Dialog International

Paul Krugman - hero of the German blogosphere

While the established financial press in Germany celebrates Angela Merkel for embracing her inner "Swabian housewife" and putting Germany on a path of austerity and deficit reduction, the left-leaning bloggers have been searching for a strong voice to make the argument for more stimulus.   They found him: Paul Krugman, the Nobel prize-winning economist and columnist for the New York Times who has been spending time in Berlin.

Jens Berger, one of the more influential bloggers in Germany, writers on his blog: Fragen wir doch mal Paul Krugman ("Why don't we ask Paul Krugman?") and commands his readers to read the interview with Krugman in the Handelsblatt. But Berger fears that Krugman's "wise words" will fall on deaf ears in Germany ( "Krugmans weise Worte auch weiterhin ein Kampf gegen teutonische Windmühlen sind").

In the Handelsblatt inteview, Krugman sees serious problems for Europe down the road if Germany follows through on the austerity measures:

Wenn die Deutschen 80 Milliarden Euro weniger ausgeben, spürt man das auch in den Nachbarländern. Der Konsolidierungskurs Deutschlands drückt nicht nur im eigenen Land auf die Konjunktur, er bremst auch in anderen Ländern das Wachstum. Deshalb müssen insbesondere die Europäer ihre Wirtschaftspolitik untereinander abstimmen. Außerdem schwächt die Sparpolitik den Euro, was wiederum anderen Exportnationen inklusive uns Amerikanern das Leben schwermacht.

(If the Germans cut expenditures by 80 billion euros that will be felt by its neighboring countries.  The consolidation program in Germany will not just have a negative impact on economic growth at home, it also slows growth in other countries.  That's why it's so important that the Europeans coordinate economic policy with each other.  Also, the austerity measures weaken the euro, which causes problems for other export nations including America).

Another influential economics blog, Nachdenkseiten, notes with satisfaction that Krugman's comments in the interview were greeted with outrage by the establishment economists and conservative politicians close to Angela Merkel:

Offenbar hat Krugmann ins Schwarze getroffen. Weitere, geradezu wunderbare Bestätigungen der völligen Borniertheit der deutschen Ökonomenzunft und der deutschen Politik. Gerade die Aussagen des finanzpolitische Sprecher der Unions-Fraktion im Bundestag, Leo Dautzenberg, sind in ihrer Ignoranz kaum mehr zu übertreffen.

(Evidently Krugman struck a nerve. The reaction only confirms how close-minded the clique of German economists is. Especially the remarks of Leo Dautzenberg, the conservative spokesman for the finance committee in the Bundestag are striking in their total ignorance.)

Outside of the blogosphere, Krugman's criticism of German policy was met with derision;  Wirtschafts Woche called Krugman an "economics clown" (Ökonomie-Clown). Still, Krugman received strong support from none other than George Soros: 

Mr Soros said Germany was treating the deeply-flawed Maastricht Treaty as it
were a “sacred text”, warning that monetary union cannot endure
for long as a narrow construct based on debt and deficit ceilings. He said
wage rises in Germany are imperative to help lift the whole eurozone,
allowing peripheral economies to claw their way out of trouble without
fighting the extra headwinds of deflation.

SPD's Edathy: State must monitor hate blog "PI"

The other day I wrote about the popular blog "Politically Incorrect" and its hate campaign against President Obama.  It appears that some politicians in Germany see the blog as something more sinister than just a harmless forum for racists and right-wing extremists.  Now a prominent member of the German paliament - Sebastian Edathy - has accused the blog of "incitement" (Volksverhetzung) - which is a crime in Germany:

Sebastian Edathy, Rechtsexperte der SPD, fordert vom Bundesinnenminister Thomas de Maizière (CDU), die Internetplattform "Politically Incorrect" unter Beobachtung vom Verfassungsschutz zu stellen. Er geht davon aus, dass die Inhalte auf der Platform den inneren Frieden in Deutschland stören. Auch würden auf der Plattform die Angehörigen des Islam kontinuierlich verächtlich gemacht. Laut Edathy würde vor allem "wiederholt der Straftatbestand der Volksverhetzung und der Beschimpfung von Religionsgemeinschaften erfüllt".

(Sebastian Edathy, legal expert of the SPD, has demanded that Germany's interior minister Thomas de Maiziere (CDU) place the Internaet platform "Politically Incorrect" under observation by the Office for the Protection of the Constitution. Edathy asserts that the site's content disturbs the internal peace of Germany. Furthermore, the site constantly subjects followers of Islam to scorn and ridicule. According to Edathy, this violates the laws against incitement and ridicule of religious communities.")

And the Tageszeitung reports that the site's followers are no longer just content to make anonymous comments.  Increasingly, they are organizing and taking to the street:

Zunehmend drängen die Leser der Homepage auf die Straßen. Es gibt mittlerweile bereits zahlreiche PI-Aktionsgruppen in Deutschland - vom Ruhrgebiet bis Dresden, von Karlsruhe bis Hamburg. Eine genaue Übersicht über Anzahl und Größe islamfeindlicher Gruppen und Grüppchen gibt es nicht. "Ihre Zahl hat in den letzten Jahren zugenommen, und von daher auch die gefühlte Islamfeindlichkeit", sagt die Islamismusexpertin Claudia Dantschke.

(Increasingly the readers of the site are taking to the streets. There are already numerous "PI" action groups in Germany - from the Ruhr region to Dresent, from Karlsruhe to Hamburg. There is not any reliable data concerning the number and size of these anti-Muslim groups. "Their numbers have grown along with the intensity of their hatred towards Islam," says the expert in Islam Claudia Dentschke.)

The concern is that these small groups will eventually find their way into neo-fascist organizations and political parties.

While I sympathize with Sebastian Edathy, I don't see his efforts as having much effect on PI.  The owners/operators of the site have move the servers to the United States where hate speech is protected under the First Amendment.

Limits of a "pro-American" hate blog

  The popular German blog Politically Incorrect describes itself as "pro-amerikanisch" ("pro-American") in its banner.  And it was pro-American -  until Americans elected a black man as president.  Now it routinely heaps scorn on the democratically elected president, whom the editors describe as an "African Muslim".

In a typical post, "PI" accuses President Obama of destroying all of the glorious achievements of his predecessor, George W. Bush.  Bush "liberated" 27 million Iraqis and created a democratic paradise in Iraq, which Obama wants to abandon.  Under Bush the American healthcare system flourished (except for poor Americans, who don't count)and now President Obama has destroyed this with his reforms.  And Obama - or, at any rate - poor blacks - caused the global financial crisis by buying homes they couldn't afford. 

"Was uns bleibt ist ein Präsident, der beim Star Sprangled Banner seine rechte Hand nicht aufs Herz legt, sich vor den grausamen Diktatoren dieses Landes bückt und lächerlich macht, Israel keine unmittelbare Unterstützung mehr zusichert und die Muslime aller Länder fördert.

Thank you Hussein, you can keep the change!"

(What we have is a president who refuses to place his right hand over his heart when the Star Sprangeled (sic!) Banner is played, who bows down to vicious dictators and is the object of ridicule, who refuses to support Israel and supports Muslims in every country.)

It is always instructive to read the comments to this and other posts on PI.

Ironically, while PI spreads hatred against President Obama (and, by inference, the majority of Americans who elected him) the blog moved its servers to the United States.  The site is now hosted by Liquid Web in Lansing, Michigan, just a few miles from America's largest Muslim community.

Junge Freiheit's American Cousin

For years, the neo-fascist weekly Junge Freiheit has attempted to put a respectable veneer on right-wing extremism in Germany.  The editors cleverly combine "interviews" with mainstream politicians and thought leaders with op/ed pieces extolling völkisch nationalism and historical revisionism. Believe it or not, Junge Freiheit has its fans in the United States. One of the most vocal is Paul Gottfried, a professor of political science at Elizabethtown College.  Gottfried has been a frequent contributor to Junge Freiheit over the years, and has vigorously defended the Berlin weekly in numerous articles.  Last week Professor Gottfried defended "his good friend" Jost Bauch, a Junge Freiheit contributor and activist in the right-wing hate group Bürgerbewegung Pro Köln.  Gottfried dismisses any criticism of Bauch's extremists views as evidence of a "police state mentality" in Germany. 

Now Professor Gottfried and his friends have launched a new Webzine, Alternative Right, which puts an American spin on the editorial thrust of Junge Freiheit.  Alternative Right openly celebrates the racial superiority of "white America".  Every other piece on the Web site explores the "science" of genetic supremacy of whites (and Asians) over black and Hispanics.  America, in the view of these "academics", is quickly going down the tubes, thanks to the "diversity" of its population.  The magazine makes its racist point of view explicit in its opening manifesto:

Besides our disagreements with mainstream conservatives on the issue of foreign policy and the relative importance of fighting terrorism, there is the topic of race and, more broadly, IQ and heredity.  We've known for a while through neuroscience and cross-adoption studies--if common sense wasn't enough--that individuals differ in their inherent capabilities. The races do, too, with whites and Asians on the top and blacks at the bottom. The Alternative Right takes it for granted that equality of opportunity means inequality of results for various classes, races, and the two sexes. Without ignoring the importance of culture, we see Western civilization as a unique product of the European gene pool.

No doubt we will soon see some interesting collaborative efforts between the scholarly racists at Alternative Right and their counterparts at Junge Freiheit. 

Making Profits from Hate Sites

I have written about my efforts to have the Holocaust-denial site kreuz.net shut down in the US. Holocaust denial is a felony crime in Germany but perfectly legal in the United States, so the anonymous owners/operators simply find a US service provider to host their Web site and they can spew their poison with impunity back into Germany and Austria.  Now, most of these US hosting operations do not read German, so they are not aware that kreuz.net is denying the historical fact of the murder of six million Jews, or that it is calling for the elimination of lesbian and gay people, or that its many anonymous commenters fantasize openly about the assassination of the "Blut- und Homo-Praesident" Barack Obama. When I informed one hosting provider, Global Net Access in Atlanta, about the nature of the hate site and submitted translations they agreed it was not an appropriate customer.  Unfortunately, however, not every US service provider is as ethical as Global Net Access. In fact, there are companies that traffic in hate as part of their business model.

The operators of kreuz.net joined a number of other hate sites - sites openly expressing pro-Nazi sympathies as well as racist and virulently homophobic sites - and set up shop at Steadfast Networks in Chicago.  It turns out that this technology company has created a profitable niche business in trafficking in hate. Not only is Steadfast Networks aware of the premise of kreuz.net but the company is proud that it facilitates anti-Semitic and Holocaust denial sites.  In response to my inquiry they wrote back:

We're quite clear about content hosting policies; we comply with US law and otherwise do our best to uphold free speech. Blithely denying the Holocaust, while certainly ignorant and not in line with views of any of our staff, is fully legal here.

The CEO of Steadfast Networks even implies on his blog that hosting hate sites is somehow patriotic, that he is standing for freedom of speech: 

With free speech, you need to take the bad with the good; you can't just have the good. Sure, we could restrict certain speech, but then do we truly have free speech? Who is to determine which ideas can be freely expressed and which cannot? What if we were not allowed to speak against our government in times of war or unable to profess a religion just because it was unpopular at the time?

Steadfast Networks and other companies like it caught the attention of the Chicago Tribune, which wrote about how German hate groups are circumventing German and EU laws by operating their sites in the US: 

Hundreds of foreign-language Web sites – some tied to the Chicago area –are using U.S. servers to dodge laws abroad that prohibit Holocaust denial or racist and anti-Semitic speech. Run by hosts in the United States, they thrive out of reach of prosecutors in Europe, Canada and elsewhere.
Locally, the connections range from Radio Islam, a hate site inspired by a Moroccan exile in Sweden, to a site created by a former Cicero man who was extradited to Germany for Holocaust denial. One Chicago server company (Steadfast Networks) is home to as many as 17 hate sites, eight of them European, a watchdog groups said.
In the past, Berlin has estimated that computers in the United States host 800 such sites in the German language alone, although its embassy in Washington says no current count is available.

It would appear that this company is actively seeking hate sites and profiting from their activities. The executives wrote to me that as long as the sites were not promoting "physical violence" they could publish anything they wanted.  The problem is these sites give comfort and support to those who are contemplating physical violence against Jews, gays, women, etc... Yes, they are obeying the laws of the United States and conforming to the First Amendment, but, by making profits from hate, they are extremely unethical.

Anonymity on Hate Blogs

The author and independent scholar Susan Jacoby makes a very good point in her Washington Post blog:

In my view—and I have already said this many times in my “On Faith” posts—anonymity is precisely what devalues the quality of  discussion on the Internet.  If I had my way, everyone who comments on a blog like this one would be required to use his or her own name. I know, from my readers’ comments, that almost no one agrees with me. But I’ll say it again: free speech is meaningful only when people are willing to stand up and take responsibility for their opinions—before their neighbors, their families, and their fellow citizens. It’s regrettable enough that the Web is used to spread anonymous lies that can have a serious impact on other people’s reputations.

Jacoby's comments came to mind when I read this interview with the journalist Kay Sokolowsky in Telepolis: Der Hass auf Muslims hat sich in Deutschland wie eine Epidemie breitgemacht (Hatred against Muslims is spreading like an epidemic in Germany): 

Die Autoren und Hardcore-User von PI sind die Avantgarde des Muslimhasses. Sie tummeln sich überall, wo das Web 2.0 ihnen die Möglichkeit gibt, ihr Gift zu verspritzen (The authors and hardcore users of PI (Politically Incorrect) are the avant garde of anti-Muslim hate. They are found everywhere where the Web 2.0 provides them with the possibility of spreading their poison)

Of course, Sokolowsky is referring to the Politically Incorrect hate blog where anonymous users routinely post comments advocating violence against Muslims in Germany. The operators of this blog, however, are not anonymous, and host the site on servers in the US.  But how many of the commenters would be so open in expressing hate if they were forced to post under their actual names? Even worse than Politically Incorrect, however, is the homophobic "Catholic" site kreuz.net, which openly propagates Holocaust denial (a crime under German law).  I have written about my efforts to shut down this site after anonymous commenters advocated violence against President Obama. How brave would these anonymous violence advocates be if they had to reveal their true identities?

I'm all for freedom of speech.  Germany should decriminalize Holocaust denial and reform its laws pertaining to "incitement" (Volksverhetzung). Let people openly admit their Islamophobia, homophobia, and rabid anti-Semitism.  But they should be required to do it under their own names.

kreuz.net and "Volksverhetzung"

In German criminal law, Volksverhetzung (literally "agitation of the populace") is a punishable offense under Section 130 of the Strafgesetzbuch (Germany's criminal code) and can lead to up to five years imprisonment. Volksverhetzung is punishable in Germany even if committed abroad and even if committed by non-German citizens.  The law bans the incitement of hatred against a segment of the population.

There is perhaps no better example of Volksverhetzung in the German blogosphere than the hate site kreuz.net.  The allegedly "Catholic" news Web site (the Roman Catholic Church in Germany has condemned it) routinely engages in Holocaust denial, hatred against Jews, and virulent homophobia - all illegal under German law as Volksverhetzung.  

How do the anonymous German operators get away with flagrantly breaking the law?  By cleverly hiding behind the freedom of speech protections in the US constitution.  As I wrote about earlier, the owners/operators have set up the site in the US.  An American company (Global Net Access in Atlanta) hosts the site.  But it is still unclear to me that merely hosting in the US protects the operators of the site, since the content is in German and is written for consumption in Germany. 

An amendment to the German Criminal Code in 2000 (BGB 1 StR 184/00) would seem to deal precisely with situations such as kreuz.net:

1) Stellt ein Ausländer von ihm verfaßte Äußerungen, die den Tatbestand der Volksverhetzung im Sinne des § 130 Abs. 1 oder des § 130 Abs. 3 StGB erfüllen ("Auschwitzlüge"), auf einem ausländischen Server in das Internet, der Internetnutzern in Deutschland zugänglich ist, so tritt ein zum Tatbestand gehörender Erfolg (§ 9 Abs. 1 3. Alternative StGB) im Inland ein, wenn diese Äußerungen konkret zur Friedensstörung im Inland geeignet sind. (BGHSt) 

A Gay/Lesbian University Student organization in Trier bas basically come up the same conclusion(pdf):

Es muss die Plicht der deutschen Politik sein, auf eine Kooperation mit den USA in dieser

Sache hinzuarbeiten, damit die Urheber in Deutschland auch zur Rechenschaft gezogen

werden können.(German politicians have the duty to seek cooperation with the US in this matter so that the orginators in German can be dealt with accordingly.)

I agree with the students, and so far have contacted the German Embassy in Washington and the office of German Justice MJnister Brigitte Zypries, but so far have not gotten any response. 

I should point out that not everyone agrees that kreuz.net should be shut down or censored.  The Distraught Queen writes:

Es täte, denke ich, uns besser, nicht gleich nach dem Staat zu rufen. Besonders dann, wenn es besser wäre, die Verrückten einfach mal machen zu lassen, damit jeder Mensch sehen kann, was im klerikalfaschistischen Universum abgeht. Das bringt für unsere Sache mehr als Zensur. Manchmal ist es eben so dialektisch…(I think it's better not to call in the state.  Especially when it's better to let these nutjobs keep doing what they do, so that everyone can see what's going on in the clerical-fascist universe. This will do more for our cause than censure.  Sometimes it's just dialectic....)

 

Serving up hate

Holocaust denial is a punishable crime in both Germany and Austria. But that doesn't stop certain Web site from advancing the point of view that the Holocaust never happened.  Case and point is the "Catholic" Web site kreuz.net.  This site describes itself in its banner as "katholische Nachrichten" - Catholic news.  In reality, it is an anti-Semitic hate site that identifies with the most reactionary strains of Roman Catholicism.

How does kreuz.net get away with publishing content that is clearly illegal in Germany?  Easy. The site's owners simply change the domain suffix to .net and find a hosting service in America.  In the US, Holocaust denial is protected under the First Amendment, so the anonymous operators of kreuz.net believe they are protected from any legal liability.  They can thus post articles like this with apparent impunity. 

It should be pointed out that kreuz.net - although now hosted in America - publishes frequent and vicious attacks on minority groups in the US, especially lesbians and gays.  Another favorite target is President Obama, whom they call "der amerikanische Blut-und Homo-Präsident" (evidently a play on Blut und Boden - "blood and soil"). Commenters are permitted without any censure to call for the assassination of President Obaman (HT Politblogger).

I have sent the following e-mail message to the hosting service for kreuz.net - Global Net Access in Atlanta:

Hi XXX,

 You may not be aware of this, but  Global Net Access is hosting a German hate site: www.kreuz.net.  I follow Web sites in Germany that deny the Holocaust and advocate violence.  Holocaust denial is a criminal offense in Germany, but not in the United States, so hate groups seek to find American hosting services where they can continue to spread their poison.

 This particular hate site – kreuz.net – also makes hateful comments about President Obama, going so far as to advocate assassination.  I am happy to provide the relevant links to this.

 I am sure that the views expressed by kreuz.net do not represent those of Global Net Access and its employees.   I strongly urge you to consider severing your relationship with the group behind this site.

 I am also alerting the Wiesenthal Center in New York concerning kreuz.net.  They track the activities of Holocaust deniers and their enablers globally.

 Sincerely yours,

 David Vickrey, Ph.D.

Global Net Access have asked for English translations of the offending articles (actually, EVERY article on kreuz.net is offensive). 

Even if I succeed, with the help of the Wiesenthal Center, of getting the hosting service to shut down kreuz.net, the site will not doubt spring up on another service.  Last year I had success in working with the Wiesenthal Center to shut down an American Holocaust denial site.  Unfortunately, the site is again up and running.  All we can do is keep putting on the pressure to drive these hate sites out of business.

 

German Left Embraces 9/11 Conspiracy Theories (and Amadinejad)

When he was in Europe this spring, President Obama made the following comment at a town hall-style meeting with German and French students in Strassbourg:

“In America, there is a failure to appreciate Europe’s leading role in the world. Instead of celebrating your dynamic union and seeking to partner with you to meet common challenges, there have been times where America has shown arrogance and been dismissive, even derisive. But in Europe, there is an anti-Americanism that is at once casual, but can also be insidious. Instead of recognizing the good that America so often does in the world, there have been times where Europeans choose to blame America for much of what is bad. On both sides of the Atlantic, these attitudes have become all too common. They are not wise. They do not represent the truth. They threaten to widen the divide across the Atlantic and leave us both more isolated. They fail to acknowledge the fundamental truth that America cannot confront the challenges of this century alone, but that Europe cannot confront them without America.”

One blog I often read and learn from is NachDenkSeiten, which has been critical of Germany's participation in NATO's mission in Afghanistan.  Now, I am all for constructive criticism of NATO's and the US war in Afghanistan, but NachDenkSeiten links approvingly to a highly critical piece in a German/Swiss blog Alles Schall und Rauch (loosely translated as "It's All Smoke and Mirrors"). Here we find a number of arguments for why the Bundeswehr should withdraw from Afghanistan immediately, including:

Deshalb ist die Ausrede, "Wir müssen uns vor Terror hier bei uns schützen, indem wir ihn in Afghanistan bekämpfen" eine glatte Lüge. Die Taliban wehren sich nur gegen die Invasoren, zuerst gegen die sowjetischen Eroberer und jetzt gegen die westlichen NATO-Truppen. Dieser Abwehrkampf ist völlig verständlich und berechtigt, denn jedes Volk würde sich gegen fremde Besatzer wehren und hat das Recht dazu. (Thus the excuse "We have to prevent terrorist attacks here (in Germany), so we need to fight terror in Afghanistan" is a complete lie.  The Taliba are only defending themselves against invaders - at first against the Soviens and now against NATO troops.  This defensive war is understandable and just, since any people would defend themselves against foreign occupiers and has the right to do so.)

Der Hauptgrund den die Amerikaner für die Invasion und Krieg in Afghanistan angeben, die Taliban hätten Osam Bin Laden mit seiner Al-Kaida beherbergt, der angeblich die Anschläge vom 11. September 2001 geleitet und Amerika damit angegriffen hat, stimmt nicht und ist auch gelogen, denn die Amerikaner haben Bin Laden bis heute deswegen weder angeklagt, noch suchen sie ihn wegen 9/11. Warum? Weil sie zugeben müssen, dass sie keinen einzigen Beweise gegen ihn haben. Wenn sie keine Beweise für seine Führungsrolle und Tat haben, wie können sie dann einen Krieg damit begründen? (The principal reason cited by the Americans for the invasion and war in Afghanistan is that the Taliban had been harboring Osama Bin Laden and Al-Qaeda; bin Laden allegedly organized and ordered the attacks of Sept. 11, 2oo1 and therefore had attacked America. But this is a complete lie, for the Americans have never charged bin Laden for these acts, nor is he even being sought in connection with 9/11. Why not? Because they (the Americans) have to admit that they don't have a single piece of evidence against him.  If they don't have any evidence of his leadership or actions, how can they use this argument to justify a war?)

It turns out that Alles Schall und Rauch is just one of many left-wing blogs dedicated to the "9/11 Truth Movement", that is, those who believe that 9/11 was the result of a conspiracy of the CIA and the Bush administration:

Die absurdeste 9/11 Verschwörungstheorie von allen, ist die offizielle Story der US-Regierung, dass ein kranker Bin Laden aus einer Höhle in Afghanistan mit seinen 19 Amateuren, die beste und teuerste Luftwaffe der Welt ausschaltete und Amerika angegriffen hat. (The most absurd 9/11 conspiracy theory of all is the official story of the US government, that a sick bin Laden from a cave in Afghanistan was able to circumvent the best and most expensive air force in the world and attack America.)

So great is the anti-American hate of these bloggers that they now side with Mullahs and Amadinejad against the protesters on the street in Iran seeking freer, more democratic society.  The protests, they write, are funded by the CIA.

This admiration for the repressive regime of the ayatollahs in Iran is widespread among German left-wing groups, according to Reinhard Mohr in Der Spiegel: Ein Slibowitz auf Ahmadinedschad.

German Hate Blogs Erupt Over Obama's Cairo Speech

President Obama's tour de force address to the Muslim world in Cairo was generally praised by the press around the world as a balanced effort to begin a new relationship with the over 1 billion followers of Islam alienated by the US foreign policy over the past eight years. 

But for the anti-Muslim hate blogs in Germany, the president's speech was yet another example of "Hussein's" treachery and secret affinity with terrorists. Leading the pack, of course, was Politically Incorrect, which accused President Obama of lying Warum lügt Barack Hussein?  In his speech, President Obama praised the contributions of American Muslims:

And since our founding, American Muslims have enriched the United States. They have fought in our wars, served in government, stood for civil rights, started businesses, taught at our Universities, excelled in our sports arenas, won Nobel Prizes, built our tallest building, and lit the Olympic Torch.”

For the hate-bloggers, this is unacceptable, since Muslims are incapable of any positive contributions; ergo President Obama was lying. In fact, he was lying because he himself is a Musel (derogatory term for Muslim) Ist doch ganz klar: weil museln lügen, sobald sie ihr maul aufmachen…(It's quite simple: Musels lie whenever they open their mouths.) Of course, a simple search reveals that the President was NOT lying. In lauding the achievements of American Muslims, he singled out those who excelled in our sports arenas (Muhammad Ali, Kareem Abdul-Jababr, Ahmad Rashad, and many others), won Nobel Prizes (reference to, among others, Ahmed Zewail, an Egyptian-American who won the 1999 Nobel Prize in chemistry), built our tallest building (Fazlur Rahman Khan, Bangladeshi-American structural engineer, considered “the greatest structural engineer of the second half of the 20th century” for his constructions of the Sears Tower and John Hancock Center), and lit the Olympic Torch (again, Muhammad Ali).

Then there is the well-known hate-blogger who blogs anonomously under the name Kewil at Fakten-Fiktionen, who wrote a review of the speech - Obama ist ein armseliger Naivling (Obama is a pitiful naivling)  - even though he admits he refused to watch or read it:

Da ich keine Minute Obama angeguckt habe, weder im Morgen-, noch im Abendland, weder im Frühstücksfernsehen, noch bei Kerner, und auch zu faul bin, seine Kairoer Unterwerfungsrede unter den Islam zu lesen, lasse ich andere sprechen.

What really bothers Kewil and the others is that President Obama enjoys enormous popularity In Germany - as he does in America.

Finally, there is what passes for "intellectual heft" on the far-right, the blog of Gudrun Eussner, who has a detailed "analysis" of President Obama's Cairo address and comes to a conclusion that reads like the worst kind of parody that we hear from Fox News:

Die Präsidentschaft Barack Hussein Obamas ist eine einzige Lüge, angefangen bei seiner bis heute nicht im Original veröffentlichten Geburtsurkunde über Ergebnisse seiner Studienzeit, seine politischen und privaten Freundschaften bis zur Zusicherung, er werde sich immer dafür einsetzen, daß Ostjerusalem zu Israel gehöre und Jerusalem ungeteilt bleiben solle. (The presidency of Barack Hussein Obama is one big lie, beginning with the lack of an original birth certificate to his work as a student, to his political and private friendships to his guarantee that he would always ensure that East Jerusalem remains part of Israel and Jerusalem would remain undivided.) 

The New York Times struck exactly the right tone in its editorial on President Obama's Cairo speech:

When President Bush spoke in the months and years after Sept. 11, 2001, we often — chillingly — felt as if we didn’t recognize the United States. His vision was of a country racked with fear and bent on vengeance, one that imposed invidious choices on the world and on itself. When we listened to President Obama speak in Cairo on Thursday, we recognized the United States.

Frau Eussner and her friends on the extreme right were much more comfortable with President Bush's "us versus them" world vision.  In their constant hate-mongering against our new president they are displaying a profound anti-Americanism.