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Jan.06

on 6. Januar 2017

Veröffentlicht in: Allgemein

Victor Grossman

TARGETS HUMAN AND POLITICAL

Berlin Bulletin No. 123

Victor Grossman

No, Berlin did not have a good old Merry Christmas. Tragedy hit hard, in the form of a long, heavy truck steered right into the Christmas market by a fanatic Tunisian immigrant, already in serious trouble in his home country and Italy, and scheduled for expulsion from Germany. Twelve were killed, also the Polish driver of the hijacked bus, and nearly fifty were injured, many of them foreign tourists. The killer died a few days later in an almost accidental shootout in Italy, and Berlin did its best to mourn the loss but keep a sad but stiff upper Christmas lip for the holidays.

My question: Would a well-publicized decision by the government that German troops and weapons will be removed from all Muslim territories (and any others as well) and no more murderous arms shipments sent anywhere near conflict areas perhaps be the best long-term answer to „terrorism“?

Soon local politics again took center-stage. City-state elections in Berlin were back in September. After many weeks of negotiation, the city’s first three-party coalition agreed at last on a joint program, with almost 90% of the LINKE members voting Yes per postal referendum, and on a ruling Senate (cabinet). The SPD (Social Democrats) won fewer election votes than ever before but still more than any other party, so incumbent mayor Michael Müller keeps his job; his party gets four seats, one of them the mayor’s. There are three seats for the LINKE, one for youthful, smiling Klaus Lederer, until now head of his party in Berlin, but now deputy mayor and in charge of culture, always a hot theme. And there are also three Senate seats for the Greens, their first in Berlin city rule.

What will this new team bring to Berlin? A double whammy broke the suspense. When LINKE city planning engineer Katrin Lompscher finally got the job she always wanted, Senator for Housing and Construction, she amazed everyone by naming university sociologist Andrej Holm as one of her two deputies (called state secretaries). He is known as a scrapper, even a radical; aside from academic duties he has long fought the squeeze of Berlin’s low income renters, over half the total, out of the main city area and off to the outskirts. He even approved of the once so frequent „squatting“, with young people defiantly occupying buildings cruelly rid of low-income renters and permitted to decay so they can be replaced by fancy, expensive condominiums. Holm was arrested in 2007 on suspicion of working with „underground anarchists“; some of his vocabulary, it seems, matched theirs, like the then new terms „gentrification“ and „precarization“. He was freed after three weeks and world-wide protests and is highly respected as a fighter against the advancing take-over by the wealthy.

This frightened many in the newly-sidelined CDU, who quickly launched their counter-whammy. They dug up the fact that in September 1989 at 18 Holm had agreed to join the Stasi, for which his father worked. His family was pro-GDR leftist, the Nazis had imprisoned his anti-fascist grandfather in Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp. His few months of Stasi-apprenticeship were ended after the Berlin Wall fell. That was 27 years ago; not just the LINKE but the two other coalition parties dismissed the matter as a long-dated youthful decision which had never damaged a single person.

But then the ferrets dug up more; in 2005, when taking on a university job, he had allegedly admitted his application and brief membership in the Stasi but not that he had been paid for a month or two. His appointment now rests with the university authorities. The media smell blood; a few weaker supporters are joining in a chase whose motivation is all too clear. The real estate gentry, already rubbing their hands, are most raucously „indignant at such an evil-doer“!

Though without knowing his full story, I cannot help recalling my own. Drafted during the McCarran-McCarthy Era, I was told to sign a paper denying any leftist memberships. I fearfully signed; admitting the truth would have brought immediate big problems and could have ruined my entire life. Perhaps his situation had not been so very different; the atmosphere certainly wasn’t! I must applaud the LINKE for naming such a fighter and for supporting him at least thus far.

The tripartite coalition in Berlin inevitably leads speculation to the coming German elections next September. The dream of some in the LINKE is a similar coalition, just like here. The polls of the three parties currently add up to about 42%. Can this grow a little? And would the LINKE, to beat the „openly right“ and get into government accede to the ultimatum of the SPD and the Greens by breaking their „Peace Party“ pledge against the sending of any German troops abroad?

The traditional partner of the Christian Union sister parties has always been the big-biz Free Democratic Party. If it manages to regain the needed 5% and edge back into the Bundestag and rejoin that team that could almost exactly reach about 42%, like the others. It’s all tight!

Could the Christmas market tragedy hurt the chances of Angela Merkel? Ever since she first announced her welcoming policy toward refugees she has been under attack by parties of the Far Right, by a few strident opponents within her own party and by her further-right Bavarian sister party, who want ever more video cameras and ever more people behind bars or expelled. She and her stalwarts have been moving backward, step by step, on a delicate tightrope, making life harder and harder for one group or nationality after the other. Was that enough to stem the tide? There was a sudden swing in the polls against her party, strengthening the menacing Alternative for Germany (AfD) but at present this trend seems to have subsided, with the AfD back down to its 13% status – alarming enough. But if those seats in the Bundestag are needed to continue in power, would the Markel party break all taboos and make a deal with the extremist AfD? Tensions are mounting by the month, many are wobbling – and often hoping for shining victories – and comfy cabinet seats.

www.european-left.org

Germany is biggest, strongest, central in Europe and muleteer of a scattering herd. And it was in Berlin on December 18-19th that just such matters were debated by representatives of 25 left-wing parties (with six sending „observers“) from all over Europe. Their goal: to strengthen the Party of the European Left. Though not a new organization, it has hardly played a noticeable role thus far. This, 300 participants decided, must be changed!

The members vary widely. Some, tiny vestiges of former Communist Parties, still strictly correct, require little more than a large phone booth for their membership. Others are strong opposition parties, and Syriza is the controversial government party in Greece. More than one party was represented from some countries – France, Spain, Finland. And some were conspicuous by their absence, like those from Portugal. One hot question still divides them. Should leftist parties battle within the European Union, where some belong to a Leftist-Left/Green coalition? Or should they reject it as a largely German-dominated force for reaction and fight it from without. The meeting in Berlin decided that disagreement on this must no longer weaken their efforts. The far right is ever more menacing, with Le Pen, Wilders in the Netherlands, Hungary, Poland, Austria and the AfD. And who knows what Trump may bring? There must be a united fight against it, against austerity measures, racism, misogyny, union-busting, anti-immigrant hatred, against ecological disaster and, finally for nuclear disarmament and for peace initiatives in the Mideast and Eastern Europe.

The new president of this European Left, elected by only 67.7%, was Gregor Gysi, no longer in any leadership job in the German LINKE he did so much to build. An Executive Committee was chosen with representatives from France, Spain, Italy and Bulgaria. Gysi said the European Union was antisocial, undemocratic, ecologically inconsistent, non-transparent, lacking in solidarity, bureaucratic and was grasping at military power. He sees the reasons why some abhor it but, despite its current crisis, favors helping it stay alive as a balancing factor in the world, important for keeping peace at least in Europe, and because it enables young people to travel at will through most of the continent. Gysi pledged to help make the European Left a much bigger force, with annual congresses and actions like a united demonstration protesting violence against women or a united march to Brussels to demand an end to „precarious jobs“. The need for such unity is becoming desperate.

More by Victor Grossman: Berlin Bulletin No. 122, No. 121 (deutsch), No. 121, No. 120, No. 119, No. 118, No. 117, No. 116, No. 115, No. 114, No. 113, No. 112, No. 111, No. 110, No. 109, No. 108, No. 107, No. 106, No. 105, No. 104, No. 103, No. 102, No. 101.
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Jan.08

on 8. Januar 2017

Veröffentlicht in: Allgemein

Victor Grossman

THE YANKS ARE COMING!

Berlin Bulletin No. 124

Victor Grossman

Hit that old song again, loud and clear! “Over there, over there, Send the word, send the word, That the Yanks are coming, the Yanks are coming…”

Yes, sirree! Shades of 1918 and the Battle of the Marne! Shades of 1944 and the beaches of Normandy! But no, not just shades and not just words have already been sent.

2017 had hardly begun in Germany’s port of Bremerhaven when 4000 lads and lasses in Yankee uniform disembarked and unloaded three shiploads, over 2,500 tanks, trucks and other combat vehicles, and sent them on by rail, on ferries through the Baltic or clanking along those Autobahn highways through North Germany. So many memories!

The military equipment on arrival in Bremerhaven, Photo: EPA

Colonel Bertulis at US Command Headquarters in Stuttgart called it “the greatest redeployment operation of the US Army to Germany since 1990…It will ensure that the necessary combat power is brought to the right place in Europe at the right time.” Higher up the ladder, Lt. Gen. Frederick Hodges, commander of US forces in Europe, said, “Three years after the last American tanks left the continent, we need to get them back.”

What dangerous front are they moving to defend? Where, this time, is “over there”?

Well, it is not exactly a front. Or not yet! Not one BB gun has been fired along the Russian border with Latvia or Estonia, nor along the short Polish or Lithuanian borders around the small, fully surrounded Russian enclave at Kaliningrad. Nor has anyone heard Putin or any other Russian leader utter a single threat or make one demand directed at any of those countries.

But, as General Hodges told journalists, the measures were a “response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the illegal annexation of Crimea.” He added consolingly, “This does not mean that there necessarily has to be a war, none of this is inevitable, but Moscow is preparing for the possibility.”

Peace demonstrations (far too few) point out that Russia has 900,000 armed troops while NATO has 3.5 million, stationed in over a hundred bases in a world-wide ring around Russia. It threatened to shut off Russia’s only warm-water naval base on the Crimea (where most people, Russian-speakers, voted for their “take-over” in a referendum) while moving to close the ring from the south. It’s coup d’état Ukrainian government of Russophobes (and many fascist types) was largely set up by Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland in 2014. “’Yats’ is our man,” she telephoned and, after more money and violence, Yatsenyuk it was! People wondered what Washington would do if friends of Russia moved right up to American borders. Then they recalled coups or invasions in Guatemala, Cuba, Grenada, Panama, Chile. Not to mention Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya, hardly closer to US borders!

Some Europeans even wondered at the planned arrival date of the new troops at the Russian borders, January 20th of all days! Were there any star-struck generals or well-groomed connivers who hoped to end an era not with a whimper but with a bang? Did some fear that Donald Trump, while switching back and forth on nearly everything else he said in his campaign, might just possibly, for whatever reason, keep his word about getting along peacefully with Putin? For the highest ranking neo-con enthusiast down to the last deluded riveter at Lockheed-Martin – that sounded alarming!

How many Germans believe all the New Year’s fireworks from Washington about Putin’s electoral hacking? Most of them certainly drew other conclusions as to why Clinton was defeated. They have many questions about that mysterious American institution, the Electoral College, which somehow offers nothing remotely resembling anything like an academic degree. Many have lost old faiths in their great friend and protector.

The 1.8 ton heavy bomber from Augsburg,
Photo: dpa

But some welcome this operation, “Atlantic Resolve“, like smaller ones which preceded it. Although it is not sponsored by the UN, not even by NATO, but only by the outgoing US administration, some political leaders, as in Canada and Britain, now want to have the German Bundeswehr get into the act and send a battalion to Lithuania. The Baltic countries are not far from St. Petersburg. Then still called Leningrad, a million and a half people died there, mostly of hunger and cold during the genocidal Nazi siege in 1941 to 1944. The flags and uniform colors of those who maintained that siege were different, but some traditions have long lives, as too many have been demonstrating in loud marches and more and more voting booths.

As yet, at least, not too many in Germany like the idea of playing mass scale Russian roulette. In Augsburg, over 50,000 people, many old-timers unable to walk, had to leave homes and hospitals on Christmas Day so a giant triple-fused bomb from World War Two, 75 years ago, could be defused. And now there are those, only a hundred miles away in Stuttgart, who speak lightly of a Number Three! And today’s missiles can have phosphorus, uranium and nuclear components, and be delivered by unmanned drones.

If this Operation Atlantic Resolve somehow recalls the idea of New Year’s resolutions, millions could supply a few of absolute, overriding urgency; move troops and weapons out and away, negotiate, make peace, break with the conscience-less plans and ambitions of a limited number of greedy adventurers and turn to the planet’s vitally crucial problems – a decent life for all its people and plans for saving our tortured planet.

More by Victor Grossman: Berlin Bulletin No. 123, No. 122, No. 121 (deutsch), No. 121, No. 120, No. 119, No. 118, No. 117, No. 116, No. 115, No. 114, No. 113, No. 112, No. 111, No. 110, No. 109, No. 108, No. 107, No. 106, No. 105, No. 104, No. 103, No. 102, No. 101.
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└ Schlagwörter: Rüstung

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Jan.17

on 17. Januar 2017

Veröffentlicht in: Allgemein

Victor Grossman

ROSA AND KARL AND BERLIN TROUBLES

Berlin Bulletin No. 125

Victor Grossman

Rosa and Karl: Like every mid-January Sunday in Berlin, their names are recalled by those with a social conscience. Once again thousands laid red carnations, brightening the snowy surroundings, at the monument honoring them and those named nearby who lived and died for a good cause. Karl Liebknecht was a fighter, the one Social Democratic delegate in 1914 to defy a party decision and vote against the World War, and to keep opposing it until he was jailed. Rosa Luxemburg, with him in opposition, and also jailed, wrote bitterly, “The dividends rise and the proletarians fall.”

In the bloody days of the November Revolution at war’s end they fought for a socialist Germany, helped found a Communist Party and, two weeks later, 98 years ago, were both brutally murdered by forerunners of the Nazis. Rosa is still especially loved; she was not only a truly revolutionary fighter against injustice, war and oppression, but could also dream. Even in prison she described the sky, songbirds, even the ants and beetles she could observe, and wrote: “I feel at home in the entire world, wherever there are clouds and birds and human tears.”

The “old faithful” and many young people, too, walk several blocks from the subway to the site. And, as every year, a militant mix of leftist parties, grouplets and national groups from all Germany and beyond, Czechs and Turks, Kurds and Basques, Austrians and Danes, prefers to first parade for several kilometers through East Berlin, with music, slogans, banners and flags (also a few of the forbidden Kurdish People’s Party, whose bearers were again nabbed by the police).

The day before, as ever, the newspaper junge Welt organized a leftist conference. 2800 people, a record, heard reports on events in Brazil, the Basque country, Mexico, Turkey, Cuba and the USA, also a taped greeting from Mumia Abu-Jamal, the framed Black journalist in prison since 1981.

Rosa Luxemburg Memorial at the Landwehrkanal in Berlin

In the crowded rooms two themes could often be heard: Donald Trump and the position of the LINKE party. Not surprisingly, there was little affection for Trump; some were planning to demonstrate in Berlin against him. But some expressed fears at the unprecedented movement of US tanks and weapons through Germany and Poland to the Russian border.

Could war hawks be planning some provocation there and using it to oust Trump, not because of his racism or misogyny, but because he wants to negotiate peacefully with Putin? Was the hectic, more than dubious hacker campaign so planned that Trump could be labeled a pawn of Putin and potential traitor in the face of a new emergency? Heightening such fears were reports of a US Marine unit just arriving in Norway to “learn skiing” and “get used to polar conditions” near the Russian border and then join the big units gathering near St. Petersburg. What would the next days bring?

As for the LINKE, debate centered on its willingness, or refusal, to join the Greens and Social Democrats in a coalition government after the September elections. Would the LINKE join up, if the results permit, dropping its strict opposition to deploying troops outside German borders? Thus far it had voted solidly, often alone, against involvement in Afghanistan, Turkey, Syria and Mali. This was the basis of its claim to be the one party of peace. Social Democrats and Greens insist it cannot be so stubborn on this if it wants to join in and some LINKE say, “OK, let’s agree on some exceptions”. Others recall the proverbial camel’s nose in the tent, soon followed by legs, hump and all!

But those elections are nine months away, and one difficult baby has already been born in this connection. In Berlin just such a three-party coalition is now in charge, its joint program supported per referendum by almost 90 percent of all LINKE members in Berlin. The new LINKE cabinet minister in charge of city planning, herself an engineer, courageously chose as deputy Andrej Holm, an expert, and known as a militant fighter against gentrification and for the rights of low-income tenants, for keeping rent rates down and building more homes for those who need them most.

Then it was found that Holm, after high school, had followed the bidding of his father (the son of an anti-Nazi concentration camp prisoner) and his feelings for the GDR and, in September 1989 signed up for a uniformed sector of the State Security Ministry or Stasi. Four months later came the end of the Stasi, and soon after the GDR. But not the animosity of its foes, not in 27 years. The masters in digging dirt found that when Holm applied for a university position in 2005 he had admitted to joining the Stasi but not that he had received pay for three or four months. Had he forgotten after 15 years? Was he trying to save his livelihood and career against the lasting taboos? For his foes that was unimportant. The city, they insisted, could not have such an untrustworthy man in office!

Luxemburg-Liebknecht Memorial memorandum 2017, photo: Uwe Hinksch

All this landed in the middle of the Liebknecht-Luxemburg Conference. Then came the news that Mayor Michael Müller, a Social Democrat, without waiting for a university report, as agreed, had decided to fire Holm. One speaker recalled bitterly how Hans Globke, one of those most responsible for preparing the Holocaust, remained a deputy minister and “second most important man in West Germany” until 1963. And so many others had cleansed or concealed a Nazi past! The conference ended with a unanimous call on the LINKE to answer this move by quitting the city government coalition. Yet it was clear to most that this would not happen. The real estate sharks won out, and a day later Holm decided to quit before he was fired. But he vowed to stay militant!

This was no pleasant start for the Berlin coalition, and may even have relevancy for the national election campaign. It was good, therefore, that Sunday ended with a wonderful meeting in a big theater, with all top leaders of the LINKE party in a friendly row of brief speeches, also the LINKE candidate for German president, speakers from other countries and good music, German and Turkish, all under the slogan “Labor Unions strengthen Humanism (Anti-Communism destroys it).”

In conclusion Sahra Wagenknecht, the party’s most prominent leader, made a powerful, fighting speech. She denounced the forces in Germany and elsewhere who are responsible for wars, death, destruction and poverty, with resulting waves of refugees. She accused German rulers of bribing some groups of workers into acquiescence while pushing others into ever worsening part-time, temporary, unprotected jobs, divided in each plant to prevent unity, and thus lowering wages. The cheaper-built products helped force countries in southern Europe into “austerity” measures and those in Africa or Asia into extreme poverty, with half their young people facing joblessness and hopeless futures. Only if the LINKE hits at these problems, offering German working people a true alternative to establishment politics, can right-wing extremists be beaten back. It was a wonderful speech, the crowd was galvanized into new determination to fight back and to fight forward. This meeting, like all the weekend’s events, was truly in the spirit of Rosa and Karl!

More by Victor Grossman: Berlin Bulletin No. 125, No. 123, No. 122, No. 121 (deutsch), No. 121, No. 120, No. 119, No. 118, No. 117, No. 116, No. 115, No. 114, No. 113, No. 112, No. 111, No. 110, No. 109, No. 108, No. 107, No. 106, No. 105, No. 104, No. 103, No. 102, No. 101.
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Feb.12

on 12. Februar 2017

Veröffentlicht in: Allgemein

Victor Grossman

BEARS AND MUSICAL CHAIRS

Berlin Bulletin No. 126

Victor Grossman

Those who, like me, grew up with the writings of A. A. Milne may recall not just Winnie the Pooh but two other little bears and how “one of them was Bad and the other was Good” and kept getting better. In a way that recalls German politics. The goodie in next September’s elections, it had seemed, would certainly be Angela Merkel with her two “Christian” parties, one in Bavaria, the other in all the other states. And despite scolding from her own rightists due to her refugee policy, now backtracking, she was well ahead in the polls, heading towards a fourth term.

Her main rivals, the Social Democrats, always seemed to get things wrong, like the poem’s “Bad bear” who “left all his buttons undone“ and whose “nicketies were terrible tore”. They plummeted – (not their nicketies (?) but their poll results). But then, as in the poem, “quite suddenly (just like Us), One got better and the other got Wuss.” A turnaround which seems to be echoing in Germany.

Martin Schulz, the new shooting star of the SPD

The reason for the sudden SPD upturn is simple; lack-luster party boss Sigmar Gabriel, 57, less popular by the day, withdrew as party head and chancellor candidate in favor of jolly Martin Schulz, 61, who, like one little bear, somehow “learnt his Twice Times Three” and managed within two short weeks to boost the Social Democrats from an almost hopeless minus of thirteen percentage points behind Merkel’s backers to a slim four point margin, an amazing jump. Achieved by cutting away at nearly all other parties, and with seven months left to go, this opened the door to all kinds of hopes and aspirations. More and more favored him, keen, fresh Schulz, over her, a tiring Merkel.

What made it possible? Martin Schulz has been in the European Parliament since 1994 and its president since 2012. That won him lots of TV time, but rarely about German politics. Unlike Gabriel, who was Vice-Chancellor and Economics Minister, he was never a visible part of the Berlin Establishment, which many German voters distrust as much as many Americans dislike pols from “inside the Beltway” in Washington. And Angela is the truest symbol of a German “Beltway”.

So, turning again to the children’s world, there was a game of Musical Chairs.* Schulz, followed as EU Parliament chief by one-time Berlusconi spokesman Antonio Tajani, was now free to replace Gabriel as SPD party boss and chancellor candidate. Gabriel then replaced Frank-Walter Steinmeier as Foreign Minister. And, on Sunday, Steinmeier will replace retiring Joachim Gauck as new German president, a largely ceremonious job and a largely ceremonious election, with 1260 delegates, all the Bundestag members plus an equal number of celebrities and minor dignitaries. The outcome is certain, since both coalition parties support Steinmeier, but there are other candidates, like Cologne Professor Christoph Butterwegge, 66, an expert on the fight against poverty, who will hardly get more than the votes of the LINKE (Left) who proposed him but who hoped that as a candidate he might get a genuine chance to present leftist views. He didn’t. Remember how the media treated Jill Stein?

But otherwise everybody except Angela Merkel should be happy. Or maybe not. Martin Schulz, with his bald head and clipped beard, looks nothing like stout Gabriel. But his program, as far as we can tell, is no different, and that is nothing to rejoice about. In fifteen of the past twenty years the Social Democrats were in coalition governments, as senior partners with the Greens or, like now, as juniors with Merkel’s Christians. They thus share responsibility for many or most of the measures so painful for working people, for those who lose their jobs, those needing medical care or a decent retirement. Germany, starting out far ahead of the USA in such matters, has been slipping downward in all of them – especially since the demise of the East German GDR in 1990. The SPD party (and the Greens) joined in Germany’s first military involvement since 1945, in Yugoslavia; it is now engaged in Afghanistan, Mali, Syria, Lebanon, and elsewhere. Germany used its economic and political weight in Europe to force devastating austerity pressures on weaker countries, all with the OK of the SPD. Martin Schulz has given eloquent, socially-conscious replies to interviewers’ questions on some topics, but has refused to say anything definite, not on a decent minimum wage, not on a fairer share of medical care expenses, not on higher taxes on the wealthiest. But what he doesn’t really say he really says so very well! And most of his party and many others just eat it up. At least for now!

He is even less clear about foreign policy but refused to oppose CETA and TTIP, the TPP equivalents. Far more worrisome, not just for Germans but for the world, is another matter he has not been quoted on. One thousand NATO troops from seven nations, with two more to follow, now stationed in Lithuania, 100 km from the Russian border, have been placed under German command. Hawkish Defense Minister Ursula von der Leyen, belligerent as always during her frequent trips to fire up the troops, said: “To prevent any danger arising from Russia is precisely the reason why we are here.” In view of the lack of any threats from Moscow against the USA, which is organizing this entire rotation of military units all along Russian borders, or against Lithuania, or against Germany, it is hard to avoid a shudder at the memory of a not all too distant yesterday – involving Germany and Russia, also starting near here, and ending in the death of over 50 million human beings. Or to think of what some incident, provoked, accidental or misunderstood, might mean to the world tomorrow. (And some wondered what Washington would say to Chinese troops similarly stationed in Baja California with guns aimed at San Diego, perhaps citing as justification the US invasions of Libya, Iraq and its actions at the Chinese border to Afghanistan!

Little is said about this danger, not in the media and not in the words of those playing Musical Chairs. Their main worry today – to return one last time to children’s games – is how to avoid the economic and political results of “London Bridge is Falling Down” for the EU and possible copy-cat decisions after elections soon to be held in France, the Netherlands and Austria.

For the LINKE the changing scenery can also get dramatic. Current gains by the Schulz-SPD might indeed make it numerically possible to form a tripartite coalition after September. The SPD is still labeled “red”, so this would be a “red-red-green coalition”. The second strongest party in a coalition gets the job of Vice-Chancellor and either Economics or Foreign Minister, and with the SPD ahead, and the Greens and the LINKE about neck and neck, the possibilities are increasing temptingly, and so, too, may be some unspoken hopes.

But if the LINKE should enter such a government, what would happen to its strong pro-working class positions, to its “tax the wealthy” demands and, above all, to its rejection of any military involvement by Bundeswehr troops outside German borders? Both Social Democrats and Greens – whose right wings have grown stronger – would certainly demand LINKE compromise, dilution – and compliance, especially on military expansion! If this were granted, what would then remain of its genuinely left position?

The year ahead may become very complicated and difficult in many places on both sides of the Atlantic. Let us hope that it will become more peaceful!

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*We used to call this game Going to Jerusalem, but I don’t want to get into that question, not in this bulletin, anyway.

More by Victor Grossman: Berlin Bulletin No. 125 No. 124, No. 123, No. 122, No. 121 (deutsch), No. 121, No. 120, No. 119, No. 118, No. 117, No. 116, No. 115, No. 114, No. 113, No. 112, No. 111, No. 110, No. 109, No. 108, No. 107, No. 106, No. 105, No. 104, No. 103, No. 102, No. 101.
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Feb.13

on 13. Februar 2017

Veröffentlicht in: Allgemein

Petra Willemelis

Kundgebung am Sonntagmorgen in Ziegenhals

Zum 84. Jahrestags der illegalen Tagung des ZK der KPD in der Sportgaststätte Ziegenhals

Petra Willemelis

Aus Anlass des 84. Jahrestags der illegalen Tagung des ZK der KPD in Ziegenhals (Berlin), fand gestern um 11. 30 Uhr eine Kundgebung am Gedenkstein in Ziegenhals statt. Es sprachen Victor Grossmann zur aktuellen Lage in den USA, ein Vertreter des Bundesvorstands der Roten Hilfe und Maren Cronsnest (ETGZ) zur Lage in Russland.

Trotz des des kalten, aber trocknen Wetters herrschte eine kämpferische Stimmung und die angereisten Teilnehmer/innen lauschten den Redner/innen. Herzliche Kampfesgrüße an den Donbass wurden übermittelt und Spenden für die Arbeit des Freundeskreises gesammelt.

Wieso tagte das ZK am 7. Februar 1933 in der Sportgaststätte Ziegenhals?
Dazu schreibt der Freundeskreis „Ernst-Thälmann-Gedenkstätte“ e.V., Ziegenhals:

„Eine Woche nach der Machtübergabe an Hitler und der Errichtung der offenen faschistischen Diktatur in Deutschland versammelten sich am 7. Februar 1933 ca. 40 Mitglieder des ZK und andere leitende Genossen der Partei zu einer beschlossenen Tagung des Zentralkomitees im Lokal „Sporthaus Ziegenhals“. Auf abgesicherten konspirativen Wegen waren die Teilnehmerinnen und Teilnehmer dort, unweit der Stadtgrenze von Berlin, angekommen: Sie waren zu verschiedenen Treffpunkten in Berlin bestellt worden und erhielten dort die Adresse einer neuen Anlaufstelle bei der Treptower Sternwarte. Von dort aus wurden sie in drei Gruppen als Angehörige eines Sportvereins in Reisebussen zum Tagungsort gefahren. Während der Tagung selbst sicherten zuverlässige Parteimitglieder die Umgebung des Lokals, um eine Entdeckung durch die Nazis zu verhindern. Ca. 40 KPD-Funktionäre, Mitglieder und Kandidaten des ZK, sowie, nach der damaligen Praxis, „Bezirkssekretäre und die Chefredakteure der wichtigsten Bezirkszeitungen“, nahmen an dieser illegalen ZK-Tagung teil. Unter den Teilnehmern befanden sich Landtagsabgeordnete aus Preußen, Sachsen, Thüringen und Bayern. 27 Tagungs-Teilnehmer waren während der Weimarer Republik Reichstagsabgeordnete der KPD. Sie waren zu dieser illegalen Tagung des Zentralkomitees der KPD zusammengekommen, um zu beraten, wie der Kampf gegen die faschistische Diktatur am wirksamsten zu führen sei. Die Tagung begann um 17 Uhr.

Thälmann analysierte in seiner „Ziegenhalser Rede“die neu entstandene Lage nach dem 30. Januar 1933 und den Klassencharakter der faschistischen Diktatur, die politischen und sozialen Auswirkungen nach Innen und die wachsende Kriegsgefahr nach Außen. Er bereitete seine Genossinnen und Genossen auf den bevorstehenden Terror, aber auch auf den erforderlichen Widerstandskampf, mit dem Ziel des Sturzes der Nazis, vor. Sein Hauptaugenmerk lag dabei auf der Zusammenführung aller notwendigen gesellschaftlichen Kräfte und der Aktionseinheit der Arbeiterklasse – einer Verstärkung, aber zugleich auch Fortsetzung der antifaschistischen Arbeit der KPD der vorangegangenen Jahre. Zugleich formulierte Ernst Thälmann in dieser Rede ein neues strategisches Ziel des antifaschistischen Kampfes. Welches Deutschland muss nach Hitler kommen? Sowjetdeutschland oder bürgerliche Demokratie? Der VII. Weltkongress der Kommunistischen Internationale und die „Brüsseler Konferenz“ der KPD (beide 1935) bestätigte die Richtigkeit der dialektischen Schlussfolgerungen, die Ernst Thälmann in Ziegenhals aus der damaligen neuen Situation entwickelt hatte.

Ernst Thälmann war stark von der Situation gepackt, in der sich die Partei seit der Errichtung der Hitlerdiktatur befand. Er sprach mit lauter Stimme. Als die mit der Sicherung Betrauten bemerkten, dass das Lokal unter Beobachtung stand, signalisierten sie ihre Wahrnehmungen Walter Ulbricht, der die Tagung leitete. Dieser schloss daraufhin gegen acht Uhr abends, kurz vor Beendigung der Rede Ernst Thälmanns, die Tagung.

Dank der umsichtigen Leitung und Sicherung der Sitzung konnten alle Teilnehmer ungehindert das „Sporthaus Ziegenhals“ verlassen. Ein Teil der Teilnehmer fuhr dabei mit dem Boot Charlotte über den Krossinsee nach Schmöckwitz.

Als zwei Stunden später die SA erschien, war das Lokal bereits leer.

Es war das letzte Mal, dass der Parteivorsitzende Ernst Thälmann vor dem Zentralkomitee der KPD sprechen konnte.“
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Comment

Apr.06

on 6. April 2017

Veröffentlicht in: Allgemein

Victor Grossman

MIRACLES CAN HAPPEN

Berlin Bulletin No. 127
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Victor Grossman

To follow German politics these days you have to like arithmetic. At first only up to six, for that many parties are now vying to get good grades, lots of votes, and more power in the September elections to the Bundestag, which will lead to a government ruling until 2021.

Leading a current coalition is the strongest party, the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), combined, usually peaceably, with its Bavarian offshoot the Christian Social Union (CSU). They have been having some worries lately. The leading figure, Angela Merkel, often described sort of affectionately as “Mutti” (Mutti means Mommy and the “u” is pronounced as in “put” not as in “mutt”), is no longer the one and only choice of a big majority. Her controversial “welcome” words to all refugees lost her right-wing voters, her backtracking on it stopped this tide only partly, and a note of tiredness is sometimes visible behind her friendly, vigorous, plain-talking nature, which has covered many a sin at home and abroad. She has been moving down, up, down and up again in the popularity ladder.

With proportional representation it is the vote on a party basis which determines the route ahead. The current junior coalition party, the Social Democrats (SPD), has had a tightrope job; being in the government but also sounding critical and independent enough to win votes for itself and away from its partner. It was teetering alarmingly; even its one coup, winning overwhelming support for its man as new president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, was a mixed blessing, for the president has little to say politically except at celebrations and to foreign kings and presidents, and the removal of their most popular leader from all election endeavors left them with only the increasingly unpopular party chairman, Sigmar Gabriel, to wave their banner.

And this banner was sinking lower and lower. The faces of SPD leaders looked as glum as any child having trouble moving from adding and subtracting to percentage. By early 2017 the polls showed a measly 20% heading downward, while Merkel’s position in the front row, or that of her combined two parties, was way ahead in the mid-30 range. What hopes for September could survive that gap?

Merkel or Schulz

Then, in late January, it happened! German politics did a headstand! Martin Schulz, 61, for five years president of the European Parliament, left that job, entered German politics, replaced Sigmar Gabriel, who obligingly switched to the job of Foreign Minister, and was elected both SPD president and its main candidate for September. Every vote within his party gave him a rare, amazing result – unanimous 100 % approval. This was followed by a wave of popularity in all the land, with several thousand joining the party within a week. And the SPD poll figures moved higher and higher, soaring from the poor 20% on January 11th to 26% by February 1st and 31% a week later. A little numbers dance followed; in one poll the CDU-CSU was ahead by a point or so, in the next one the SPD.

There were several reasons for the euphoria. Schulz was known to TV viewers thanks to his position in the European parliament, but in German politics his face was new and unblemished. And his face, with bald head and clipped beard, was always a jolly one (or almost always), always exuding confidence that he would replace Merkel as next Chancellor. But more important were his promises. He surprisingly admitted the mistakes of the SPD-Green coalition before 2009, which had been great for the wealthy and super-wealthy but tough for pensioners, working people and especially those who lost their jobs. He promised to reverse such laws and improve the lot of precarious workers and the jobless. Such unprecedented honesty and a promise of better breaks are what won him the amazing gains, which cut into the numbers for the other parties, less those of the CDU-CSU, but rather of the Greens, the LINKE (Left) and the racist, ultra-reactionary Alternative for Germany (AfD).

Now arithmetic was again useful, and juggling, because even 32-33% is not enough to form a government; 50% of the seats are required. Who then would go with whom – and who couldn’t?

The AfD is still branded taboo and not in the coalition race, although the media have given it far too much time and some on the CDU-right have been sniffing around like a hound dog hunting a mate. But somehow Schulz has won back many voters who voted AfD to protest establishment politics leaving them behind economically and threatening with worse to come. Schulz offered them new hope while the AfD, torn by inner quarrels, has dropped back to 8-9%. That’s one good thing anyway!

As for the Greens, so long as their one-time favorite partner, the SPD, dropped so low in the polls they chose conservative leaders and turned their eyes to the right. The party, totally unlike USA-Greens, was once youthfully rebellious, especially on climate issues, opposing atomic energy and women’s rights. Its interest in working people’s rights, never too strong, waned further as its members, often well-educated intellectuals, got older and more successful. They were showing interest in cuddling up to Angela Merkel and her right-wing crowd, perhaps reaching the 50% mark with the help of the newly-revived right-wing Free Democrats. Then suddenly, with the rise of Schulz, they saw the chance of a so-called red-red-green coalition with the SPD and the LINKE (which both use red as party color) and started to sound more leftish again.

The LINKE, which lost protest voters to the AfD and now some to the Schulz bandwagon, dropped from its 12 % rating of 2009 to a low of 7-8%. But the rise of Schulz suddenly roused new hopes to get cabinet seats in just such a red-red-green coalition! Indeed, if it stays ahead of the Greens (one point) it would be in second place in the triple coalition, and that means getting the Vice-Chancellor title and maybe even the Foreign Minister post! It sounds very, very enticing.

But there are still Cassandras, cynics, dogmatists or whatever, who warn that Schulz, with all his promises, has somehow remained vague about the details, and they recall how often in the past the SPD sounded vigorously leftist in its campaigns – until it won government power, when most or all promised gains were diluted or drowned. And the SPD and Greens, greedy as they are to gain power again, would make demands of the LINKE requiring a retreat on its basic principles, like barring German military involvement outside its borders, barring weapons shipments to the Near East or any conflict areas, or guaranteeing pensions high enough to keep seniors from poverty. Compromises on such issues would make the LINKE meaningless as a party fighting the status quo and working towards a truly socialist future.

Then on March 26th, in elections in the small state of Saarland, the CDU came back strong, keeping its lead there, while the SPD stayed in an unexpected, sad second place, while the LINKE also disappointed in its strongest state in West Germany, and despite the popularity there of Oskar Lafontaine, dropping a point to less than 13%. Has the SPD euphoria ended? Will the pendulum swing again? Some say this changes the whole picture. Others say: Wait for the state elections in May in northern Schleswig-Holstein and especially North-Rhine-Westphalia, the state with the largest population, both now headed by Social Democrats. They may really provide an omen for September.

Meanwhile Wolfgang Schäuble, Merkel’s Finance Minister, is still trying to impose austerity on an all-suffering Greece while Ursula von der Leyen, Merkel’s Minister of Defense, at first frightened that President Trump might leave NATO in the lurch, is now rejoicing at his demands that every NATO member spend more on armaments, exactly her song from the start, now especially desirable and especially dangerous – frighteningly so – as tensions increase with more battalions sent to confront Russia at her borders from the Baltic Sea to the Black Sea, and with new dangers in Syria. It is scary!

But here, to close with, is a less momentous note from Berlin. The elevated tracks, in Berlin called the S-Bahn, pass so close to one of the wonderful museums on East Berlin’s Museum Island (the most famous is the Pergamon Museum) that passengers get quick glances into museum windows. On March 27 a few men took some time and not only looked but with the help of a long ladder, a sledgehammer and a wheelbarrow broke at around 3 AM and stole the one meter diameter, pure gold Elizabeth II coin contributed by the Canadian government and managed to get it out and drive away with it. Melted down the gold’s worth up to 3.7 million euros, near $4 million. They may well have had insider help. The only moral I can see: Be careful whom you trust, whether it be a museum watchman or a politician. And don’t leave any big gold coins near windows!

More by Victor Grossman: Berlin Bulletin No. 126, No. 125, No. 124, No. 123, No. 122, No. 121 (deutsch), No. 121, No. 120, No. 119, No. 118, No. 117, No. 116, No. 115, No. 114, No. 113, No. 112, No. 111, No. 110, No. 109, No. 108, No. 107, No. 106, No. 105, No. 104, No. 103, No. 102, No. 101.
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Comment

Mai05

on 5. Mai 2017

Veröffentlicht in: Allgemein

Victor Grossman

Curiouser and Curiouser

Berlin Bulletin No. 128
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Victor Grossman

A story worthy of a mystery author – or dramatist – has been hitting German headlines. It began when police at the Vienna airport in Austria arrested a first lieutenant of the German Bundeswehr army when he picked up a pistol hidden some weeks earlier in a bathroom. He denied it was his and was released. But his fingerprints somehow matched those of a refugee who had applied for German asylum two years earlier.

Like Alice in Wonderland when she got bigger and bigger, the story turned “curiouser and curiouser” and here too, odd language was important. This young blond German officer, 28, had been registered in the German states of Hesse and Bavaria as a refugee from Damascus in Syria. He had said he was Catholic but the men of ISIS had persecuted him and killed some of his family because of his partially Jewish background and Jewish name – “David Benjamin”. Strangely enough, he spoke little or no Arabic and was questioned in French – with a German accent. No-one had ever been suspicious, or so it was claimed. He then seems to have commuted between his job as officer in a

A 28-year-old soldier of the German Armed Forces is said to have registered as a Syrian refugee and apparently planned under this identity.
Photo: Karl-Josef Hildenbrand / dpa

mixed French-German unit in French Alsace and his false existence as a Syrian refugee in Germany.

He remains mum, but it seems he was planning to commit some crime which would then be blamed on Syrian immigrants, in line with a current media wave against “criminal foreigners”. Two things are known: his accomplice, a 24-year-old German student now also under arrest, stored munition for the lieutenant. And a “death list” found in his quarters includes the name of a young woman delegate of the LINKE in the Berlin Assembly who is known for her defense of immigrants.

As with Alice, the story took on ever greater proportions. How could the Bundeswehr, including the military snooping department (with the acronym MAD) somehow miss out on such strange goings-on? It now seems that they did indeed know; the French military college where he had taken courses advised the German military authorities two years ago that his final thesis was racist and pro-fascist. Somehow this did not overly disturb anyone.

It does now! Interior Minister Thomas de Maizière, who has been leaning out the political window to attract rightist votes away from the even-further-rightist party AfD (Alternative for Germany), stated vigorously – to cover his past negligence, or worse: “Our investigation of this incident will leave no stone unturned”!

Probably damaged far more was Ursula von der Leyen, the ambitious Defense Minister, hitherto preoccupied with building up an aggressively-oriented Bundeswehr with the latest, most “effective” rifles, tanks, drones and other shiny utensils, ready to embark within days or hours to the furthest corners of the globe. Now, suddenly, she was on the defensive – or not quite so suddenly, since more and more reports have surfaced in recent months of brutal customs in the armed forces, especially the hazing of recruits and other underlings often involving sexual abuse. In her usual clipped, efficacious manner she took the unprecedented step of admitting weaknesses in processing and leaning doors open to “extremists” who are not supposed to be in the Bundeswehr – but always have been, sometimes at the top. Her words were really aimed at absolving herself and blaming subordinates, although she has been responsible top boss for three years. Her words quickly led military men, hitherto her closest buddies, to yelp like whipped dogs, thus weakening her usual position of coolly smiling superiority. Just such wrinkles could hurt what some have speculated were her hopes of succeeding, or even replacing, Angela Merkel.

Beate Zschäpe at the Oberlandesgericht Munich on 20.12.2016 next to her lawyer Mathias Grasel

How many knew of the officer’s double existence – and perhaps of his plot? How many have similar views? The story echoes the case of the National Socialist Underground group which murdered nine Greek or Turkish immigrants and one German policewoman and set off a disastrous bomb in a largely Turkish neighborhood. The trial of Beate Zschäpe, a surviving member of the group, is now in its 5th year in Munich while Bundestag investigations drag on – and there are more and more suspicious connections between the murders and official authorities who have somehow been shredding key documents incriminating secret service agents and politicians at high levels, and now, strangely enough, even the American FBI!

There is no lack of dirt flying around, much of it related to elections. On Sunday, May 7th, the same day as in France, there will be much tamer voting in northern Schleswig-Holstein, where the Social Democrats are strong. One open question is whether the LINKE (Left) will get back into the state parliament. Five years ago they were down to 2.2% and weren’t, but current polling has them teetering on the hurdle of 5% where a single vote can make the difference. Any and every win in a West German state is, for them, a pleasant surprise.

Another election is due a week later in Germany’s most heavily populated North-Rhine/Westphalia (with Cologne, Dusseldorf, Essen and Bonn). Can the Social Democrats and Greens, governing as a coalition since 2010, reach a majority again? The chances look skimpy. They might manage if they bring in the LINKE, whose polls are at a wobbly 6 %, but would they accept it as a partner or prefer a taboo even if it means losing their own chances to stay in office? And would the LINKE consent even if invited to join?

The same question may recur in September after the all-German vote. The sudden surge for the Social Democrats after cheerful Martin Schulz took the reins has slipped considerably, while Markel’s Christian Democrats, after dimming, has recuperated and is well ahead again. But with four smaller parties all balancing at about 8%, attaining a 50% coalition majority is tougher than ever. Except for the present solution, with two big boys, CDU and SPD, ruling together though neither is happy about it, it’s hard to find any way to squeeze “three men in a tub” with four smaller parties getting in each other’s way. The Greens are slipping downward fast. The far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) is also slithering downhill, luckily, after infighting led to pushing out of the top job its very attractive, a tiny bit more moderate leader and very pregnant Frauke Petry, a main force in building the party. It is possible that her shape had a negative effect on the chauvinist, racist, ultra-reactionary delegates, but who then surprisingly replaced Petry as candidate with Alice Weidel, 38, a partner in a same-sex, parental partnership, and also a far-right business consultant who once worked with Goldman-Sachs. Her co-candidate, Prof. Alexander Gauland, 76, is just as far right as she is. As the oldest delegate in the new Bundestag he will probably get to make the opening speech. (A side-note: before departing the GDR as a youngster he attended the Friedrich Engels High School in Karl-Marx-Stadt. They left little mark!)

As for the LINKE, some leaders yearn to join in an SPD, Green, LINKE coalition, which might become numerically possible. Others in the party say that any compromise on withdrawing German troops from current threatening bases in Lithuania, near the Russian border, and anywhere else in the world, would mean abandoning the basic principles of the party. But just such a program change would be a condition for their admission to a coalition. For those who have a constant fear of provocations or even war with Russia by such NATO forces, or maybe kicked off by something like the Maidan Square events in Kiev, this is the most vital question in the world. They hope that Merkel’s meeting with Putin will lead to de-escalation!

The months ahead – in France, Britain, Germany and the USA – could be crucial ones, for the European Union – minus Britain – and very possibly for the world. Unlike with Alice, “You’re nothing but a pack of cards!” does not apply here. We are not in Wonderland!

More by Victor Grossman: Berlin Bulletin No. 127, No. 126, No. 125, No. 124, No. 123, No. 122, No. 121 (deutsch), No. 121, No. 120, No. 119, No. 118, No. 117, No. 116, No. 115, No. 114, No. 113, No. 112, No. 111, No. 110, No. 109, No. 108, No. 107, No. 106, No. 105, No. 104, No. 103, No. 102, No. 101.
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Comment

Juli07

on 7. Juli 2017

Veröffentlicht in: Allgemein

Victor Grossman

Big shots in Hamburg

Berlin Bulletin No. 129
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Victor Grossman

Years ago the 35th US president made a speech in Germany, four words of which, in American-accented German, remain famous: “Ich bin ein Berliner!”- “I am a Berliner!” That was John F. Kennedy. Will the 45th president, soon to visit Germany’s second city, emulate him and tweet “I am a Hamburger! Wow!” Whatever he tweets, Donald Trump’s encounter with Vladimir Putin on Friday, their first ever, can have immense importance for the world, no matter what it thinks of either of them.

The giant port, known for its gales and floods, is already facing storms which have little to do with North Sea winds or waves. All kinds of important people are gathering there this week for the G-20 meeting of heads of state, and although it has no statute or mandate from any organization but itself, a lot of waves may be created.

Its hostess, Angela Merkel, has been in Berlin until now, welcoming the Chinese president and two youthful giant pandas, to be lent to the Berlin Zoo (for $1 million a year). She hopes they may help her and her Christian Democratic party win the elections in September. The pandas can’t vote, but maybe their charm will rub off on the party, overcoming the not so charming vote of nearly all Christian delegates against same-gender marriage, while all other parties voted successfully “Ja” – also for the right of adoption. foremost

When Merkel arrives in her home town – she was born there in 1954, a genuine Hamburger – she will find a dish of mixed pickles far less charming than bamboo-chewing Meng Meng and Jiao Qing. It will mean a “bon jour” to the worrisome new French president, Emmanuel Macron, with his big majority in the Assemblée nationale, who seems to be copying Napoleon or Louis XVI. We may recall their fates! And maybe a sarcastic “how do you do? To a worried Theresa May, who forfeited her majority in Parliament and hopes no one recalls the ill-fated Mary Queen of Scots.

Also present will be Prime Minister Shinzo Abe of Japan, whose party was swamped in a Tokyo state election; his corruption record is winning him the nickname “Dis-Honest Abe”. Erdogan of Turkey will be there too; his recent referendum victory was a sure thing after he threw thousands of people – the kind who might vote mistakenly – judges, generals, policemen, journalists and writers – out of their jobs and often into prison. Other charming guests will include Michel Temer, king of corruption in Brazil, Enrique Peña Nieto from Mexico, a rival in that race, and the equally gifted Jacob Zuma.

King Salman of Saudi Arabia decided against appearing in person, perhaps due to recent British details for a tale almost rivaling the Arabian Nights; how for decades his super-rich kingdom was the major purveyor of the most vicious distortions of Islam, whose spread of hatred is a major factor in terrorism. It has also been a top customer for British, American, German, French and other bombers, tanks or other weapons, to be used most tellingly against the children of Yemen. His presence in Hamburg might embarrass almost everyone, so it is better if he keeps to his home palaces with his entourage and harem.

Two far more numerous groups will be in Hamburg; many are already there: those coming to protest the gathering and those to protect it.

The protesters are engaged in a whole week of activities; an evening dance event, a regatta of canoes, rowboats, kayaks and rafts to temporarily block off the harbor, a series of rallies, dozens of meetings and symposia, a march of symbolically gray-clad figures, and a giant protest on Saturday, with a hoped-for attendance of somewhere near 100,000.

A broad spectrum of organizations has been planning counterdemonstrations to G-20 since it was first announced. Big protest groups like attac, campact and Blockupy are backing it, also the strong local LINKE party, the northern region of the German Labor Federation, some churches, agricultural groups opposed to gene manipulation and monopoly seed control, ecology groups like Greenpeace and various opponents of globalization and the deportation of refugees. Also present will be the so-called “autonomous” group, an estimated 5000 from all over Europe, noted for masked conflicts with the police, for shattered windows, overturned and burned-out squad cars, luxury vehicles and dumpsters, just the “left-wing terrorist” stuff the mass media love to report. They plan to defy police “red lines” around “no go zones” but want no violence, they say, “unless the cops start it”. They will be featured at one event on the evening before the official Saturday meetings, titled “Welcome to Hell!” Their announced intention is to entirely disrupt the whole G-20 event, a meeting of the top exploiters of the world, to be opposed tooth and nail, dumpster for dumpster.

The city and government officials are officially committed to permitting organized peaceful dissent, and the Hamburg government is run by a coalition of Social Democrats and Greens. Even the courts, after many to’s and fro’s, OK’d the presence of the demonstrators. But black blocs are black blocs – and cops are cops, nearly 10,000 from Hamburg, nearly 20,000 from other states. There has already been trouble. First, a group pf Berlin cops, preparing for their protective actions, held a fine orgy in their temporary HQ, with enough public intoxication, fornication, urination and a naked dance (with her side weapon as ornament) to get them sent home in disgrace.

Perhaps to compensate for such human failings, three police units invaded the tent sleeping quarters of one protest group, waking them up after midnight and confiscating their tents – despite court orders. Yes it may turn out to be a hot weekend!

But one basic question looms behind all of it; the meeting between Trump and Putin, matter fraught with confusion, distortion and deception. I fear my findings in the matter may anger some readers, but here they are. In an attempt to explain away the shady methods used to beat Bernie Sanders for the nomination and the following misguided election campaign, aimed more at rich money-givers than the urgent, vital needs of working people, Hillary Clinton and most of her party’s leaders cooked up a fragile scenario blaming Putin and Russia. No matter what may be uncovered (and I have yet to see a single bit of convincing evidence), she and her backers bear the blame for the November defeat.

But that is water over the dam. What is still relevant; this flimsy structure is being used to create an alarmingly belligerent atmosphere, part of the long effort of a small, powerful group in Washington and environs to break any resistance to their will to expansion. As General Wesley Clarke described it, the effort has gone ahead, country by country, most recently in North Africa and the Near East. Yet Russia, since Yeltsin dropped out, is a main obstacle. Over the years it has been possible to surround European Russia with an iron ring, whose military installation and missile bases extend from Norway and the Baltic countries down to Georgia and Azerbaijan, including Russian exits to world waterways in the Baltic and Black Sea. The undisguised attempt to close this ring completely, blocking off the Black Sea and moving even closer to Moscow, was quite openly pursued by people like Victoria Nuland, Deputy Secretary of State, and was only barely stopped, in desperation against total, hostile encirclement, by Putin in Crimea and the eastern Ukraine. The current policy is to suffocate Russia economically, blocking its vital oil and gas export routes to western Europe and ruining the economy with sanctions. A few candid politicos have tattled their end goal; regime change in Moscow, perhaps with a Maidan Square episode in Red Square.

These matters are of vital importance this weekend. With NATO troops in full battle array less than 150 kilometers from Kaliningrad and St. Petersburg, with US forces shooting down Russian-allied aircraft in Syria, with NATO ships and planes maneuvering in hailing distance in the Baltic and the Black Sea, not to mention Ukraine – the dangers recall Europe in 1939. It seemed at first that Trump, loony as he seemed, was at least ready to negotiate with Putin about peace. These hopes have dimmed, partly because he felt he must prove his distance from Putin, partly because of the pressure from decoration-hungry generals and sales-hungry armaments giants. He has already launched a frightening bombing raid in Syria, dropped a gigantic bomb in Afghanistan, increased frightening threats to North Korea (for doing, after all, nothing worse than the military testing by ten other atomic-armed countries). It seems clear that Trump knows little more of the outside world than hotels and other business deals. Both he and his backers are dangerous. Hamburg offers a thin chance that Putin and Trump can somehow take a few steps away from the precipice.

Can we afford to abandon such hopes – and such pressures? Some of the protesters, maybe taking cues from some op-ed writers at the Washington Post or whoever their backers, seem to be trying to turn protest against many bad things – climate destruction, globalization, oppression, exploitation – into a jolly but mindless attack on Trump, Putin, Erdogan, and Merkel, without a word of analysis.

We need not love Putin any more than Trump, Erdogan or Merkel, we can hate them all as capitalist villains, but we must look at the facts: 761 US military bases spotting the earth like a bad case of measles, with provisional bases bringing it close to 1000, and Russia, except for a few remnants in one-time USSR republics, has two, in Syria, its only bases in the Mediterranean (those of NATO are in Greece, Turkey, Italy, Spain, France, Morocco and the adjoining Red Sea. The USA spends yearly over $680 billion on its military, NATO an additional $273 billion – and Trump insists both raise this sharply. Russia spends $93.7 billion. Russia has one aircraft carrier, the USA has ten. A look at the map clinches the matter; who endangers who here? If we count aggressive words as well – US Senators talking of the Russian “foe”, words Putin never uses, it seems difficult to explain how the threats can be called equal.

The meeting in Hamburg, whatever else is achieved or obstructed, should be used to pressure Trump and the NATO countries to negotiate with Russia and join in safeguarding a peaceful world. There is then more than enough repression and deforestation, and a dozen other things, which must be fought against. But first of all, I am convinced, against confrontation, which can all too easily mean atomic war!

More by Victor Grossman: Berlin Bulletin No. 128, No. 127, No. 126, No. 125, No. 124, No. 123, No. 122, No. 121 (deutsch), No. 121, No. 120, No. 119, No. 118, No. 117, No. 116, No. 115, No. 114, No. 113, No. 112, No. 111, No. 110, No. 109, No. 108, No. 107, No. 106, No. 105, No. 104, No. 103, No. 102, No. 101.
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└ Schlagwörter: G-20, Imperialismus

Comment

Juli12

on 12. Juli 2017

Veröffentlicht in: Allgemein

Victor Grossman

Fire and Riddles at Hamburg

Berlin Bulletin No. 130
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Victor Grossman

The concert hall in Hamburg’s wonderful new Elbphilharmonie edifice resounded with Schiller’s thrilling Ode to Joy and world brotherhood in Beethoven’s 9th Symphony. Nineteen heads of state were there for a G-20 conference; only Erdogan from Turkey was missing; he may not appreciate Beethoven or was too busy worrying about the huge peaceful march to Istanbul, a first major response to his repression. All other leaders and their spouses heard the music; even Donald Trump was seen for a TV moment with half-closed eyes, in euphoric enjoyment of Beethoven, we assume. Or why else?

For the outside world it was not Schiller’s sparks of joyful brotherhood which marked that evening – and two more evenings – but those from the torches of black-masked figures setting fire to cars and dumpsters, throwing fireworks, breaking shop windows and shop interiors.

What lay behind the destruction and all the water cannon and pepper gas used in response? Did it overshadow the meetings? Was anything accomplished in polished conference rooms and luxurious hotel suites carefully protected from the wild, fiery street scenes? Was it worth hundreds of injured police officers and arrests and millions in damage?

Confrontation

The event was rife with contradictions and haziness, not only from smoke and tear gas. The groups opposing the conference ranged in tactics from mild disapproval to violent disruption, some condemned climate warming, others condemned capitalism. One group denounced Erdogan, others opposed Merkel, muslimophobe racists, or Putin. For the first two hours, it seems, the police did nothing to control the masked men with torches and hammers but then moved in hard with a water barrage against a large group which was defiantly blocking the street but was non-violent, with no connection to the masked “black bloc”. One police spokesperson explained their long wait to fears of Molotov cocktails, cement blocks or stones thrown from rooftops in Hamburg’s famous leftwing-anarchist Schanzenviertel neighborhood, not wanting to risk lives of police and civilians. But well before any Bush, Obama or other controversial dignitary visits in Germany every sewer is examined and sealed off, divers check river bottoms, windows along the route are ordered shut; even a hostile mouse could hardly get through and do any damage. Here 20 top world leaders were expected, for months, but no-one seemed to think of the rooftops until the flames spread.

Some things are still hard to explain. By skipping musically from Beethoven to Gilbert and Sullivan’s very British operetta HMS Pinafore, we find a song famously casting doubt on appearances:

“Things are seldom what they seem, Skim milk masquerades as cream…” Etc.

„Rote Flora“ (Red Flora)

At heated events in the past, some masked men were rather “skim milk” than cream. When the G-8 met at Heiligendamm in 2007, a leading stone-thrower lost his mask and was recognized as a police employee. The far left-anarchist center in Hamburg (a building known as “Red Flora”), a main organizing center of the current protests, has been infiltrated more than once by very “leftist”, inquisitive, even libidinously active police spies. Some truths may never come out; who is masquerading here and why. New, angry demands from the CDU and the SPD that “leftist-terrorists” from all of Europe should be listed in a register make me wonder; isn’t someone who reads Karl Marx or calls for socialism a “leftist-terrorist” for some dignitaries making these demands? And isn’t this ”down with leftists” campaign one more reason to suspect black-masked provocateurs?

The city-state Hamburg is now ruled by a coalition of Social Democrats and Greens. The Social Democratic mayor has sometimes been considered as a popular new national head of his slumping party. Only until this weekend, that is! Now he is being pressed by indignant Christian Democrats (Angela Merkel’s CDU) to step down. Germany’s second city is at stake and so are crucial German elections, due in eleven weeks. The calls for even more authoritarian measures than recently approved have grown to a louder crescendo than any joyous chorus in the 9th Symphony.

The CDU is well ahead in the national polls, at about 38%. Its desired partner, the right-wing big-biz Free Democrats, are moving upward with 8% and could supply the desired majority. But polls often change, and Merkel and her band would gladly squelch any remaining chance that potential rivals might somehow present a challenge. After a brief surge with their new leader Martin Schulz the Social Democrats slumped back downward and now trail by 13 points. But who knows? Some still hope they can overcome repugnance toward the LINKE and join them and the Greens, who will team up with almost anyone to win a few cabinet seats, and squeeze out a ruling coalition trio. For the CDU, angry new demands for more “law and order” from countless frightened citizens might have been seemed just the needed guarantee for rescuing Germany from an imagined “leftist threat”.

Did such tactics play a secret role last weekend? We can only hum again: “Things are seldom what they seem, Skim milk masquerades as cream…”

Chancellor Merkel and her Cronies

It would seem, however, that Angela Merkel did hope to improve her world standing, already so strong, with herself as courteous hostess of a great conference, heading toward the top of the world pile, despite differences with the transatlantic ally, indeed, replacing that unruly clown in some areas without quite breaking with big brother’s trade and ebbing yet still powerful political and military muscle. Did she navigate the tight rope? This scene, too, is murky, with deceptive lights and shadows.

The decision on saving the Paris Agreement, without Trump, is rated as a limited success, since no one expected him to back down. Was nearly everyone else’s yes-vote a triumph for our sea and air? Paris had been a step forward, if a limited one. But the Christian Democrats (and Greens) have ties to Daimler and Porsche; official Social Democrats enjoy financial ties to Volkswagen (sharing with Qatar) and Bavarian Christian politicians are close to BMW. None fought passionately for better air conditions, their electronically deceptive exhaust pipes aimed in false directions. German “Marshall Plan assistance” to sub-Saharan Africa is to be mostly private, hence profit-oriented, fond of wide, monstrous monoculture with few workers, ruined landscapes and countless shaky boats risking Mediterranean waves and winds. That does not bode well for big advances, nor did the lack of any African leader except Jacob Zuma, more an expert on private swimming pools than cleaner oceans.

The trade agreement has been billed as the one really big success. But trade agreements now on the drawing boards seem likely to be rehashes of the dumped TTIP Trade Treaty between Europe and the USA, beneficial if you’re a big import-export trader but not otherwise. And Washington may come around, anyway. Trump pledges to ditch NAFTA no longer seem so very definite, any more than making Mexico build that wall. Promises can sour, too, like skim milk.

Two happenings during the conference, though pushed to the media sidelines by the torches or the wardrobes of the Trump ladies and Ms. Merkel, were potentially far more crucial. Merkel, Putin and Macron met to try defusing the Ukraine conflict. We do not know what was accomplished, if anything, but it was good that they talked. Almost immediately NATO boss Jens Stoltenberg raced off to Kiev to undo possible de-escalation by opening an exhibition called “Ukraine-NATO. A Formula for Security”. His obvious aim (for years now): to fully close the nearly total, heavily-armed NATO ring around Russia. We shall see how many warning statements, euros, battalions and weapons Merkel and Macron will commit to that ring – or will they surprise everyone by working towards peace?

Far more important was Friday’s meeting between Putin and Trump, when they agreed on a cease-fire in southwest Syria. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said: “This is our first indication of the US and Russia being able to work together in Syria… The two leaders had a lengthy discussion of other areas in Syria where we can work together“. Both the US and Russia „promised to ensure that all groups there comply with the ceasefire“ and „provide humanitarian access“. Thus far the cease fire has held.

Of course, no-one knows what Donald Trump will say or do tomorrow, perhaps not even Donald Trump. He has ordered more and bigger maneuvers in South Korea, against South Korean wishes, for they would be worst hit if sparks lead to explosions. He backed off from cyberwar agreements. But volatile and untrustworthy as he is, and a growing danger in domestic policy, the fact that the head of the most powerful military force in the world took one hesitant step toward reducing tension with a country pictured as “the enemy” was a second Hamburg event offering any hope.

Why do so many US politicians and journalists attack such hopes? Do they want more bloodshed in Syria? Or some bloodthirsty idiot stationed in Estonia or Poland to light that fuse; we have many bloodthirsty idiots around, some with hand weapons in schools and dancehalls, some commanding drones, aircraft carriers and atomic warheads. Should we let them escalate confrontation?

One such liberal was full of hatred toward Putin for “helping to orchestrate an attack on the sovereignty of the United States during the last U.S. election”. His evidence? “According to all indications”. No more. Yet when Trump shook hands with Putin and patted him on the back he found that “a disturbing if not sickening display….No one is arguing that seeking peace and lowering tensions with Russia isn’t necessary. But demonstrating strength and resolve, in ways small and large, is an imperative in trying to reach those ends. That and making it abundantly clear that mucking around in American elections will not be tolerated.” Such language brings back terrible memories!

Perhaps, after quoting Dan Rather, I should recall Washington’s total involvement (with Pres. William Clinton) in having Russia “increasingly passing into de facto western receivership”, with American advisors and funds openly backing Yeltsin, leading to the near total collapse of the county. A huge US-backed IMF loan at the time was, according to the New York Times “expected to be helpful to President Boris N. Yeltsin in the presidential election”. As TIME noted, “Yanks to the rescue: The secret story of how American advisers helped Yeltsin win”.

I also think of the Ukraine in February 2014 when Deputy Secretary of State Victoria Nuland, after “contributing” $5 billion, said over the phone “I think Yats is the guy.” And indeed, Arseniy Yatseniuk was then “the guy”. There have been so many such stories from Chile to Myanmar; I wonder whether those so horrified today were sickened then at US attacks on others’ sovereignty. There has been lots of masquerading, I think, by disguised provocateurs or indignant sovereignty defenders. Their threats against even hesitant moves toward dialogue, disarmament, de-escalation in the world’s charged atmosphere are what truly sicken me – and frighten me!
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Weitere Artikel zu diesem Thema:

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More by Victor Grossman: Berlin Bulletin No. 129, No. 128, No. 127, No. 126, No. 125, No. 124, No. 123, No. 122, No. 121 (deutsch), No. 121, No. 120, No. 119, No. 118, No. 117, No. 116, No. 115, No. 114, No. 113, No. 112, No. 111, No. 110, No. 109, No. 108, No. 107, No. 106, No. 105, No. 104, No. 103, No. 102, No. 101.
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└ Schlagwörter: G-20

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Aug.06

on 6. August 2017

Veröffentlicht in: Allgemein

Victor Grossman

Diesels and honorable Men

Berlin Bulletin No. 131

Victor Grossman

Imagine finding, at one table, the worst killer crooks you ever heard of: Jack the Ripper, Al Capone, Bonnie and Clyde, the Serial Killer, maybe the pirate Blackbeard, surely a cold-blooded terrorist or two. The very worst! No matter what bootleg Scotch, yo-ho-ho rum or speakeasy gin they’d offer, Mr. Normal Citizen would want to get out – fast!

Lower the curtain, change the scene. The atmosphere in the government building in Berlin on August 2nd is fully different, not a bit of similarity. Those present, most in tailored apparel, sit in soft leather chairs and sip aromatic drinks from fine glassware. Who are they? Germany’s power people!

Karikatur Stuttmann, 201

Their subject matter, not nearly so pleasant as the furnishings, was set in motion by Volkswagen, or rather the innards of its diesel motored vehicles. It was vital enough; not only is VW the world’s biggest auto producer, this industry is most powerful in a country whose economic success depends on its reputation; strong, efficient German products, always safe and respectable! Like the furnishings and those meeting in this safe and respectable meeting room.

What had occurred? As the Financial Times of London reported: “Up to 11 million vehicles worldwide were fitted with the ‘defeat devices’ to reduce nitrogen oxide emissions – only when they were tested.” (January 11 2017) It has since turned out that VW was not alone in this planful cheating. So were its rivals, Daimler-Benz (Mercedes) and BMW as well as some suppliers.

But who can distrust such illustrious names? How many dreams they recall, fulfilled or unfulfilled! Happily mated since 1926, Daimler and Benz have always appealed to aristocratic tastes with their beautiful Mercedes. Other wealthy customers preferred distinctive BMW cars. In terms of quantity, Volkswagen autos sold best but, depending on the size of wallets or portfolios, many turned to other brands in the Volkswagen stable – the elegant Porsche, long connected by marriage and money, or to Audi, SEAT, Škoda, Bentley, Bugatti, Lamborghini or Ducati, all acquired branches of the VW empire.

Only a few like me, blessed with long lives but burdened with long memories, have few gleaming dreams but rather bitter recollections on hearing those names. I know, for example, about the major owners of BMW, the Quandt family. Like daughter Susanne Klatten, with a fortune of $22.5 billion the richest person in Germany and probably, after Angela Merkel, the most influential. Her yoiuiunger brother Stephan Quandt has only about $20 billion. Father Quandt, a major sponsor of the Nazi movement, provided the Wehrmacht with a substantial share of its weapons, making his fortune with thousands of concentration camp slaves, many so starved they ate material used to fill the batteries for military vehicles. Ms. Quandt herself is guilty of no such crimes, and can probably drive a car and a very good bargain but not a lathe or machine drill. But her pressure against cuts in air poisoning has been considerable, and so have been her company’s contributions to political parties deciding on such issues.

Up to 11 million vehicles worldwide were fitted with the ‘defeat devices’ to reduce nitrogen oxide emissions.

Nor can I forget that during the Nazi era Daimler-Benz was owned by Friedrich Flick, a major financial backer of Hitler and a major profiteer of his war, when 40,000-60,000 hungry slave laborers contributed to his immense wealth, over 10,000 with their lives. Mildly sentenced after 1945 but pardoned in 1950, he became the richest, most powerful industrialist of them all. His son and heir was not known for any better morals; in the giant “Flick Affair” in 1983 it was found that the family had cheated the nation of almost a billion in taxes and bribed every key minister or politician to cover it up. Daimler-Benz, always close to the top, indicated its moral improvement by defying the UN boycott and selling military vehicles to the apartheid government in South Africa.

Volkswagen was born with a scandal; founded by Hitler to provide German workers with a car – the “beetle” – it collected their money every month in advance but then switched to weapon-making before it had delivered one of them. Only after sixteen years of post-war litigation did the cheated – and surviving- workers get a small rebate for the lost money. VW also made a giant fortune by using 40,000 war prisoners, kidnapped workers from conquered areas and concentration camp prisoners.

But those crimes all belong to the past; their perpetrators are long gone, replaced by new men.

And their morals? Month for month more facts came out, VW was forced to retreat step for step, already agreeing to pay huge damages in the USA for its trick use of equipment which showed the permissible and advertised level of emissions during inspection, but switched to high gear air poisoning as soon as it rolled away. Then it was discovered that this was the practice in nearly all diesel-fueled vehicles in Europe, not only VW and Porsche but their competitors Daimler-Benz and BMW in the same way. And then it was found that they were all in it together, not only with nitrogen oxides but in general planning and pricing, agreed upon in strictly forbidden cartel meetings and agreements – known familiarly as cahoots!

Things still moved slowly. Then a lower court judge in Stuttgart ruled that Diesel vehicles which did not conform with legal emission limits could be barred from inner cities; health came first. This was earnest; if Stuttgart could do it, might not Munich, Hamburg or Berlin? Who would then buy banned vehicles? Something had to be done, so the “Diesel Forum” was called, with the Transportation Minister, the Environment Minister, the big corporations companies involved, the heads of some German states, a few organizational representatives but none of those hit by asthma, cancer or other victims.

But this was at best a sticky field. How tough could they get? The minister president of Bavaria, a major player in the Christian party union with Angela Merkel, is hardly unaware of the huge BMW corporation in his state. The head of Baden-Wurttemberg is a Green (the only one in such a job) and his party should be especially alarmed about emissions. But his presidential palace is within yodeling distance of the main factories of both Daimler-Benz (with Mercedes) and Porsche, the main props of his economy (and he conspicuously uses a state Mercedes!). As for VW itself, 20% of it is owned by the state of Lower Saxony, whose government has thus far been in the hands of the Social Democrats (with a few Greens). How stern can they all get? Elections, due in eight weeks, are always expensive!

The Environment Minister can be a bit difficult, but not the more important Transportation Minister, Alexander Dobrindt, a far-right politician from Bavaria who has made a name for himself in three matters; his sharp opposition to same-sex marriage, even sharper opposition to the LINKE (Left) Party, which he thinks must be carefully watched, or better yet, forbidden, and his listing by Greenpeace as one of 33 auto industry lobbyists. A few years ago he held his protective hand over illegal carbide dioxide emissions; now it’s nitrogen oxide from Diesels.

At issue at the forum was how best to lower the poisonous emissions. Making necessary changes to about 5 million vehicles’ hardware would be extremely expensive, up to 1500 euro apiece, a heavy charge. Changing only the software at 100 euros per vehicle would be far, far preferable! It would not nearly bring poison levels down to safe levels, but would cut less of the 10 and more million annual incomes of the carmakers – a small price for years of purposely, secretly deceiving testers, purchasers, laws, society and above all human beings, especially children, who as a result die earlier, not by walking the plank or falling in a hail of bullets, but in debilitating illness and earlier death.

Some people protested, lowering a big banner from the roof of the Transportation Ministry, with a pun on the Nitrogen oxide formula, calling it “Fort NOx”. The unamused response was to move the forum to the less accessible Interior Ministry. Need one inquire which decision was reached? After all, money does not grow on trees – nor much else either if such people continue to have their way. The obvious escape was labeled “a compromise!”

Was my opening comparison with notorious bad-man killers too harsh? Perhaps. After all, as Shakespeare’s Anthony once said about the killers of Julius Caesar: “So are they all, all honorable men!”

More by Victor Grossman: Berlin Bulletin No. 130, No. 129, No. 128, No. 127, No. 126, No. 125, No. 124, No. 123, No. 122, No. 121 (deutsch), No. 121, No. 120, No. 119, No. 118, No. 117, No. 116, No. 115, No. 114, No. 113, No. 112, No. 111, No. 110, No. 109, No. 108, No. 107, No. 106, No. 105, No. 104, No. 103, No. 102, No. 101.
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