Dialog International

The Bright Side of the Print Media Crisis

There is much handwringiing in the US about the demise of print media as it seems each week another newspaper files for bankrupcty or simply shuts down altogether.  The situation in Germany is not quite as dire, also here there is a general decline in circulation (Auflage deutscher Zeitungen weiter Rückläufig ).  But there is a positive side to the crisis: some of the really bad newspapers have ceased publication or are basically on life-support.  Thus the neo-con rag The Washington Times, the mouthpiece of its owner - cult leader Sun Myung Moon - ,has fired most of its executives, let go most of its reporters, and discontinued the sports section in a desperate move to stay afloat.  And in Germany, the mighty Bild-Zeitung, a reliable source of unreliable "news", has seen its circulation numbers decline precipitously, according to these figures published in Bildblog.

 

German homeschoolers granted political asylum in US

In the US, parents has the right to homeschool  their children. The outcomes of the homeschooling movement are decidedly mixed.  While some homeschooledl children do receive an excellent, well-rounded academic experience, others - especially the children of fundamentalist Christians - are provided with substandard and distorted perspectives on history and science.  Many fundamentalists are teaching their children that dinosaurs and humans cohabited the earth just 3 thousand years ago (the "young earth" believers) or that America is a nation chosen by God to spread "freedom" and Christianity throughout the world.  Fundamentalist Christian families in Germany do not have the option to (mis)educate their children at home because of compulsory education laws (Schulpflicht), for them, the United States is seen as a sacred refuge.  Now one such German family achieved a huge legal victory - in the heart of the Bible Belt:

NASHVILLE, Tenn. -- A German couple who fled to Tennessee so they could homeschool their children was granted political asylum Tuesday by a U.S. immigration judge, according to the legal group that represented them.

The decision clears the way for Uwe Romeike (roh-MY-kee), his wife and five children to stay in Morristown, Tenn., where they have been living since 2008. Romeike says his family was persecuted for their evangelical Christian beliefs and for homeschooling their children in Germany, where school attendance is compulsory.

The decision has energized the Christian right movement in the US, which often views Europe as a godless cesspool of secularism.  The World Net Daily - a Web site of the lunatic fringe of right-wing extremism - is jubilant: 

It's recognition that the German state is persecuting homeschoolers. We are pleased to have been able to support this courageous family and we hope and pray that this decision will have a decisive effect on German policy makers who should change their laws to recognize a parent's right to educate their own children.

As things stand now, Germany is unworthy of membership in the European Community, or to speak on Human Rights in the international arena. The shadows of the Third Reich and the ideology of Adolf Hitler – if not worse – still drift over Germany.

According to Der Spiegel, there is little chance that the compulsory education laws in Germany will be overturned: 

Hinter der Schulpflicht steckt "die Überlegung, dass das gemeinsame Lernen in der Schule der Vermittlung sozialer Kompetenzen dient", sagt Martina Elschenbroich, Schulrechtsexpertin der Kultusministerkonferenz. So könne der Umgang mit Andersdenkenden als Grundlage einer demokratischen Gesellschaft eingeübt werden. (Compulsory education is "based on the premise that learning with others in schools serves to build and strengthen social competencies," said Martina Eischbreich, expert in educational rights in the Ministry of Culture. Exposure to different points of views provides a basis for a democratic society.)

What is troubling is what happens to these homeschooled Christian children once they leave home.  Some end up at right-wing "madrassas" such as Patrick Henry College in Virginia, where they kneel before posters of Jesus and Ronald Reagan, and are taught that George W. Bush invaded Iraq under orders from God.  As far as I'm concerned, the US needs its own Schulpflicht. 

Fed-Up Homeowners: "Make Deutsche Bank Pay!"

During the US real estate bubble, Deutsche Bank made $$ billions in fees by buying up sub-prime mortgages in US urban areas, packaging them into "CDOs" (Collateralized Debt Obligations) and selling the worthless paper to clueless investors such as the German Landesbanken.  The investors even paid Deutsche Bank to act as trustee, so when the US homeowners default on the underlying mortgage, DB serves with with a notice of foreclosure and evicts them from their homes.  In certain cities such as Cleveland, Akron, and Stockton, California there are blocks and blocks of empty, boarded-up, rotting properties controlled by Deutsche Bank.

Milwaukee, Wisconsin is no different.  There, three banks - Deutsche, Wells Fargo and US Bank - control 25% of the foreclosed properties.  But members of the community have begun to take action, demanding that Deutsche Bank and the other two banks each put up $25 million to rehabilitate and sell the properties to responsible owners:

In addition, it's asking that the banks stop selling to speculators through auctions or mass sales. It also asks the banks to pay to demolish the properties that can't be fixed and then donate that land to a community land trust for future residential construction.

Common Ground, an affiliate of the Industrial Areas Foundation, a national community organizing network, started here in 2008 and represents 50 faith and community organizations in the four-county area. It developed its proposals after spending the past year researching the foreclosure issue.

In all, 250 Common Ground leaders have conducted neighborhood walks in Milwaukee, taken photographic surveys, examined records, and interviewed a variety of public officials and housing foreclosure experts on the detrimental effects vacant and boarded up homes have on residents and neighborhoods.

The community organizers were unmoved by Deutsche Bank's claim that it is merely the trustee and has no beneficial ownership interest in the properties:

"Do not hide behind the legal excuse that we are 'only the trustees,' " Connolly said. "You are responsible. You broke it." The crowd chanted back - "You fix it."

Representatives from Deutsche Bank were handed a detailed report (pdf) on the damage done to Milwaukee and the proposal for how it could be fixed with the giant bank's financial contribution.

John T. Gallagher, a spokesman for Deutsche Bank, said officials had not reviewed the report.

Hopefully similar groups will organize in Cleveland, Akron, Boston, Miami and a hundred other cities demanding that the banks pay for wrecking their communities.

More Celan Letters Published

A while ago I translated one of letters that appeared in Herzzeit , the correspondence between Paul Celan and Ingeborg Bachmann.  Now Suhrkamp has come out with the collected correspondence between Celan and his long-time close friends, Klaus and Nani Demus (Briefwechsel).  I look forward to reading these, since the letters provide one of the few glimpses into Celan's state of mind in the last years of his life.  But I want to comment here on Benjamin Ivry's review in The Forward. 

For Ivry, the fact that Celan was accused of plagiarism by the widow of Ivan Goll looms large in the poet's depression and increasing isolation:

"The letters it contains show how simply trying to exist by writing and translating poetry in postwar Europe eventually drove Celan to suicide in Paris. The moving letters it contains recount how a great Jewish poet was egged on to self-destruction in the name of two mediocre poets who happened to be Jewish. Claire Goll, born Clara Aischmann, widow of the mediocre Surrealist poet Yvan Goll (born Isaac Lange), launched these machinations. The Golls spent the war years in safety in America and returned to postwar Europe, after which Yvan Goll died prematurely of leukemia. Celan had translated some of Goll’s poetry into German, as he had translated dozens of other English- and French-language authors, but as a 2000 study from Suhrkamp, “The Goll Affair: Documents Surrounding an ‘Infamy’ (“Die Goll-Affäre — Dokumente zu einer ‘Infamie’”), sadly details, Claire Goll devoted herself to relentlessly defaming Celan as a plagiarist of her husband’s work, quite literally driving the great poet to madness and suicide."

There is no doubt that Claire Goll galled Paul Celan and the sordid affair was a major irritant to the poet at a critical juncture of his life.  But the affair had pretty much run its course by the summer of 1960, when literary luminaries such as Hans Magnus Enzensberger and Walter Jens came to Celan's defense - publicly and vociferously. And the poet was completely vindicated that same year when he was awarded the prestigious Georg-Büchner-Preis in Darmstadt. 

Paul Celan drowned himself in the Seine in April 1970.  According to his biographer, John Felstiner, the poet by then had become completely isolated, haunted by the ghosts his parents who perished in the Holocaust and by the deaths of his two sons. That spring he was teaching a seminar on Kafka and he kept coming back to the ending of Ein Landarzt ( A Country Doctor):  Betrogen! Betrogen! Einmal dem Fehlläuten der Nachtglocke gefolgt — es ist niemals gutzumachen. ("Betrayed! Betrayed! Once you've answered the wrong ring of the night bell - it can never be made good"). Had Celan answered the wrong call?  We will never know for sure what his reasons were, but he shared the same fate of other survivors such as Jean Améry and Primo Levi. A year later, Celan's friend and most insightful critic Peter Szondi - a survivor of the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp  - drowned himself in Berlin.

 

German Anti-Americanism II: "US wants to colonize Haiti"

The United States government has undertaken an unprecedented rescue and relief effort to save lives and restore some semblance of order in Haiti.  Much more needs to be done, to be sure: the scope of the tragedy is nearly incomprehensible.  But lives have been saved.  American television networks have broadcast images of Haitians being pulled alive from collapsed buildings through the heroic efforts of American and other international rescue teams.  But you won't read much about these rescue and relief efforts in the German press.  Instead, the German news media seem to be focused on how the US is "occupying" Haiti - as if it were possible to provide food, shelter and medical care without a massive deployment of military assets.

Der Spiegel writes about the race to "colonize" Haiti:  Haiti entwickelt sich wieder zur Kolonie.  Of course, it is the US that is seeking to (re)colonize the island nation:

Die Marines haben bereits Fakten geschaffen, sie halten den Flughafen in der Hauptstadt und haben vor der Küste mit dem Flugzeugträger "USS Carl Vinson" einen weiteren "schwimmenden Landeplatz" geschaffen. (The marines have created facts on the ground.  They control the airport in the capital and have a floating landing strip with the aircraft carrierUSS Carl Vinson off the coast.)

No mention made that the earthquake destroyed the port as well as the airport's control tower. 

Das Beben dürfte nun wieder zu einer verstärkten US-Präsenz in der haitianischen Politik führen. Die USA waren zuletzt 1994 mit 20.000 Mann einmarschiert und hatten den aus dem Amt geputschten Präsidenten Jean Bertrand Aristide wieder eingesetzt. (The quake will no dout lead to a greater US influence on Haiti's poltics.  The US marched 20,000 troops into Haiti in 1994 to reinstate President Betrand Aristide, who had been ousted in a putsch.) 

Google News will take you to this article by the anti-American hate blog Duckhome: The US will occupy Haiti for the long term. 

Die USA setzte gleich einen Flugzeugträger in Fahrt. Vermutlich um den Hunger mit Bomben zu bekämpfen. Selbstverständlich haben die USA auch gleich den einzigen Flughafen übernommen. Freunde wie die USA, also imperialistische Eroberer sind eben so. (The US immediately deployed an aircraft carrier - in order to fight hunger by dropping bombs.  Of course, the US quickly took over the only airport.  Friends like the US - imperlialist conquerors  - always behave like this.) 

Why does the US have imperialist designs on Haiti?  Well, they can create a new military base for threatening Cuba and launching wars against Venezuela and Boliva - while allowing US capitalism to suck the wealth out of the ruined country:

Nun hat der Friedensnobelpreisträger Obama die langfristige Besatzung des Landes angeordnet und wenn die Amerikaner irgendwann wieder abziehen, werden die Menschen in Haiti noch ärmer und noch hoffnungsloser sein. Aber das us-amerikanische Kapital wird sich freuen, neue Militärbasen gegen Kuba und die aufbruchswilligen Länder in Südamerika werden bereit und ein neuer Papa Doc wird dank US-Hilfe an der Macht sein. (Now the Nobel Peace Prize winner Obama has ordered the long-term occupation of the country, and if the Americans ever withdraw the people in Haiti will be even poorer and with any hope.  But this capitalists will rejoice, new military bases against Cuba and unfriendly countries in South America and a new Papa Doc will - thanks to US help - be installed in power.)

The writer goes on to say that since President Obama has "lost" the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, it is looking for quick military victories in Latin America.

This is what passes as "analysis" these days on the German left.  President Obama was correct when he made the statement while in Europe last spring that " in Europe, there is an anti-Americanism that can be casual but can also be insidious,"

German Anti-Americanism: Critique of Haiti Relief Aid

President Obama reacted swiftly to the catastrophe in Haiti and immediately mobilized the USAID and US military to provide humanitarian relief and logistical  support to the devastated country.  Obama pledged $100 million to the relief effort and millions of Americans have donated money, food, clothing and medical supplies for the Haitian people.  I cannot disagree with defense secratary Robert Gates when he stated: "I don't know how ... this government could have responded faster or more comprehensively than it has,"

But for many obeervers in Germany, the US relief effort is too little too late, or simply another example of American "imperialism". Thus German viewers of the state-owned Tageschau were informed that there was nothing altruistic about America's response to the tragedy: America was acting in its self-interest to prevent Haitian refugees from washing up on the beaches of Florida, and also to counter the influence of Cuba and Huga Chavez.  In fact, the US is entirely to blame for the crisis in Haiti:

Washingtons diverse Regierungen, die mit einer falschen Entwicklungspolitik Haitis Landbevölkerung auf die Hügel der Hauptstadt gelockt hätten, wo sich ein Erdbeben besonders verheerend auswirke. (The various governments in Washington implemented the wrong development policy by enticing the rural villagers to the hills of the capital city, where the impact of the earthquake was especially devastating.) 

Der Spiegel writes about how President Obama's response has been entirely for America's self-interest:

Zugleich beginnt aber auch ein weiteres Kapitel in der Hassliebe, die die reichste und die ärmste Nation der westlichen Welt seit langem verbindet. "Hilfe" bedeutete da nicht immer einfach nur Hilfe - sondern meinte stets ein komplexes Geflecht aus geopolitischen Interessen und Eigennutz. (At the same time this is yet another chapter in the love-hate relationship that connects the richest and poorest countries in the weet to each other.  "Aid" doesn't simply mean just aid but is a complex mixture of geopolitics and self-interest.)

And the blog NachDenkSeiten warns that the US is simply using the crisis to implement a neo-liberal plan to extract profits from the ruined nation of Haiti - although how the evil capitalists are going to get rich off an impoverished island nation like Haiti is not explained.

Certain left-wing blogs are even more explicit in their hatred of the US.  The WomBlog writes:  "The earth quakes, Haiti weeps - and America profits." 

Wie sollte es auch anders sein. Die selbsternannte Weltmacht USA eilt dem zerstörten Haiti zu Hilfe. Aus reiner Nächstenliebe? Welche Hintergründe hat das Erdbeben? Hätte es vorausgesagt werden können? Hilflosigkeit und Wut lassen verschiedenste Gedanken der Betroffenen zu. Kein Wunder, wissen wir doch, dass hinter fast allen Dingen nur eine Lüge steckt.

Nach dem Erdbeben auf Haiti sieht es in der Region um Port-au-Prince aus, wie nach einem Bombenangriff. Dabei sind amerikanische Kriegsschiffe und der Flugzeugträger “Carl Vinson” erst nach dem Beben losgeschickt worden. Normalerweise hinterlassen die Amis fremde Länder in Schutt und Asche, anstatt sie bereits bei ihrer Ankunft so zerstört vorzufinden.

(How could it be otherwise"  The self-proclaimed superpower rushes to aid a ruined Haiti. Out of humanitarian concern?  What is behind the earthquake?  Could it have been predicted?  Helplessness and anger give rise to the most extreme thoughts. No wonder we realize that behind everything there nothing but lies.

Haiti after the earthquake looks like a bombed out city. But the American destroyers and aircraft carrier were sent after the quake. Usually the Americans leave foreign countries in ash and rubble rather than arriving to find them in that state.)  

The authors of this piece go on to imply that either the US somehow knew ahead of time about the earthquake, and did nothing to warn the people of Haiti, or that it somehow caused the earthquake through a secret Pentagon program of mass destruction (HAARP).

I should mention that the German left is so infected with conspiracy theories that it has become mainstream in Germany to believe that the US government was behind the Twin Towers attack on 9/11.  So it is no surprise that the human tragedy in Haiti is yet another opportunity to express anti-American hate.

Jörg Haider strikes from beyond the grave

It's been more than a year since Austrian neo-fascist leader Jörg Haider was killed in a car crash following a night of drunken debauchery but his ghost haunts the taxpayers of the Free State of Bavaria.  The details  of the scandal surrounding the ill-fated acquisition of Haider's house bank - the Hypo Group Alpe Aldria (HGAA) by the the Bavarian state-owned bank BayernLB  - are just now beginning to become clear.  But one thing is already certain: the taxpayers of Bavaria have lost billions of Euros: 

(Haider's) legacy however, is now costing billions, tearing holes in the budgets of Carinthia and Germany’s Bavaria. The crisis surrounding the Hypo Group Alpe Adria (HGAA) bank, in which Haider played a central role, is a prime example of the coming together of high finance and right-wing politics.

A week ago, the Austrian government took control of ailing HGAA to prevent the immediate collapse of the sixth-largest banking house in the Alpine republic. In the settlement, the previous owners—Bayerische Landesbank (BayernLB), the province of Carinthia, and Austrian mutual insurer Grazer Wechselseitige—each received one euro. They had collectively pumped in several hundred million euros to try and secure the survival of the bank.

The state-owned BayernLB, which became the majority owner two and a half years ago, must now deal with losses of nearly €4 billion. These will largely fall on the Bavarian state treasury and will be recouped through cuts in public spending. A year ago, the state of Bavaria pumped in €10 billion to protect Germany’s second-largest Landesbank (owned 94 percent by the Bavarian government) from bankruptcy.

The fate of HGAA is closely linked with the rise of Haider’s ultra-right Austrian Freedom Party (FPÖ) and its successor, the Alliance for the Future of Austria (BZÖ). Haider, who served 12 years as governor of Carinthia, used the bank to finance his political projects, enrich his friends in the party, and buy votes.

Under Haider’s charge, the financial institution, founded in 1896, rose from being a provincial bank into a market leader in the Balkans. The bank funded Haider’s money-losing prestige projects in Carinthia, such as the luxurious Schlosshotel Velden and the floating stage on the Wörthersee in Klagenfurt, as well as financing the province’s growing debts.

[...]In the manner of an emperor in ancient Rome, Haider used the cash flow from HGAA to win the support of the voters. He introduced various forms of family benefits, payments for commuters, heating and diesel fuel subsidies, and an inflation relief payment. Under Haider’s successors, young people who acquired a driver’s license were given €1,000. These monetary gifts did little to lessen social inequality; with 76,000 people at risk for poverty, Carinthia is the second poorest of Austria’s provinces—but it ensured that the BZÖ won substantial majorities.

In the successor states of Yugoslavia, the HGAA financed a semi-criminal and corrupt elite, which resembled the one surrounding Haider. “In Macedonia, Bosnia or Montenegro, banking geniuses were drawn hypnotically into the wake of Jörg Haider, needy entrepreneurs who could make good use of inexpensive bridge financing for their cash flow,” the Frankfurter Allgemeine commented.

Besides Haider and his corrupt, right-wing friends, who benefited from Bayern LB's overpriced takeover of the failing bank?  The list of investors who profited while taxpayers lost everything includes the Flick family - who made its fortune using slave labor during the Third Reich and members of the Piëch family dynasty, who control VW and Porsche.

Review: Arno Surminski's Fremdes Land

For more than 30 years Arno Surminski has been the chronicler of the postwar German refugee experience and the voice of the generation that came of age in die Stunde Null - the  period just after the war when Germany was just recovering from total devastation.  In his autobiographical masterpiece Jokehnen Surminski recounts a childhood idyll in rural East Prussia that is shattered forever by war.  Kudenow describes the difficult years of survival in the war's aftermath and the uneasy relations between refugees and native villagers in rural Schleswig-Holstein. 

The third novel in the series, Fremdes Land oder Als die Freiheit noch zu haben war (1980), (Strange Country or When We Still Could Be Free) deals with Germany in 1955, as the "economic miracle" is beginning to take hold.  The central figure, Herbert Broschat, has just turned 21 and is itching to emigrate to Canada.  Why does he want to leave Germany?  Well, why should he stay?  He is tired of the years of deprivation and lack of opportunity for young men. His relationship with his father has deteriorated and he is fed up with his mother's petty anxieties and limited aspirations.  And he is simply bored living in Sandermarsch - a rural village  in Schleswig-Holstein.  The wide expanses and freedom of Canada beckon.  The final straw for Herbert is when the young Federal Republic reconstitutes the army and threatens mandatory conscription.  As a child Herbert had seen first hand the horrors of war in East Prussia and wanted nothing to do with the military.  Germany was a pariah among nations and the young man dreams of reinventing himself far away from his despised homeland:

 Deutschland fing wieder an, etwas zu werden. (...) Aber das stand nur auf dem Papier.  Die Wirklichkeit sah so aus, dass Deutsche in französischen Resaurants nicht bedient wurden, dass in den Niederlanden Hakenkreuze auf deutsche Autos geschmiert und in Dänemark Wagen mit deutschen Kennzeichen die Reifen aufgeschnitten wurden. Nein, als Deutscher durftest du dich nirgends sehen lassen, höchstens im kanadischen Busch oder bei den Kängaruhs. (Germany was starting to become something again...But only on paper.  In reality, Germans were refused service in French restaurants, in the Netherlands German cars were defaced with swastikas and tires were punctured in Denmark. No, as a German you were not welcome anywhere - except perhaps in the Canadian wilderness or with the kangaroos. ) 

So young Herbert boards an ocean liner in Bremerhaven and bids farewell to his girlfriend Gisela and to Germany forever - or so he thinks.  While crossing the Atlantic Herbert befriends another young German seeking his fortune in Canada, a coal miner from Gelsenkirchen named Erich Domski.  Domski is one of Surminski's most vivid creations. By temperament he is the polar opposite the brooding Herbert Broschat; Domski is a sex-crazed extrovert with boundless energy and a thirst for adventure.  They room together in Toronto and take menial jobs, eventually saving enough to buy a Buick that will take them across Canada to Vancouver.  There, Herbert becomes infatuated with his landlord's teenage daughter and the two young Germans find jobs in a logging camp in the mountains. Surminksi's description of life in the camp, the dangerous work and the majestic beauty of woods is masterful.  

Herbert finds that he cannot escape Germany altogether, even thousands of miles away from Sandermarsch.  In Toronto he is helped by a German-Jewish emigrant whose family perished in the Holocaust.  His foreman at the logging camp is a German who denies his heritage and native tongue until he begins to drink.  Gisela send German newspapers to Herbert so that he won't forget his Heimat.  High in the mountains above Vancouver the headlines from Hamburg seem like news from a distant planet. 

Eventually Herbert realizes he has some unfinished business in Germany, and when news comes that his father is dying he returns to Sandermarsch.  After an absence of two years, Herbert sees his native country with new eyes and learns a surprising truth about his father. 

Good-natured humor is the hallmark of Arno Surminski's style.  He pokes gentle fun at his characters and the people of Gelsenkirchen and Sandermarsch.  The vivid portrayal of the people and the land - Germany as well as Canada - makes Fremdes Land a very entertaining novel.  Arno Surminski - ignored by the critics but beloved by readers - is one of Germany's most durable novelists. 

Freya von Moltke has died

A while back I wrote about the German exile enclave in Vermont.  One of the most famous was Freya von Moltke - the wife of the conservative anti-fascist Helmut James Graf von Moltke, who was executed by Hitler for discussing peace and democracy with a small group of like minded intellectuals which became known as the Kreisau Circle. 

The Burlington (Vermont) Free Press announced last week that Freya von Moltke had died in Norwich on January 1: 

Freya von Moltke, a prominent member of the Nazi resistance in World War II, has died at the age of 98, her son said.

Von Moltke, who was born in Germany but had lived in Vermont since 1960, died Friday after suffering a viral infection, her son Helmuth von Moltke told the Lebanon Valley News.

In her writings after the war, von Moltke described her life in the resistance with her husband, Helmuth James Graf von Moltke, who co-founded the anti-Nazi Kreisau Circle and was executed for his activities.

She was born into a banking family in 1911 in Cologne as Freya Deichmann and met her future husband when she was 18. They were married in 1931, and both received law degrees.

The couple settled on his Silesian estate, Kreisau, located in present-day Poland. In 1932, they moved to Berlin, where he set up an international law practice. He was an opponent of Adolf Hitler's regime from its start, and he helped Jews and other victims of Nazism in his early law practice.

He was drafted into the German army in 1939 as a specialist in international and martial law, but during his military service he advocated the humane treatment of prisoners of war and civilians in German-occupied territories under the Geneva Conventions.

The Kreisau Circle included several dozen clergy members, economic experts and diplomats. Freya von Moltke hosted meetings in 1942 and '43 at the family estate at which the group discussed plans for the democratic Germany they hoped would follow the collapse of the Third Reich.

Since her death was announced in Vermont tributes have poured in from around the world including the Telegraph in London, the New York Times, and Ha'aretz in Tel Aviv.  Jochen Thies, writing in Die Welt, sees it as a loss for Germany that Freya von Moltke spent the last half of her life in Vermont rather than contributing to the building of the Federal Republic: 

Hat die Bundesrepublik leidenschaftliche Anstrengungen unternommen, dieser außergewöhnlichen Frau, die für höchste Ämter in Staat und Gesellschaft geeignet war, eine Perspektive in Deutschland zu bieten? (Did the Federal Republic do everything in its power to sway this extraordinary woman - who was suited for the highest offices in the government and society - to consider returning to Germany?) 

In 1942 Dorothy Thompson delivered a series of radio broadcasts directed to her friend Helmuth James Graf von Moltke about the prospects for democracy and peace in Germany.  These broadcasts were transcribed and published in book form as Listen, Hans.  Not long after, von Moltke was arrested by the Gestapo and tried for treason. No Hollywood blockbuster starring Tom Cruise will be made about him and his resistance to tyranny.  As Christians, von Moltke and his wife Freya rejected violence and worked in the realm of ideas and discourse. 

German Pirate Party protests full-body scanners at airports

One of the more dubious "solutions" to terrorist threats to airline passengers is the requirement to install full-body scanners at all airports with flights into the US.  I was in Canada this week and there was much grumbling about the plans to purchase 44 machines for Canadian airports. Canadians view the fear-mongering over terrorism by US politicians and American news media with amusement and disgust. But they have little choice but to comply with US directives, even if they disagree.  Not the least worry are the doubts about the safety of the machines: does exposure to the low-level radiation pose a health risk? And who stands to benefit financially from selling and installing these machines?  Michael Chertoff, the Homeland Security head in the Bush administration, has been on all the major television networks calling for full-body scanners but not revealing that he is a highly-paid lobbyist for the company that makes the machines.

In Germany, the small but highly visibile Pirate Party has formally protested the installation of full-body scanners and threatens to organize "flash-mob" demos at German airports: 

Die Piratenpartei lehnt die Einführung der Nacktscanner ab, weil sie “die Intimsphäre und die Persönlichkeitsrechte der Passagiere” verletzten. Für den Parteivorsitzenden Jens Seipenbusch sei die Einführung des Nacktscanners vor allem eine “Steigerung der gefühlten und nicht der tatsächlichen Sicherheit”. Seipenbusch kritisiere den Scanner für die Bekämpfung von Terrorismus als “den falschen Weg” und als “Interesse von Leuten, die ihn verkaufen”. (The Pirate Party rejects the installation of "naked scanners" because they violate the intimacy and the rights of privacy of the passengers.  According to party chairman Jens Seipenbusch the scanners merely increase the perception of security, without adding anything to actual security.  Seipenbusch criticized the scanners as "the wrong way" to combat terrorism; they benefit only those individuals selling the machines.)

A press release on the Pirate Party Web site goes into more detail:

Die Nutzlosigkeit der Nacktscanner zeigt sich unter anderem bei der Betrachtung des jüngsten Attentatsversuchs in den USA. Der von dem Täter verwendete Sprengstoff wäre durch die Geräte nicht erkannt worden (The uselessness of the "naked scanners" is evident from the most recent terrorist attempt in the US. The explosive substance used by the perpetrator would not have been detected by the machines).

The Pirates intend to organize demonstrations at major aiports where the protestors will strip down to their underwears, using the slogan: “Ihr braucht uns nicht scannen - wir sind schon nackt” (You don't need to scan us - we're already naked!).