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Jul13

am 13. Juli 2020

Veröffentlicht in: Allgemein, Victor Grossman

Victor Grossman

BREAKUPS AND LEAKS

Berlin Bulletin No. 178
.

Victor Grossman

Despite the continuing corona-virus danger, and despite anger, loathing or fear about “that man”, some people may still have an eye or an ear for international relations. If so, and if they listen hard, they may just fancy hearing an unusual tearing sound. Could it be emanating from a recent development, not conclusive or complete and yet undeniable; the painful ripping apart of that eternal brotherhood between the German Federal Republic and its great patron, provider and protector, the USA, a seemingly indestructible alliance cemented after World War Two?

D. Trump. Photo: YouTube

One key location in this process, however – in or under the Baltic Sea – is soundless. The chug-chug of the special Swiss ship which had laid over 1000 kilometers of the underwater gas pipeline from Russia to Germany – called Nord Stream 2 – is now silent. It had only a measly 150 km left to reach its goal when Washington made good on the very undiplomatic threats barked out by then US Ambassador Richard Grenell (once a commentator for Fox and Breitbart): any company helping with the pipeline would get slammed by sanctions as tight as those used against Russia or Cuba, Venezuela and Iran. To the surprise and anger of Angela Merkel and many German businessmen, that is just what happened. The imposed stranglehold was all too suffocating, the Swiss seamen shut down their engines and went home to the Alps, while the only Russian ship equipped for the job needs renovations and repairs and is docked in Vladivostok. Many commentators saw this Verbot as an insult to Germany and a blow, not for ecology but for selling more fracking gas from the USA while also damaging or wrecking the Russian economy.

Bückel, US nuclear weapons base. Photo: YouTube

Stationed in the small town of Büchel are about twenty American atomic bombs, next to a German base with Tornado planes ready to carry and fire them at a moment’s notice – each one far, far more horrendous than those at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The bombs are both doomsday weapons and likely targets. In 2010 a large majority in the Bundestag called on the government to „work effectively to achieve the removal of USA atomic weapons from Germany”. But the government did nothing of the sort and annual demonstrations in Büchel were largely ignored. Until May 2nd, that is, when a leading Social Democrat (whose party is in the government coalition) repeated this demand – and found surprising approval from the new leaders of his party. This too was a sign that the alliance was crumbling. Of course, it will take far more than that to close Büchel or the giant base at Ramstein, the European relay station for all US drone attacks (and the protests continue).

Then in June Trump announced plans to pull 9,500 US soldiers out of Germany, from a total 35,000. Was this to punish Germany for refusing to spend 2% of its Gross Domestic Product on armaments, as NATO (and Trump) demanded, but only 1.38%. That too is a huge pile of euros, but disobeyed the boss’s orders! Or was it a penalty by thin-skinned Mr. Trump after Ms. Merkel spurned his invitation to a G7 summit in Washington, spoiling a campaign device to show himself as a “world figure”?

Whatever the reasons, the “Atlanticists” in Berlin, who cherish Washington ties, were shocked and dismayed. One top adviser groaned: „This is completely unacceptable, especially since nobody in Washington thought about informing its NATO ally Germany in advance.“

Many would be glad to see them go; they love neither Trump nor having Pentagon troops in Germany since 1945, more than in any other country. But their pleasure was short-lived; Bückel and Ramstein would not be closed down and the troops would not fly home but to Poland, perilously close to the Russian border, even worsening the dangers of a tragic – if not final – global catastrophe.
Even for a junior partner there had been problems; majority opinion just before an election kept Germany out of the Iraq wars and the aerial bombardment of Libya. But it dutifully followed its leader in bombing Serbia, it joined in battering Afghanistan, obeyed the embargo-blockade of Cuba, Venezuela and Russia, bowed to pressure to bar Iran from the world trade market and supported the USA in nearly every UN controversy.

Where might a more independent path lead? Can some leaders break with the dangerous anti-Russia, anti-China campaigns in the USA and search for a new detente? Is that more than a dream?
Many with strong muscles and influence prefer to strive for Germany, the heavyweight in the European Union, to head up a continental military force, ready and willing to hit any overseas target area, just as in the Kaiser’s day, and more essentially, just as in the days of a later Führer, to aim straight eastward, where its warriors already join eagerly in NATO maneuvers along the Russian borders. Whatever the goal, Minister Kamp-Karrenbauer, chair of the leading Christian Democratic Union, keeps demanding ever more devastating bombers, tanks, armed drones and military robotry. The more the better! Worrisome recollections of events ending just 75 years ago are inescapable!

Such nightmares just got new steroid shots. One of those “damned whistleblowers”, a captain in the elite, top-secret Special Forces Command (KSK), leaked out that his company was jam-packed with Nazi memories – and hopes. Blind obedience was demanded during duty hours, but jolly after-duty parties almost required one to shout Sieg Heil and give a Hitler salute to avoid getting ostracized. Then it was found that one Hitler-loving noncom had hidden army weapons, ammunition and 62 kilos of explosives in his garden – and the scandal exploded. Kamp-Karrenbauer expressed her utter shock and published a list of 60 measures to remove such “aberrations” with “an iron broom”. Cynics recalled that her predecessor, Ursula von der Leyen (now head of the European Union), facing similar shocks, also wanted an “iron broom”. It seemed advisable to keep such a utensil close by at all times.

Cynical historians recalled that the Bundeswehr, the West German military force, was first headed by Adolf Heusinger, who as early as 1923 called Hitler “…the man sent by God to lead the Germans”. He helped plan strategy for almost every Nazi blitzkrieg and ordered the shooting of thousands of civilian hostages in Russia, Greece and Yugoslavia. When he was promoted to chair NATO’s Permanent Military Committee in Washington his successor was Friedrich Foertsch, who had ordered the destruction of the ancient cities of Pskov, Pushkin and Novgorod and joined in the genocidal siege of Leningrad. He was followed by Heinz Trettner, a squad captain in the Legion Condor bomber unit which destroyed the town of Guernica during the Spanish Civil War. After the pensioning or death of the last Nazi generals, their successors maintained the traditions of the “patriotic” Nazi Wehrmacht, if possible without too openly alarming western patrons, providers or protectors.

But omens and signals have become too alarming, with racist and fascist attacks often ending in cold-blooded murder – of a Christian Democratic official who was too “immigrant friendly”, in the killing of nine people in a hookah bar, the shooting up of a synagogue, the burning of the car of an active anti-fascist, in constant attacks against people who look too “foreign”.

In case after case it proved strangely difficult for the police to find the culprits, or the courts to punish them, while mysterious threads led to the very authorities responsible for observing such fascist groups. That elite-unit non-com with the hidden explosives, and his background, had long been known to the military police. The car burning in Berlin was committed by a fascist group whose leader was seen chatting in a bar with a cop supposed to be hunting for clues. When an immigrant café owner was murdered in Hesse years ago – one in a series of nine such killings – a secret government spy was sitting at a nearby table. But all interrogation with him was barred by the Hessian government and evidence was shredded or locked away from investigation. The minister in charge of police later became the powerful prime minister of Hesse – and still is.

Last week, Hessians got into the headlines again. Janine Wissler, 39, state leader of DIE LINKE (and a vice-chair of the national party), received messages threatening her life, signed “NSU 2.0”. National Socialist Union, NSU, was the name used by the Nazi group which committed the nine murders mentioned above. Such threats are by no means uncommon for leading left-wingers, but the messages this time contained information about Wissler with only one possible source: the computer of the local police department in Wiesbaden. It has now been officially admitted that police and other institutions authorized to protect the citizenry are permeated by far-right networks. Federal Minister Seehofer, in charge of these institutions, finally admitted that they are more dangerous than the “left-wing extremists” which were always favored targets in the past. Strict measures will now be taken, he promised; the old “iron broom” is again to be taken out of the closet.

Meanwhile, untouched by the broom, the Alternative for Germany (AfD) is a legal party represented in all legislatures and the Bundestag, with members at work at all government levels, while maintaining personal ties to all the spider webs of semi-underground pro-Nazi groups. Happily, recent AfD blunders down-playing the corona virus plus personality quarrels between open pro-fascists and those who prefer a more dignified, democratic mien instead of overt rabble-rousing have caused the AfD’s decline with the voters – already down from 13% to about 10%. And that despite an amazing amount of “objective” talking time afforded by both the private and state-owned media.

Germany, which is weathering the corona pandemic better than most countries, will soon face giant economic problems, with disaster threatening many citizens. It also faces federal and many state elections in 2021. Will there be an effective opposition to increased racism, militarism, widespread surveillance and political controls? Hard confrontations may well be in the offing, in the domestic and foreign spheres. Will their outcome steer Germany to the right – or just possibly leftward?

+++++

One greatly-loved voice will be missing in future events. Heinrich Fink, born in a poor rural family in Bessarabia, thrown around by war events as a child, became a theologian in the (East) German Democratic Republic and was lecturer, professor and then dean of the Theology Department in East Berlin’s Humboldt University. During the brief era when the GDR opened up to choices from below, in April 1990, faculty, students and staff elected him – 341 to 79 – to be rector of the whole university. But within two years the winds changed. West Germany took over and he, like innumerable “undesirables”, was unceremoniously thrown out, charged in his case with having helped the “Stasi”. Countless doubts about any and all accusations, protests by many prominent writers and big student marches for the popular rector were all in vain.

After one session as Bundestag deputy he was elected president of the Association of Victims of Fascism and Antifascists and, later, its Honorary President. Remarkable for his modest friendliness, humility, almost tenderness, one could never imagine him harming or scolding anyone or ever even raising his voice. But just as impressive was his devotion to his principles – his belief in a humane Christianity based on struggle for a better world. He was both a Christian and a Communist – and saw no contradiction in the combination. He will be greatly missed!

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Aug13

am 13. August 2020

Veröffentlicht in: Allgemein

Victor Grossman

SOME COME OTHERS GO

Berlin Bulletin No. 179
.

Victor Grossman

Some come and others go, to the applause of some and regret of others.

On Saturday, crowds came to Berlin from all over Germany for a huge mass parade, estimated at 17,000 to 20,000 by the police but over a million by some exuberant adherents. Many or most politicians, media and a majority of Germans were debating over whether, how soon and with what anti-virus restrictions schools, vacation travel, and soccer stadiums might safely start up again, even though the low infection rate was edging a bit back upwards. But the big crowd in Berlin, after picking up steam for weeks with smaller rallies, insisted that the whole corona virus pandemic had ended or maybe hadn’t really existed at all! It was most likely just a government plot to silence dissent, attack democratic rights and win dictatorial power.

The parade motto was “The End of the Pandemic – The Day of Freedom.” Was it coincidental that the latter words were the title of Leni Riefenstahl’s propaganda film about Hitler’s giant Nazi rally in 1935? And there was no denying the participation of groups of neo-Nazis with their black-white-red war flag of Imperial Germany, a common substitute for the forbidden Nazi swastika flag.

But most participants ignored them and stressed their denial of the virus danger, rejection of the menace of some future inoculation, often including warnings that Bill and Melinda Gates control the World Health Organization (WHO) and plan to rake in billions by forcing their vaccines onto the world – possibly with a feared ”compulsory vaccination” registered with chips embedded under the skin. They denounced Merkel and the top German virologist for being in on the plot.

Surprisingly perhaps, a few people hitherto in the splintered left scene have helped organize these events, whose only common denominators have been demands for ”Freedom” and a refusal to observe social distancing or wear face masks. Indeed, anyone who wore one – like those in small groups of march opponents along the route, organized by anti-fascist organizations – was booed, shown the finger and sometimes threatened.

Although they merrily defied city or state ordinances, the Berlin police did nothing to stop the parade until its very end when they announced that its leaders would be “held responsible”. A final later meeting at another site was broken up – after it was all but over. In general, the police have arrested a few but usually been gentler than is their wont.

The uncertain leadership of this movement seems to be only a party calling itself Widerstand 2020 (Resistance 2020). Of its three founders one was a woman, hitherto unknown politically, who implied she ran a small enterprise, called movingly for togetherness – but has since quit. Remaining were an obscure Leipzig lawyer with a family in Mallorca and an ENT doctor from a village near Heidelberg. Their alleged party has a detailed statute but no recognizable program except to oppose social distancing, facial masks, and any other restrictions on freedom.

It seems unlikely that this ghost-like entity can meet the deadlines for entering next year’s elections. But, like Kanye West, it could reach enough dissatisfied citizens to take votes away from the LINKE (Left), which opposes the face-mask deniers. It could also take votes from the far-right Alternative for Germany party (AfD) which, torn by internecine disputes between rabble-rousers and more dignified but no less sinister men in suits and ties, is now showing signs of weakening. Perhaps this explains the swift growth of this new movement – as a Plan B to distract and divide genuine struggles of working people facing the joblessness, evictions and poverty resulting from the pandemic.

The crowds came – but finance expert Thilo Sarrazin went – out of the headlines anyway. As Berlin’s Finance Senator from 2002-2009 he stood for austerity, at least for the jobless and poorer pensioners. They could manage with 4 euro a day, he contended, which surely sufficed for a good sausage meal! In 2010 he wrote a book which asked: “Isn’t it time we finally broke taboo chains and discussed openly why some people are inferior in intelligence and too lazy to work?” He made his views clearer with the words: “I do not have to acknowledge anyone who lives by welfare, denies the legitimacy of the very state that provides that welfare, refuses to care for the education of his children and constantly produces new little headscarf-girls. This holds true for 70 percent of the Turkish and 90 percent of the Arab population in Berlin.”

His book, based on lies, stank of racism! Yet he was invited to countless interviews and talk-shows with the alibi: “Doesn’t media objectivity demand that all views be aired?” Soon 1,500,000 copies were sold, a non-fiction record. His recent book – “Hostile Takeover: How Islam Impairs Progress and Threatens Society,” even more openly racist, hints at possible eugenic solutions.

The glaring incongruity was that Sarrazin insisted on remaining in the Social Democratic Party (SPD), to the great embarrassment of party leaders. A first attempt to expel him was defeated in his local Berlin party club; so was a second attempt, when a few prominent Social Democrats defended his right to “free speech”. But new, bloody cases of Islamophobic violence made his views intolerable (at least publicly) and the top party commission finally canceled his membership, gaining applause from all but the Alternative for Germany (AfD). He may yet appeal to top German courts, but his name will doubtless disappear from German front pages.

Another SPD member, definitely still in the party, filled recent headlines. Olaf Scholz, vice chancellor and finance minister in Germany’s ruling coalition government, had hopes of becoming his party’s candidate for chancellor, to succeed Angela Merkel after next year’s election. But then that fan was hit – by the biggest scandal in many decades. Wirecard, a major German financial services provider and one of the thirty strongest enterprises on the elite DAX stock index (like Dow-Jones) suddenly went bankrupt and then turned out to be as phony as – well, let’s say Trump’s anti-corona remedies. Its “prosperous Asian branches” were one-room holes-in-the wall, 1.9 billion euros had somehow evaporated into thin air – and so, it seemed, had its manager. Its CEO and a few other biggies were not so quick and got nabbed. The big question is why the special oversight department of the Finance Ministry somehow never noticed these shenanigans, or if it did, why it waited several years and a media exposé to do anything. In either case, the buck stopped on the desk of Finance Minister Olaf Scholz, who is still stuttering various excuses. He and a few gentlemen from other cabinet posts, slightly less fully implicated, may survive the scandal. But one thing seems certain. The rightward-leaning Olaf Scholz as SPD candidate for chancellor in 2021? No way! That might encourage a trend.

One very different development hit the Berlin press last Sunday; someone did leave the scene, causing very contradictory sentiments.

Berlin, a city-state, is governed by a triple coalition: SPD, Greens and LINKE (Left). The latter has three seats in the ruling executive body (the Senate). The difficult one responsible for Housing was assigned to Katrin Lompscher, 58. On TV she seems a gentle, motherly type. Some learned that after becoming an engineer she worked on a construction site and then, a young mother, studied architecture and city planning (all in GDR days). When she took on the Berlin job she proved she was a scrapper – for the people of Berlin. Overcoming powerful resistance she pushed through a law freezing current rent levels for five years, reversing some past overcharging and trying to hinder further gentrification. Its opponents are now contesting the law’s validity in the higher courts. If her law is OK’d it could be a model for other states.

She has also endorsed a grass-roots initiative for a referendum: “Confiscate Deutsche Wohnen”. This greedy, heartless real estate firm owns 163,000 apartments, 111,000 in Berlin. Her position sufficed to make business-friendly media call her “the most-hated woman in the city”. True in part perhaps – but hated by whom?

Then, last Sunday, a startling item hit the media; Katrin Lompscher was stepping down! The reason: her job as housing senator required her to sit on the advisory boards of three publicly-owned companies. This was modestly remunerated. An AfD representative found that she – or her tax adviser – had neglected to report the sums and pay her taxes on these three jobs, a sum of about 7000 euros. She has stated that she was unaware of this lapse, regretted it deeply, and immediately paid the missing amount. But she also gave up her job as Senator and also her seat in Berlin’s House of Representatives, saying that a public figure must have a totally clean vest.

Many admirers were shocked and saddened; the real estate bosses and their open and less open allies rejoiced. The leaders of the LINKE in Berlin expressed their admiration for her principled step – and set about choosing a successor. There were whispers that the regret of some LINK leaders was not all too gloomy; her militancy on rent control had put some others in the shade – and perhaps caused bumps in the togetherness with less confrontational Greens and Social Democrats, with whom some yearn to share Cabinet posts in a coalition on the federal level – after the 2021 elections. Too much militancy could be a major hindrance. These issues may be of central importance at the Congress of the LINKE, October 30-November 1 in Erfurt, where new party leaders must be chosen. Regardless of the outcome; the fight on affordable housing, jobs, fascists, environment, all more burning than ever due to corona, must be centered “in the streets and workshops!”

This holds true for today’s most burning issue. The horrific explosions in Beirut shocked us; they cost up to 150 lives, injured far more and wrecked countless buildings. But the date forcefully recalls the purposeful explosions over Hiroshima and Nagasaki exactly seventy-five years ago. They cost well over 200,000 lives and totally destroyed two cities.

Today thousands of far more destructive nuclear bombs and missiles threaten the world; a small error during NATO maneuvers in Estonia, another mistaken judgment in the Gulf of Iran or the South China Sea – could be the spark which within minutes nullifies all debate about candidates, police violence, monopoly power, environmental disaster and all else. Yet politicians like the Republican Trump and the Democrats Schiff and Engel, and their equivalents and pals in Germany, are outdoing one another in condemning “our adversary” in Moscow or Beijing – and heightening tension. The pressure to move instead towards diplomacy, détente and demilitarization – to safeguard our troubled world – now on Trump, after January 20 hopefully on Biden, must grow and grow!

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Aug26

am 26. August 2020

Veröffentlicht in: Allgemein, Victor Grossman

Victor Grossman

MIRROR MIRROR AND POLITICS

Berlin Bulletin No. 180
.

Victor Grossman

“Mirror, mirror on the wall…” Nearly every German knows the story of Snow White. Currently, the question of who is “fairest of them all” faces nearly every German political party or, in modern terms, who can attract more votes in next year’s election. The U.S. equivalent question, which will seek and hopefully find answer much sooner, is simpler; the poisonous apple has been exposed often enough. As for dwarfs – a political species – they abound in both countries, though never so cute as Walt Disney’s. As for the wicked witch, I must be cautious about any German analogy!

In Germany a year is left to go, but with the corona crisis, threatening economic collapse and a tattering friendship with Trump’s America, the suspense is already heightening. Choices are getting urgent. And for the Social Democrats (SPD), while Vice-Chancellor Olaf Koch’s smiling face is not exactly the fairest of them all (although nowadays bald is seen as sexy), some hope he can at least become the gallant prince riding to the rescue!

Germany’s oldest party needs rescuing! It has had a troubled history. In its militant youth Chancellor Bismarck outlawed it from 1878 to 1890, but after regaining legality it became, by 1913, the largest party in the Kaiser’s unified empire. But alas, its youthful ardor had cooled, or twisted, and it betrayed all its principles by joining in the “On to Paris!” cheers at the start of World War One. When Germany’s November Revolution ended the murderous, lost war, SPD-chief Ebert joined the far-right officers’ corps and war profit millionaires in blocking a socialist path – and at least abetting the murder of its devoted advocates, Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg.

In the following years the SPD made many compromises with Right and Center. As Hitler gained strength, it opposed the Nazis, though never as militantly as the Communists. The failure of the two to join in this fight proved fateful, but (despite many such interpretations) this was not only the fault of the Communists, who continued to lead in the resistance – before and, until 1945, in the underground. The exiled SPD failed sadly when it came to supporting the elected Spanish government against Franco and Hitler in 1936-39. After 1945 it joined in Cold War policies and massive attempts to wreck the (East) German Democratic Republic. When the SPD’s Willy Brandt won the top job as chancellor (1969-1974) he helped pass a tough witch-hunt law copied from McCarthy while switching to a cooler “Eastern policy”, not attacking with a Holy Crusader battering ram but with Lorelei temptation, which proved successful in 1990.

German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder (SPD) 1998 to 2005. Popularly known as: „Comrade of the bosses“. Photo: YouTube

In its next administration (1998-2005), this time with the Greens, the SPD joined in the bombing war against Serbia and supported every policy of its protectors and patrons in Washington and the Pentagon (except, in an election-related abstention, the Iraq war of 2003). It also pushed through an economic austerity program under which the jobless and poorer seniors suffer to this day.

And yet, contrariwise, its policies on some economic issues were contradictory enough to keep the allegiance of nearly all labor leaders and a large portion of the working class, who saw no other alternative. (Think Clinton, Obama, etc.) But in recent years German workers have become very skeptical, causing a drastic slump in the polls, now between 14-17 %, less than half that of its current coalition partner, Merkel’s “Union” of two “Christian” parties (one is a purely Bavarian sibling). This position as the weak junior partner of its traditional rivals has surely been a main cause of its slump.

November 2019 brought a big surprise. After its latest electoral losses new leaders were urgently needed, if possible a male-female team (thus copying the Greens and the LINKE). In a first-ever mail-in referendum vote by its membership, the SPD made a flip-flop worthy of any Brothers Grimm tale. Instead of the expected team with Vice-Chancellor and Finance Minister Olaf Scholz, always on the right in the party, the membership squeezed in two little-known Social Democrats, their names hardly known outside their own bailiwicks, but who definitely belonged to the SPD’s left wing! Norbert Walter-Borjans (the name after the hyphen was from his wife) was for protecting whistle-blowers, legalizing marijuana and most forcefully for taxing the wealthy. Saskia Esken was strong on opposing racism, reining in police brutality, supporting antifascists (even when they were called “antifa”) and also legalizing marijuana (at least medically). Neither of them liked the current coalition with the right-wing rival party.
This result was a shock to the leadership, it was almost as if AOC and Ro Khanna were to win a referendum to head the Democratic Party National Committee!

A second shock followed in May. For years leftists and other anti-war activists have been warning and demonstrating against the menace of some twenty unimaginably catastrophic US atomic bombs at a base at Büchel in Germany, next door to a German air base with swift planes to carry them to an all too obvious destination. There are now plans to replace them with more modern, even more murderous planes. But not many listened to the warnings – the media saw to that!

All of a sudden the co-chair of the SPD caucus in the Bundestag, Rolf Mützenich, little-known but important, joined in demanding the removal of U.S. bombs from German soil. There was an angry outburst against him, also from within his SPD, including Foreign Minister Heiko Maas. But then the new party co-chairs, Saskia Esken and Norbert Walter-Borjans, backed him up against the bombs!

It began to look as if a majority of left-leaning members had moved their party to the left. Some in the LINKE have long hoped to join a possible national coalition with the SPD and Greens but have been restrained by LINKE membership rejection of NATO’s aggressive military policy and of once again sending German troops far and wide to police the world. But these new statements seemed to be steps onto a bridge spanning such differences. The three parties now work together in governing the city-states of Berlin and Bremen and the state of Thuringia; why not on a national level?
But the powers behind the SPD throne took another look in the mirror, seemingly more one of the twisty fun-house variety, and found conservative Olaf Scholz as the fairest – or safest – for next year’s election. It looked like a repeat of that old SPD tradition; blink left – then turn right! We shall see!

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At the same time the chairman of the little right-wing Free Democratic Party tried to explain why he fired its young secretary-general Linda Teuteberg after less than a year and a half. Many found the young blonde fair enough, but the party was barely keeping its nose above the 5 % level in national polling. Less than that means it’s out of the Bundestag and faces oblivion. So why not blame the vivacious young East German and replace her with a dull, allegedly efficient man from the West? It’s hard to imagine that he will have more luck.

+++

The “Christian” Union parties were also scrambling in their hunt for a successor to Merkel, all three now in the running are male, ambitious and conservative. But the pandemic has caused them to postpone the face-off until – well, maybe in late autumn. Until then it’s all-out one-upmanship.

+++

But DIE LINKE has definitely scheduled its next congress in the city of Erfurt for October 30th-November 1st, with face masks and social distancing. It too must look in the mirror and make a choice, not for one but two chairpersons, somehow both male and female, eastern and western, rightish and leftish. Almost like squaring the circle! This was achieved with the current co-chairs, but their time in office runs out after a two-term limit (or will it be extended?). There may well be hot debates and some not so social distancing – on various issues, but first and foremost on that question of joining in a federal government coalition – if improved voting results permit it.

The SPD and Greens have always insisted on that one main condition: support for NATO and the use of Bundestag troops abroad. Some of the LINKE view any compromise on these issues a sacrifice of basic principles by the only genuine Peace party in Germany. Others say some compromises are necessary in politics if a party wishes to stay relevant. Hidden behind this issue is a larger one: Should DIE LINKE set its goals on attempts to win better conditions for working people, seniors, children, the jobless – concentrating on winning improvements and opposing slashes but accepting a basic status quo? Or should it use such conflicts as steps, even small ones, towards changing the system? That would mean sharply squaring off against firms like Aldi and Trader Joe’s, Volkswagen, Daimler-Benz and BMW, Bertelsmann-Random House, McDonalds, Coca-Cola, Purdue, Bayer, BASF, Amazon and Facebook before they completely rule the world – and against Northrop-Grumman, Raytheon and Rheinmetall – before they destroy it. And that would also require a rejection of expanding military missions and invading armies and navies, from Afghanistan to Mali or the South China Sea – the modern equivalent of all wicked witches.

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Sep20

am 20. September 2020

Veröffentlicht in: Allgemein, Victor Grossman

Victor Grossman

WHICH WAY?

Berlin Bulletin No. 181
.

Victor Grossman

I’ll never forget the day my father’s ancient jalopy got stuck boarding the New York-Jersey City ferry; two wheels on the dock, two on the boat, the motor stalled, my father frantic, my mother scolding, cars behind us honking, and me, just 6, looking at the swirling waters below. Two muscular ferrymen finally pushed us back on land.

The gas pipeline Nord Stream 2 has markedly different proportions. But it’s also stuck; one end near Vyborg in Russia, the other, after a thousand km under swirling Baltic Sea waters, stalled only 164 km short of its safe goal, Sassnitz in eastern Germany.

Here, too, there is plenty of honking – and more than a few muscle men, with Germany half on and half off its policy toward Russia, between rapprochement and confrontation. Donald Trump offered his customary words of wisdom; blustering threats if Germany favors pipelines over ever greater military build-up. His buddies, far-right Senators Ted Cruz, Tom Cotton and Ron Johnson, warned little Sassnitz, pop. 9186, of “crushing economic and legal sanctions” if it lets the pipeline land there.

Some German business and political leaders were outraged at this crude interference and consider it far wiser to do business with Russia, selling it cars, chemicals, machinery and farm products, than kowtowing to arms manufacturers and other war hawks on both sides of the Atlantic. This at a time when, with more and more weapons along Russian borders, one little false move, a maneuver missile accidentally fired a bit too far eastward, a fighter pilot briefly losing his bearings, a misunderstood message, could unleash a world-destroying nuclear war. Like 1962 but at far closer range.

For Angela Merkel’s government it was two wheels on and two off. Then came Belarus. And then a poisoned Alexei Navalny. Both provided the hate-Russia crowd with exactly what they yearned for, to push things their way and counteract the wishes of a majority of Germans who want to stay peaceful.

Yet both issues were far from being so very clear-cut. As the keen analyst and one-time British ambassador Craig Murray wrote:

“I have no difficulty at all with the notion that a powerful oligarch or an organ of the Russian state may have tried to assassinate Navalny… What I do have difficulty with is the notion that if Putin, or other very powerful Russian actors, wanted Navalny dead, and had attacked him while he was in Siberia, he would not be alive in Germany today….One thing we know about ‘Novichok’ for sure is that it appears not to be very good at assassination… If the Russian secret services had poisoned Navalny at the airport before takeoff as alleged, why would they not insist the plane stick to its original flight plan and let him die on the plane? ….Next, we are supposed to believe that the Russian state, having poisoned Navalny, was not able to contrive his death in the intensive care unit of a Russian state hospital. …If Putin wanted him dead, he would be dead… There are a whole stream of utterly unbelievable points there… Personally I do not buy a single one of them, but then I am a notorious Russophile traitor.”

Nor is the Belarus uprising as clear-cut as European leaders and op-ed writers quickly decided. It is obvious that Lukachenko’s 80% election victory was a poor joke; it seems evident that many or most people there want to get rid of him after 26 years, for a wide variety of reasons.

But the outside support given the protests is steeped in hypocrisy. When Lukachenko seemed to be leaning westward the invective softened, there was a sudden increase of trust in Lukashenko, as in 2010, when the Polish and German foreign ministers and the Lithuanian president met both him and the opposition, and found that he might even be won over – and was supported by a majority of his citizens.

Just last February Secretary of State Michael Pompeo visited Lukashenko and told him temptingly:

“Our energy producers are ready to deliver 100% of the oil you need at competitive prices. We are the biggest energy producer in the world and all you have to do is call us…. The U.S. wants to help Belarus build its own sovereign country… Inspired by what I saw at Hi-Tech Park (in Minsk); a great example of how Belarus can seize its extraordinary growth potential by embracing forward-looking economic policies and smart regulation. It’s clear how impactful American investment can foster prosperity across the globe.”

Two women talk with a riot police officer as police block a part of a street in the capital of Minsk, Belarus, Tuesday, Aug. 11, 2020. Heavy police cordons blocking Minsk’s central squares and avenues didn’t discourage the demonstrators who again took to the streets chanting „Shame!“ and „Long live Belarus!“ Police moved quickly Tuesday to separate and disperse scattered groups of protesters in the capital, but new pockets of resistance kept mushrooming across downtown Minsk. (AP Photo/Sergei Grits) Quelle: YouTube

He offered prosperity. Was he really thinking of power, not just fuel-based but strategic? Lukachenko has indeed maintained a merciless, tight grip. But Belarus is the only ex-Soviet republic to maintain public ownership of much of industry, instead of oligarch control, and permits no giant private landowners. Is a hope for good pickings behind western support for the current uprising? As for noble words; nasty as arrests and beatings in Minsk certainly are, they cannot compare with those of brutal cops elsewhere, often aiming missiles at heads, eyes and hands – in Chile, Ecuador, Iraq, France (against the yellow jackets) and the new buddy, Bahrein, or for that matter in Baltimore, Minneapolis or Staten Island. Are jail beatings in Belarus worse than in Riyadh or Abu Ghraib – or CIA “black sites”, with tortures worse than those of the Inquisition? All are horrible, but denouncing some and downplaying or ignoring others is pure hypocrisy.

Most important of all, perhaps; while Kharkov in the Ukraine is about 400 miles from Moscow, Vitebsk in Belarus is less than 300, not much farther than New York to Washington. And the US Army and Raytheon are working on a new Long Range Precision missile which can hit targets at least 310 miles away.

Ups and downs in Germany are less dramatic than in Minsk or the USA, now suffering under the corona pandemic, terrifying forest fires and worrisome election-fever, with an outcome far from certain – and possibly even leading to armed violence.
But Germany, too, could veer left or right, when countless jobs are gone, small businesses vanish, evictions multiply. Some omens foreshadow grave differences. Can humane pressures force the government to accept more than a few token planeloads with 400 child refugees from the miserable, burnt-down camp on Lesbos, where 13,000 refugees lost even their miserable tents and shanties? Most fled Afghanistan, Iraq or Syria where foreign warriors destroyed their homes and livelihoods.

In German cities a re-named “Querdenken711” movement has been gathering crowds. ”Querdenken” – “crosswise thinking”, rejecting both left and right; it is for “self-determination” and “love” – and strictly against face masks, social distancing, or even the existence of an epidemic. Its mysterious, hitherto unknown leaders offer no other program. Many of those marching and filling squares simply oppose a world-wide Bill Gates “compulsory vaccine plot”, all vaccinations, or the current “conspiracy government”. A few are non-party “super-leftists”. Much more conspicuous are far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) members and groups with fascist tattoos and flags; a mob of them even stormed the Bundestag building, whose doors were defended (peculiarly!) by only three cops. Will this movement fade – or grow?

And what will follow the uneasy coalition between Merkel’s Christian Democrats and the Social Democrats after next year’s elections? The Social Democrat chosen to lead the campaign against whoever succeeds Merkel – still an ongoing rivalry – is Olaf Scholz, now Vice-Chancellor and Finance Minister. But poor Olaf was hit by a scandal about a phony software giant whose crooked organizer is missing (as are 1.9 billion euros), all of which he somehow failed to notice – or to deal with. And now he faces another scandal. While mayor of Hamburg he seems to have helped save the big Warburg bank from paying millions in back taxes – and later lied about his secret meetings with its boss.

And the LINKE? With a key congress due at the end of October it is facing a key issue. If it becomes possible to form a coalition government with the SPD and the Greens (current polls don’t make that possible but they could change), should the LINKE weaken or drop its basic demands to oppose NATO or sending any Bundeswehr soldiers to fight in foreign arenas. That’s a condition set by the war-willing Social Democrats and Greens. It could thus achieve a few coalition cabinet seats, always the dream of some? Or should it stick to its position: no cabinet seats but still remaining the only “party of peace” in the Bundestag?

This question will affect the choice of new LINKE leaders; the current co-chairs, after two terms, are stepping down. Two are already in the running. One, from the party’s “pragmatic wing”, is a leader in the LINKE-Social Democrat-Green- government in East German Thuringia. The other has led the LINKE quite successfully in opposition in the West German state of Hesse. She is from the militant wing of the party. Others may also run, but at present it looks possible that these two may join in a balanced slate which would make the LINKE the first party with two women in top leadership. If the two remain friendly it could also succeed in keeping both sides of the party – not only geographically – in one piece, safe from the threatening waters swirling beneath them. Like those ferrymen long ago, more working-class muscles, politically speaking, might also help the divided party to move and grow. It will be needed!

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Nov22

am 22. November 2020

Veröffentlicht in: Victor Grossman

Victor Grossman

AIRPORTS AND RALLIE

Berlin Bulletin No. 181
.

Victor Grossman

Ding-dong, the wicked witch is dead! A wicked but very male Witch of the East seemed to be crushed under a houseful of angry voters, though this house, unlike Dorothy’s in The Wizard of Oz, was definitely not from Kansas! And I have a lingering fear that the man still in the White House may plan another trump card, like a false flag operation to provoke a conflict – at home, with Iran, Venezuela, Russia, Iran, even China – then proclaim a national emergency requiring him to remain commander-in-chief. Is that just a hangover nightmare? Or can someone finally dig up a straitjacket?

Countless Germans also waited, full of angst, for final numbers from distant Ohio, Wisconsin, Arizona – while many puzzled over the mysteries of the Electoral College. (Does it have dormitories or offer a degree?) Or why, until January 20th, a weird fowl called a lame duck can keep squawking about foundless, featherless “Fouls”! But as the figures rolled in from Pennsylvania there was a collective German sigh of relief (and a few may have wondered whether Germantown, PA also played a part).

The media here are full of speculation: How much friendlier will Biden be toward Germany and Europe? There will certainly be far less friction. Is that good or bad? Federal Germany was a compliant buddy of every US government – until 2016. Its growing independence since then was partly due to dictatorial White House insistence that Germany buy American fracking gas instead of cheaper Russian pipeline gas. Also due to pressure because Germany never spent quite the giant sum on armaments demanded by NATO, also largely imported from the USA. Nor did it join heartily in provoking trouble with Iran. Will Germany now revert to its long, cosy relationship with the Pentagon, Langley and the billionaire transatlantic gang? Or will it prefer to build up its own strength as the biggest bully in its European playground, with heavy-muscled domination of a new European army and the European economy, now free of British competition – plus growing power in other continents? With the witch gone, will Germany again be caught between the devil and the deep blue (Baltic) Sea?

hier geht es weiter »

But enough of worries about Trump and other toxic mixtures, including the virus shutdown. After all, maybe a possible vaccine rescue is really in view! I turn instead, almost sadly, to the end of a different and less menacing story – that of Berlin’s Tegel Airport.

Why sadly? Except for those poor souls who lived under its arriving and departing planes – every two minutes from dawn to late evening (and who now rejoice) – most Berliners liked or even loved it. East Berliners, able to use it after 1989 and undisturbed by its Cold War/Berlin Airlift history, also came to admire it. That was easy. Only five miles from downtown, its unique hexagon shape made it amazingly practical. With no long safaris through mazes of “duty-free” shops, there was a short walk to the right check-in counter, five steps to pass control, five more steps to a short, one-line baggage check, separate for each plane, and you were right in the waiting room for your gate. No endless corridors, confusing turns, multiple escalators. When arriving in Berlin, a usually perfunctory pass control near your plane’s short exit tunnel led right to your baggage carousel. After a brief glance by the customs checkers you were one door away from bus, taxi or car slots inside the hexagon. Maybe twenty yards in all. Yes, air travel via Tegel could almost be pleasant again.

BER. Pfoto: YouTube

But alas, it proved too small, so it was decided to build a big, super-modern airport replacing it and the equally overfilled Schönefeld airport on East Berlin’s oppositer border. It would be more than double so far from downtown, but a quick, easy city rail connection was guaranteed. In 2006 work began on the Berlin-Brandenburg Willy Brandt project – named for the former West Berlin mayor and West German chancellor. It was to cost 2 billion euros.

Elaborate opening ceremonies were planned for June 2011. Then, only weeks in advance, Berlin’s mayor, Brandenburg’s minister president and a federal minister, its joint bosses, admitted shame-facedly that the deadline could not be met. Nor could the 2012 deadline. Nor 2013. Year after year new blunders, snafus, doors that got stuck, ceiling extinguishers that didn’t extinguish, etc., etc. , delay followed delay, and before long all Germany finally had something to laugh about. Bets were offered: which would be first, the airport or a human on Mars. Others advised: “Let’s just move Berlin to a functioning airport – that’s cheaper and quicker!“ Nostalgic East German “Ossies” recalled West Germans’ haughty condescension about the capitalist system’s efficiency and superiority.

It finally did open on October 30th, nine years late and with a triple price tag of 6 billion euros! An awful lot of euros sliddered into many an already very heavy pocket! The opening ceremonies were kept to an embarrassed minimum and now, alas, its great size is no longer needed, with virus-cut travel down to a minimum, airlines going broke and cutting or closing down.

Tegel closed the same weekend with an outdoor farewell dance by the big uniformed ex-staff. There was one farewell last flight, then all the lights were turned off. This – and virus masks – covered over many a tearful face.

+++

There were more tearful faces ninety miles to the south in Leipzig – for a very different reason: tear gas! Or rather for two reasons. For days there had been a nasty conflict beween the city police and young people in a neighborhood dominated by left-anarchist young people. In their opposition to gentrification – and resultant soaring rents – they are quick to throw things, but rarely want to hurt anyone – except maybe the “bulls”. One small group, led by a young women, does physically attack neo-fascists and extreme rightwingers. When she was arrested a melee began last weekend, with water cannon and tear gas coming into play.

On the very same weekend, possibly by concidence, Leipzig was hit by a giant rally of the so-called Querdenken movement – “thinking crosswise”, which refers to its welcome to anyone and everyone across the prism, left or right. Thousands are bussed in to its rallies from around the country, and while its organizers often spout phantasy figures (this time 50,000), the number was most likely well over 20,000. Their basic position is that the dangers from the Corona epidemic are greatly exaggerated, facial masks invade our privacy, social distancing is nonsense and it’s all a Merkel plot to suppress freedom. Some are opposed to all vaccination, others suspect a world plot by Bill and Melinda Gates, with just a whiff of anti-Semitism mixed in, and its far right margins, often almost openly fascistic, display far right flags, slogans and QAnon signs. All sectors defy the regulations on masks and distancing.

Just like in Berlin and elsewhere, they were permitted to gather – under the same regulations which they clearly flouted, which the greatly outnumbered police ignored till almost the last speech was ended, when it began to arrest a few unmasked demonstrators. At left-wing demonstrations in bygone years, ironically, they arrested those who DID wear masks – or balaklavas. Far more puzzling, it was the highest court in Saxony (Leipzig’s state) which rejected the city’s attempt to ban the rally to the outskirts and insisted that they had the right to the city center. The result; when the police began arresting a handful, the far right contingent went on a nasty rampage, fighting cops, journalists and just about anybody who obediently wore a face mask. A minor version of these events – openly fascist – was taking place in Saxony’s capital, Dresden, causing turmoil in the governing coalition, made up of Social Democrats, Greens and right-wing Christian Democrats.

November 9th is a highly meaningful date in German history. After rebellious navy sailors in Kiel refused to continue World War One on that day in 1918, Workers’ and Soldiers’ Councils seized power in Berlin in their November Revolution. The Kaiser resigned, two days later came the armistice and German surrender and Karl Liebknecht’s proclamation of a socialist republic from the royal palace. But this attempt was immediately stymied and the “moderates” of the Social Democratic Party set up the weak Weimar Republic, soon ruled again by the same big business forces and lasting only fourteen years before it succumbed to Hitler’s mobs and secret super-rich backers.

On November 9 1938, called Kristallnacht by the Nazis because of all the broken glass, a government-led pogrom was begun; 1400 synagogues and Jewish religious sites were destroyed, usually by undisturbed fire, thousands of Jewish stores were pillaged and 30,000 Jewish men were thrown into concentration camps, where hundreds died – presaging – a few years later, the total annihilation of the Jewish community in Germany – in what was to be known as the Holocaust or Shoah.

On the same date in 1989 – surely by coincidence – an unexpected ruling led to the opening of the Berlin Wall, a major step in the demolition eleven months later of the East German Democratic Republic, an attempt, after World War Two, to build up – in at least a smaller third of Gemany – a state free of the giant monopolies and cartels which had profited from the first world war, built up Hitler and made billions during World War Two by war production, the seizure of nearly all of Europe and the toil of hundreds of thousands of slave laborers.

This year’s November 9th, although the events contained little of earlier victory, tragedy, hope or sadness, and with most German streets, aside from a few like Leipzig and Dresden, very calm and often “pandemic-empty “, nevertheless contained omens enough of what could happen in future – or what, by dire necessity, really needed to happen!

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Dez12

am 12. Dezember 2020

Veröffentlicht in: Victor Grossman

Victor Grossman

AN ICY RALLY WITH BURNING DEMANDS

Berlin Bulletin No. 182
.

Victor Grossman

The survival of polar bears, we know, is sadly threatened. The survival of a more colorful bear species seems assured. HARIBO (an acronym of HAns RIegel BOnn), which makes those little “gold bears” sweets, was founded in a laundry room in 1920. A century later, its jolly producers assure us, 100 million Goldbears and other “gummies” in many shapes and colors bring joy daily to consumer hearts in over 100 countries: “Kids and grown-ups love it so – the happy world of HARIBO!”

But sadness can intrude here too. In Wilkau-Hasslau (in southern Saxony, pop. 9,656), the candy factory was a main employer since 1898. Publicly-owned in the GDR era until 1990, it offered about 300 jobs. With German “unification” HARIBO took over and cut that in half. Now its West German owners decided to shut down their only remaining plant in East Germany; modernization of their plant near Bonn makes it superfluous. Neither 13,000 protest signatures nor pleas by the mayor or even Saxony’s Minister President disturbed their “happy world”. The bitter locals could tell them where to stuff those cute little gummies!

HARIBO won success in a very small market niche. A renowned American firm is angling higher – for the entire world retail market! Amazon, in its German section, hires about 6,000 people plus 10,000 temporary workers for the current boom – and stubbornly defies union organization.

Haribo in Saxony: Haribo brand gold bears are processed here. Even in GDR times, gummy bears were produced in Wilkau-Haßlau – also for export to the West. The photo is from 2001.

Break-through efforts are led by Verdi (an acronym for “united service employees”), Germany’s second-biggest union with close to 2 million members in dozens of mostly public-service occupations, from garbage collector to kindergarten teacher, railroad engineer, even journalist and poet. Its fight to get Amazon to sign regional contracts like others in retail and e-commerce jobs, covering wages, health and safety provisions, now so urgent due to corona, faces two disadvantages. One: Amazon’s provisional hiring system with its promise of permanent jobs for those who work hardest, squeal least and avoid any whisper of unionizing. The other: Amazon’s ability to find local scabs but also to switch to warehouses and supply systems in Poland. Every effort is now being made to develop international solidarity. When about 2500 Amazon workers in six locations went on a three-day strike timed to disrupt „Black Friday“ sales, a Verdi spokesman said it was a “higher number than in the past and, despite difficulties caused by the pandemic, a big success.“ But the hard fight against the world’s wealthiest capitalist, wily Jeff Bezos, must slug on.

Last Sunday I joined up with a bigger, far tougher fight. Some 500 of us gathered between Merkel’s Chancellery Building and the Reichstag, where the Bundestag convenes. The rally, organized by the peace movement with a motto best translated as “Don’t Arm, Disarm!”, called on legislators to reject a big hike in the armament budget, now up for debate. The finance plan for 2021 faces a giant deficit to cover losses due to tightening pandemic restrictions, compensating workers without work and hotels, shops, restaurants and theaters without customers. All the same, the ruling coalition of Christian Democrats (CDU and CSU) and Social Democrats (SPD) is charging ahead with its aggressive plans, including new multipurpose frigates for the German navy, its largest surface warships since World War Two, transport helicopters for NATO, 38 Eurofighter planes at 5.5 billion euros each. Add on faster Tornados for the base in Büchel, ready at any moment to pick up the twenty American atomic bombs storaged there, speed eastward and drop them on Russians. Each one has a destructive power up to thirteen times that of the Hiroshima bomb – which killed 70,000. The plans look more and more like one more war. It would be the last one!

Wardrohne. PIC: Vopal, Flickr, CCC-BY-SA2.0

Also under debate is a decision on drones. The Bundeswehr forces already use unarmed ones; debates about whether to buy killer drones from the USA or Israel or to produce German ones would bury basic ethical questions; should GIs sitting comfortably in Florida or Nevada be able to kill citizens of Afghanistan, Somalia, Niger or elsewhere, without trial, by using the giant US Army base and drone relay station in Ramstein, Germany? Seen by many as a violation of German law, Bundestag decisions and morals, this is being fought out in the courts. Should German drones do the same?

Such questions of war and peace, so crucial to the world, were a heavy burden for our little crowd, freezing in the icy December air near the Spree River and watchfully monitored by omnipresent cops making sure we wore face masks and stayed a meter and a half apart.

After so many peace rallies over the years, valiantly organized but with mostly familiar, largely aging faces, one might wonder whether it was worth it. I admit to chickening out after two hours, before they stretched a symbolic blue band to the Reichstag building (but not, as was hoped, encircling it).
But before I limped off I noted some hopeful omens. Best of all, the unions were very visible. Not only big, leftish-leaning Verdi, the adversary of Amazon, but the teachers, too, and IG Metall, with over two million members the biggest in Germany and, it claims, in the world. And the main speaker was Reiner Hoffmann, head of the entire union federation, the DGB, comparable to the AFL-CIO, who warmed at least our hearts with the fact that, though small in size, similar peace rallies were taking place that same day in nearly 100 towns all over the country – with many union members.

Crucial as they are, it wasn’t only the unions. Leaders of Fridays for Future, the brave hookey-playing kids group, also Greenpeace and other ecology organizations were now supporting “Don’t Arm, Disarm!” – opposing more billions for weapons. While virus fears and icy winds kept numbers too low to encircle the huge Reichstag, a growing unity might influence some inside who would be voting.

Maybe some, and every voice counts, but reality dispels any illusions. For who were they? It may not be easy for Americans, used to two main parties for 160 years, to decipher the scene here, with so many trying to balance the boat – and steer it. You may feel as mixed-up as that late great wit (and catcher) Yogi Berra, when he ordered a snack: “You better cut the pizza in four pieces because I’m not hungry enough to eat six.” And in fact there are six caucuses in the Bundestag.

The far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) featured angry name-calling at its recent congress between one faction, almost openly fascist, and the other which chooses to mask its position behind a bourgeois, coat-and-tie approval of democratic methods (deceiving nobody but an unusually accommodating media). Its rabid in-fighting helped cut its popularity from 12-13% down to 9-10%. Of course both its factions favor more armaments, lots of them, as modern and heavy as possible.

The smallest of the six parties, the Free Democrats (FDP), with its genteel, pro-business right-wing stance, also favors armed drones and any other modern “security” measures.

The strongest caucus, Merkel’s Christian Democrats (CDU) with its sister party, Bavaria’s Christian Social Union (CDSU), always pushes for more weaponry. Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, Minister of Defense, has made it clear; Germany must lead Europe as a NATO equal in a renewed transatlantic partnership with the new Biden government, one based on nuclear weaponry. And despite the financial strain caused by corona, it must keep developing new European weapons like the Eurofighter, the NH90 helicopter and the Eurodrone. Some generals already discuss heir future use.

What about the Greens? This once young, left-leaning party has slithered further down a slippery slope. It grew fast after the Fukushima catastrophe in 2011, achieving second place in popularity, but success has had dire results. Its stress on environment is degrading into well-phrased schemes hatched out with big industrial companies; its participation in eleven state governments, six of them with the CDU, has had few notable results. In Baden-Wuerttemberg it heads the government and maintains a cosy friendship with the auto giant Daimler-Benz. Most shocking for many old stalwarts is in Hesse, where it joined its CDU government partner in using tough police to break up 400 road blockades and a hundred tree houses trying to block the destruction of part of a 300-year-old oak and beech forest to make way for a highway expansion.

Even more important, the Green leaders have abandoned earlier anti-military principles and become the most fervent adherents of East-West confrontation. On trade? “We Greens in the Bundestag are calling on the Federal Government to abandon its support for the Nord Stream 2 pipeline and to stop construction…No deals with Putin!”- On cooling off tension? “If we are in the next government we must meet with Macron to discuss robust European military deployment.” And weapons? “What matters are NATO capabilities.“ But not all the members are going along.

How about the Social Democrats, still paired with their traditional CDU rivals in a coalition government? Their poll ratings have slipped catastrophically to only 15% (the CDU-CSU are at 35%, the Greens at 19%). In this past year their new co-chairs and a few deputies made daring statements opposing US atomic bombs at the base in Büchel – or any atomic bombs. But the party’s powers-that-be, somehow reminiscent of the Democratic leadership in Washington, are busy squashing such mutiny, and men like Vice-Chancellor Olaf Scholz and Foreign Minister Heiko Maas seem to have the stronger biceps. We will see what influence the peace movement has had when the votes are taken.

And the LINKE, the Left? It remains the only party consistently voting against rearmament and military adventures. But it has dropped to an 8% low. It, too, has sharp disagreements; some leaders want to drop full opposition to NATO membership and foreign military deployment, conditions demanded by the SPD and the Greens for joining it in a coalition government. At present, the polls would not give these three the necessary 50% anyway, and many in the LEFT insist that such compromises would end their party’s role as the only genuine peace party. In this coming year of elections in many states and nationally in September, lots of switches and turns may be expected. Next to colossal corona-connected economic problems, war and peace will be a basic, fateful factor.

++++++

Although this Berlin Bulletin has become far too long, I will include two interesting quotations. Who said them?
„Today we are seeing new efforts to fragment the world, draw new dividing lines, create coalitions not built to achieve something but directed against someone, anyone, to create the image of an enemy just as was the case during the Cold War … We are sliding into times when, instead of a balance of interests and mutual guarantees, it is only fear and the balance of mutual destruction which are preventing nations from engaging in direct conflict.“

++++++

“For the past twenty-five years all Europe has been arming itself to a hitherto unimaginable extent … Is there no exit from this dead-end street except in an annihilating war?… I insist: Disarmament, with its guarantee of peace, is possible, indeed comparatively easy to accomplish, and Germany, more than any other … has the power and the motivation to achieve it.”
The first quotation was by Vladimir Putin. The second was written in February 1893 by old Karl Marx’s friend and collaborator Friedrich Engels, who was born just 200 years ago, on November 28, 1820. Did too few listen?

+++++++

Six weeks ago I managed to forget everything, turning from virus lockdowns, election predictions, the month-long shut-down of the elevator to my 8th floor apartment and just simply enjoy a few moments. A few relatives liked the result and suggested I send it, though dated, to all readers:
This morning, from my breakfast table, I looked across the wide expanse of green, yellow, orange trees, a fine ensemble – and was lucky enough to be rewarded with a magnificent rosy sunrise over the entire sky. Joyfully adding to this, off on the horizon, a flock of perhaps two hundred birds, wonderfully circling and soaring, most probably my favorites, the handsome black rooks, just arrived here in their winter quarters like every year in late October, truly a heart-lifting sight. But in addition to this – almost too much – a radio present; a Bach cantata (BWV 180) including a duet with the warm, vibrating tones of a cello and a clear, smooth soprano, all together almost enough to bring a tear or two of breathless joy. How wonderful it is to be able to have such an experience, how lucky I was, brief as it was!
And last but not least, for your reading in required confinement, or for the holidays, may I recommend my book, “A Socialist Defector: From Harvard to Karl-Marx-Allee”. Some have praised it highly.

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└ Tags: AmericanRebel, Arbeiterklasse, Berlin, Berlin Bulletin, Bundestag, Bundeswehr, Greenpeace, HARIBO, Jeff Bezos, Karl Marx, Krieg, NATO, Roter Morgen, Social Democrats, Spree River, Victor Grossman

Kommentar

Mrz24

am 24. März 2021

Veröffentlicht in: Allgemein

Victor Grossman

Berlin Bulletin No. 187

Victor Grossman

Germany, once viewed as an exaggerated model of exactitude and discipline, is currently in a muddle.

Above all it’s the Covid mess. Seen last spring as a model of swift, effective response, Germany is now torn by controversy, with its sixteen states and dozens of politicians squabbling about when to send which kids (if any) back to school, the 1st, 5th or 9th graders, with or without masks, with or without self-testing. Shopkeepers and restaurant owners protest: “When can we open our doors or at least serve outdoor tables?” But if they can open in April, why can’t hotels do the same? What about the tourist trade? At Easter but mostly in the summer huge waves of Germans surge toward the surf at the Baltic and North Sea but especially the warmer waters (and mostly hotter nightlife) along Mediterranean coasts in Spain, Turkey, the Balearics. What about theater people and musicians, solo or in ensemble? Or the sex workers, also solo or in legal etablissements known as “Eros Centres”? All are clamoring for more government funds for survival.

All hopes were based on vaccines, first for old folks and medical staffs. But who next? Teachers, cops? Secretive arrangements for vaccine purchases were in turmoil, both financially and medically. Just as Europe seemed to be under control there were unpleasant rumors about AstraZeneca shots. Then the Minister of Health announced an “All clear, (nearly) all safe.” But some of the unvaccinated masses, skeptical anyway, decided against penetration of their arm muscles.

Some people joined motley groups marching on weekends to claim the whole virus story was phony, aimed at curtailing freedoms, increasing world power of Bill and Melinda Gates, or compelling world vaccination. Some threw in QAnon accusations or carried rightist flags. Often rejecting legally-required distancing and masks they occasionally got dragged away and registered by masked (often visored) police. Guesses were on as to where such groups would head politically, right, left, up or down.

Participants in the rally on March 20 in Kassel, Hesse) – most of them do not wear mouth and nose protection and do not adhere to the distance rule. pic: YouTube

A new question arose, hitherto unthinkable: might Germany copy India, Mexico, Hungary, Slovakia and others and resort to Russian vaccines – or even Chinese ones?!

hier geht es weiter »

Into this Kuddelmuddel (a nice German word hardly requiring translation) plopped some scandals, nice juicy ones, though without the erotic edges of many in the USA, unless you include pedophilia cover -up scandals now embarrassing the Catholic Church in Cologne, their malodour defying the fabled eau-de perfumes of that city.

But these scandals, despite their party names, did not rip into the poor church but into its close allies, the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and its Bavarian sister, the Christian Social Union (CSU). Two legislators’ hands were caught deep in the cookie jar – contracts for supplying anti-virus face masks. It seems that they were moved so deeply by early shortages that they used their business connections, cultivated despite public service in the Bunderstag, to arrange very lucrative deals from friendly producers. Friendly enough for little “Thank you” gestures for the sales – 250,000 euros for Nikolas Löbel, 35, CDU, and 660,000 for Georg Nüsslein, 52, CSU.

Of course, party leaders were “totally shocked” at such nefarious doings, almost inconceivable for members of their double party which has been foremost in running Germany for all these years. They hastened to undo the damage, ejecting the two from their Bundestag seats and demanding that all their colleagues swear in writing – by the following Friday – that they were not involved in any such bribery (at least not in Covid connected business). All of them solemnly signed.

But before the ink had quite dried another CSU man, this time in the state legislature (luckily not again in the Bundestag ), was also caught. Alfred Sauter, 71, once Minister of Justice in Bavaria, was unable to account properly for the handy sum of 1,200,000 million – also for overcharged face-masks! As yet unclarified: how much went into his pockets, how much to his party, how much was not paid in taxes. All three gentlemen had to resign from their party and all posts, but will hardly face greater harm than to their reputations – if that.

Scandals were not new to the Federal Republic. But this one had an almost comical side, hitting just days before two important elections, in a year to be studded with elections. Despite almost frantic assurances that only a few “bad apples” had been involved, the CDU got hit hard twice, not only due to the scandals, no doubt, but also to dismay about the Covid mess and growing woes and fears of current and potentially future jobless, moneyless, maybe homeless persons when (and if) the disease has run its course. Then too, in both state elections a key role was played by personalities.

Rheinland-Pfalz (or Rhineland-Palatinate in English) is known for three things. In Mannheim, its capital, Johannes Gutenberg printed his famous Bible and initiated printing in Europe. Trier was the birthplace of Karl Marx. And Martin Luther’s epochal refusal to recant, getting the Reformation going against the Catholic Church (thus already under attack way back in 1521) was at a meeting, named for the town, deliciously called the Diet of Worms. In the March election its present-day celebrity, Malu Dreyer – she’s a Social Democrat – is so well-liked by her constituents, less for party policies than for her friendly, down-to-earth way of chatting with them, that in a race with many participants she won with almost 36%, leaving the once-proud CDU with only 27.6%, their worst result in that state’s history, and affording them five years to digest what might be called a new “diet of worms”. Malu, as she is often called, will almost certainly continue her coalition with the Greens, weak here, and the even more business-friendly Free Democrats. Since their symbol-color is yellow, and Malu’s SPD claims red, this is called a traffic light coalition – red-yellow-green.

In neighboring Baden-Württemberg the leading personality – and only Green premier in Germany – is the elderly Winfried Kretschmann, 72, with bristly white hair and a croaky Swabish-accented speech. On the right edge of his once seemingly radical left, now right-tending Green party, and a close friend of the two auto giants dominating his state, Daimler-Benz and Porsche, his loud aggressivity and relative, auto-based prosperity in his state got him a 32.7% vote , his party’s best result anywhere. And here too the CDU was handed the worst result in its history (24.1%) in a state it had dominated for decades. In the past 10 years they had been humble junior partners to Kretschmann’s Greens. After this fiasco he might ditch them and form a three-party traffic-light coalition like Milu in his neighbor state.

Two other election items need mentioning. The good news first: the faschistic Alternative for Germany (AfD), once an expanding menace, remains a threat but a rather reduced one. Rent by factional strife, it skidded downward, missing its 10% goal in both elections with 9,7 Prozent (2016: 15,1 Prozent) in Rhineland-P. and even less – 8.3% (2016: 12.7%) – in Baden-W.

The bad news: the results for the LINKE were not surprising – but disappointing. A paltry 2.5% in Rheinland-P – even a bit less than five years ago – was hardly balanced in Baden-W by a 3.6% vote – just 0.7% more than five years ago. Both results were far from the 5% needed to gain a single seat in their state legislatures. The national party congress two weeks earlier was unable to give more boost in southwest Germany where the LINKE has always been weakest. Aside from the rent ceiling law in Berlin and a current attempt per referendum to force big real estate blood-suckers out of that city, the party has not been able as yet to lead any popular struggles or catch many crowds’ imagination. Perhaps the new leadership will have more success.

It is badly needed. Understandably, the Covid pandemic worries people immensely; not only the chances of illness or death but the job and financial troubles awaiting so many. But, earnest as these problems are, they are dwarfed by an overriding, far greater menace about which far too few are concerned – in Germany, the USA, everywhere; the danger of war, even atomic war. How many good souls will be marching two weeks from now in Germany’s traditional Easter peace marches? Maybe more than in recent years, maybe less, but certainly far too few – even though about two-thirds of the population favor a policy of peace with Russia (and China). Many others are undecided or disinterested.

But the belligerent remainder is powerful. It includes those who dream again of Germany’s power and glory, of its “proper place in the sun”, of high returns on African cotton, coffee, cocoa for its good chocolate, for coltan, uranium and gold diggings. Maybe even of once German-owned breweries for “coolies” near naval piers for warships in Tsingtao. And some dream of boots and guns like those which once advanced and blasted to within 19 miles of Moscow’s Red Square.

Others with related goals – the Atlanticists – are closely bound up with strongarm power people in Washington; the Boltons and Pompeos but also a wolfspack of Democrats, in politics and the media, orating about “our adversaries” and pushing their “freedom” campaigns about election meddling, Navalny, or the Uigurs. It is hard not to think of bad past decades – or not to smell names like Raytheon and Rheinmetall, Lockheed-Martin and Krauss-Maffei!

One can approve of Putin and Xi Jinping or hate them, but their policies must basically be supported or opposed by their own people, especially if we wish the same. Denouncing or attacking them on the international stage can invoke far too many fearful memories, unforgotten in the lands where they were felt: 27 million Soviet citizens, mostly civilians, murdered by those whose descendants now join in calling them “adversaries”. Or 200,000-300,000 mostly civilians massacred in 1937 in Nanking. And many in the world still recall the two to three million killed in North Korea, later in Vietnam, mostly civilians, often with flesh-burning napalm. Or and at least half a million who diedc in Iraq and over 200,000 in Guatemala after a CIA coup in 1954. They come to mind when “freedom and democracy” are cited as our motivation.

“Navalny sentenced” – “Navalny imprisoned”. The poisoning of this right-wing racist filled the German media with angry articles and editorials. How many have there been about new attempts to rescue Mumia Abu-Jamal, 66, a gifted Black journalist and leftist essayist, locked away since 1981 after a frame-up trial – and now fighting death from prison-induced Covid?

When did the mass media report on another political prisoner, Leonard Peltier, 76, arrested in 1975, acquitted, then framed, repeatedly denied either a fair trial or a pardon. We read and hear so much about the Uigurs, always from clearly one-sided sources. Is there an equivalent amount about more than 2 million Americans behind bars – the world’s record – with Blacks still getting locked up five times as easily and often as whites.

What do media consumers know about the prisoners at Guantanamo, many tortured beyond description, never given trials, some only 14 or 15 when imprisoned, many hopeless suicides. Forty are still encaged there. Injustice is always wrong and should be castigated. But hypocrisy and elastic moral standards can also be dangerous sins.

Many elderly people recall their shock at learning the facts about over 100,00 Japanese women, children and seniors incinerated within minutes in 1945, with others suffering the effects until today. How many feel shock that, also until today, fifteen or twenty US atomic bombs are stored near the small German town of Büchel – next to special German planes ready to speed them eastward. Each bomb has an explosive power four to thirteen times as murderous as the Hiroshima bomb.

In a world pocked with 700 or 800 US bases, from Poland and Estonia to the Ukraine and Okinawa, with US aircraft carriers sailing through the Persian Gulf and the South China Sea, where risky “training maneuvers” face threatened borders, with mistakes or accidents all too common, any talk of asserting “American world leadership against its adversaries” would seem to border on insanity. Will Biden’s Cabinet heads and generals choose this path? In Germany, will those hoping for peace or at least mutually advantageous business connections weaken and succumb to those (the loudest, sadly, are often the strengthening Greens) who angrily denounce pipelines or any other peaceful lines, preferring warplanes, tanks, armed drones instead? Every country is important, but the USA and Germany may well be the most important. That is why the forces of sanity, the pressure on the Biden government and on whichever forces win out in Berlin next fall are so crucially important. In Germany, the LINKE must always play a forceful role (despite some weakening around its edges). It must learn to grow and reach out in popular ways to all those who desire peace. It still has a voice!

With or without masks and vaccines, with a new government in the USA and one in Germany after September, two things will remain important: vigilance and action!

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└ Tags: Arbeiterklasse, Ausland, Berlin, Das kapitalistische System, Deutschland, Politik und Gesellschaft, USA, Victor Grossman

Kommentar

Jun16

am 16. Juni 2021

Veröffentlicht in: Victor Grossman

Victor Grossman – 16. Juni 2021

Victor Grossman

BERLIN BULLETIN NO. 190

SMALL STATE BUT BIG QUESTIONS

A week ago Saxony-Anhalt voted! The media prediction – a neck-and-neck race – was cock-eyed! But outside Sachsen-Anhalt (in German), did anyone really give a damn? Yes, some did!

It’s sandwiched along the Elbe River between “genuine” Saxony to the southeast, with Dresden and Leipzig, and Lower Saxony (Niedersachsen) to the west, which has Volkswagen. And what has it got?

Tons of history,mostly German. Bach spent his happiest years in little Köthen, whose music-loving ruler-prince played in his ensemble. But Bach left the Anhalt town and moved on to Leipzig. George Frederick Handel, born and raised in Halle (Anhalt), also moved on, to Hamburg, Rome, London (and “The Messiah”). Martin Luther was more faithful; he nailed his 98 Theses on a church door in Wittenberg (Anhalt), and was both born and died in the region. That at least is worth noticing!

The state capital, Magdeburg, can claim a little fame as birthplace of Friedrich Wilhelm Gerhard Augustin von Steuben, or “Baron Steuben” – the fantastic phony! A lowly captain when kicked out of the Prussian army (maybe for being gay), he was broke, his “baron” title and noble “von” were invented, his fancy general’s uniform was a creation of Ben Franklin’s Paris tailor. But it all worked, George Washington was glad to have one of Frederick the Great’s officers build up a disciplined army at Valley Forge and help win the Revolution. And Magdeburg boasts a fine statue of Steuben.

As old as Charlemagne, its founder, it is proud of another man, who was mayor but loved to try his hand at other pursuits (quite different from those of New York’s governor). In 1654 he pumped all the air out of two large copper hemispheres, fit together to prove the strength of atmospheric pressure. It proved so powerful that two teams of horses could not defy the vacuum and pull the two apart. Once air was allowed back in they fell apart immediately.

Two strong sides were in play again last Sunday. No matter how the other political horses strained, they could not break the double-bind of the two, invulnerable despite their differences. Six parties were in the running, there was hot air in abundance, but those two kept their tight grip.

Unlike 1654, both good and bad news was involved. It was good for Saxony-Anhalt’s premier for ten years, Rainer Haseloff, 67, a serious-looking senior, whose down-to-earth manner resembled that of another East German from the same “Christian” party, Angela Merkel. As with father or mother figures in other states, his personal popularity helped win him a third straight victory.

But the 37% tally for his CDU, a fat 7.3% increase over its result five years ago and amazingly high with six parties in the race, was based on more than fatherliness. Repeated predictions that the rabid, almost openly fascist Alternative for Germany (AfD) might win out were simply too frightening for many East Germans. And though Haseloff is as conservative as other Christian Democratic (CDU) leaders, he has steadfastly rejected all attempts inside his party to cuddle up to AfD leaders and consider an agreement or coalition with them. A widespread fear of the far right was decisive.

This victory, even in a lesser East German state, was what you might call (if it were not for Covid sensibilities about tender spots) a “shot in the arm” for the “Christian” CDU, which had grown shaky on the national level. The sigh of relief from Armin Laschet, its less than charismatic chancellor candidate for September 26th, was almost visible…”We won! Hurrah for Saxony-Anhalt!”

And the other good news? The AfD came in 16 points behind the CDU and 3.5% lower than its result five years ago. Despite its boasting predictions and the media warnings, there was no neck-and-neck dash against Haseloff and no cuddly necking with right-wingers in Haseloff’s party. Not now, anyway.

But that’s where the good news sours into bad news.

True, the AfD lost ground with its 20.9% – in national polls it is just half that. It has nothing like the support in the U.S.A. for an increasingly extremist GOP, nor does the AfD possess such a fearsomely unifying Führer figure. But it remains alarming enough; in much of Eastern Germany it is in second place, as in Saxony-Anhalt. Many pundits blame oldsters, “their thinking still twisted by GDR totalitarianism.” This is nonsense; the far right is not strongest with them but with disoriented, often hopeless young males who experienced the GDR only as babies and toddlers, if at all.

Just add them up; the AfD, whose domestic policy hardly conceals its fascist ideas, plus Haseloff’s winning CDU, always on the right of the spectrum, plus the Free Democrats, bare-faced pro-capitalist, who won enough votes (6.4%) to return to the legislature in Saxony-Anhalt. The sum of 64.3% means that nearly two-thirds voted “right-handed”. Is that an omen for the September elections? The three horses pulling against them have proved very lame.

The Social Democrats (SPD) claim to be defenders of working people and world peace were hobbled long ago when they became junior partners of their traditional CDU rivals, both in Saxony-Anhalt and on the national level. They paid dearly for this, getting a pitiful 8.3% on Sunday, so low it caused tears, almost sobs, during post-election TV interviews with their candidates.

The Greens, hoping to break through in the East at last, got 6.1, a tiny 0.7% over 2017. And sad faces!

But faring worst of all was the LINKE! Once proud in the saddle, with hopes of victory in a state with long working-class traditions, they lost over 5% of their supporters in five years and dropped to 11.2%! The fact that most of those they lost switched to the Christians just to keep the fascists out was no consolation. Those voters were lost! The LINKE election slogan, simply “Better – Die Linke!” had been no great inspiration.

Can these three parties do any better on the national level where the Social Democrats are down to 15%, pitiful enough for a party whose leader, Willy Brandt, once ruled the roost. Their current chancellor candidate, Olaf Scholz, 62, now Vice-Chancellor and Finance Minister, puts up a brave front but is facing two smelly scandals. A big financial services provider, Wirecard, high in the German charts, with ties to countless enterprises, proved phonier than “Baron von Steuben”! A London journalist let some air in; its debts were huge, its assets at the vacuum level of Magdeburg’s hemispheres. Some board members got arrested but the biggest fish disappeared. So did 1.9 billion euros. The Scholz office, the main watchdog to prevent such shenanigans, was somehow dozing.

Scholz seems to have memory problems as well. When the super-wealthy Warburg bank got caught defrauding the government in a billion-level tax rip-off, it called for help from the mayor of Hamburg, site of its main office. The mayor denied any connection – until the banker testified in court. Then he had to admit, looking very innocent, that if there was indeed such a call he had “no concrete memory of the content” and had never “exercised any influence in the tax matter.” But after more beans were spilled he finally recalled: yes, he had indeed met three times with the banker and given him tips per telephone. In the end the debt to the taxpayers went unpaid, Warburg remained unscathed. And Olaf Scholz, then Hamburg’s mayor, is now the Social Democratic candidate for the job of chancellor.

Who else wants the job? A major contender is the candidate of the “ecology” party, the Greens. Annalena Baerbock, young -looking at 40, vivacious, still displaying, like her party, a whiff of its left-leaning, untraditional, feminist past, in contrast with elderly establishment gentlemen. The Greens had soared amazingly in national polls, even overtaking the Christians on some days. Baerbock was given a fighting chance to replace the retiring Angela Merkel, that other daughter of East Germany.

Then her opponents found flies in the ointment. Stupid remarks by a few misogynists hardly registered, but even small blots in the squeaky-clean background expected of a Green candidate hit hard. Her official vita included more credits, academic and organizational, than fitted the facts. “In my brief, compressed resumé I unintentionally offered impressions I had not wished to create. That was crappy.“ In her income report to the Bundestag she had neglected to mention 25,000 euros paid her by her own party. “There should have been a more careful checkup… we have learned a lesson,” she noted ruefully. Minor matters, but they weakened her odds, already hit by the poor showing in Saxony-Anhalt. But more crucial matters intruded.

For reasons possibly affected by big, lucrative trade deals, some German leaders have not joined so fervently in the growing denunciations aimed belligerently at Russia and China. At times even Merkel dared to defy the commanding voices from the Pentagon, NATO-HQ in Brussels and all the media marionettes.

Now the CDU candidate Armin Laschet has dared to call “demonizing Vladimir Putin not a political policy but rather an alibi for the absence of one”. He criticized “marketable anti-Putin populism” and, while disapproving Russian policies, said it was necessary to “imagine oneself in the thinking of one’s conversation partner if one wishes to engage in foreign policy relations.”

Even Foreign Minister Heiko Maas, never a leftist peace activist, opposed attacks, verbal or otherwise, against Russia: “We can have no interest in joining in this confrontation. We want dialogue and good neighborliness with Russia,” he said and warned against “the many smart Alecs who always demand tougher and tougher measures.“

Such unusual remarks were balanced enough to anger, even enrage the bellicose elements known as the “Atlanticists”. And among the angriest “smart Alecs” were leaders of the Greens like Annalena Baerbock. Aside from ecology demands such as higher gas prices and lower speed limits, which angered those forced to drive to work, and tainted by agreements with big business, who should not be “too heavily over-taxed”, a main line of Greens like Baerbock has long been that “a tougher German stance toward Russia and China … should be a priority.” While demanding an „increase in pressure on Russia“ to counteract tanks it deployed on its own territory, she finds nary a word about NATO maneuvers along Russian coasts and frontiers far distant from German or American borders.

Is one CDU-Christian wing, feeling pressure from the voters, doing some re-thinking and leaning further toward detente while the other goes all-out to build up and train aggressive modern military forces? The question also goes to the SPD, with some realistic voices now audible. Even in the Greens, pressure from their “old guard” is pushing against modern killers like armed drones. At their latest conference the pro-drone leadership won – but only by a very slim margin of 347 to 343 delegates. At times it almost seems like a subtle tug of war.

But what about the LINKE (Left)? Despite arguments within its ranks about Putin, about using the Bundeswehr abroad, on allying with the SPD or Greens or rejecting any such ties (now out of reach anyway), its anti-war stand was never influenced by pressures from auto-makers, agricultural monopolies, banks or greedy investors, and most certainly not from armament giants like Krupp or Rheinmetall. Unlike the others, it gets not a cent from any of them. All its policies, even those debated among its members, were related to the interests of working people, children, pensioners, and to opposing every activity by neo-Nazis. Sometimes Greens, Social Democrats, even CDUers joined in. But the LINKE were certainly the most consistent .

With post-Corona threats to peace internationally and to freedom domestically demanding militant fights on many issues, their voices, votes and actions will be urgently needed. But despite very promising signs at their February congress they have largely failed to meet the challenge.

Some members are indeed waging a courageous battle against soaring rents in the city-state of Berlin, working to collect 225,000 signatures (175,000 approved ones) for a “confiscation” referendum which is truly scaring the rent-scrouging fat cats. But on the national political scene they have largely disappeared. A hostile media plays its part. But the LINKE have consumed themselves in inner controversy: disputes about imaginary future coalitions, refugees and immigration, about a loss of contact with working people as opposed to higher-educated minorities. Most recently about “identity groups” and friction with two of its best-known party personalities and most forceful orators, Sahra Wagenknecht and her husband Oskar LaFontaine. Are they to blame for splitting and weakening the party? Or are they still a force for militancy? Would Sahra win or lose votes in her state of North-Rhine-Westphalia. Should she be expelled because of damaging criticism? These questions have distracted far too many in the party from all the fights which need to be fought.

Such quarrels have already gained life and death proportions! The LINKE has not only lost calamitously in Saxony-Anhalt, in the national polls it has dropped from a year-long position of about 9-11% down to its current 6-7% level. If it drops further, below the 5% needed to maintain its presence in the Bundestag, it will have basically carved itself into political impotence! I hope my next Berlin Bulletin can report a change for the better! It is so necessary!

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Kommentar

Jul20

am 20. Juli 2021

Veröffentlicht in: Allgemein, Victor Grossman

Victor Grossman – 20. Juli 2021

BERLIN BULLETIN NO. 193 July 20 2021

A HAPPY WARRIOR + ESTHER BEJARANO + PRESENTE

Victor Grossman

Her life almost ended when she was herself young, 19, horribly, after being crammed into a cattle car with other Jewish Germans on a final route to Auschwitz. Unlike most of her family she survived, thanks to her ability to play the piano and please some Kultur-lover among the killers. ”Can you play the accordeon too?” Yes, she lied, and picked up the basics quickly enough to be included in the “girl orchestra” used to calm and deceive in-coming trainloads of human beings, thus avoiding incidents on the way to the gas chambers. It was a nasty job but enabled her to survive until, after escaping the guards on a forced “death march” at war’s end, she was rescued by Red Army and US army units.

Despite great doubts as to whether they would be safe there, the family moved to West Germany in 1960. Esther opens a laundry in Hamburg.

Edith went to what was still Palestine. I can add a personal note here. I was lucky enough, as a Harvard delegate, to go to the first World Youth Festival in Prague in 1947. At the Palestine evening we saw a chic uniformed Zionist dance and song group organized by the Jewish Agency. And the Ron Workers Chorus, a leftist group, no uniforms, singing leftist songs, both Jewish and Arab like the singers. The Festival asked both to perform on one evening in one place. But after the Jewish Agency group finished and the Ron chorus was ready to begin, all lights in the huge opera house went out. A minute later they were back – and a cloud of leaflets with a Zionist message floated down from the top gallery. Only then was the chorus able to sing, with Esther. So I saw and heard her 74 years ago!

The Nazis murdered Esther’s parents, her sister Ruth, her husband and many other relatives and friends. More than five million Jews fell victim to the Nazi crimes. Many Holocaust survivors then have no words to talk about their experiences. So does Esther. She finds solace in music.

She got married, had children, but was not happy. As she wrote: “My husband and I could not stand Israeli politics. It was a catastrophe… Life was difficult because we did not agree with the terrible things that were done to the Palestinians.”

In Israel, Esther later meets Nissim Bejarano. The two get married and have two children.

In 1960 she and her family made the dramatic move back to Germany, to Hamburg. But she had not forgotten her earlier suffering. She never ceased combatting fascism and former Nazis wherever they showed their heads. In West Germany in the 1960s that still meant virtually every walk of life, right up to Chancellor Kurt Kiesinger (1966-1969) and President Heinrich Lübke (1959-1969).

Despite great doubts as to whether they would be safe there, the family moved to West Germany in 1960. Esther opens a laundry in Hamburg.

She founded a German branch of the Auschwitz Committee in her living room and became honorary president of the Association of Victims of the Nazis, on occasion braving water cannon to stop neo-Nazi parades. She was active in peace demonstrations and supported Cuba against the blockade.

Bejarano takes over the chairmanship of the German Auschwitz Committee. She keeps telling young people in particular what she experienced as a persecuted Jew.

After 1988 she joined her son, her daughter and young Turkish-German musicians in groups playing modernized international songs, Jewish songs, and new political songs for all the good causes, including the rights of Palestinians to conduct their boycott campaign. In countless schools she used her story to oppose the many inroads of the fascists, and her last action was to join in urging that May 8th, the day of victory over the Nazis, be made a national holiday.

Even in 2019, at the age of 95, she does not hold back with her opinion. In the Hamburg trial against a former concentration camp guard, she sits in the audience and states: „Whoever was there knew everything and, in my opinion, is guilty.“

Most media and many politicians voiced their praise and mourning – after almost totally ignoring her in life and attacking and trying to squelch organizations she was active in, as an avowed Communist. They stressed how she had always fought anti-Semitism. She had indeed, ceaselessly, but not in the way they used the term, labeling everyone an anti-Semite who criticized Israeli government policies, its settlements, occupation, repression, its missile and drone attacks. Her opposition to this and her clearly leftist views and actions have gone almost unmentioned by officialdom and its media. But not by the thousands who attended the funeral ceremony, who had loved her, fought at her side, enjoyed her music – and would greatly miss her.

Yoram Bejarano (r.) And Hamburg’s regional rabbi Shlomo Bistritzky at the grave of Esther Bejarano

Übersetzung per Google-Translater:
Sie war 96 Jahre alt, doch der Tod von Esther Bejarano trifft hart und hinterlässt eine schmerzliche Lücke in Deutschlands antifaschistischer Szene. Bis in die letzten Wochen ihres langen Lebens war sie Kämpferin, sprach, sang und gab das gute Wort weiter – vor allem an junge Menschen.
…Ihr Leben endete fast, als sie selbst jung war, 19, schrecklich, nachdem sie mit anderen jüdischen Deutschen auf dem letzten Weg nach Auschwitz in einen Viehwaggon gepfercht wurde. Im Gegensatz zu den meisten ihrer Familie überlebte sie dank ihrer Fähigkeit, Klavier zu spielen und einigen Kulturliebhabern unter den Mördern zu gefallen. „Kannst du auch Akkordeon spielen?“ Ja, sie hat gelogen und sich die Grundlagen schnell genug angeeignet, um in das „Mädchenorchester“ aufgenommen zu werden, mit dem ankommende Zugladungen von Menschen beruhigt und getäuscht werden und so Zwischenfälle auf dem Weg zu den Gaskammern vermieden werden. Es war ein unangenehmer Job, ermöglichte ihr aber zu überleben, bis sie, nachdem sie am Ende des Krieges auf einem erzwungenen „Todesmarsch“ den Wachen entkommen war, von Einheiten der Roten Armee und der US-Armee gerettet wurde.
…Esther ging nach Palästina. Hier kann ich eine persönliche Anmerkung hinzufügen. Ich hatte das Glück, als Harvard-Delegierter 1947 zum ersten Weltjugendfest in Prag zu gehen. Beim Palästina-Abend sahen wir eine schicke, uniformierte zionistische Tanz- und Gesangsgruppe, die von der Jewish Agency organisiert wurde. Und der Ron Workers Chorus, eine linke Gruppe, keine Uniformen, die linke Lieder singen, sowohl jüdische als auch arabische wie die Sänger. Das Festival bat beide, an einem Abend an einem Ort aufzutreten. Aber nachdem die Gruppe der Jewish Agency fertig war und der Ron-Chor beginnen konnte, gingen alle Lichter im riesigen Opernhaus aus. Eine Minute später waren sie zurück – und eine Wolke von Flugblättern mit einer zionistischen Botschaft schwebte von der obersten Galerie herab. Erst dann konnte der Chor mit Esther singen. Also habe ich sie vor 74 Jahren gesehen und gehört!
…Sie heiratete, bekam Kinder, war aber nicht glücklich. Wie sie schrieb: „Mein Mann und ich konnten die israelische Politik nicht ertragen. Es war eine Katastrophe… Das Leben war schwierig, weil wir mit den schrecklichen Dingen, die den Palästinensern angetan wurden, nicht einverstanden waren.“
…1960 wagte sie mit ihrer Familie den dramatischen Umzug zurück nach Deutschland, nach Hamburg. Aber sie hatte ihr früheres Leiden nicht vergessen. Sie hat nie aufgehört, Faschismus und ehemalige Nazis zu bekämpfen, wo immer sie ihren Kopf zeigten. Das bedeutete in den 1960er-Jahren in Westdeutschland noch fast alle Lebensbereiche, bis hin zu Bundeskanzler Kurt Kiesinger (1966-1969) und Bundespräsident Heinrich Lübke (1959-1969).
…Sie gründete in ihrem Wohnzimmer einen deutschen Zweig des Auschwitz-Komitees und wurde Ehrenpräsidentin des Vereins der NS-Opfer, wobei sie gelegentlich Wasserwerfern trotzte, um Neonazi-Paraden zu stoppen. Sie war bei Friedensdemonstrationen aktiv und unterstützte Kuba gegen die Blockade.
…Nach 1988 schloss sie sich ihrem Sohn, ihrer Tochter und jungen türkisch-deutschen Musikern in Gruppen an, die modernisierte internationale Lieder, jüdische Lieder und neue politische Lieder für alle guten Zwecke spielten, einschließlich der Rechte der Palästinenser, ihre Boykottkampagne durchzuführen. In zahllosen Schulen setzte sie sich mit ihrer Geschichte gegen die vielen Einfälle der Faschisten ein, und ihre letzte Aktion bestand darin, sich dafür einzusetzen, dass der 8. Mai, der Tag des Sieges über die Nazis, zum Nationalfeiertag erklärt wird.
…Die meisten Medien und viele Politiker drückten ihr Lob und ihre Trauer aus – nachdem sie sie im Leben fast völlig ignoriert und Organisationen, in denen sie als bekennende Kommunistin aktiv war, angegriffen und versucht hatten, sie zu unterdrücken. Sie betonten, wie sie den Antisemitismus immer bekämpft habe. Sie hatte es zwar ununterbrochen, aber nicht in der Art, wie sie den Begriff benutzten, und bezeichnete jeden als Antisemiten, der die israelische Regierungspolitik, ihre Siedlungen, Besatzung, Repression, ihre Raketen- und Drohnenangriffe kritisierte. Ihre Opposition dagegen und ihre eindeutig linken Ansichten und Aktionen wurden von der offiziellen Regierung und ihren Medien fast unerwähnt gelassen. Aber nicht zu den Tausenden, die an der Trauerfeier teilnahmen, die sie geliebt, an ihrer Seite gekämpft, ihre Musik genossen hatten – und sie sehr vermissen würden.

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└ Tags: AmericanRebel, Arbeiterklasse, Ausland, Das kapitalistische System, KPD/ML, Krieg, Roter Morgen

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Jul26

am 26. Juli 2021

Veröffentlicht in: Wochenrückblick

Zurückblickend auf die letzten Tage sind uns einige kommentierbare Vorkommnisse ins Auge gefallen, die wir hier zur Diskussion stellen.
(Kommis bitte unten eintragen!)
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13. Juli | JUMP UP Extra

Zum 20. Geburtstag von Lucha Amada stellen wir einen ganz besonderen Soli-Sampler zusammen. dafür brauchen wir eure Unterstützung. Diese Compilation ist der dritte Teil unserer Lucha Amada Sampler-Reihe und heisst dementsprechend „Lucha Amada 3 – A Luta Continua“. Die Erlöse spenden wir je zur Hälfte an die Zapatist@s in Chiapas, Mexico und an JINWAR, einem feministischen Projekt im Herzen von Rojava in West Kurdistan/Nord-Syrien.
Mehr Informationen
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14. Juni | Rassismus im Fußball – (K)ein englisches Phänomen

Die Europameisterschaft endete vor wenigen Tagen mit dem Sieg von Italien gegen England. Was auf den italienischen Sieg folgte war massiver Rassismus gegen drei schwarze englische Spieler, die ihre Elfmeter nicht getroffen hatten. Igor Gvozden zeigt auf, warum dies ein Problem ist, was weit über England hinaus geht.

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16. Juli | Für demokratische Rechte, öffentliche Freiheiten,
Selbstbestimmung und eine demokratische
Übergangsregierung in Haiti

Die Internationale Konferenz marxistisch-leninistischer Parteien und Organisationen (IKMLPO) bedauert das Attentat, dem der ehemalige Präsident Juvenal Moise vor einigen Tagen in Haiti zum Opfer fiel.
…Diese Art von Aktion ist keine Lösung für politische und soziale Probleme und wurde nicht im Interesse der Öffnung des Weges zu demokratischen Rechten, zur Freiheit des haitianischen Volkes und zur nationalen Souveränität dieses Schwesterlandes durchgeführt, für die die Massen des Volkes seit 2018 ununterbrochen auf den Straßen kämpfen.
»RoterMorgen« berichtete
hier geht es weiter »

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16. Juli | Das „rein arische Familienunternehmen“
der Reimanns

Ihre Anführer scheuen oft das Licht der Öffentlichkeit, doch sie besitzen immense Macht. Konten gefüllt mit Milliarden aus Geschäften, die in aller Herren Länder verrichtet werden; Tausende Untergebene, die auf Gedeih und Verderb dem Richterspruch der Männer und Frauen an der Spitze ausgeliefert sind; sie blicken oft auf eine mehr als hundertjährige Geschichte krimineller Machenschaften zurück, sind für Millionen Tote mitverantwortlich: Deutsche Kapitalisten-Clans.
»RoterMorgen« berichtete
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18. Juli | Wir lehnen die Wirtschaftsblockade
und imperialistische Einmischungen in Kuba ab!

Erklärung des Koordinationskomitees der Internationalen Konferenz marxistisch-leninistischer Parteien und Organisationen (IKMLPO)
…Die Demonstrationen, die in den letzten Tagen in verschiedenen Städten Kubas und in anderen Ländern stattgefunden haben, sind eine Fortsetzung der Bemühungen des US-Imperialismus, dieses Land politisch zu destabilisieren und ein Regime zu erzwingen, das genau seinen Monopolinteressen entspricht.
»Arbeit Zukunft« berichtete
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19. Juli | Möge die Erde dir leicht sein Genossin Esther –
wir kämpfen in deinem Sinne weiter!

Mit einer bewegenden Trauerfeier haben sich die Familie, Freunde/-innen, Genossen/-innen und Musikerkollegen/-innen am Sonntag in Hamburg von der Genossin Esther Bejarano verabschiedet.
»RoterMorgen« berichtete
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19. Juli | Mindestens 159 Tote – da lacht und feixt er,
der Kanzlerkandidat…

Ausgerechnet der Kanzlerkandidat der CDU und noch Ministerpräsident des Landes NRW, der den Klimawandel bisher stets verharmloste und leugnete, bzw. so tat, als sei die globale Katastrophe eine Erfindung Greta Thunbergs, profitiert nun politisch von der Überschwemmungskatastrophe in Rheinland-Pfalz und in seinem Bundesland.
Volkskorrespondent Heinz Michael Vilsmeier berichtete auf »AmericanRebel«
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20. Juli | Stuttgart: „Exilkubaner“ fordern Militärintervention
in Kuba! Gegenaktion der Kuba-Solidaritätsbewegung!

Wütend wurde in den Reden dieser Contras behauptet, das Volk werde „massakriert“ und müsse befreit werden. Sie firmierten als sos-cuba. Die Aktion war offensichtlicher Teil der weltweit koordinierten Bemühungen des US-Imperialismus, Kuba politisch zu destabilisieren und ein Regime zu erzwingen, das den US-Monopolinteressen entspricht.
»Arbeit Zukunft« berichtete
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20. Juli | A HAPPY WARRIOR
+ ESTHER BEJARANO + PRESENTE

She was all of 96 years, yet Esther Bejarano’s death hits hard, leaving a painful gap in Germany’s anti-fascist scene. Until the final weeks of her long life she was a fighter, speaking, singing and passing the good word along – especially to young people.
Victor Grossmans Berlin Bulletin auf »Info-Welt«
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20. Juli | Rote Hilfe Zeitung 3/2021 ab sofort im Handel

Die neue Rote Hilfe Zeitung ist erschienen. Schwerpunkt der Ausgabe: Repression in den USA
…Ihr könnt die Zeitung im Bahnhofsbuchhandel kaufen oder im Literaturvertrieb bestellen. Mitglieder bekommen die Zeitung zugeschickt.
Außerdem ist sie wie alle Ausgaben seit 3/2011 auch als PDF-Download verfügbar.
Mehr dazu

22. Juni | Kleinere Bosch-Standorte in Gefahr:
Tausende Arbeitsplätze bedroht

Das deutsche Zulieferermonopol Bosch plant Umstrukturierungen in seiner Produktion. Dies bedroht derzeit vor allem kleinere Standorte des Unternehmens. Es sind Umstrukturierungen auf dem Rücken der Beschäftigten.
»RoterMorgen« berichtete
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24. Juli | Wir haben nur vor, Kriminelle
und Terroristen zu überwachen

Bisher heißt es doch vollmundig, Überwachung erfolgt im Zuge der Aufspürung pädophiler Krimineller?
…Peinlich ist es allerdings immer dann, wenn die Software auch die Staats- und Regierungsbosse ausspioniert. Naja, bei dem Merkel damals hat das auch nicht geholfen, dass sie abgehört wurde. Aber vielleicht setzt bei den anderen Regierungen jetzt Aktivitäten im Bereich der eigenen Reizerweiterungen ein. Der Glaube stirbt ja bekanntlich zuletzt.
Volkskorrespondet Heinrich Schreiber berichtete auf »RoterMorgen«
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24. Juli | Flutkatastrophe und die Politiker – „schamlos!“

»Eine britische Wissenschaftlerin sagte, dass die deutschen Behörden vor der Flutkatastrophe gewarnt wurden« – schreibt die Süddeutsche Zeitung am 19. Juli 2020 und spricht von einem „Monumentalem Versagen der Behörden.
Volkskorrespondet Heinrich Schreiber berichtete auf »RoterMorgen«
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25. Juli | Die „Fackel“ des HERAKLES

Herbst 2017: Das Maß des Erträglichen ist längst überschritten: Zum wiederholten Male lieferte der deutsche Imperialismus Waffen an den israelischen Staat, den Staat, der im Namen des Zionismus dem palästinischen Volk jedes Existenzrecht abspricht und dabei ist, dieses Volk von der Landkarte auszulöschen. Jüngst drei Dolphin-U-Boote, die sich mit Nuklearwaffen(!) bestücken lassen, sowie mehrerer Kampfboote. Und die Waffenlobby reibt sich die Hände. Es ist also Zeit, „den Problemen scharf ins Gesicht“ zu sehen und den Knoten nicht nur zu kennen, sondern ihn auch zu lösen, wie Aristoteles riet.
Fariss Wogatzki: Möge keiner sagen er hätte es nicht gewusst! Mit einem Vorwort von Evelyn Hecht-Galinski, Zambon Verlag, Frankfurt 2017, 472 Seiten, 19,90 Euro

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	Even leftist journalism is not free and even small donations can help to publish big things!

Suche nach ‘Berlin Bulletin’

Victor Grossman

BREAKUPS AND LEAKS

Berlin Bulletin No. 178 .

Victor Grossman

SOME COME OTHERS GO

Berlin Bulletin No. 179 .

Victor Grossman

MIRROR MIRROR AND POLITICS

Berlin Bulletin No. 180 .

Victor Grossman

WHICH WAY?

Berlin Bulletin No. 181 .

Victor Grossman

AIRPORTS AND RALLIE

Berlin Bulletin No. 181 .

Victor Grossman

AN ICY RALLY WITH BURNING DEMANDS

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Berlin Bulletin No. 187

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