Dialog International

Happy Glock-Day, America!

I originally published this blog post in July of 2012 following the massacre of innocent people at a movie theater in Colorado by a deranged young white man with a Glock semi-automatic pistol.  This week a 21-year old white racist murdered nine black people at a church in Charleston, South Carolina.   The young man used a .45 caliber Glock semi-automatic pistol.

No doubt I will be republishing this post at regular intervals. 

While families in Colorado mourn yet another senseless mass killing, the finance department at Glock Ges.m.b.H. in Deutsch-Wagram is popping champagne corks.  These are halcyon days for Austria's Deadliest Import.  The Glock has cemented its position as the weapon of choice for mass killers - and not just in America: 

Norwegian far-Right extremist Anders Behring Breivik used a Glock 17 to kill most of the 67 people he shot dead during his massacre on the island of Utoya a year ago this Sunday.

Sweden's Peter Mangs, the man accused of being behind to more than a dozen shootings of immigrants in the city of Malmo, owned a Glock 19.

Germany's Robert Steinhäuser, who killed 17 people in the 2001 Erfurt massacre, used a Glock 17.

But only in America does this deadly mayhem lead to a spike in the sales of Glock pistols.  For the United States is the only place where any lunatic can walk into a gun store and purchase a Glock. And the more Americans are gunned downed by Glock owners, the more people want to own Glocks. 

It is no mystery why Glocks are coveted by mass kilers.  Glocks are excellent killing machines which can easily be optimized with enhanced magazine clips:

According to Paul Barrat, the author of Glock: The Rise of America's Gun, the magazine is the main attraction.

"This magazine is so large, it actually sticks out the bottom of the handle of the gun, of the grip," he told an American radio station earlier this year.

"And you can fire it very quickly, and you can get off that large number of rounds before you have to reload." The weapon is now used by two-thirds of US police departments and has featured in countless films.

Thanks to the cowardice of politicians and the power of the NRA, people can now take their Glocks practically everywhere in the US: churches, taverns, state houses,  - even airport lobbies.

Americans, there is an excellent chance that there will be a Glock in your future - or at least the bullet from one.

Germany's CDU Shifts Support from GOP to Hillary

Traditionally, Germany's Christian Democrats (CDU), the party of Angela Merkel, have been closely aligned with the Republican Party. Merkel even supported (initially) George W. Bush and the US invasion of Iraq.  Since becoming chancellor, however, Angela Merkel and her party have staked out a number of progressive positions - embracing renewable energy, implementing a minimum wage, fighting intolerance against immigrants, just to name a few - while the Republican Party has moved further to the extreme right, becoming the Party of Jefferson Davis.

Today the leadership of the CDU says it can no longer stand with the Republicans.  Instead, the conservatives will support Hillary Clinton: 

Nach dem Einstieg von Hillary Clinton ins Rennen um die US-Präsidentschaftskandidatur der Demokraten gibt die CDU ihre traditionelle Orientierung auf die konservativeren Republikaner auf. "Der Grundton der Republikaner heute passt nicht zur Christdemokratie", sagte Armin Laschet, CDU-Chef in NRW und stellvertretender Vorsitzender der Bundespartei, der "Welt am Sonntag". "Die Republikaner bekämpfen die soziale Marktwirtschaft, indem sie einerseits Steuergeschenke für Superreiche verlangen und andererseits selbst die Krankenversicherung abschaffen wollen. Die aggressive Ablehnung multilateraler Konfliktlösungen vieler Republikaner passt nicht ins 21. Jahrhundert." Laschet sieht in den Republikanern sogar eine Art Gegenmodell zur modernisierten Merkel-Partei: "Die CDU hat sich in den vergangenen Jahren als Volkspartei der gesamten Gesellschaft geöffnet, bei den Republikanern steht diese Öffnung noch aus." Anders als die CDU seien die Republikaner deshalb nur noch eingeschränkt mehrheitsfähig: "Bei der letzten Präsidentenwahl hatten die Republikaner nur eine Mehrheit bei alten, weißen Männern. Einwanderer, Frauen und junge Leute wählten Demokraten", sagte Laschet.

Nach dem Einstieg von Hillary Clinton ins Rennen um die US-Präsidentschaftskandidatur der Demokraten gibt die CDU ihre traditionelle Orientierung auf die konservativeren Republikaner auf. "Der Grundton der Republikaner heute passt nicht zur Christdemokratie", sagte Armin Laschet, CDU-Chef in NRW und stellvertretender Vorsitzender der Bundespartei, der "Welt am Sonntag".

"Die Republikaner bekämpfen die soziale Marktwirtschaft, indem sie einerseits Steuergeschenke für Superreiche verlangen und andererseits selbst die Krankenversicherung abschaffen wollen. Die aggressive Ablehnung multilateraler Konfliktlösungen vieler Republikaner passt nicht ins 21. Jahrhundert." Laschet sieht in den Republikanern sogar eine Art Gegenmodell zur modernisierten Merkel-Partei: "Die CDU hat sich in den vergangenen Jahren als Volkspartei der gesamten Gesellschaft geöffnet, bei den Republikanern steht diese Öffnung noch aus." Anders als die CDU seien die Republikaner deshalb nur noch eingeschränkt mehrheitsfähig: "Bei der letzten Präsidentenwahl hatten die Republikaner nur eine Mehrheit bei alten, weißen Männern. Einwanderer, Frauen und junge Leute wählten Demokraten", sagte Laschet.

- See more at: http://www.germandailynews.com/bericht-53161/cdu-unterstuetzt-hillary-clinton.html#sthash.lH94eq1y.dpuf

Nach dem Einstieg von Hillary Clinton ins Rennen um die US-Präsidentschaftskandidatur der Demokraten gibt die CDU ihre traditionelle Orientierung auf die konservativeren Republikaner auf. "Der Grundton der Republikaner heute passt nicht zur Christdemokratie", sagte Armin Laschet, CDU-Chef in NRW und stellvertretender Vorsitzender der Bundespartei, der "Welt am Sonntag".

"Die Republikaner bekämpfen die soziale Marktwirtschaft, indem sie einerseits Steuergeschenke für Superreiche verlangen und andererseits selbst die Krankenversicherung abschaffen wollen. Die aggressive Ablehnung multilateraler Konfliktlösungen vieler Republikaner passt nicht ins 21. Jahrhundert." Laschet sieht in den Republikanern sogar eine Art Gegenmodell zur modernisierten Merkel-Partei: "Die CDU hat sich in den vergangenen Jahren als Volkspartei der gesamten Gesellschaft geöffnet, bei den Republikanern steht diese Öffnung noch aus." Anders als die CDU seien die Republikaner deshalb nur noch eingeschränkt mehrheitsfähig: "Bei der letzten Präsidentenwahl hatten die Republikaner nur eine Mehrheit bei alten, weißen Männern. Einwanderer, Frauen und junge Leute wählten Demokraten", sagte Laschet.

- See more at: http://www.germandailynews.com/bericht-53161/cdu-unterstuetzt-hillary-clinton.html#sthash.lH94eq1y.dpuf

(After Hillary Clinton announced that she's running for president as the Democratic candidate, the CDU decided to abandon its traditional orientation with the conservative Republicans. "The fundamental message of the GOP is today no longer aligned with the Christian Democratic principles, " said Armin Laschet, leaders of the CDU in North-Rhine Westphalia and deputy chairman of the national party. "The Republicans fight against the social market economy; on the one hand they demand tax breaks for the super-wealthy while on the other they seek to eliminate universal health insurance.  Their aggressive rejection of multilateral diplomacy for resolving international conflicts is not appropriate for the 21st century.  [...] In the last presidential election the Republicans were only able to achieve a majority among older white men.  Immigrants, women and younger voters went with the Democrats.")

While this shift in support from a traditional European ally may be disappointing to some in the GOP, they can still count on support in France from Marine Le Pen's neo-fascist Front National, whose anti-immigrant program mirrors the GOP platform.

(Cross-Posted at Daily Kos)

America's Shame / Amerikas Schande

The US Senate Intelligence Committee Report on torture is frontpage news in Germany (and everywhere else).  It confirms our worst fears about what the Bush administration did in the post-2/911 era.

As Der Spiegel's Markus Feldenkirchen states in his commentary, this is America's Shame:

Dass Amerikas Ansehen in der Welt heute auf einem historischen Tiefstand ist, ist nicht die Schuld "der Islamisten" oder "der Anti-Amerikanisten" in Europa oder anderen Teilen der Welt. Schuld ist vor allen anderen Amerika selbst. Es ist das Werk von Regierungsbehörden wie CIA und NSA, die Menschen folterten und ein Überwachungssystem errichteten, das einer freien Gesellschaft unwürdig ist. Ob sie dies im expliziten Auftrag der Regierung taten oder im Laufe der Jahre ein Eigenleben entwickelten und ihrer Regierung einzelne Vorfälle verschwiegen, ist dabei sekundär. Die geistigen Väter der Eskapaden waren Präsident George W. Bush und sein Vize Dick Cheney.

(The fact that America's reputation in the world is at a low-point today is not the fault of the "Islamists" or Europe's "Anti-Americans" or elsewhere in the world. America has only itself to blame. It is the result of the work of government agencies like the CIA and NSA, who tortured people and created a giant surveillance aparatus - unworthy of a free society. Whether these were carried out under express orders of the government or, over time, developed a momentum on their own and was hidden from oversight is secondary.  The spritual fathers of these escapades were President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney.)

I'm not a great fan of Senator John McCain, but I am proud of his speech on the Senate floor yesterday endorsing the findings of the report.  He is the sole member of the US Senate who can speak with authority on torture.  (Transcript and Video here)

If there is a silver lining or positive aspect about the release of this "report of shame" it was pointed out today by Gabor Steingart in his Handelsblatt Morning Briefing: 

Obama hat diesen zunächst als streng vertraulich klassifizierten Bericht zur Veröffentlichung freigegeben. Das allerdings verdient Respekt: Es gibt kein zweites Land auf der Welt, das so schonungslos mit sich selbst umgeht.

SAP Does the Right Thing

On its Web site, the German software giant SAP likes to promote its commitment to "open government", clean environment, and economic sustainability: all admirable goals.  So it came as something of a surprise to learn that SAP was a huge financial support of ALEC (The American Legislative Exchange Council), the lobbying organization of the Tea Party in the United States, backed by the Koch brothers.  ALEC attempts to impose its extreme right-wing agenda state by state; its policies include denial of climate change, abolishing any restrictions on guns, and voter suppression legislation to deny poor minorites the right to vote.   These objectives are diametrically opposed to the corporate values espoused by SAP.

Last month Manager Magazin exposed SAP's backing of ALEC:  Wie SAP in den USA rechte politische Hardliner unterstützt ("How SAP is Supporting Right-Wing Hardliners in the US").  The reporter pointed out the discrepancy between SAP's values and its lobbying efforts in the US:

SAP kommt durch sein Engagement bei Alec ebenfalls in Rechtfertigungsdruck, denn Aktivitäten der Organisation widersprechen eigenen Unternehmenswerten. Die Walldorfer wollen nach eigenen Angaben den zehn universell anerkannten Prinzipien des Global Compact aus den Bereichen Menschenrechte, Arbeitsnormen, Umweltschutz und Korruptionsbekämpfung der UNO gerecht werden. In Punkt neun heißt es: "Unternehmen sollen die Entwicklung und Verbreitung umweltfreundlicher Technologien beschleunigen."

("SAP is under pressure to justify its engagement with ALEC, for the group's activities contradict the software firm's own values.  The Walldorf company, according to its own information, supports the ten universally-recognized principles of the UN's Global Compact in the areas of human rights, worker rights, environmental protection and combatting corruption. Article 9 reads: "Corporations are committed to acceleratiing the development and distribution of environmentally-friendly technologies.)

Shortly after the Manager Magazin article appeared, SAP announced it was following the decision of Google, Yahoo and other US tech companies and severing its ties with ALEC:

"The spokeswoman told Manager that the company abandoned ALEC because of its "merkwürdigen" (odd) positions -- such as its support for Stand Your Ground laws, climate denial, and opposition to solar energy deployment. Germany's state-supported solar-power renaissance is in stark contrast to the United States, in no small part because of the work ALEC has done for decades to oppose renewable energy.

SAP, which touts its sustainability leadership, is a major producer of smart-grid and energy-efficiency solutions. Unlike ALEC, SAP is unambiguous about the threat of fossil-fueled climate change, saying that "with the dangers and costs of global warming and rising carbon dioxide levels, and it's clear that increased energy efficiency is an absolute must.""

That is good news.  Now pressure should be put on Bayer AG, Boehringer-Ingelheim and T-Mobil to follow SAP's lead and cut funding to this "cancer on the democratic process" in America

Bush Library: Shrine for a War Criminal

The whitewashing of the most disastrous presidency in American history has begun.  Amnesia was on display at the opening ceremonise for the George W. Bush Presidential Library in Dallas, with the Washington press corps eager to engage in revisionist history:

Coverage of the opening of his presidential library Thursday was wall to wall on cable, and a feeling of affection for him was encouraged, or at least enabled, by the Washington press corps, which doesn't much like Mr. Obama because he's not all that likable, and remembers Mr. Bush with a kind of reluctant fondness because he was.

Only problem is, the disasters of the Bush era will be with us for many years to come: a war based on lies that ruined thousands of families and cost the nation $3 trillion (all borrowed from China), a great city abandoned in a terrible hurricane - still reeling eight years later, a wreck economy still limping back from the precipace.  No, these tragedies cannot be simply swept under the carpet.  Bush and his admirers in the press believe that over time his legacy will be reevaluated, that, like Harry Truman, he will come to be admired as a great president. 

But historians will remember Geortge W. Bush as the president who authorized torture, bringing shame and dishonor to the United States:

Die Museumsmacher in Dallas sind nicht zu beneiden. Bush ist nach wie vor sehr unpopulär; er baut darauf, dass er – ähnlich wie einst Harry Truman – im Verlauf der Zeit (und mit Nachlassen des kollektiven Gedächtnisses seiner Landsleute) immer besser beurteilt wird. Schwerer wiegt, dass gut eine Woche vor der Einweihung der Bibliothek eine mit Angehörigen beider Parteien besetzte Institution, das Constitution Project, explizit von «Folter» während der Bush-Ära gesprochen hat – und nicht die von Cheney und Rumsfeld benutzten verniedlichenden Umschreibungen wie «verstärkte Fragetechnik» anwandte. Das Constitution Project machte deutlich, wo die Verantwortung für die Folter lag: ganz oben, beim Präsidenten.

(The museum developers in Dallas have a difficutl job. Bush remains very unpopular. He's counting on the fact that - like Harry Truman - over time and as the collective memory of the American people fades, he will be judged better. But weighs more heavily is the fact that just a week before the dedication of the library an institution - the Constitution Project - consisting of members of both political parties, spoke explcitiy of "torture" during the Bush era, not using the euphamism "enhanced interrogation" favored by Cheney and Rumsfeld.  The Constitution Project made clear that the responsbility for the torture was at the highest level of the government - with the president.)

No presidential library or effusive newspaper columnist can ever erase the stain of torture from the history books.

The Myth of Nazi Gun Control

Tune into Fox News any time day or night and you will find frequent comparisons of President Obama to Adolf Hitler.  For just like Hitler, Obama wants to disarm the American people so that he can impose a Socialist/Fascist dictatorship.  The "Gun Control = Holocaust" meme is so pervasive that it is even invoked by Republican members of Congress. The premise is that Hitler was able to consolidate his power through implementing a gun registry, and then murder six million Jews by confiscating their weapons. It is an article of faith among American gun fetishists that "the first thing Hitler did was round up all the guns."

The myth of Nazi gun control was exploded already in 2004 by Bernard E. Harcourt in his article On Gun Registration, the NRA, Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Gun Laws: Exploding the Gun Culture Wars (pdf warning) published in the Journal of the University of Chicago Law School.  It turns out, as Harcourt documents, that the Nazis relaxed many of the gun ownership restrictions that were put in place during the Weimar Republic (as required under the Versailles Treaty). And one could argue that the Nazi Party might not have successfully seized power if gun laws had been strictly enforced during the Weimar Republic, since Hitler had few problems procuring illegal weapons for his paramilitary troops such as the SA. 

It is true that after the Novemberpogrom of 1938 the Nazi regime expressly forbade Jews, gypsies, homosexuals and other "undesirables" from owning any weapons (Waffengesetz von 1938), but it is not clear at all that this had any significant effect on the persecution of Jews. And it is patently absurd to point to this as the cause of the Holocaust.  The Jews that were detained and then deported after 1938 tended to be older and less-well off; most Jews with any resources left Germany much earlier.  The deportation took place with the open or tacit approval and complicity of the vast majority of Germans; any act of armed resistance would have been completely futile.   In any case, most of the Jews who perished in in the Nazi death camps were non-Germans and not subject to the Waffengesetz. 

But don't expect any rational discussion of history to change the Gun Control = Holocaust hysteria.  There is a segment of white males in America who fantasize about using their AR-15 military assault rifles to mow down Obama's gay Muslim storm-troopers who will be coming to a neighborhood near you to take your guns. 

German reporter goes underground at Patrick Henry College - America's Madrassa

Amrai Coen, a writer for Die Zeit, wanted to visit Patrick Henry College, but the college administration refused her visit since the school had "bad experiences with foreign journalists."  Undeterred, Amrai posed as a prospective student and showed up on campus on "Visitor's Day".  Her piece on her experience that day provides a rare inside glimpse of life at America's Madrassa, 

Nearly all of the students at Patrick Henry College have been home-schooled by ultra-conservative evangelical Christian parents.  At Patrick Henry these young people can complete their christo-fascist indoctrination before joining right-wing think tanks and media groups in Washington.  Students are taught to kneel before images of Jesus and Ronald Reagan; they attend lecturess on how America can waterboard its way to global dominance. Professors are dismissed if they actually teach science, since students are taught that the earth is only 6000 years old and baby Jesus frolicked with dinosaurs. 

Das College hat eine Mission: Amerika vor dem Untergang retten. Vor dem Abgrund, dem entgegen Barack Obama das Land in ihren Augen in den vergangenen vier Jahren gelenkt hat. Junge, konservative Christen sind die Soldaten in diesem Krieg. Am Patrick Henry College werden sie ausgebildet, um eines Tages an der Front zu kämpfen – als Politiker, Filmemacher oder Unternehmer sollen sie die amerikanische Gesellschaft zurückerobern. Manche von ihnen haben Yale und Harvard verschmäht, um hier zu studieren.

(The college has one mission: to save America from its downfall, from the abyss into which Barack Obama has steered the country in the past four years. Young conservative Christians are the soldiers in this wa. At Patrick Henry College they will be trained to fight one day on the front - as politicians, filmmakers, or entrepreneurs they will win back American society.  Some have rejected Harvard or Yale in order to study here.) 

 Amrai Coen points out the irony of kids who grew up isolated from American society want to be come political activists.

Könnten diese Studenten wirklich eines Tages Amerika regieren, frage ich mich nach ein paar Stunden und vielen Gesprächen auf dem Campus. Die meisten von ihnen kennen nur ihr Wohnzimmer als Klassenraum, nur ihre Geschwister als Mitschüler. Ausgerechnet diese jungen Leute wollen in die Politik, wollen einen Beruf ergreifen, der mit sozialer Verantwortung zu tun hat, wollen Entscheidungen treffen, die das Leben von Millionen Menschen bestimmen.

(Could these students really govern America some day? I ask myself after a few hours and many conversations on campus.  Most of them have only experienced their own living rooms as their classroom and their siblings as classmates. And these are the students who want to into politics, to pursue a career that is involved in social responsibility, to make decisions that impact the lives of millions of people.) 

She sees the students as mostly naive or just misguided.  I see something rather more sinister: as the college puts on its Web site, the school is engaged in a war on secular society and seeks to overturn the separation of church and state which is at the core of the American experience:

"But when such a government 1) commands disobedience to God, 2) enjoins the right and duty of human beings to worship God, 3) denies other God-ordained rights by extreme oppression and tyranny, or 4) "when a long Train of Abuses and Usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object (tyranny), evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism" it is the right and duty of godly men and women "to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future Security." Importantly, this action must be taken in accordance with God's laws and in submission to other legitimate authorities, anarchy being as illegitimate as tyranny."

Der Untergang .... von Mitt Romney

Team Romney ....er, Hitler ... get the election results on November 6.....

Ohne Mitt

A friend teaches German language at a local university and found this image quite useful to instruct beginner-level students in the use of prepostions. 

Triumphant Obama: "The best is yet to come."

In the end, Democracy prevailed over the money the billionaires poured into the the election to defeat a president they hate.  The campaign of lies, race-baiting, Donald Trump-birtherism, and fear-mongering proved to be totally ineffective.  Barack Obama has built a bullet-proof coaltion of young people, African-American, Latinos, and women fed up with "legitimate rape" rhetoric.  Yes, Romney carried the former the slave-states, but even there the demographics are shifting rapidly and one can envision Texas as a swing-state in 2016.  The US Republican Party is ideologically bankrupt and faces growing irrelevance unless it can reinvent itself and address the realities of the new American electorate. 

Reading the German press this morning, I do detect a collective sigh of relief, even though in the last days some commentators suggested that America is lost and there is no real difference between Romney and Obama.  I agree with the sentiments expressed by Wolfgang Blau in Die Zeit: 

"In Deutschland – und auch in den Leserkommentaren auf ZEIT ONLINE – war in den vergangenen Wochen oft zu lesen, dass es doch eh kein Unterschied sei, wer diese Wahl gewinne, Obama oder Romney. Wir können Obama dankbar sein, dass Romney gar nicht erst die Gelegenheit bekam, das Gegenteil zu beweisen.

Wenn Obama jetzt auch noch mehr Mut fasst, ist heute ein guter Tag für Amerika. Be bold, Mister President!"

(In Germany - and also in the readers' commentary in Zeit OnLINE - one could often read that it made no difference who would win the election, Obama or Romney.  We are grateful to Obama that Romney won't have the opportunity to prove otherwise. If Obama is able to move forward boldly, then this is a happy day for America.  Be bold, Mr. President!)