Dialog International

Who is Sarah Palin?

Like everyone, I was taken aback by McCain's pick of Sarah Palin as his running mate. Like everyone, I scrambled to learn as much about as I could.  She sounds like a wonderful person and a courageous mom - and totally unqualified be Vice President of the United States.  Sure, she appeals to the extreme right-wing base of the Republican Party:  she detests science (denies an human factor in global warming; is sympathetic to creationist teaching in public schools), she embraces drilling as a panacea for America's dependency on foreign oil; like most Americans, she is amiably ignorant and uncurious about the world at large.  She is a polarizing and reckless choice by John McCain, and it reflects on the man's character and judgment.  Here I can only agree with conservative Ueber-Blogger Andrew Sullivan:

"Think about the men and women serving this country who have every right to trust that their potential commander-in-chief, whatever their party, would have some record of even interest in foreign policy before assuming office.

Think about how the key factor in this decision was not who could defend this country were something dreadful happen to McCain in office but how to tread as much on Obama's convention bounce and use women's equality as a wedge issue among Democrats because it might secure a few points here or there. Oh, and everyone would be surprised. And even Rove would be annoyed.

This is his sense of honor and judgment. This is his sense of responsibility and service.

Here's the real slogan the McCain campaign should now adopt:

Putting. Country. Last."

If the purpose behind McCain's surprise decision was to attract votes from disaffected Hillary supporters, I can't see the logic.  How many Democratic women voters would support someone who has vowed that the old white men on the Supreme Court will take control of their uteruses?

The German press is still rushing to learn about Sarah Polin, but once again Wolfram Eilenberger of Cicero has provided timely and superior commentary.  He succinctly outlines the risks of electing the McCain/Palin ticket:

Natürlich besteht die Möglichkeit – Hey, wir leben in Amerika! –, dass die Newcomerin sich als hervorragende, äußerst kompetente Kandidatin und gewiefte Wahlkämpferin erweist, dass sie die Herzen des Landes im Sturm nimmt und sämtliche taktische Hoffnungen erfüllt. Wäre es so, John McCain würde als genialer Bauch-Entscheider gefeiert.

Oder aber, was mindestens ebenso wahrscheinlich scheint, Palins Wahl wird als eine der selbstsüchtigsten Verantwortungslosigkeiten der amerikanischen Präsidentenwahlkämpfe in die Geschichte eingehen. Denn gewinnt McCain im November, wird Sarah Palin nur einen Herzschlag vom mächtigsten Amt der Welt entfernt sein. Und bei allem Respekt für die Kandidatin, dies ist – nach allem, was wir und auch John McCain bisher über sie wissen können – eine tief verunsichernde Aussicht. Für Amerika. Für die Welt.

(Of course it is entirely possible - hey, we live in America! - that the newcomer (Palin) proves to be an outstanding and highly competent candidate and strong campaigner who takes the nation by storm and fulfills all of the tactical hopes.  If this happens, John McCain will be celebrated for making an ingenious decision from his gut.

Or - just as likely - the choice of Palin will be seen as one of the most selfishly irresponsible decisions ever made in the history of presidential campaigns. For should McCain win in November, Sarah Palin will be just a heartbeat removed from the most powerful office in the world.  With all due respect to the candidate, based on what we and John McCain can know about her, this is a deeply unsettling prospect. For America.  For the world.)

Barack's Dream

Last evening, exactly 45 years after Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech, Barack Obama gave the speech of his life.  Read it, watch it, auf Deutsch.

"America, we are better than these last eight years." That line got me thinking about how far off course we have veered as a nation: wrecked cities, needless war, frayed alliances, torture, crumbling infrastructure, hurting families. Are we better than these last eight years?  The next 68 days will show if this is true...

Great reports on the speech in the German press here, here, and here.  The head of the Green Party Delegation in the Bundestag, Renate Künast, saw the speech in Invesco Stadium last night and gave an effusive interview in Der Tagesspiegel.

I found Wolfram Eilenberger's commentary in Cicero to be quite good:

Es war ein neuer rhetorischer Stil, den Obama mit der Rede von Denver suchte und fand: Zu dem bislang dominierenden parteiübergreifenden Idealismus traten kernig vorgetragene Programmatik und gezielte persönliche Attacken. Damit ist die Taktik enthüllt, mit der Obama in den kommenden Monaten gegen McCain zu bestehen gedenkt. In Anlehnung an den großen Cassius Clay (später Muhammad Ali), lautet sie ganz offenbar: Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee. (With his speech in Denver Obama was looking for a new rhetorical style, and he found it: it was no longer just the soaring idealism that transcended party politics.  It included an outline of substantive policies and forceful personal attacks.  Thus Obama has revealed the tactis he will use in the coming months to beat McCain.  To quote  the great Cassius Clay (Muhammad Ali) it will be this: "Float like a butterfly and sting like a bee.")

More Stupidity From Gabor Steingart

Der Spiegel augments its cover story on John McCain this week with some commentary from my favorite neocon-wannabe journalist Gabor Steingart. For months I have been following Steingart's awful reporting on Barack Obama's campaign, starting with his piece on Obama's first great win at the Iowa Caucuses in January. Steingart interpreted that great victory as a sure sign that Obama's candidacy was doomed for failure.  Ever since Iowa, Steingart has been predicting failure for Barack Obama, even as Steingart cozies up to Rupert Murdoch to join the right-wing extremist commentators at the Wall Street Journal.

Now that Barack Obama has clinched his party's nomination, Steingart predicts that Obama will fail again in the general election. You see, Steingart knows that Obama has divided the Democratic Party: Democrats Divided by an Obama-Shaped Wedge (auf Deutsch).  But while other observers see the party divided into the Clintonistas and the Obama supporters, Steingart knows that there are in fact THREE factions:

As if the enmity between Clinton and Obama weren't already enough, the past few weeks have witnessed the formation of a third group of Democrats. This group's profile is a bit harder to define and they aren't led by one spokesperson. Nevertheless, this is the group that might very well come to dominate the mood of the convention. These are the Doubters.

[...]Obama fever has only spread to a part of the Democratic Party, the majority of the US media -- and two thirds of Germans. The election, though, will be won exactly where America is most American -- where people drive big cars, carry weapons, consider the death penalty to be indispensable. And where at the entrance to the supermarket there is a sign reading "We support our troops."

This is silly analysis coming from someone who has rarely ventured outside the Beltway around Washington DC.  What does Gabor Steingart know about working class Americans?  Here's an invitation:  come with me this October to canvass for Barack Obama in the trailer parks of New Hampshire. You might be surprised, Herr Steingart, at what people who "drive big cars, carry weapons, etc." really are thinking these days.

Neo-Nazi Plot to Kill Barack Obama

Given the simmering climate of hate in the United States, this is hardly a surprise:

A man arrested with two neo-Nazis who spoke of assassinating Illinois Sen. Barack Obama at the Democratic National Convention said in a jailhouse interview with a local television station that he was unsure whether the plot would have been carried out.

"I don't want to say yes, but I don't want to say no," Nathan Johnson, 32, told Denver's CBS affiliate in an interview broadcast this morning.In the interview, Johnson said he told police that Gartrell and Adolf had talked about killing Obama during the senator's acceptance speech Thursday night at a football stadium in downtown Denver.

Johnson said the men believe Obama should not be a candidate for president. "Blacks don't belong in political office," Johnson said. "He should be shot."

Interesting that the German magazine Focus recently interviewed a Ku Klux Klan leader who warned that Obama would never take office (via Politisch Korrekt):

FOCUS Online: Barack Obama hat realistische Chancen, der erste farbige Präsident der USA zu werden. Das muss für ein Klanmitglied der Albtraum sein, oder?

Dupre: Sollte Obama, dieser muslimische Nigger, Präsident werden – (Dupre schüttelt das Sturmgewehr in seiner Hand) – so wird er das bestimmt nicht lange bleiben.

FOCUS Online: Was meinen Sie damit?

Carl Dupre: Sie werden schon sehen.

(trans. Focus: Obama has a realistic chance to become the first black president of the uS. That must be a nightmare for a Klan member. Dupre: If this Muslim nigger becomes president, he won't remain so for long (shakes his automatic rifle). Focus: What do you mean? Dupre: You'll see soon enough.)

White supremacists have been driven into a frenzy by the success of Barack Obama; publicly, many racists, such as the posters on Stormfront.org, profess that they really want to see Obama win, since that would create a "white backlash".  But recent campaign ads from the McCain campaign that show attractive young white women talking about how "hot" Barack Obama is may have driven some right-wing extremists over the edge.

The patron saint of the US White Supremacist movement is the former Klansman and Lousiana representative David Duke, who is taking time out from his Holocaust Denial activities to stir up hate against Barack Obama. David Duke is true internationalist with close ties to the German NPD.  Below is a photo of David Duke together with NPD Party Chairman Udo Voigt:

 

German Press Reacts to Biden Choice

Barack Obama's choice of running mate - Delaware Senator Joseph Biden - is well known in Germany.  The reaction to the news by the German political establishment was overall quite positive:

Gert Weisskirche (SPD):"Obamas Entscheidung für ihn ist eine außergewöhnlich gute Entscheidung, die auch zeigt, wie Obama versucht, alle Strömungen der Demokraten hinter sich zu versammeln" (Obama's pick is an extraordinarily good decision that shows that he's attempting to get all the various factions of the Democratic Party behind him.)
Eckart von Klaeden(CDU): " Bidens Nominierung ist der Versuch Obamas, seine im Vergleich zum republikanischen Präsidentschaftskandidaten McCain geringe außenpolitische Erfahrung auszugleichen" (Biden's nomination is an attempt by Obama to close the gap with the Republican candidate McCain with respect to foreign policy experience.")
Werner Hoyer (FDP): "Sollte Obama die US-Präsidentschaftswahlen gewinnen, wird es dank Biden zu einer anderen Außenpolitik kommen als unter dem Republikaner McCain"(Should Obama win the presidency Biden will ensure that there is a completely different foreign policy than there would be under John McCain.")

The reactions by the commentators are pretty much all over the place: many were hoping for a bold move (Hilary Clinton or Al Gore) and are disappointed by Obama's choice.  Dietmar Ostermann in the Frankfurter Rundschau complains that Biden is solid, loyal, and dull. The Tageszeitung is more generous, calling Biden a man of the people *volksnah" , and a fast learner. The paper also relates the story of the tragic death of Biden's first wife and daughter, and the fact that he initiated legislation protecting women from domestic violence.

A number of publications, such as Focus, make reference to Joe Biden's tendency to commit embarrassing gaffes (Peinlicher Versprecher), but others note his strong oratorical ability ("Der profilierte Außenpolitiker hat eine starke Waffe: seine Rhetorik" ).

Torsten Krauel in Die Welt complains that Obama made a strategic blunder in choosing Biden, since the big issue facing voters in November is the economy, not foreign policy - Biden's area of expertise. McCain could crush Obama by choosing a running mate with strong business credentials such as Mitt Romney or Carly Fiorina (kicked out of Hewlett Packard!):

Es sind alles erfahrene Unternehmer. Im Gegensatz zum ehrlichen Vielredner Joe Biden können sie handfeste Resultate bei dem Thema vorweisen, das die Wähler derzeit am meisten beschäftigt - der Wirtschaft. (These are all experienced entrepreneurs; in contrast to the honest blow-hard Joe Biden they can point to genuine accomplishments in the area that concerns voters the most now: the economy)

The strangest "analysis" comes from the left-wing Junge Welt.  They worry that an Obama-Biden adminsitration would prolong the American empire until 2020, while a McCain presidency would lead to a collapse much earlier:

Nach dem Desaster, das die Neoliberalen im Ausland anrichteten, erhalten Obama und Biden lediglich eine Chance als Protagonisten eines »menschlicheren Gesichts« des US-Imperialismus. So dürfte es dem Duo im Weißen Haus leichtfallen, die europäischen Verbündeten wieder in die imperialen Pläne Wa­shingtons einzubinden und die globale Position der USA wenigstens temporär zu festigen. Aber noch hat John McCain gute Chancen. Im Fall seiner Wahl würde sich, so Friedensforscher Johan Galtung, die Frist bis zum Untergang des US-amerikanischen Imperiums um fünf Jahre auf 2015 verkürzen. Mit Obama als Präsident müssen wir bis 2020 oder sogar noch länger warten. (After the disaster that the neo-liberals created abroad, Obama and Biden have the opportunity of presenting themselves as protagonists of "US imperialism with a more human face".  With this duo in the White House it should be easy to enlist the support of European partners for Washington's imperial plans and secure the global position of the US at least temporarily.  But John McCain still has a good chance to win. According to the peace researcher Johan Galtung, if McCain is elected than the downfall of the American empire should occur in a much shorter timeframe - by 2015. With Obama as president we'll have to wait until 2020 or beyond.)

 

IKB: "Locust" to the Rescue

In 2004 SPD chief Franz Müntefering made headlines by attacking the private equity "locusts" (Heuschrecken) that were swarming over German industry, sucking out the substance while laying off thousands of German workers.  Since then, private equity firms have been highly unpopular in Germany.  That is why I nearly fell off my chair when I read this report:

Germany drew a line under one of its biggest banking crises on Thursday as it revealed a deal to sell IKB, the lender stricken by subprime investments, to a US investment group.
Lone Star is acquiring more than 90 per cent of IKB from KfW, the German state-owned development bank, for an undisclosed “low three-figure” sum.

[...]The deal emphasises the continuing importance of international private equity investors to Germany, in spite of political hostility towards such “locusts”.

And, Die Welt had this sardonic statement:

Als   „Heuschrecken“ wurden die Lone Stars dieser Welt einst von SPD-Mann Franz   Müntefering verunglimpft. Nun hilft ausgerechnet eine Heuschrecke der   Politik dabei, das Milliardengrab IKB zu schließen. (At one time the Lone Stars of the world were scorned by SPD leader Franz   Müntefering as "locusts".  Now it is none other than a locsut that is helping the policy makers close up a hole that has drained billions.)

Die Welt estimates that the IKB subprime debacle cost each German taxpayer 125 euros with the various bail-out packages.  With the Lone Star deal, the IKB shareholders have been wiped out completely and the bondholders are unlikely to see any interest payments for years.

There is only one immediate winner in Lone Star deal: Deutsche Bank.  It was Deutsche Bank who bundled the subprime mortgages into CMOs and funneled them to IKB, earning $$millions in fees in the process.  Rather than forcing Deutsche Bank to acquire the assets of IKB and reimburse the German taxpayers, the German government, by blessing the Lone Star transaction, is allowing Deutsche Bank to walk.

Max Beckmann in New York

If you hurry you can still catch the Max Beckmann exhibit at the Neue Galerie in Manhattan. This small gem of a museum is located just across from Central Park, a stone's throw away from the sidewalk where Beckmann keeled over and died in 1950. The museum is famous for its collection of Austrian painters - especially Klimt, Schiele and Kokoschka, - but for now some of the greatest Germans from the Weimar era have taken over the third floor.

The centerpiece of the exhibit is Beckmann's Self-Portrait with Horn, which he painted in exile in 1938.

Of all the self-portraits Beckmann painted, this is his most enigmatic - and his most melancholy.  Like the other painters represented in the exhibit - Otto Dix, Kirchner, Christian Schad, and Georg Grosz,  - Beckmann's artistic sensibility was shaped by the horrors of the Great War. In Self-Portrait with Horn Beckmann is no longer the self-confident, aloof artist in the tuxedo. He is in a strange dressing gown that has a timeless, harlequin-like quality. The hunting horn, as well, appears as if from the distant past. The artist is staring off to the side expectantly, waiting for an echo of the horn call he has just sounded.  Has he sounded the alarm of the war to come?  But the artist seems enveloped in silence; the warning will not be heeded. The artist's huge hand is suspended at the center of the frame, its creative work is powerless to penetrate the silence or stave off the horrors to come.

Beckmann towers above his peers in the exhibit.  The artists have been categorized as belonging to the Neue Sachlichkeit (New Objectivity) movement of Weimar painting, but Beckmann was never really a member of any school.

The Beckmann exhibit only runs until September 1, but Self-Portrait with Horn is part of the Neue Galerie's permanent collection (the museum acquired the painting in 2001 for $22.5 million), so presumably we will be able to view it in the future.

As a bonus for visitors to the museum, there is a room of wonderful photographs of Beckmann, Dix, Kandinsky, Franz Marc and Lyonel Feininger all at work in their studios.

50 Near Perfect Books of German Poetry

As a lover of lists, I was intrigued by the list of 100 Near Perfect Books of Poetry compiled by the people at the Lilliput Review.  So I undertook a less ambitious project of listing the 50 Near Perfect Books of  German Poetry, limiting it to 1) books published since 1900, and 2) collections or poem cycles published in the poet's lifetime. The list is arranged by date of publication.

I make no claims of completeness or objectivity: the choices are mine alone. No doubt Marcel Reich-Ranicki, Germany's Literary Pope, would heap scorn on many of my choices. So be it.

I would like to expand my list to 100 Near Perfect Books and would welcome any comments or suggestions - especially post-1980 book titles.

The term Near Perfect is used, since artistic perfection is considered an unattainable ideal. But I would maintain that Near Perfect does would not apply in all cases, such as the titles by Rilke, Celan and Trakl: they are perfect.

Georgia Crisis Sparks Anti-American Sentiment in Germany

I know George W. Bush is unpopular in Germany (as he is in the US) but I was unprepared for some of the pro-Putin opinions that have been expressed in the German media and especially in the German blogosphere.  There was considerable Schadenfreude on many German fronts that Russia's invasion of Georgian territory was a blow to the foreign policy of the US, and the conflict in Georgia is viewed by some as a proxy war between Russia and the US, with jubilation that Putin has been victorious on all fronts. But the origins of the conflict itself have been pinned on the US:

Die fremde Intervention und militärische Präsenz der USA auf dem europäischen Kontinent durch ein expansionistisches Militärbündnis an der Grenze Russlands bringt Unruhe und sät Konflikte, die Europa destabilisieren. Polen und die baltischen Staaten müssen an die Leine genommen werden, damit sich ihre Russophobie nicht weiter schädigend auf die EU auswirken kann. (The foreign intervention and military presence of the US on the European continent with an expansionist military alliance on the border of Russia has caused unrest and breeds conflicts that destabilize Europe.  Poland and the Baltic States must be brought back into line, so that the Russo-phobes cannot inflict damage on the EU.)

Then Der Spiegel asserted that Washington implicitly gave the green light for Georgia to undertake military operations in South Ossetia:

Die USA unternahmen einiges, um Georgien ihre Unterstützung zuzusichern: Sie schickten Militärberater in den Kaukasus, nahmen mit tausend Mann an einem Manöver teil, betrieben mit Nachdruck die Aufnahme Georgiens in die Nato - und taten laut kund, dass sie die territoriale Einheit des Verbündeten in der Auseinandersetzung um die separatistischen Enklaven Abchasien und Südossetien unterstützten, ohne freilich ihre Bereitschaft zu zeigen, selbst militärisch einzugreifen. (The US did several things to assure Georgia of its support: it sent military advisors into the Caucasus, participated in military maneuvers with 1,00 troops, insisted on Georgia's inclusion in NATO, and proclaimed loudly that it supported the territorial integrity of its partner with respect to the conflicts in South Ossetia and Abchasia, even though it didn't expressly signal it was ready to intervene militarily.)

So blogs like Duckhome loudly proclaimed that the US wants war with Russia; that was the plan all along:

Tatsächlich wollte Bush diesen Krieg und er wird ihn ausbauen. Dieser Krieg ist gut für Bush. Er schafft Arbeitsplätze in der Waffenindustrie, bringt Europa in neue Abhängigkeiten und vor allem verschleiert er die Probleme die Bush der USA und der Weltwirtschaft bereitet hat. (Bush in fact welcomed this war and he will expand it.  This war is good for Bush.  It creates jobs in the armaments industry, forces Europe into a position of dependency and above all obscures the problems that Bush has created for the US and the world economy.)

And a commenter agrees that, comparing Russia and the US,  "the Americans are the worse epidemic"("die Ami's (sind) die schlimmere Epidemie").

In his blog NachDenkSeiten Albrecht Mueller expresses his fear that the leadership of the German Social Democrats is in the pocket of the US.  The party is missing a huge chance by not rejecting the US "policy of confrontation":

Der Krieg zwischen Georgien und Russland hat nämlich gezeigt, dass wir uns unter Anleitung der USA und einiger Nachbarn Russlands in neue Gefahren begeben. Es geht darum, uns davor zu bewahren, in eine neue Konfrontation mit den „Russen“ und ins Kriegsrisiko gezogen zu werden. (The war between Georgia and Russia has shown that the US and a few neighboring countries to Russian have put us in new danger. We must do everything not to be drawn into a new confrontation with the Russians and the new risks of war.)

In fact, notwithstanding the bellicose noises coming from the neocons and the McCain campaign, the response of the US has been rather measured; military options have been vocally rejected by the Secretary of Defense and others in the Bush administration. Perhaps this is one of the few benefits of having our military capabilities bogged down in Iraq and Afghanistan.

It will be interesting to see if the pro-Russia, pro-Putin and anti-American opinion in Germany persists as Russian troops expand their occupation of Georgia and news of Russian atrocities against the population of Georgia leaks out.

UDATE: DerSpiegelfechter: US progressive media "incredibly naive" ( herzergreifend naiv) for not celebrating Putin's invasion of Georgia.

 

McCain: "Deutsche Post should come to Ohio."

Germany is again a target of the presidential campaign of John McCain.  First he mocked the thousands of "fawning Germans" who cheered Barack Obama in Berlin.  Now he is going after the evil German "locusts" (Heuschrecken) who are taking away the jobs of thousands of workers in Ohio.  Airfreight giant DHL Express is shutting down its hub in Wilmington, Ohio and outsourcing the work to rival UPS.  The move will result in 8,000 workers in Ohio losing their jobs.  DHL is owned by Deutsche Post.  No wonder John McCain is livid.  Only problem is that John McCain and his campaign director enabled DHL to acquire the Ohio facility in the first place:

Little known to those citizens, McCain and his campaign manager, Rick Davis, played roles in the fate of DHL Express and its Ohio air park as far back as 2003..."Those jobs are on the chopping block because Sen. McCain and his campaign were involved in a deal that resulted in control of those positions being shifted to a foreign corporation, and there's no getting around that," said Joe Rugola, president of the Ohio AFL-CIO.

The roles of McCain and Davis in the 2003 DHL deal have not been noticed in the current Wilmington flap. They were mentioned briefly, however, in a Washington Post story in June on Davis' lobbying work. In 2003, Davis lobbied the Senate to accept the proposal by DHL to buy Airborne Express for $1.05 billion. Airborne Express at the time ran the airport and package-sorting facility in Wilmington .

Ohio is an important "swing state" in the upcoming election.  So McCain, a champion of globalization and the unrestricted movement of capital, is forced to limit the potential damage to his campaign.  He has pledged to summon the executives of Deutsche Post to Ohio to explain their actions.  He will ask the US Justice Department to investigate the activities of Deutsche Post and possibly ask Congress to intervene. Free markets are great, except when they cost you votes.

Deutsch Post CEO Frank Appel scoffs at McCain's threats:

"Es gibt keine echte Alternative. Sonst würden wir unser gesamtes Expressgeschäft in den Vereinigten Staaten gefährden, und am Ende des Tages wären noch wesentlich mehr Arbeitsplätze bedroht", sagte er der F.A.Z. ("There is no other real alternative. Otherwise our whole express business in the US would be jeopardized, and in the end considerably more jobs could be threatened" he told the FAZ).

DHL Express is now losing $5 million a day in the US.