3 posts tagged “politics”
When I heard the news today, I had to remember a song from Roger Waters' album "Amused to Death". History is really going in circles.
In his song "Perfect Sense", Waters, the ex-head of Pink Floyd says:
"And the Germans killed the Jews
And the Jews killed the Arabs
And the Arabs killed the hostages
And that is the news
And is it any wonder
That the monkey's confused"
And that made me remember how much of an influence way beyond their century the German voters of the year 1933 really probably had. I woke up to the thought whether the ferocious so called "War on Terror" would be all that ferocious, had it not been for the Nazis forcing the sense of an urgent need to defend against everyone under any circumstances as part of Israel's DNA. What would a world without Hitler have been like? Probably the Middle East map would look pretty much the same as it does today, maybe not. There would not be an example for the hatred against the Jewish community upon which a lot of the Israeli-Arab conflict stands rock solid, seemingly for eternity.
Almost inevitably, the politics of almost racial segregation and the construction of fortifications around some parts of Israel that even belittle the pre-1989 Berlin Wall, does nothing to defuse this conflict. Israel's attack on a weakened Lebanon has done little to generate peace in the region either. The seeming tranquility in the region is one controlled with a crop, not one that is a chosen solution for all partners in what should be a dialogue in the region. Do the Jews kill the Arabs? Sorry folks, I am German and could and would not go as far as to subscribe to Waters' statement here. Be that as it may, certainly Israel has not been treating the humanitarian war conventions with a great deal of respect lately - and it is pretty irrelevant whether certain parts of its military have simply declined political supremacy or whether the rank and file actually sponsored its behavior during the 2006 assault on Lebanon.
Anyhow, the Arab's kill the hostages. And office workers on 9/11/2001. An epic with which we have had to cope with for the better part of six years now. Since then, it seems the world has reversed into full gear towards a new Dark Age. Yes, some 3,000 people were killed by the September 11 attacks. Civilian deaths, American deaths, heroic deaths. But then again: According to iraqbodycount.org, at least 56,468 Iraqui civilians were killed since the beginning of the hostilities which were initiated by the US under false allegations. Arguably, Iraqis are worse off now than they were under the Hussein regime. So, is one American life worth 18.82 Iraqi lives? Where do we find the certainty that we are allowed to do this? Where does the Bush Administration find it?
And that is the news.
Or is it? The more I look into this process, the more haunting the perspectives become to me. Look at it this way: What is the Western world willing to give up in terms of freedom - or rather which totalitarian powers is it willing to put into the hand and at the mercy of an administration which was caught a red handed liar? Set aside minor things like unwarranted wiretapping or secret dark camps (formerly called Konzentrationslager in Nazi jargon), freedom itself seems at stake. Since yesterday, the Rule of Law is no longer a valid category for the US-government. It reserves the right to define whichever foreigner as a hostile fighter, detain him indefinitely, put him before tribunals, and guarantee him zilch rights. Not that recent reports about police brutality inside the United States put whole groups of US-citizens in a better position. However, not even the pretence of a Rule of Law is now being sought by the Bush administration. Instead, it reserves the right to define who, if foreigner, becomes a second class object of torture, indefinite detention, and who becomes entitled to plane flights in unmarked white Boeings around the world.
The self perceived hostages kill their own freedoms? Possibly yes. There can be little doubt that the United States have begun sliding down a slippery slope of erosion of human and basic rights. The terrorists have a 100% mission accomplished. They have achieved their ultimate goal: The West was moved to set aside its very principles, its unique selling proposition if you will, that made it worth to struggle for. Civil liberties. Bin Laden and others need not drop a single bomb, because the West is caught in its cramp of fear and overreaction. Just like a human body, with its immune system gone berserk into a permanent red alert condition, the US will pay a heavy price. Some of them might be too glad to pay it, and it is probably not too speculative to say that members of the Bush administration will be amongst them.
What they overlook is that, Just like Germany is paying a heavy price for the Hitler-regime to this day, just like Germany has never again produced so many Nobel Prize winners in science after World War two as before, the US is set for an unpleasant surprise from here in about 15 or 20 years. Had it been the Grail of advance and freedom, Zeitgeist is moving away from the US. Intimidated intellectuals will not seek entry, they will simply stay away.
Where is Zeitgeist going to move?
Keep watching Scandinavia and maybe China for answers in the near future.
Without Hitler, the world would really be a better place, even as we speak.
German online IT newspage Heise.de reports in its Tuesday edition that the German legislator drafts a law that would forbid the dissemination of precise geodata. Some remark, it is a shift into full gear, back into communist era censorship.
According to the report, the German government has submitted a draft law to the upper chamber of German parliament titled: "Law for the protection against imperilment of the security of Germany by means of distribution of high quality reconnaissance data".
The law puts all earth reconnaissance and geo-data systems operated from Germany or by Germans under the potential threat of prohibition, and leaves large leeway for interpretation to the authorities to define what "high quality" actually is.
All operators of Geographical Information Systems (GIS) would, according to the draft law, need a written permission by the German authorities to distribute data, which would potentially confront the development of satellite based navigation systems and map material with unacceptable bureaucratic hurdles. The now introduced legislation, according to Heise, would also concern terrain elevation data models, as they could be used to operate unmanned aviation vehicles in terrorist contexts. It is interesting to observe that the law draws its constitutional justification from Article 26 of the German Grundgesetz (constitution):
"Article 26 [Ban on preparations for war of aggression]
(1) Acts tending to and undertaken with intent to disturb the peaceful relations between nations, especially to prepare for a war of aggression, shall be unconstitutional. They shall be made a criminal offense.
(2) Weapons designed for warfare may be manufactured, transported, or marketed only with the permission of the Federal Government. Details shall be regulated by a federal law."
[Non authoritative translation FYI, source: http://www.iuscomp.org/gla/statutes/GG.htm#26]
Commentators in the blogosphere argue that services like Google Earth would either be beaurocratized to the degree of standstill by the now introduced legislation, or be put in peril considered the potential risk of law violation, making it easy for GIS-companies to decide in turn to divert investment away from Germany.
The law provides for a maximum penalty of five years imprisonment or fines of up to EUR 500.000, putting the politically undesired distribution of geo data in one league with the sale of deadly weapons to rogue states, to which article 26 of the Grundgesetz did pertain in its original intention. It is noteworthy that the law, very obviously being a mishapped attempt to curb terrorist dangers, puts terrorist act at one level with "wars of aggression", completely blurring the border between individual criminal acts and state-sponsored wars of aggression.
Some members of the blogosphere also observed in comments about the article that the now introduced law marks an important step back towards communist-era handling of geodata, quoting a report from Berliner Zeitung about intentionally distorted maps in communist Eastern Germany before 1990.
When I went to Dusseldorf airport recently, one problem at the heart of the German Krankheit (German disease) beacme crystal clear to me: It's all about appearence and no or little substance.
Some weeks ago, i visited the airport in the West German city of Dusseldorf. Not that Dusseldorf differs in many ways from other German cities, on the contrary: It seems to be German society in a nutshell, hosting the well-off 10 per cent and extremely poor parts of the society.
Walking through the departures hall, the following image lept to my eye:
Now, one has to keep in mind that this is the official departure hall of Lufthansa at the Dusseldorf International Airport, not Erich-Sixt-Airport. The ads are by German car rental group Sixt. Actually, not only here, but also at the gangway-fingers, and all over the rest of the place, you will find quite obtrusive Sixt ads. Not only that. Also take a look at the following movie:
This is an aerial approach to the Düsseldorf ariport terminal, not the Vodafone headqarters in that town, as you may think.
Now, not to be mistaken: Ads are and will always be part of a traveller's world, and other airports do display advertisements as well. But what you see in Dusseldorf, as happens all over Germany, goes further: Public assets and their dignity as public places are being sold off to a cheap make-beleive of an advertiser's wonderland.
This goes so far that often projects having been financed and funded publicly are no longer recognizeable as such, or that form follow the advertiser's needs, not necessarily function. Football stadiums in Germany, almost wiithout exception, are named after beer brands or other corporate sponsores. Of course, this does not prevent that more often than not these projects have received heavy public funding before.
Corporates are not so much citizens in Germany than a-socially behaving parasites, joy riding on the back of taxpayers' Euros.
Which brings us to two quite important observations of symptomps of what I would call the "German Krankheit", the German Disease:
- on one hand, appearance overrides function, and everything is tailored to the need of sponsors. The world of make beleive that does not deliver on its promises, as long as the consumer can be billed and bombarded with obstrusive messages. It seems that the country is being sold off as a huge billboard,
- on the other hand, such behavior sheds some light onto the way that Germany ticks these days: Everything is measured to its market value. Even if you ask, what's so special about that. Beleive me, Germany is going to the extremes, as it always does in implementing a concept. Which means that people are getting forced into a hypercommercialized environment, and funny election results to the tunes of the 1930's should only be a question of time - actually tacitly, Germans are quickly getting fed up with the way globalization is implemented in preemptive obedience towards corporates by courage-less politicans.
Actually, in a TV broadcast in September, former German chancellor, Helmut Schmidt, has compared today's Germany to the Weimar Republic Germany in the 1930's. There is little to join to that remark, except for the observation that German politicians 2006 AD seem to be willing to strectch their good luck to the extreme and seem to go on living carelessly on borrowed time.
