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Jun15

am 15. Juni 2022

Veröffentlicht in: Victor Grossman

Victor Grossman 15. Juni 2022

Berlin Bulletin No. 202

BERLIN MUNICH KYIV

Victor Grossman

The tide of public opinion in Germany is as overpowering – and changeable – as elsewhere: “Stop the Russian invasion!“ – “Defend Ukraine!” – “Send money” – “More, bigger, further-reaching weapons!”- “Defeat Russia!” Sustaining this tide is an all-encompassing media campaign. No politician is exempt; even President Frank-Walter Steinmeier and ex-Chancellor Angela Merkel are pressured to make excuses for long-past efforts to achieve detente and decrease confrontation with Russia, now denounced as “appeasement”. (Steinmeier has abjectly apologized, Merkel stubbornly refuses to do so.) And the calls to defend Ukraine are expanding: now we are told to defend our “democratic rules of order” in a new crusade.

Every epoch has had its call to battle the Forces of Evil. Once it was Anarchism, then Bolshevism, Communism. After those menaces were defeated new ones were required; in 2001 it was Terrorism. With that frightening term eroding, it is being replaced by Authoritarianism. The gargoyle staring at us from magazine covers – after Stalin, Mao and Fidel have died and Saddam Hussein, Osama bin Laden, Gaddafi been eliminated – is now a scowling Putin. And with him Russia, which must be ostracized, sanctioned, wrecked, starved and, above all, defeated. I have not yet heard any direct use of the word “bombed,” but the weapons are ready, with $800 billion spent annually in the USA, about thirteen times Russia’s military budget, not counting the others in NATO. In Germany, on top of its already huge military outlay, a special €100 billion fund was added, after receiving the required 2/3 parliamentary majority to overrule constitutional limitations. Its use is restricted to strengthening and modernizing the Bundeswehr, for F-35 planes, capable of dropping atomic bombs on Moscow in record time, for warships capable of landing at any shore, for latest-model, deadliest tanks.

Change of course: Germany is now supplying arms to Ukraine after all. | Photo: YouTube

All this is “to achieve security”. German borders are nowhere threatened, but the Ukraine invasion, it’s said, proves Putin’s plans to regain the area of the USSR or the czarist empire. So who knows? And any call to reason, to push for a truce and negotiations instead of demands to defeat and “ruin” Russia, oust Putin and put him on trial, is denounced as appeasement, with allusions to the 1938 Munich Agreement, when Neville Chamberlain and French premier Daladier sold out Czechoslovakia.

I also see parallels, but very different ones. Hitler’s main aim, proclaimed in his Anti-Comintern Pact with Italy and Japan, was to invade and destroy the USSR, seizing the wealth of its giant expanse and moving closer toward hegemony, with Japan, of all Eurasia.

How did “the West” view such plans? In a secret meeting on November 19 1937, Lord Halifax, Britain’s representative, congratulated Hitler „that the Fuehrer had not only achieved great things in Germany, but that by destroying communism in his own country he had blocked its way to Europe and that therefore Germany can rightly be regarded as a bulwark against Bolshevism.“

The West, though not itself fascist, admired Hitler’s hatred of the USSR and hoped he might attack and destroy it, thus eliminating any nasty socialist threat. It demonstrated this by supporting Hitler, Mussolini and Franco in Spain, uttering hardly a whisper of disapproval of the Nazi takeover of Austria, agreeing to the sacrifice of Czechoslovakia which brought Germany to the Russian border, and rejecting calls by Soviet Foreign Minister Litvinov in the League of Nations for “collective security” against German expansion. Litvinov’s hopes for unity against fascism died with the West’s speedy recognition of Franco’s victory on April 1 1939. Within a week Stalin drew the consequential conclusion, ousted Litvinov and set his successor, Molotov, to making a deal with Germany.

As Litvinov commented: British and French leaders “… had done everything they could to goad Hitler’s Germany against the Soviet Union by secret deals and provocative moves … The Soviet Government, in order to avoid an armed conflict with Germany in unfavorable circumstances and in a setting of complete isolation, was compelled to make the difficult choice and conclude a non-aggression treaty with Germany.”

The two years it gained made the Red Army’s liberation of Berlin possible, but only after the death of over 50 million people, about 27 million of them Soviet citizens. The events following the West’s rejection of Litvinov’s “collective security” were bloody and devastating. So too are the events of 2022. Of course the world is very different and neither NATO, Putin nor Ukraine are Nazi Germany. But has it not been USA policy to push its NATO closer and closer to Russia, building up its neighbors militarily, with annually threatening border maneuvers, organizing provocations like the putsch against an elected Ukrainian president in 2014 for wanting trade with both Russia and the West? Has it not been trying to totally surround Russia, weaken it economically, aiming at a final goal of “regime change” with a pawn like Yeltsin providing full access to a giant region and a ramp for an attack on the last big barrier to world hegemony, China? Doesn’t current US (hence NATO) policy recall eastward pressures of the past – called “cordon sanitaire,” “containment“ or “rollback”?

That ugly agreement of Stalin with Hitler was necessitated by an overwhelmingly existential threat. Did Putin view the present scene similarly? We cannot tell. Of course he saw how Ukraine was being steadily armed with Javelin antitank missiles, modern artillery, drones and howitzers that fire deadly Excalibur shells “with pinpoint accuracy”. He most certainly knew of deadly, joint US-Ukrainian “biological research facilities,” as admitted by Undersecretary of State Victoria Nuland (the same official who guided the 2014 putsch in Kyiv). And we needn’t simply guess at what steps Washington would take if China conducted heavily-armed maneuvers in Tijuana or Baja California; we can look up the Bay of Pigs invasion or the attacks against Guatemala, Grenada, Panama, Dominican Republic, not to mention Korea, Vietnam, Iraq , Libya, Afghanistan, all of them far distant from Washington or New York. Luckily, the toll in lives and damage in Ukraine has not approached that in some of those invasions. Of burning necessity today; those numbers must never be approached!

But even the most valid comparisons with past or present dangers cannot minimize the Putin government’s share in the guilt for present horror! Nor can they overcome worries that Putin may indeed be dreaming of Czar Peter, of a Greater Russia, denying Ukrainian rights to independence and sovereignty. Nor do accusations of Nazi rule justify the violation of international law, the wrecking of so many towns, cities and families, despite a very real Bandera cult and the strength of Azov thugs. It is more than likely that a massive attack against the Russian-speaking Donbas republics was planned and Putin moved to prevent it. But was invasion the only method of prevention? I cannot say.

There is much we do not know. But there can be only one answer to current escalation, with growing election-related American belligerency, ever more powerful weaponry which will cost ever more lives, mostly Ukrainian ones – and the constant menace of atomic war. The answer must be to pressure Biden and Johnson, Baerbock and Scholz to support negotiations and peace. Difficult as such a response may be, I think it must top the agenda, worldwide, of every progressive! And it also means welcoming similar conclusions by a very mixed crowd including Erdogan in Turkey, the Pope in Rome, courageous Lutheran leaders in Germany and even that old war hawk Kissinger.

The call for peace is also heard from inside Russia, despite attempts to silence it. I hope it bears fruit – but not for those Russians who yearn for a NATO victory – and one more regime take-over!

In Germany, weak attempts to avoid total confrontation and work for peace were heard from Chancellor Olaf Scholz, a Social Democrat, who dared briefly to look to the future, when a Europe deprived of its Russian component, unalterably aligned against it, should be unthinkable. But timid words in this direction were soon shushed by his coalition partners: the right-wing Free Democrats, ready to spend billions for war and weapons but not tax the billionaires one more euro, and the Greens, once seen as progressive, now nicknamed “Olive-Greens”, with Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock loudest in the ravenous pack, outdoing even European Union Commission boss Ursula von der Layen. Scholz knows that resisting either partner could sink his coalition ship and end his captaincy. Both of them (and his own party) have happily joined in many state-level coalitions with the rightist Christian Democrats and could try it again nationally. His fears of their desertion could explain his loud support for the €100 billion package for the military. But the trend is strong all over Europe, as seen in the efforts of Sweden and Finland to break long-held traditions and apply to join NATO. The bellicose “Atlanticists” have used the Ukraine war to please the Pentagon and the Raytheons and defeat the pragmatic, business-minded advocates of trade and rapprochement with Russia and China.

Olaf Scholz now plans to forget past insults from Kyiv and pay a visit, together with Emmanuel Macron and Italian premier Mario Draghi, all of them somewhat hesitant till now but all fearful of media accusations of being slouchers, the threesome will be listening favorably to Zelenskyy’s insistent demands for heavy weapons. They will undoubtedly be spared embarrassing encounters with the Nazi-like flags, insignia and tattoos of the Azov battalions or visits to giant Bandera statues.

Scholz has already paid a first-time state visit to Vilnius, where he assured the heads of state of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia that Germany was thinking of them and would send more troops to their countries, near Russian St. Petersburg and Kaliningrad. No mention was made of Hitler’s use of this Baltic area when attacking the USSR in 1941 and laying deathly siege to Leningrad for 2½ years, nor the eager participation of Baltic volunteers in SS units fighting for Hitler. During the visit none of the traditional, police-protected marches of SS veterans and supporters were held; their current accent has switched to support of Ukraine.

While the western winds were blowing stronger, partly out of sympathy and solidarity, partly tainted by the smell of nationalism and hatred, where in Germany was DIE LINKE, The Left, a party traditionally standing for peace and opposing the weapons race? Sadly said, it’s better not to ask!

After its disastrous results in the national election last September, where it sank to 4.9%, down from 9.9% in 2017 and only squeezed back into the Bundestag thanks to a rule by which, if three or more delegates were elected directly by their districts, proportional representation (PR) came into force. Just three won, two in Berlin, one in Leipzig, so the party stayed in the Bundestag, but no longer the largest opposition party with 69 seats but as the weakest, down to 39. Drastic changes were more than urgent! But they were not made, and in three state elections the Left again lost catastrophically.

Despite participation in four state coalitions, in Berlin, Bremen, Mecklenburg-West Pomerania and Thuringia, the party’s further existence was clearly endangered. A heavy blow hit in April, when the more “reformist” co-chair Susanne Hennig-Wellsow resigned, because of her “personal situation” as mother but with a veiled attack on her more militant co-chair, Janine Wissler, based on a nastily distorted article in the crafty magazine »Der Spiegel«, always an enemy of Die Linke, which falsely wrote of Wissler covering up a case of misogyny by her ex-partner. Almost certainly allied with its usual behind-the-scenes snoopers and manipulators, it wrote of Die Linke’s mishandling of “sexism.“

Because of the co-chair’s resignation, the many election defeats, and the charges of sexism flying around (although Die Linke has a female majority in its Bundestag delegation and in state legislatures), it was decided to elect an entire new leadership at the party congress in Erfurt on June 24-26. Defying the unjust media attacks, Janis Wissner will run again for the top office. Since she is a left-leaning female West German, a likely co-chair might be a reformist-leaning male East German.

But the party is sharply divided. The “reformers,” who based their disastrous campaign last year on hopes of joining a national coalition with the Greens and the Social Democrats, had to bury this dream (for now). Even if feasible, the party would have had to abandon opposition to NATO and the deployment of German troops in foreign wars and occupations, as in Afghanistan and Mali, and its resistance to big armament plans, or sending heavy weapons to Ukraine. The ”left wing” of Die Linke insists that this would mean giving up its position as a lone party of peace, thus becoming irrelevant: a slightly left-leaning Social Democratic sector of the establishment, forgetting its opposition to the capitalist system and its mighty billionaire potentates!

Such basic questions will likely be at the center of debate in Erfurt at the end of the month – and in the choice of co-chairs and all other positions. Will the party choose sides? Will it find some compromise? Could it split, forming two weak parts, leaving a peace position unstated in the Bundestag and the media? In two weeks we should know

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Despite the current catastrophe, about forty people, also calling the past to mind. met at a small square monument at Berlin’s Lustgarten park to commemorate a tragic failure.

In May 1942 the Nazi war machine, after all its Blitzkrieg victories and early gains in its attack on the USSR, had begun to bite on granite. Unexpected reverses and heavy losses meant flagging morale, so a big, multimedia exhibition, sarcastically named “Soviet Paradise,” was set up to show the desolate, poverty-stricken Soviet they were destroying – and regain enthusiasm for ”our boys in uniform”.

Two underground groups, young Communists, decided to set fire to the exhibition. Five from one group, seven from a second, Jewish group, severely restricted but not yet hit by the deportations, were led by Herbert Baum, 29, highly talented, in sports, musically, and in support of Marxist ideas – and dearly loved by all of them.

But on the date set, May 18th 1942, the combustible material secreted around the exhibition failed to ignite; the plot was discovered and nearly all members of both groups were caught, tortured, and sent to the guillotine. Baum was found hanged in his cell. The small monument in East Berlin was erected in 1981 and only slightly altered after unification, partially veiling references to the USSR.

++++++++

On May 8th, to mark the anniversary of a great victory, many hundreds of Berliners resumed the traditional annual visit to the Soviet Memorial Monument in Treptow, one of three in Berlin, with its statue of a Red Army soldier holding a small child protectively in one arm, in the other a sword, smashing a swastika at his feet. The long green lawn below the statue contains the remains of 7000 soldiers who, after four terrible war years, died in the last fierce battle to defeat Hitler fascism.

++++++++

1. Additional side-notes: Elon Musk has started production of his electric autos in a gigafactory complex in a previously wooded area southeast of Berlin, to be his biggest plant in Europe.

2. With prices here also soaring upwards, various schemes are constantly being debated, either to allay misery or blunt growing militancy, now seen in strikes by nurses, airline attendants, hospital personnel and others, with demands as high as 8% in raises.

3. In a curious experiment, a single €9 ticket in June, July and August will grant free transportation for one month each on all subway, elevated, streetcar, bus and railroad travel, except only the fancy international routes. From the start, trains to Baltic and North Sea beaches were jammed.

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└ Tags: Annalena Baerbock, Britain’s representative, ed Army, Friedrich Merz, Germany, Groko, Horst Seehofer, liberation of Berlin, Lord Halifax, magazine Der Spiegel, NATO, Putin, Russia, Soviet Government, St. Petersburg, Ukraine, USSR, Victor Grossman

Kommentar

Jul12

am 12. Juli 2022

Veröffentlicht in: Victor Grossman

Victor Grossman – 12. Juli 2022

THE WAR * GERMANY * THE LEFT
BERLIN BULLETIN NO. 203

Victor Grossman

In 1307 in Switzerland, so goes the legend, the Habsburg rulers’ local bailiff, Gessler, stuck his hat on a pole and commanded every passerby to salute it. Wilhelm Tell refused. As fearsome punishment he had to shoot an apple from his own little boy’s head with his crossbow. His aim was sure, the boy was safe. But „Gessler’s hat” still means forced obeisance to some symbol. Or else!

In current media, every mention of the war in Ukraine must start with a denunciation of that monster Putin. Or else! What epithet is more withering than “Putin-lover”!

I, too, am not a Putin-lover. And I have a great hatred of war, especially war rained from the skies or aimed from a distance. Waging war, against civilians, even against young uniformed “adversaries,” is inherently wrong. But I will not bow my head to this modern “Gessler’s hat”, no matter what epithets I may be pelted with (crossbows are rarely available). Actually, for my last Berlin Bulletin, while some readers accused me of being too “pro-Putin” others said I was too “anti-Putin”!

Despite my horror at the death, destruction and misery I see daily on TV, my entire background demands a careful analysis of a conflagration which may yet fling flames across more borders and can all too easily kindle atomic annihilation. Why did Russia send an army into Ukraine? Was it pure imperialism? A terrible miscalculation? Did Putin see it as a dire necessity? Or was it a baited trap?

To start with, I cannot forget, deny or ignore what I have seen happen since 1945; how the Pentagon, White House, Congress and those behind them sought the defeat of one pro-socialist effort after another. They failed in Cuba and Vietnam, they succeeded in Ghana, Grenada, Chile – and, most important, in Europe! By utilizing every weakness, blunder, even offense, and exerting every form of pressure, Poland was won by a team led by Ronald Reagan, “Polish Pope” John Paul II, the CIA and a few experts in the AFL-CIO. In 1989-90 it was the GDR’s turn, with help from US Ambassador to Bonn Vernon Walters, a former CIA Deputy Director who had played a major role in Poland. In 1991 came the glorious victory over the USSR, where Yeltsin, an alcoholic marionette, opened the gates to ten years of chaos, desolation and sell-out to new Russian oligarchs and not so new US corporations.

That’s when Putin stepped in, just in time to save Russia from total collapse, using his own set of oligarchs, crossing himself piously as he knelt in church but keeping a tight state hold on banks and basic resources. This was not at all what American businessmen and politicians wanted. So the US-led military pact NATO, breaking its promise of 1990 not to move an inch eastwards, advanced, one regime-changed ally after the other, towards complete encirclement of Russia: in 1999 Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, in 2004 Slovakia, Bulgaria, Romania, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania; then the hinterland in fragmented, bombed ex-Yugoslavia: Slovenia, Croatia, Montenegro, North Macedonia. Only a few more were needed to close a tight ring around Russia. Afghanistan did not pan out, nor did Georgia (though attempts are vigorously continuing). But most important was Ukraine, which could block Russia from the Black Sea and reached to within 400 miles of Moscow.

The elected president of that huge gem, unwilling to become part of the encircling noose, sought a more neutral position. “Not enough!” said NATO and sent in Nuland. Victoria Nuland, deputy in Hillary Clinton’s State Department (and wife of a top cold war strategist), went to Kyiv, dealt out at least $5 billion and even tasty cookies to a largely right-wing, anti-Russian crowd, and maybe a few to the mysterious snipers who forced the president to flee for his life. In a famous hacked phone call she personally chose the next Ukrainian ruler, banker-politician Yatzenyuk, a man supported by the “Freedom Party” of Oleh Tyahnybok, who had denounced a “Jewish-Russian Mafia” and praised Ukraine’s new hero Stepan Bandera, who led in murdering thousands of Jews and Poles in 1941.

One of the new rulers’ first measures discriminated against the many Russian-speakers, limiting the use of all but Ukrainian, making them second-class citizens and in Crimea angry enough to vote, with a big majority, to break with Ukraine and rejoin with Russia (to which they had belonged until 1954) and in eastern Donbas to form two separate republics, much as Albanian-speaking people in Kosovo broke away from Serbia in 2008. In such decisions national pride, or self-defense – superseded complex international rules. Military operations against Donbas were soon launched, using the fascistic “Azov” militia units.

With Ukraine now a new segment in the ring around Russia, USA-NATO built up its strength there, first with “non-lethal” arms and trainers, letting allies like Lithuania pass on bigger stuff. Then came a series of military maneuvers. Defender-Europe 20 was hindered by Covid-19 but, in 2021, Sea Breeze was conducted in the Sea of Azov and the Black Sea with more than 30 warships and 40 planes from 32 countries not far from the Russians’ southern naval base of Sevastopol.

Then it was Operation Cossack Mace, this time to “improve compatibility between British and Ukrainian military formations, strengthen mutual relations, joint planning and perform battalion and tactical operations.” Two British-built naval bases were planned near the short Russian coast.

In September 2021 it was Rapid Trident 21. -“To increase combat readiness, defense capabilities and interoperability, the exercise features joint jumps of Ukrainian and U.S. paratroopers and, for the first time, service members will conduct battalion tactical exercises of a multinational battalion with combat shooting in a single combat order … The purpose is to prepare for joint actions as part of a multinational force during coalition operations.” Joining the USA and Ukraine were Bulgaria, Canada, Georgia, Germany, Italy, Jordan, Lithuania, Moldova, Pakistan, Poland, Romania, Turkey and the UK.

Such activities were allegedly for peace, defending Ukraine against “authoritarianism.” But Russia viewed the threat of cutting it off in the Baltic and Black Sea, plus 700 or 800 big or small USA bases on six continents, in a very different way. Washington was a safe 7800 miles away; St. Petersburg and Moscow were under the noses of those missile launchers, warplanes and warships, and the USA alone had a 13-1 preponderance over Russia in military spending. Bipartisan American politicians were outdoing themselves in reviling Russia, nor could the Maidan events with Victoria Nuland be forgotten.

As for Putin, like him or hate him, it is hardly surprising that he was alarmed, perhaps even for personal reasons in view of the fates of other leaders disliked by Washington: Allende, dead in his bombed residence, Lumumba, tortured and murdered, Saddam Hussein, hanged, Muammar Gaddafi, fatally sodomized, the Afghani Najibullah, castrated and stringed up, Usama Bin Ladin, shot in his rooms and dumped into the ocean, Slobodan Milošević, mysteriously dying in a prison cell. (Fidel Castro was luckier, surviving over a hundred bungled CIA assassination attempts.)

hier geht es weiter »

In a 14-page historical summary, Putin wrote:

“We respect the Ukrainian language and traditions. We respect Ukrainians’ desire to see their country free, safe and prosperous.” … “Russia is open to dialogue with Ukraine and ready to discuss the most complex issues. But it is important for us to understand that our Ukrainian partner defend its national interests not by serving someone else’s, that it not be a tool in someone else’s hands to fight against us.”

That was in July 2021. How sincere were such words? What did they mean in February 2022? Daring to ignore the “Gessler hat,” I think basic Russian policy must be seen not as expansionist but as defensive. In 2015 Russia agreed to the Minsk II agreement to avoid further warfare in Donbas and resolve the conflict with negotiations and compromises. Kyiv ignored, indeed undermined Minsk II; Germany and France, its co-sponsors, abandoned it. Foreign Minister Lavrov made proposals to discuss a neutral Ukraine. At first Zelensky seemed interested – until pressure from Washington and London to “stay tough” prevailed; Lavrov’s further requests to negotiate differences, above all to remove NATO troops and maneuvers from Russian borders, were rejected in December 2021 by Secretary of State Blinken, as “very obvious nonstarters”. Was that rejection Putin’s “red line”? Who knows? I only wish they had been “starters” instead – for the White House and Pentagon. That could have saved the Ukrainians immense suffering and exile – although it might have meant fewer billions for Northrup-Grumman or Raytheon.

And on February 24? Did Putin perhaps march into an elaborate trap – as Russia had once done in Afghanistan? Did he consider a big impending Ukrainian offensive against the Donbas republics and their Russian-speaking population, where 14,000 had died in ten years of battle, as an immediate danger to Russia? Did the many US-Ukrainian biological laboratories – admitted to by Victoria Nuland in a US Senate committee hearing – seem an immediate threat? I cannot know.

One commentator, turning to history, recalled the surprise attack on the USSR by the Nazi armies in 1941, resulting in up to 27 million deaths and vast destruction. He surmised that Putin, seeing a growing, hostile Ukrainian army, with NATO (or the USA leaders) guiding it from the wings, decided that a first attack was necessary to prevent any repetition of 1941.

Putin defended the invasion of Ukraine with the following words:

“Today we are told that we started a war in Donbas, in Ukraine. No, it was unleashed by this same collective West which organized and supported the unconstitutional armed coup d’état in Ukraine in 2014, then encouraged and justified genocide against the people of Donbas …

“The West is fighting Russia with all the tools that are also used in a war: weapons, sanctions, money, media, diplomacy. The only thing that slows the West down from intervening with its own soldiers is the danger of nuclear war.

“Ukraine is only the unfortunate sacrificial pawn of the West, which had been prepared for this role since 2014 and with which the West has provoked Russia (with the Maidan coup in 2014, arms deliveries, construction of NATO bases, etc.) until Russia saw no choice but to take military action to protect its own security interests. At the beginning of February 2022, the West rejected the security guarantees proposed by Russia in December 2021 and even refused to talk about them.”

That is Putin’s position. True or not, and for whatever reason, invasion was a tragic choice! Aside from the misery in Ukraine it has led to a dangerously explosive polarization, painfully splitting the world’s weak left-wing forces for peace and progress.

And in Germany? For years the unified country was torn between two forces. Some economic groups, like gas importers and exporters of manufactured and agricultural goods, wanted to get along with Russia (and even more with China), a policy symbolized by Angela Merkel and the Baltic pipelines. This was angrily opposed by men along the Potomac, in Charles Koch’s Wichita HQ and similar locations, who wanted both to export fracked gas and to head off even limited German-Russian reconciliation. They were aiming at the eventual defeat of Russia, then China, as major barriers to their plans for world hegemony, prudently labeled “the rule of order,” democracy, liberty (and free markets!) as against “authoritarianism.”

Closely beholden to them was that force in Germany, the Atlanticists, whether because of ideology, intertwining corporate and financial interests, or perhaps even personal career hopes. After February 24th, inside and outside the governing coalition, the Atlanticists won full victory, filling the media with angry denunciation of everything Russian, working to permanently break off all commercial ties with Moscow, starting with the Baltic oil pipelines, even though this may well cause industrial shutdown s and maybe very chilly room temperatures. Christian Democrats, Free Democrats, and first and foremost the Green party joined the attack, with the young Green foreign minister Annalena Baerbock demanding that as many and as heavy weapons possible to be sent to Kyiv, with her cherished goal the “ruin of Russia”.

The Social Democrats were not so clear, with Chancellor Scholz hesitant about sending heavy weapons to Kyiv and getting deeply involved in what could become an open war, NATO vs. Russia. But media attacks grew fiercer, and Scholz bowed to that “Gessler hat,” siding with NATO and Washington, stationing more German troops in Lithuania and demanding an unprecedented sum of €100 billion for more armaments to “protect German security”.

The competition in denouncing Russia grew strong enough to revive half-forgotten tones from the 1930s, like when Lars Klingbeil, a leading Social Democrat, claimed that “Germany’s allies have great expectations and Germany must fulfil them… It is time for it to exit the end-of-history mode and become a leading power on the world stage after almost 80 years of holding back.“

Frightening words! Even more frightening were those of top air corps General Ingo Gerhartz: “For a credible deterrent, we need both the means and the political will, if necessary, to implement nuclear deterrence.“ The “old guard” in the established parties were beginning to summon up past glories!

The far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) is all out for those past glories but, like some other far-righters in Europe, did not join the verbal attacks on Russia and opposed armaments for Ukraine! Their main mission in nearly all matters is opposition – above all to the European Union. But as dyed-in-the-wool nationalists, they also support a big German military build-up, a renewed draft and/or compulsory civil service for young men (as also recommended by President Steinmeier!).

The Left – Die Linke – has always stood out as the one party of peace, opposing deployment in Serbia, Afghanistan, Mali or anywhere outside German borders. Now it was split, with the main bone of contention the Ukraine war. Actually, disagreement on related issues was by no means new, though rarely so emotional as at the party congress session in late June.

It was a disastrous year for The Linke. In the September elections the party received only 4.9%, down from 6.9% four years earlier. Its caucus in the Bundestag was only just saved by a special rule; if three or more delegates were elected directly in their districts the caucus was saved, even without 5%. Exactly three scraped through, but proportional representation now gave it 39 deputies, not its previous 69; no longer the strongest opposition party, it had become the weakest. The urgent party reassessment and changes called for by this disaster failed to materialize and the party lost bitterly in three state elections: Saarland – from 12.8% to 2.6%, Schleswig-Holstein, 3.8 to 1.7% and in the key industrial North Rhine-Westfalia from 4.9 to 2.7%! Few workers voted Left. Some prominent members quit. The magazine Der Spiegel falsified a sex-related event (some obscure member’s alleged assault) into a malicious “Me-too” attack on the more militant co-chair Janine Wissler for allegedly covering it up. Her “reformist” co-chair, Susanne Hennig-Wellsow, quit her leadership position in a huff, and with new leadership elections now necessary, the party faced total defeat, perhaps a split and even its demise!

In the main dispute the so-called reformers weakened the party’s basic opposition to NATO in hopes of being accepted in a government coalition with the pro-NATO Greens and Social Democrats. Such dubious hopes were rendered fully impossible by the Left’s poor election results. But the reformers still tended to play down or absolve the NATO’s current role, giving Russia and Putin the entire blame for the Ukrainian tragedy while the militant wing of the party viewed the NATO, especially the USA, as provocateurs, whose expansionist policy of deploying armaments and maneuvers along Russian borders was clearly looking for trouble – and, sadly, getting it. The quarrel reflected a deeper rift – between those who called for improvements in child care, pensions, minimum wages but saw socialism only as a future goal in vague clichés while basically accepting a systemic status quo in which they strove to become accepted, despite the growing menace of the billionaires. The militants, while not calling for revolution tomorrow (like some ultra-leftists), nevertheless saw a rejection of the capitalist system as vital – and basic opposition a necessity. The one group accepted NATO, the other opposed it. Their differences colored often hot but very brief Congress debates, which were dominated by the reformers, who won out in the end with about a 60-30 ratio – and managed to slip some very ardent pro-NATO advocates into leading positions. Janine Wissner was re-elected as co-chair (thus rejecting the malicious media smear). For co-chair, the usual male-female, East-West, leftish-reformist balance formula was maintained, and the militant, popular Sören Pellmann from Leipzig, one of the three delegates to save the Left caucus by winning a seat in his district, lost out to the rather moderate Martin Schirdewan, till then a delegate in the European Parliament, who promised to put far more stress on working-class struggles while opposing armament sales to Ukraine and organizing for peace. He seemed to seek Left reconciliation – and, at last, action.

Some on the left deplored the Congress results. Others were glad there had been no split, some political positions had been rescued, a threatened stress on “gender issues,” even in grammar and punctuation, had been averted and a shaky compromise arrived at. It remain to be seen whether The Left can regain roots among working people for the many hardships and big menaces now looming. And much may yet depend on its position regarding Gessler’s hat. A side note: In the famous play by Friedrich Schiller, the events involved led to the Swiss rebellion against Habsburg tyranny.

More by Victor Grossman

Only the author is responsible for the content of this article.
It doesn’t have to be the opinion of the editorial board.

└ Tags: Annalena Baerbock, BERLIN BULLETIN NO. 203, Britain’s representative, ed Army, Friedrich Merz, Germany, Groko, Horst Seehofer, liberation of Berlin, Lord Halifax, magazine Der Spiegel, NATO, Putin, Russia, Soviet Government, St. Petersburg, Ukraine, USSR, Victor Grossman

Kommentar

Jan17

am 17. Januar 2023

Veröffentlicht in: Allgemein

Victor Grossman – 17. Januar 2023

BLUNDERS – SPLITS – WAR
BERLIN BULLETIN NO. 206

Victor Grossman

Berlin has still seen no real snow – but instead – lots of “mist.” In German “Mist” means manure, BS, or, to quote Google: “crap, sh-t, dammit!”). Some suggest it derives originally from visiting American basketballers a century ago who, when a shot failed, said “Missed” – and were misunderstood.

True or not, dammit, we were hit by it. In September 2021, in a complicated election, the Berlin minister in charge screwed up; ballots were wrongly delivered, polling stations lacked ballots, voters waited in long lines (like certain areas in US cities) to elect each district’s national Bundestag delegate, its city council delegate and its borough council delegate, each on a separate ballot requiring two X’s each (for person and for party), then dropped into three boxes (no machines). And also a Yes or No vote on a referendum to “Confiscate Deutsche Wohnen,” Berlin’s biggest owner (and exploiter) of Berlin apartment houses. The courts finally ruled that (except for the referendum) the vote must be completely repeated, so thousands of new posters with smiling faces and empty words now decorate lamp poles all over town – until the repeated election day on February 16th.

The Christian Democrats (CDU), Social Democrats (SPD) and Greens, at about 20% each, are vying for first place. But the CDU, now slightly in the lead, can find no partners in Berlin; no party dares to team up with the fascistic Alternative for Germany, and it would never ever join hands with the LINKE (Left)! It seems inevitable that the SPD and Greens will again tie up with the LINKE, whose votes (currently polling at 12%) would add enough seats to top the half-way mark and renew the present triumvirate.

But these three have no real love for each other; it’s a compulsory ménage à trois, with the Greens hoping for first place so they can replace Franziska Giffey (SPD) as mayor. Her pleasant manner and good looks may help her win some voters, but with Berlin politics shakier than ever, not enough.

New Year’s Eve in Germany, above all Berlin, is marked for hours before and after a midnight climax by millions of private fireworks. Groups near almost every building set them off with loud explosions, often from boxes with 6, 9, up to 36 linked rockets, shooting up and ending in sparkling, many-colored showers. Many enthusiasts save up for them for months, often smuggling in products made in Poland but forbidden here. There are always injuries and fires; a common defense is: “… but far less deadly than in the USA – here with fireworks not firearms!” Every year churches, environmentalists and animal lovers denounce them, always in vain, except that the official fireworks at Brandenburg Gate have been replaced by a fancy light display.

New Year’s Eve 2022 in front of Berlin’s Friedrichstadtpalast | Photo. YouTube

But perhaps because of a two-year covid hiatus, the display got out of hand this time, especially in a low-income neighborhood where Mayor Giffey was once borough mayor. Instead of firing in the air, groups of young men aimed fireworks at the police and even at firemen trying to put out some of the blazes. 41 policemen and 14 firemen were listed as injured and over 140 people arrested.

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As always, the usual “law and order” voices grabbed the mics to denounce “weak-kneed politicians on the left” (for them the SPD and Greens were still “left”) who were going easy on “youth crime and violence,” with more than a hint that “those foreigners” and their “different cultures” were again to blame, joined of course by “antifa terrorists”. Social reasons for young people’s anger: “stop and frisk” discrimination and police strong-arm tactics, lack of decent schools and jobs were dismissed, while rightist hopes to use racism to win votes in Berlin and three more state elections were obvious.

Other young people in Berlin (and Munich) were making trouble in very different ways, like gluing their hands to the street, blocking traffic to protest official foot-dragging in saving the environment.

In a far more popular effort in the same cause, protesters in the tiny village of Lützerath near the Dutch border held out for weeks, often in empty buildings (the villagers had to leave long ago), in little makeshift tree huts, and most recently sitting on the tops of tall tripods or in deep tunnels. Their aim was to prevent monstrous excavators from extending mile-wide open pit mines for lignite coal.

Last week they were countered by a giant police force from all around Germany, and after an ultimatum expired the men in uniform moved in, with cranes, tear gas, dogs, even on horseback, tearing down the huts, ordering all protesters to leave and arresting those who refused. At first there was little violence except for a few fireworks recalling Berlin on New Year’s Eve – and allegedly a Molotov cocktail tossed into a street in angry retribution. Then, on Sunday, up to perhaps 35,000 gathered in a mass protest, defying rain showers in a peaceful demonstration (also with Greta Thunberg). But when one group also defied police orders and gathered in protest at the edge of the excavation the police again resorted to violence and there were many injuries, including dog bites.

Behind the battalions of finally triumphant cops the protesters faced two other foes. One consisted of politicians. It may still surprise a few that they include not only loud-mouth right-wing “Christian Democrats” but also soft-spoken Green cabinet ministers who rule with them in a joint coalition in that state, North Rhine-Westphalia. And also on the national level, the man largely responsible for continuing such excavations is none other than Robert Habeck, a leading minister in another coalition government at the top as well as co-chair of the Green party, which was once so active in joining and leading just such protests. That was decades ago, however; it is still embarrassing if only because of the party name. That was audible in Habeck’s excuse about two giant power plants; supposed to be shut down by January 1st they will now emit smoke and fumes from the mined lignite at least until April. “It was not my personal plan nor the plan of our coalition to return the plants back into the network,“ he said, “but there’s a war on in the Ukraine, and thus half of German gas imports are missing.” The same reasoning is offered for huge new docks now unloading liquidized gas from the USA, and endangering famed extensive mud flats used – and needed – by migratory shore birds.

Behind the Green-CDU coalition in the state where Lützerath is – or was – located, there is a third adversary: the mine-owner. RWE once helped finance Hitler’s rise, raked in millions by using slave labor during Word War Two and since then has become alternately first or second among Germany’s four giant energy providers. It decidedly does not want to lose the many-digit profits it wins from atomic and lignite power; its CEO alone pockets personally over €5 million a year. Who would want to lose any of that? So – damn the environment or anyone trying to save it! And as many have found; ten thousand or so euros donated in the right places can be greatly appreciated and well worth it.

Here’s an interesting footnote; the largest single shareholder of RWE stocks in 2021 was the US asset management company BlackRock. Together with its sibling in Pennsylvania, Vanguard, BlackRock will soon control world investments worth 20 trillion dollars. According to a Bloomberg report, that will make it “the fourth branch of government”.

And another footnote; the referendum in Berlin in September 2021 – “Confiscate Deutsche Wohnen” – got over a million “Ja” votes (56.4%) and affected all companies owning more than 3,000 Berlin apartments. Deutsche Wohnen owns 155,000. It has since been taken over by a far bigger real estate raptor, Vonrovia, which owns 11,000 apartments in Berlin but 550,000 in all Germany. And strange to say, BlackRock has been financially connected with both of them. It’s a small world!

One more biggy footnote; Elon Musk built his first European Gigafactory for electric Teslas southeast of Berlin, after chopping down half a forest. There are already rumors of dissatisfaction and a union start-up. BlackRock may also have a finger or two in there – but no talk yet of confiscating Tesla.

That demand for confiscation, despite its million supporters, is seen differently within the trio governing Berlin. Franzisca Giffey, the Social Democrat mayor (at least until the February 16th vote and a possible change in ranking), has never hidden her opposition to such a radical move, which means more public ownership, smells too much of old GDR low rent public housing, and displeases those real estate raptors with whom she gets along so cosily. The Greens, though also getting along better and better with big business, not only in Lützerath, could not ignore voters and young rebels in their ranks in Berlin and verbally approved (compensated) confiscation but refrained from any active support.

That left only the Linke within the ruling coalition trio. And even that is misty, for Berlin’s “reformer” Linke leaders had agreed to submit confiscation questions to a special commission for a year, which some feared meant letting it die of dehydration. But now, possibly motivated by the election re-run, Berlin’s Left leaders have revived it as an issue. Berlin suffers fearfully from a lack of apartments and, like so many other items, rents are soaring – and are doubtless for many the most crucial issue.

The lack of homes for working class and also for middle-class seekers is a nation-wide emergency. Somehow, allegedly due to rising costs, there is never enough money to build affordable homes, repair schools, open needed kindergartens and reverse damaging reductions in public health care.

What there is aways enough for, somehow, is rearmament and ever bigger weapons for the Ukraine, which is also called “National Security” – in a powerful land surrounded by allies and threatened by no-one. In the government coalition the Greens blow the loudest military bugles; the Free Democrats are always enthusiastic if more big money is to be made and it is taxed less. Some Social Democrats (SPD) have been reluctant to rush full steam down the military track, and some industrial groups preferred trade (and peace) to moving toward conflict with Russia and China; but they have been almost fully intimidated by a media offensive stamping any questioning of official policy as “Putin-friendship”. In line with this massive increase in Mist (the German definition), Chancellor Scholz called for € 100 billion for the armed forces, a demand happily welcomed by arms manufacturers, German or American, who always rejoice at escalation of USA-Russian confrontation. Though paired with sympathy for the Ukrainians, of course, the aggressive tones regarding Russia, reverberating almost everywhere, remind some historians of the atmosphere in Germany during most of the past century, as in 1914, with all the ”Hurrah” shouting against “our enemies,” but rejected almost alone at first by a courageous Karl Liebknecht, who dared to openly oppose war credits for the army which nearly all Social Democratic leaders had approved – and for which he was first drafted, then jailed and, since he remained rebellious, finally beaten to death, 109 years ago.

His memory, and that of the great Rosa Luxemburg, also murdered on the same day, was again remembered in Berlin on Sunday. But what about his political heritage? And his legendary anti-war words: “The main enemy is in one’s own home country”?

Today the Linke is tragically split, on both political approaches and personalities. Some demand less concentration on parliamentary chambers and more aggressive activity in the streets, factories, shops, colleges and job centers, aimed at building resistance to forces like RWE, Aldi, Vonova, Deutsche Wohnen, or ThyssenKrupp, Daimler-Benz and Rheinmetall, which want to rule the nation and Europe – or more. Some argue about the question of ending their rule entirely, the goal for which Karl and Rosa lived and died. Others stress gender questions or positions on immigration.

But most worrisome is the split about the present war. Some in the Left downplay the role of NATO, call for total condemnation of Russian imperialism and total military support for the Ukraine, in agreement with most media positions. Such views are strong in the Linke, at least on its upper levels.

Sharply opposed are those who fully support Putin and see his policies and actions, and the war, as basically self-defense. They describe the long history of US policy as already viewing a socialist Russia as a threat to its ”free market” system since 1918, when it invaded it, and until 1993 when it could defeat it. With Boris Yeltsin as its lackey, socialism was no longer an issue, but after Putin took over in 2000 the huge country again became a barrier to world hegemony – after lesser barriers had mostly been eliminated (as either leftist in Chile or simply too independent as in Libya and Iraq).

According to this analysis, Ukraine and Georgia were to be used, via EU and NATO, to overcome this giant barrier while also moving on against the even bigger one to the East. They see Putin as trying to prevent increasingly suffocating encirclement, with an annihilating arsenal moving closer and closer to Moscow, St. Petersburg and the sole warm water base of Sevastopol. To achieve this US policy a freely elected, largely neutral Ukrainian government was overthrown in Kiev’s Maidan Square in 2014, followed by an arms build-up, repression of undesirable opposition, attacks on Russian speakers while pro-fascist Bandera admirers were promoted. That, it is believed, was the basic situation until last February, when Putin decided to forestall a fatal provocation or major military move against Donbas and Crimea and by making the first move and, as he probably saw it, preclude a repeat of June 1941, when Russia was not fully prepared – and 27 million people were killed!

We cannot know the facts on secret plans or strategies, but I too am convinced that the USA leaders, with NATO, laid a clever trap, as in Afghanistan four decades earlier, with no easy exit of any kind. And the trap worked. It seems possible that Putin believed his forces could win out very quickly and not too painfully. What a misjudgment! And alas, in one year how many efforts to achieve a world of peace have been split and weakened! And how happy that makes generals and armaments makers!

In all my own tortured inner debate, I must always oppose attempts at US world hegemony and all their bloody attacks, and neither forget nor minimize the terrible killing and destruction in Vietnam, Korea, in Iraq and Afghanistan, in Libya and Serbia, and the murder and torture which accompanied them. Yet somehow I recall no Iraqi or Libyan flags nor calls to sentence or jail Bush or Obama.

I know too of the years of attacks by Zelensky’s Azov troops against the Donbas people – and the estimated 14,000 deaths in those years. And yet, regardless of a very possible strategic necessity for crossing into the Ukraine, with a fear of possibly far worse events as the alternative, I cannot approve endless death and destruction, even in defense of the Donbas people. When I see the damage done at Christmas in Kharkiv I cannot help but recall Hanoi at Christmas 1972. But then US bombers destroyed 2,000 buildings and killed 287 people in one night – mostly women, children and elderly. Olof Palme of Sweden drew comparisons to Guernica, Babi Yar, Katyn, Lidice, even Treblinka with the words, „Now another name can be added to this list: Hanoi, Christmas 1972.“ No, Kharkiv is not the same, the difference is immense (but forgotten), and yet – all the same – my heart is heavy at the sight of destruction in the Ukraine, at the thought of the misery there, in east and west.

These tortuous issues have created a deep split within the Linke. The party’s best-known theoretician and most popular YouTube speaker, Sahra Wagenknecht, gave a short, passionate speech in the Bundestag, demanding an end to the promotion of war enthusiasm with its almost gleeful increase in German martiality, with its demands for heavier, tougher weapons for the Ukraine and a permanent, sanctions-based break in commercial relations with Russia, a policy which might be good for some American producers but is immensely harmful for the people of Germany. She was furiously attacked by the “reformer” wing of the Linke, with some calls to expel her. Her opponents, at present the stronger wing of the party, largely omit any blame on the belligerent eastward expansion of NATO and the USA and extend blanket support to Zelensky; in other words they climb on the bandwagon. Many hope in this way to win more votes in this year’s state elections – after Berlin in Hesse, Bavaria and Bremen. But the opposite outcome is very possible.

There is talk among some who support Sahra (as she is mostly known) and some who oppose her -about a break away to form a new more militant party, favoring peace negotiations above all as well as outspoken, adversarial support for working-class rights, with some of the spirit shown at Lützerath (where Linke co-chair Janine Wissler was also present).

I have friends with very differing views on the war. I debate them willingly, often less gladly than sadly. My views also change, but I feel strongest on one main issue; no matter how difficult for both sides and regardless of our own deep differences, we must join in demanding a cease-fire and negotiations. This goal is not furthered by spending €100 billion more here or $ 857.9 billion in the USA for more and speedier, bigger and further-reaching weapons.

The threats are great, in Germany – in most of he world, almost everywhere. One must again resort to that word, “Mist” – both German and English meanings. In February, after the Berlin election, we may see more clearly. But every week before and after should see demonstrations against universal death and destruction! With the Left in the vanguard!

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