are as alike as two brothers. Indeed, they must be compared with each other; otherwise we would lack important knowledge about the functioning of dictatorships. After all, no political system is innately immune against the return of such manifestations! And what's more, a 'murky' form of justice such as that resulting from the Nuremberg Trials is still better than no justice at all. Yet the Stalinist criminals of the GDR regime have yet to receive the sentence they deserve."

Somewhere between 400 and 1000 East German citizens were killed crossing the border during the GDR's existence.  Does it really make sense to drag out comparisons with the Third Reich or Stalin's terror regime where millions perished?  Have we forgotten the realities of the Cold War just 18 years after its demise, where two powers were threatening with nuclear annihilation, and the East German border was the flashpoint? At least one German blogger has pointed out the hypocrisy of feigning outrage over the shoot-to-kill order, while cheering interior minister Schäuble's call for targeted killing of suspected terrorists, or Germany's involvement in the NATO forces in Afghanistan, where US bombings routinely result in the killings of dozens innocent civilians. Lutz Herden writes in Freitag that the problem is not so much historical amnesia, but the banality of historical understanding in the German media:

Das Bedrängende, ja Beängstigende ist die Erfahrung, dass Umgang mit Geschichte immer grobschlächtiger wird, immer mehr zur Glaubensfrage degradiert ist und sich jedem tieferen Verständnis historischer Zusammenhänge verschließt. Es mutet an wie eine postume Rache der DDR, dass die Beschäftigung mir ihr ohne ein beachtliches Maß an geistiger Banalität nicht mehr auskommt.

Interview: Die Linke - Germany's Newest Political Force

Few Americans know much about German politics, and even fewer know anything about Germany's newest political force - Die Linke (the Left Party), which was formed this past June from a merger of the western German WASG and the eastern PDS parties. Now, according to the most recent Forsa polling Die Linke is Germany's third largest party, attracting 13% of the German electorate. Die LInke's principal strength has always been in the new states of eastern Germany, where they are in control of several state and municipal governing councils.  Recently, with the charismatic leader Oscar Lafontaine (former German finance minister) Die Linke scored a political victory in Bremen, taking seats in a western German state assembly for the first time.

Last spring Olaf Petersen, a well-known German blogger, left the virtual world of blogs for the real world of politics and became an activist for Die Linke in Nordfriesland, the northern most district of Germany's northern most state. Olaf kindly agreed to answer some questions from Dialog International. I translated the interview into English.

Dialog International: Why did you join Die Linke and what is your current role in the party?

Petersen: I got involved in the Internet and had access to databanks and other information, and soon some of my friends and acquaintances started coming to me for advice concerning social issues. WIth respect to unemployment compensation it became quite clear to me that those people who are most in need of the financial aid are for the most part left to their own devices. They are given instructions and information that are virtually incomprehensible, or they get half-truths that then allow them to get only a portion of the benefits they are entitled to. There is no government office or advisor who is acting in their interests. I started to get angry at how the most vunerable people in our society were being treated. Just look at all the Internet discussion boards that deal with these topics. The fact that all this was taking place with the Social Democrats (SPD) in power - even though the problems originated with Helmut Kohl's disasterous economic policies after the colloapse of East Germany - made me realize that there was a real need for a genuine worker's party. So in May 2007 I decided to join the PDS which soon merged with the WASG to form Die Linke (The Left).  By the beginning of July the members voted to make me the district leader, a position I share with a female colleague.

Bad Advice

The extent of German banks' exposure to the US mortgage crisis is becoming more apparent each day as the bad news continues.  On Friday it was revealed that Deutsche Bank is a major creditor to an insolvent US mortgage lender, HomeBanc Corp. Today, Deutsche Bank announced it had retained former Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan as an adviser to its investment banking business: 

"Dr. Greenspan's position as one of the architects of the modern financial system gives him a unique perspective from which to help our clients make critical risk management decisions," said Josef Ackermann, chairman of Deutsche Bank's management board and its group executive committee.

There is a great deal of irony at play here, for Greenspan bears a great deal of blame for the mess we are in due to the reckless lending practices of the past decade. It was Alan Greenspan who urged American homeowners to switch to Adjustable Rate Mortgages, essentially playing Russian Roulette with the credit markets.  Now, many of these homes are in foreclosure, since the owners can no longer afford the high interest rates.

Alan Greenspan is revered by Wall Street executives as a God and a Seer, who can do no wrong.  But some are brave enought to point out that the emperor has no clothes.  Nearly nine months ago a commenter ("Wolf") on the Web site of Die Zeit wrote:

"Greenspan ist ein “Hack”, der unverantwortlich die idiotische Steuerpolitik der USA unterstuetzte und Leuten geraten hat variabele Hypotheken aufzunehmen. Auch das war unverantwortlich. Anstatt die Immobilienblase zu verhindern hat er sie aufgeblasen. Offensichtlich hat er keine Ahnung wie sich das auf die Konsumenten auswirkt.
Wer hier in USA wohnt, und die Entwicklung miterlebt hat, weiss wie gefaehrlich die Immobilienblase ist. Investieren in Haeuser mag in gewissen Masse nicht bedenklich sein. Aber ueber Jahre waren die meisten Investitionen in Immobilien. Und das nur wegen steigender Preise. Und die Belastung der Haushalte ist erheblich. Viele Leute wissen gar nicht wie hoch ihre monatlichen Zahlungen sein werden."

Yes, "Hack" is the best characterization of Greenspan, the architect of our current market crisis.

One additional comment on the involvement of German banks in the US subprime mortgage mess.  When I was working as corporate banker, I noticed how the WestLB seemed to participate in every credit disaster that came along.  Whether it was the Mexican debt crisis of the 1980s, the bankruptcies of the biggest leveraged buy-outs (LBOs) or lending money to the corrupt Enron Corporation, WestLB was always there with a big exposure. But WestLB never really had to pay a price for its incompetent management and reckless credit policies, since it was a quasi-state institution, backed by the taxpayers of North Rhine-Westfalia.  Now the NRW taxpayers can count on seeing their taxes used once again for bailing out the bank from its own disasterous mistakes. WestLB has disclosed that it invested $1.75 Billion in the junk mortgage securities.

"America Needs Another 9/11"

If you need more evidence about how far American conservatives have fallen into delusional thinking, you only need to read this editorial by a right-wing columnist in a major US newspaper.  What would really help America is another terrorist attack that would kill thousands of citizens:

"Turn back to 9/11.

Remember the community of outrage and national resolve? America had not been so united since the first Day of Infamy - 12/7/41.

We knew who the enemy was then.

We knew who the enemy was shortly after 9/11.

America's fabric is pulling apart like a cheap sweater.

What would sew us back together?

Another 9/11 attack.

The Golden Gate Bridge. Mount Rushmore. Chicago's Wrigley Field. The Philadelphia subway system. The U.S. is a target-rich environment for al Qaeda.

Is there any doubt they are planning to hit us again?

If it is to be, then let it be. It will take another attack on the homeland to quell the chattering of chipmunks and to restore America's righteous rage and singular purpose to prevail."

The right wing realizes it is losing its grip on America.  Americans are tired of a pointless war that has brought nothing but misery, they are not so enamored of torture, they are not clamoring for more tax cuts that have ruined our infrastructure and our schools. The only way to preserve power is to welcome terrorists to our shores.

Predictably, the right-wing media outlet Fox News endorsed this call for the mass murder of Americans. Fox star anchor John Gibson told viewers: "I think it's going to take a lot of dead people to wake America up."