Dialog International

A Bridge to "Blue America"

The February edition of Cicero has a number of excellent essays concerning US - German relations, and what chances there might be for improvement in a Second Bush administration.  One of the best pieces is by the Berlin writer Peter Schneider, who has been spending the year as "writer-in-residence" at Georgetown University in Washington DC.  So he has had a close-up view of the political divide in America - a divide that has grown even deeper since the election of November 2.  I find the observations and analysis in his essay Verdammt zur Partnerschaft  (literally: "Damned to parthership")  accurate and balanced.  I have translated the concluding passages:

From a moral standpoint, Bush’s America has can no longer lay claim for the leadership of the democratic west. The preemptive war in Iraq, the system of abuse and disenfranchisement of prisoners in Guantanamo, Afghanistan and Iraq, the masterminding of the voting irregularities in the 2000 and 2004 elections which disadvantaged the African-American voters, the blurring of the boundaries between church and state – none of this can be reconciled to the self-image and mission of the US as the beacon of liberty and human rights everywhere in the world.

Europeans now have to adjust to a partner on the other side of the Atlantic that has been transformed; they must react to the glaring contradictions between America’s self-image and its politics and at the same time find their own solutions. It would be dangerous for Europe, in pursuing its own path, to minimize the threat of Islamic totalitarianism, or, like Michael Moore and his legion of fans in Europe, to declare it a figment of the imagination. Many critics of the war in Iraq act as if everything would be fine in Iraq and the Middle East if only Saddam Hussein were still in power. The fact that one out every seven Germans believe that US agents were somehow behind or involved in the attacks on 9/11 – a similar number of French and Italians believe in such a conspiracy – shows how much Europe has become stuck in a stupid, even infantile, anti-Americanism. But the other danger is that European political leaders – in an effort to distance themselves from ant-Americanism and “feel-good” pacifism – will ignore America’s reckless use of military power and pledge blind loyalty to the alliance. An example of this kind of behavior was displayed by Angela Merkel during her visit to Washington DC in spring of 2003 when she called for closing ranks with the US – without uttering one critical word about the invasion of Iraq – as if it were the duty of Germany to follow America into any war, even into a war that was rejected by the majority of Americans themselves. A similar logic was displayed by the Atlantik-Bruecke e.V when it took out a full-page ad in the New York Times shortly for the launch of the Iraq invasion and listed everything the Germans were grateful to the US for: liberation from fascism, security shield during the Cold War, for the reunification of Germany. Many American readers were touched by this tribute, but were equally confused when they observed that 80 to 90% of all Germans were passionately opposed to the war in Iraq.

The US-German alliance cannot be stitched back together through displays of obedience. It is about time for German political leaders to think beyond a partnership with those who currently hold power in the White House, and build a bridge to the cosmopolitan and liberal America which may be out of power for some time to come. For “blue America” demands that Europe defend the ‘moral values’ of democratic civilization with confidence and resoluteness – values that George W. Bush and his people have abandoned in the name of “War on Terror”.

I like the idea of political leaders  reaching out to democrats in the US.  We know that a sizable percentage of Americans share the same values of mainstream Europeans.  By working together now, "blue" Americans and Europeans can work towards an alliance of equals, rather than one dominated by US interests. 

Anti-Germanism in the US Press

I have posted in tne past about anti-Americanism in the Europe, and there are numerous German blogs that attack the mainstream German press for its perceived anti-American slant.  But there has been compartatively little notice of the anti-German sentiment of much of the conservative press in the US.  To be sure, France is by far seen as the greater evil in red state America, and Germany is often seen as a vassal state to France, with Gerhard Schröder playing the role of Chirac's poodle. Especially on the economic front, Germany is seen as embodying everthing the "experts" in the US press - who worship the unfettered Free Market - despise.

A typical example anti-Germanism is Paul Johnson's recent column in Forbes Magazine with the title Germany's Dismal Future , where Germany is depicted on the edge of economic ruin - the same situation it was in at the end of the Weimar Republic.

Today the German economy is a model--especially for the rapidly expanding nations of the Third World, such as China and India--for what not to do. Stagnant production, static or falling productivity and appalling levels of unemployment are the salient factors. Unemployment figures have recently been revised upward to 4.5 million but could be as high as 6 million when the "hidden unemployed" are taken into account. These figures are close to those of 1932, at the depths of the Great Depression and just before Hitler came to power. So many being unemployed was one reason Hitler's bid for power was successful.

What is behind this economic collapse?  For one thing, the power of the trade unions.  Unions have lost most of their power in the US with rise of Wal-Mart and other anti-union corporations and the results have been devasting to the American working class: more than 45 million Americans lack basic health insurance. Johnson is enraged that unions still wield power in Germany:

German unions insist on short hours, high wages, immense social security benefits and conditions of work that make productivity increases virtually impossible. Their stranglehold on the economy is akin to that exercised by British unions before Margaret Thatcher smashed them in the early 1980s.

But what really angers Johnson and his ilk in the US press is Germany's turning away from the US hegemonic ambitions.  By looking to a stronger EU, Schröder has committed  unforgivable treason against its partner that dominated it for past 50 years:

ndeed, Germany's subservience to France is one of the most astonishing and inexplicable features of today's world. Chancellor Gerhard Schröder seems content to play the poodle to President Jacques Chirac in the most humiliating and grovelling way, following tamely in courses that demonstrably work against Germany both at home and abroad.

When Germany looked to U.S. leadership between 1950 and the early 1970s, it prospered. Since Germany submitted to French direction, the country has plunged relentlessly into the pit. Sooner or later the German people are going to grasp this salient truth; when they do, the consequences for Europe will be dramatic. This moment has been delayed, however, by the third factor in the nation's decline.

Germany's future looks very bleak indeed to Johnson, and he sees the nation collapsing in violence unless it reverses course and a strong "leader" emerges.

Such dismal tones are nowhere to be heard at the World Forum in Davos, where Schröder made a triumphant appearance .  The reaction of the world's elite to his half-hour speech would have astonished Johnson:

Gerhard Schröder muss ein glücklicher Mann sein. „Wir begrüßen Sie als den Kanzler der Reformen“, sagte Klaus Schwab, der Gründer des Weltwirtschaftsforums im Kongresszentrum von Davos, und all die mächtigen Manager im Auditorium schienen das ebenso zu sehen.

Eine halbe Stunde lang sprach der Bundeskanzler, frei, gelassen und überaus professionell. So etwas kommt hier gut an, und wenn man den Beifall hinter als Maßstab nimmt, dann hat Schröder etwas Entscheidendes geschafft.

Er ist der Mann der Wirtschaft, in dem Sinne jedenfalls, dass die Manager innerhalb und außerhalb Deutschlands den Kanzler als den einzigen Politiker anerkennen, der in Deutschland Reformen durchgesetzt hat und dies auch weiter wir können. Sein Wahlsieg ist hier in Davos schon eingepreist.

As the US Dollar continues its downward spiral due to the disasterous fiscal policies of the Bush amdinistration, it will be interesting to watch how the US press covers Europe's  - and Germany's - growing economic and political clout.

Auschwitz 60 Years Later

There was a lot of excellent commentary yesterday in the international press marking the date that Auschwitz was liberated by the Red Army.  But not matter how much we learn about what happened at Auschwitz and the other death camps, we are left in the end with a number of questions, which Rüdiger Suchsland asks in Telepolis (my translation):

Why did Germans commit these awful crimes?  Why did so many Germans - at least 100,000, perhaps as many as 500,000 were directly involved in the Holocaust - participate in this event?  Why did so few refuse to participate, even though it has been shown there were hardly any repercussions for refusing?  Why did the overwhelming majority of Germans accept genocide against the Jews as a reasonable response, when it was publicly announced by the Nazi officials?  Why didn't even one Bishop speak out openly in support of the Jewish population, when they were willing to do so to prevent euthanasia for handicapped Germans?

Incidentally, Suchsland is certainly correct that the genocide was widely known after 1942.  In the interesting book Reisen ins Reich 1933-1945, Oliver Lubrich compliles the impressions of foreign journalists who visited Germany during the NS-period.  The American radio correspondent Harry Flannery - who could barely understand German - told his listeners already in 1941 about "Jews being deported to concentration camps."  After the war, of course, few admitted to knowing anything. 

The editor of the right-wing Junge Freiheit , Dieter Stein, used the occasion of commemorating the liberation of Auschiwtz to attack Turkey for denying the genocide against  Armenians.  This fits the right-wing opposition to Turkey joining the EU, and the demonization of the Turkish community in Germany:

Zu Jahresbeginn wurde der Stoff laut Presseberichten sang- und klanglos wieder vom Plan gestrichen - auf Druck türkischer Diplomaten. Wie diametral entgegengesetzt der Umgang mit der Vernichtung der Juden in Deutschland und der Armenier in der Türkei ist: In Deutschland ist die Leugnung der Judenvernichtung unter Strafe gestellt, in der Türkei ist es mit Strafe bedroht, die Tatsache des Völkermordes überhaupt zu behaupten! Ein Thema, das von den Befürwortern des EU-Beitritts der Türkei elegant zur Seite geschoben wird. So unehrlich geht man mit dem Thema „Erinnerung“ um.

Finally, the writer Aharon Applefeld has some moving words for those who see Auschwitz as a reason for engaging in pre-emptive wars to fulfill what President Bush called God's mission to bring freedom to all:

This is not a story with a happy ending. A doctor who survived, from a religious background, who sailed to Israel with us in June 1946, told us: "We didn't see God when we expected him, so we have no choice but to do what he was supposed to do: we will protect the weak, we will love, we will comfort. From now on, the responsibility is all ours."

 

Rumsfeld's Munich Trip Uncertain

The charges of war crimes filed in German last month against Donald Rumsfeld and eight other officials of the Bush administration may be having some impact: Rummy is having second thoughts on attending the annual Munich Conference on Security Policy next month.  The Washington Post reports this morning:

    

The German press agency Deutsche Presse Agentur first reported last week that Rumsfeld had decided not to go to Munich. The agency said the decision was prompted by a criminal complaint, filed Nov. 30 with the federal prosecutor's office in Germany, accusing him of war crimes in connection with detainee abuse at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.

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    The 160-page complaint was brought by the New York-based Center for Constitutional Rights, a group of lawyers representing four Iraqis who say they were mistreated at the prison outside Baghdad. In addition to Rumsfeld, the complaint singles out eight other high-ranking U.S. military authorities and former CIA director George J. Tenet.

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   It is based on a German law, enacted in 2002, that gives the Karlsruhe Court "universal jurisdiction" in cases involving alleged war crimes. A prosecutor is obligated to investigate the claims but does not have to act on them further. So far, German authorities have said that the complaint against Rumsfeld and the others is being studied.

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    "We've been in discussions with the Germans about the case and have expressed concern because it would set a precedent for those who want to pursue politicized prosecutions," a spokesman for the U.S. Embassy in Berlin said yesterday.

Meanwhile, tens of thousands of protesters are organizing to welcome President Bush on his visit to Mainz on February 23rd, according to taz:

Der amerikanische Präsident trifft am 23. Februar Gerhard Schröder in Mainz, in der Stadt, deren Ruhm sich sonst hauptsächlich auf Weck, Worscht und Woi sowie der Fastnacht gründet. "Wenn Bush hier eine ,cosy atmosphere' erwartet, dann hat er sich aber getäuscht", sagt Tina. Denn Mainz macht mobil. Eine Demonstration wurde bereits einen Tag nach Bekanntgabe des Bush-Besuchs beim Ordnungsamt angemeldet, rund 100 Leute haben sich am vergangenen Samstag zu ersten Planungsgesprächen getroffen - Vertreter von Friedensgruppen, Gewerkschaften, Attac, Pax Christi und anderen Initiativen. "Sonst kooperiert ja nicht jeder mit jedem, aber in diesen Fall ist das etwas anderes", erklärt Tina, "nur rechte Gruppierungen wollen wir natürlich nicht dabei haben." Und Andreas ergänzt: "Bush ist der gemeinsame Nenner des Protestes, egal ob man jetzt den Schwerpunkt auf Irakkrieg, Umweltpolitik oder Bürgerrechte legt."

The Web site NotWelcomeBush  is a clearing house for information on the planned protests, and Genosse Tabu will keep the blogosphere informed on the preparations. 

 

Should the NPD be Banned?

The neo-Nazi NPD was the center of an uproar last week when it used the term "Bombing-Holocaust" to describe the firebombing of Dresden.  Reuters has the report:

A German far-right party has provoked outrage and calls that it be banned after it refused to take part in a minute's silence for Nazi victims and referred to wartime Allied bombing of Germany as a holocaust.

Mainstream politicians and Jewish leaders condemned the National Democratic Party (NPD) at the weekend after its 12 representatives in the Saxony state parliament staged a walkout on Friday, saying they would only remember German victims.

One NPD member later described Dresden's wartime destruction by the Allies as a "bombing holocaust".

The NPD's Web site has a press release from the party leader in Saxony - Holger Apfel - where he attacks film director Steven Spielberg and the Holocaust Museum in Berlin: (my translation)

"We will not rest until no further monuments are built to attack the German Volk and new memorials are established to remember the Germans who perished in Dresden, Hamburg, Berlin and elsewhere."

Der Denkpass notes that it is hardly a coincidence that  Apfel made this announcement on January 20, the anniversary of the Wannsee Conference where the policy of the Endlösung (Final Solution) was established.  The behavior of the NPD has renewed calls for Parteiverbot (banning the party) of the NPD.  Der Spindoktor  in favor of this measure, and criticizes interior minister Otto Schily for his excuses as to why this is not possible.  The conservative blog Fakt und Fiktion has some reasonable arguments against banning the party, but then goes on to blame Gerhard Schröder for the rise of right wing extremism in Germany.  By refusing to participate in the pre-emptive invasion of Iraq Schroeder fanned the flames of anti-Americanism - which the blogger equates with anti-Semitism. 

Herbert Prantl in the Sueddeutsche Zeitung is probably correct that "it is impossible to ban stupidity" in a democracy ( we know much about this in the United States):

Man sollte den Versuch eines Verbots nicht noch einmal unternehmen. Dummheit kann man nicht verbieten, die Demokratie muss sich mit ihr auseinander setzen. Das freilich wird dann nicht ganz einfach, wenn in Büchern, in Reden, in historischen Seminaren und auf Wahlveranstaltungen respektable Personen sich als V-Leute der Verdrängung des Holocaust zu erkennen geben. Irgendwann muss wirklich Schluss sein – mit den immer neuen Versuchen der Relativierung der Nazi-Gräuel.

One can only hope that those voters in Saxony that elected the NPD to the state assembly are having second thoughts. 

 

The Idea of Freedom

In Franz Kafka's short story Der Heizer  (published in English as The Stoker)  the protagonist  Karl Rossmann arrives in New York harbor on a steamship and watches as  the Statue of Liberty becomes visible through the fog.  But instead of a torch lady liberty is holding a sword. 

President Bush, in his inaugural address, mentioned the words freedom and liberty at least 40 times.  Why aren't European observers rejoicing this vision of freedom triumphantly spreading throughout the world?  Isn't this the culmination of the ideals first developed in the Enlightenment, and then exported to the new world?  Or does freedom have different meanings?  I agree with erphschwester that the protesters at the inauguration parade may have been puzzled by Bush's repeated mentioning of Freedom:

Während Mister B. über Freiheit und Demokratie sprach, wurden draußen die Demonstranten, die augenscheinlich eine andere Vorstellung davon haben als Mister B., mit Schlagstöcken und so´m Pfefferzeugs von Mister B.´s Art von Demokratie und Freiheit  überzeugt.

Is it a coincidence that President Bush gave this paean to Freedom in Schiller Year?  It is unlikely that Bush ever read Schiller - or even heard of him.  But maybe he should before he throws out the word freedom over and over again, for no other poet-thinker thought as much about freedom as Schiller.  This is from his great poem Der Spaziergang :

Seine Fesseln zerbricht der Mensch. Der Beglückte! Zerriss' er
Mit den Fesseln der Furcht nur nicht den Zügel der Scham!
  Freiheit ruft die Vernunft, Freiheit die wilde Begierde,
Von der heilgen Natur ringen sie lüstern sich los.
  Ach, da reißen im Sturm die Anker, die an dem Ufer
Warnend ihn hielten, ihn faßt mächtig der flutende Strom,
  Ins Unendliche reißt er ihn hin, die Küste verschwindet,
Hoch auf der Fluten Gebirg wiegt sich entmastet der Kahn,
  Hinter Wolken erlöschen des Wagens beharrliche Sterne,
Bleibend ist nichts mehr, es irrt selbst in dem Busen der Gott.

Schiller watched the ideal of freedom in the French Revolution turn into arbitrary terror, and came to believe that only through art could the impulse for freedom (Spieltrieb) achieve moral completion.  In the Bush doctrine freedom becomes the legitimizing principle for preemptive war (Operation Iraqi Freedom)  and abuse of human rights (Guantanamo).

Orlando Patterson has an interesting piece in the New York Times where he points out that most Americans have a different understanding of the concept of freedom - one that would have been  completely alien to  Schiller:

But most ordinary Americans view freedom in quite different terms. In their minds, freedom has been radically privatized. Its most striking feature is what is left out: politics, civic participation and the celebration of traditional rights, for instance. Freedom is largely a personal matter having to do with relations with others and success in the world.

Freedom, in this conception, means doing what one wants and getting one's way. It is measured in terms of one's independence and autonomy, on the one hand, and one's influence and power, on the other. It is experienced most powerfully in mobility - both socioeconomic and geographic.

In many ways this is the triumph of the classic 19th-century version of freedom, the version that philosophers and historians preached but society never quite achieved. This 19th-century freedom must now coexist with the more modern version of freedom. It does so by acknowledging the latter but not necessarily including it.

So perhaps it this private consumer ideal of  freedom that President Bush was referring to his speech.  If so, Kafka with his image of the sword was amazingly prophetic.

Democracy and Populism

In his inaugural address yesterday, President Bush pledged to spread democracy throughout the world. By 'Democracy' I assume he was referring to the American-style democratic system of government.  But in this context it is fair to ask: is America still democratic?  The Italian philosoper Paolo Flores D'Arcais has an interesting essay in Die Zeit where he examines this question: Is America Still a Democracy?  His findings are not encouraging.

I have translated some key passages from the German, which itself was a translation from the Italian original.

There are other minimum standards for a democracy, that the United States no longer fulfills. Not too long ago it seemed that the United States was the promised land for freedom of the press, and that the public would not tolerate a government that lied to them. But what about George W. Bush?  He is allowed to disseminate untruth with impunity. He lied about the reasons for going to war in Iraq, a war that has killed nearly 1,400 American soldiers and tens of thousands of non-combatant Iraqi citizens. But Bush won a triumphant re-election. His lies no longer cause a moral outrage. Puritanical America is a distant memory.  Jesuitism without Jesuits has prevailed.

The New York Times and other major newspapers have admitted that they allowed themselves to be used as mouthpieces for the administration. But is that really meaningful?  In reality, the value of newspapers has diminished greatly as purveyors of the product “information”.  The vast majority of Americans get their information from television, where information is ‘embedded’ in the interests of the administration.  Furthermore the brutal competition in the media markets leads to censorship, manipulation and blatant lies at the television stations. It is becoming extremely rare that they respect what Hannah Arendt called “ the modest truths contained in facts”.  Once that respect is gone, democracy is endangered.

Even more disturbing is the creeping normalcy of torture, the theoretical groundwork of which  was prepared in the first Bush administration. The conservative journal Commentary printed a piece in July/August 2004  by the legal scholar Andrew McCarthy where the ‘Unthinkable’ concession to torture was not only made thinkable, but was considered necessary.  “There are difficult circumstances that call for measures that are illegal under US and international law.”

Now that the critical journalism has been weakened by television, there is only one institution that stands as a counterweight to the administration: the Judiciary.  But can it still play the role that the founding fathers intended?

Let’s consider the ‘Bible’ of democracy – The Federalist Papers . James Madison wrote:” The concentration of the power of the executive, legislative and judiciary in one hand is the clear sign of tyranny.”  And none other than Thomas Jefferson wrote in his autobiography:” Good government is realized through a distribution of power, not a concentration.”  And Alexis de Tocqueville writes in Democracy in America: “What I find most disturbing in America is not the prevailing freedom, but the weak protection against tyranny, for in many states the judges are elected by the voters.  I’m not saying that Americans make frequent use of tyranny, but rather there is little security from security.”

Even though political scientists are reluctant to admit the truth: In liberal democracies the political right is often democratic against its will. And it often uses the democratic process to its own tactical advantage. But as soon as democracy begins to be taken seriously and the privileges are called into question, then populism rears its head and even God is recruited to the cause. In short, the more true democracy begins to take root, the faster the interests of the establishment are mobilized.  It feels threatens, and therefore itself threatens the foundations of democracy: from the independent judiciary to the  critical free press.  It seeks to undermine the secular nature of the state as well as the integrity of the voting process.

When the demons of populism are “called to arms” the weapon of choice is often a war. Every populist movement requires an enemy in order the exorcise the liberal logic and transform internal opponents into ‘traitors’.  War closes the antidemocratic circle of populism and glorifies its components: the community is heralded as ‘one big family’ (or even company) with the father at the head.  Populism instills the logic of obedience. Dissent – the basis for democratic coexistence – is criminalized and conformism  is the great virtue.

This conformism is now spreading throughout rural America. It is dangerous because its moral values have totalitarian features and minority groups are becoming marginalized, if not demonized.  The individual is pressured into obedience; he must not stand out from the ‘herd’.  It is precisely his self-knowledge as an individual that is so suspect to the majority.  And here it should be stated:  those who degrade a nation into a huge ‘army’ and believe they can prevail by relying on the slogan “God is on our side”, they have subverted the ideals of the Founding Fathers and transformed the spirit of the constitution into its opposite.

So more often than not the states that we call democracies are actually democracies in decline.  And it’s not just a bad dream to think that nations – East and West – are almost imperceptibly moving in the direction of a new political  model:  capitalism without democracy.  China and Russia – each in its own way -  are quite openly heading down this path.  The America of the fundamentalists and the oil magnate Bush (not to mention little Italy, with it Berlusconi regime) are following in a less overt way. 

Reviews of Bush Inaugural Speech

The German press reacted for the most part with skepticism and cynicism to Bush's second inaugural speech.  Writing in the Frankfurter Rundschau Arnd Festerling called the speech "Just Words", noting that the only difference between the spectacle in Washington DC and the installation of Julius Caesar was the presence of snow.  Bush's promise of freedom throughout the world rings hollow when democratic rights in America have been curtailed in the global 'War on Terror.'

In seiner ersten Amtszeit hat er den Krieg gegen den Terror ausgerufen - unzweifelhaft ein guter Gedanke - und im Vorübergehen die bürgerlichen Rechte in den USA massiv eingeschränkt, dazu das Verhältnis zu vielen Verbündeten demoliert. Er hat Irak Frieden und Demokratie versprochen - wer wollte dagegen etwas sagen - und die blutige Diktatur Saddams zunächst einmal in einen anarchischen Hort des Terrors verwandelt; um den Preis abertausender, auch amerikanischer Toter. Er hat seinem eigenen Land Wohlstand und Wohlfahrt versprochen, dabei drei Mal die Steuern massiv zugunsten der Reichen gesenkt, das Staatsdefizit in unglaubliche Höhen (und den Dollar in ungeahnte Tiefen) katapultiert und gleichzeitig das Sozialsystem noch weiter runtergebracht.

There was much commentary that Bush's approval ratings were the lowest recorded for the a second term president, and that his proposed overhaul of the Social Securith system lacked public support.  In the Austrian Die Presse it was noted that a recent international poll found that a majority consider President Bush to be a 'major threat to wold peace'.

Die Weltbevölkerung gibt George Bush keinen Vertrauensvorschuss für seine zweite Amtszeit als US-Präsident: Einer Umfrage des britischen Rundfunks zufolge glauben 58 Prozent von 21.000 Befragten in 21 Staaten, dass der Weltfrieden durch Bushs Wiederwahl gefährdet sei. Die meisten Kritiker gibt es in der Türkei (82) und Argentinien (79 Prozent).

Der Spiegel was one of the few media outlets that took note of the international protests to the Bush inauguration:

In Washington, San Francisco, Los Angeles und anderen Städten wurden Demonstrationen mit Tausenden Teilnehmern erwartet. "Es gibt einige in diesem Land, die nicht in der Stimmung sind, den Präsidenten einen sonnigen Tag genießen zu lassen", sagte James Hudnut-Beumler, ein Experte für Protestbewegungen. Historisch betrachtet seien

The left wing taz was particularly scathing in its headline: Bush Threatens More Freedom.  And Bernd Pickert in his commentary - The Horror is Justified - interprets the inaugural address as a justification for future preemptive wars:

US-Präsident George W. Bush als missionierenden Irren an der Spitze einer waffenstarrenden Weltmacht zu bezeichnen, führt nicht wirklich weiter, löst keine Probleme und ist, obwohl beleidigend, nicht einmal mehr besonders originell. Und doch: Wer sich an den Wahnsinn nicht gewöhnen mag und ernst nimmt, was Bush vor und in seiner Antrittsrede zum Besten gab, bekommt vor dieser US-Regierung das Grausen. "Wir sind zu den größten Leistungen in der Geschichte der Freiheit bereit", rief Bush gestern am Ende seiner Rede und drohte allen Tyrannen der Welt. Überall auf der Welt müssten sich die USA um die Freiheit bemühen, wenn sie ihre eigene bewahren wollten.

But even conservative papers such as Die Welt were rather subdued in their enthusiasm for Bush's rhetoric of freedom. The paper describes in detail the extraordinary security precautions that set a distinct undemocratic tone for the event.  Even the ostensible supporters of the Bush administration seem to be approaching the next four years with dread.

Airbus: Triumph of Old Europe

Lots of commentary in the US and European press about the new super-jumbo Airbus 380 jet that has a capacity of up to 800 passengers. This is from Forbes:

French President Jacques Chirac and other European leaders struck a triumphal note at the ceremony, hailing the A380 as a sign of Europe's capacity to generate world-beating industries.

"It's a symbol of economic strength, technological innovation, the dedication of the work force that built it and above all of a confidence that we can compete and win in the global market," British Prime Minister Tony Blair said.

But the A380, which was partially funded by European governments, amounts to a huge bet that carriers need ever-bigger planes to process a growing numbers of passengers through the busiest hub airports. Airbus is investing $13 billion to develop the plane, which has a list price of $280 million apiece and is scheduled for its first commercial flight in 2006.

It was German chancellor Gerhard Schröder who alluded to the geopolitical rivalry between the EU and the United States.

For Gerhard Schröder, Airbus seemed to amount to the revenge of “old Europe” against the Americans who had relegated Germany to that category. “This is a triumph of science and engineering . . . The tradition of good old Europe made this possible,” the Chancellor said. “Our Europe is still in a position to give impulse to innovative actions.”

Der Spiegel exhibits a bit of Schadenfreude today in surveying the reactions of the US press to the Airbus announcement.

Reactions to Abu Ghraib Verdict

If the Bush administration thought that the guilty verdict for Charles Graner - resulting in a 10-year prison sentence - would put to rest the shameful chapter of prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib they were mistaken.  Judging from the reactions in the German press, the verdict only highlighted the inequities of justice in the case, and the sense that that the architects of the strategy are not only escaping punishment, but are being rewarded by a government engaged in a immoral policy.

Bernd Pickert is certainly correct when he writes in taz that the only unusual aspect to the case is that that there were photographs. How would the public react, Pickert asks, if we had photos of the planes 'rendering' prisoners for torture in Afghanistan?  What it there were photos of the abuses taking place in Guantanamo?  The true lesson here is: don't get caught.

Das politische Verhalten der US-Regierung und die Belobigung von Alberto Gonzales aber zeigen, dass die Message der Urteile nur ist: Du sollst dich nicht erwischen lassen. Wie würde die Öffentlichkeit wohl reagieren, wenn sie Bilder davon sehen könnte, was mit den geheimen Gefangenen der CIA geschieht, die noch immer in klandestinen Charterflügen in Folterländer verbracht werden? Was, wenn sie detaillierte Fotos vom Umgang mit den Gefangenen in Guantánamo zu Gesicht bekäme?

Sueddeutsche Zeitung in a commentary  agreed with the verdict, but felt that justice had not been done in the case.  Noone believes that the atrocities in Abu Ghraib were isolated, or were done at the sole initiative of a few unsupervised soldiers:

Graner hat also seine gerechte Strafe erhalten. Doch ist damit auch schon der Gerechtigkeit Genüge geleistet worden? Wohl nicht. Kaum jemand glaubt, dass die Folterabende von Abu Ghraib alleine auf die Initiative einer gelangweilten Nachtschicht zurückgeführt werden können.

The Tagesspiegel has a commentary "Pyramid of Shame" where the editors state that the Graner verdict leaves a bitter taste, since the case of Abu Ghraib is nothing more than the logical consequence of what began at Guantanamo:

Doch ein Rest Bitterkeit bleibt. Abu Ghraib – das war mehr als die Entgleisung einiger mieser Charaktere. Das Klima für die Misshandlungen wurde begünstigt, ja geschaffen von ganz oben. Auf Guantanamo begann, was in jenen Pyramiden aus nackten Leibern endete, die zwischen den Zellen aufgetürmt wurden und in die die US-Soldaten, Anlauf nehmend, mit voller Wucht hineinsprangen. Die Diskussion darüber ist erstickt. Die Täter landen hinter Gittern, die Anstifter sind frei. Deren Unschuldsmienen sind das wahre Vermächtnis von Abu Ghraib.

The confirmation of the architect of the US torture policy - Alberto Gonzales - as the new attorney general of the United States will be a constant reminder for the next four years of America's betrayal of its most cherished ideals.  The Graner verdict changes nothing.