Re: In Germany, Marx comes third, outdone by Martin Luther and Konrad Adenauer
K"onrad Adenauer, the first post-war West german leader has been chosen by TVwatchers as the "greatest German" in the ZDF-show called Unsere Besten. When3,2 million Germans voted in the finals, he beat Martin Luther (second) andKarl Marx (third)." All the more credence to the theory that a EURODISNEY in Berlin would never go bankrupt and will make lots of money all the time. Come to think of it I saw many Germans at EURODISNEY when I visited. Had to: pressure from the kids; the youngest 9 years said: mom i am sorry that i fall into the trap they set for kids in these tv commercials and then I make you buy things for me that i do not really need... i think they take your money that way. Then again 50 or 80 million germans can be wrong time and again, ain'it? Do you Yahoo!? Free Pop-Up Blocker - Get it now
In Germany, Marx comes third, outdone by Martin Luther and Konrad Adenauer
Konrad Adenauer, the first post-war West german leader has been chosen by TV watchers as the "greatest German" in the ZDF-show called Unsere Besten. When 3,2 million Germans voted in the finals, he beat Martin Luther (second) and Karl Marx (third). The ZDF-show was ridiculed by some, but the producers of the show point out that millions of people watched discussion for days about the pro's and con's of Bach, Gutenberg, Goethe en Willy Brandt. Throughout the ex-DDR (as well as in Hamburg en Bremen) Marx came out number 1, staunchly defended on TV by ex-PDS-leider Gregor Gysi, who promoted a vision of a world without exploitation. "We can be proud that one of us thought of that", he said. But there are five times as many West Germans. Konrad Adenauer was praised by tv-historian Guido Knopp as father of freedom and the happy Federal Republic, with an integrity which politicians today don't have. Luther probably profited in the ratings from a recent movie about his life. In fourth place were the student Sophie Scholl en her brother Hans. They were executed by Hitler, who was not included in the competition. From: http://www.volkskrant.nl/buitenland/1070179262819.html
Marx again popular in Germany: voted 10th in the top ten "most important" Germans
Marx rivals Einstein for Best German Saturday 08 November 2003, 12:06 Makka Time, 9:06 GMT Millions of German television viewers picked Karl Marx, Albert Einstein and Willy Brandt among the top 10 Best Germans of all time in a national call-in contest on Friday. More than 1300 Germans were nominated for the competition to identify the 10 most important Germans, and a "top 100" list unveiled on Friday night contained a number of surprises. A winner will be selected from the 10 finalists in three weeks. In a country long weighted down by guilt from World War Two and wary of idolising national heroes as a reaction to the ultra-national Nazi era, the Best German contest reflects a growing, if still modest, sense of German patriotism. While sports heroes like Formula One champion Michael Schumacher, Wimbledon title winner Boris Becker, tennis queen Steffi Graf and football World Cup winner Franz Beckenbauer made it into the top 40, supermodel Claudia Schiffer and Nobel-prize winning author Guenter Grass weren't even among the first 100. Organised by Bild newspaper and ZDF television, Germans now have three weeks to cast ballots for the top 10 finalists to pick the Best German in a competition modelled on a popular British BBC television programme called Great Britons that selected war-time Prime Minister Winston Churchill ahead of Shakespeare, Darwin and Princess Diana. () Top 10 Germans: Albert Einstein Johann Sebastian Bach Karl Marx Willy Brandt Konrad Adenauer Otto von Bismarck Sophie & Hans Scholl Martin Luther Johannes Gutenberg Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Notable among the top 100 were the high number of those famed for resisting Hitler - Georg Elsner, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and Claus Schenk von Stauffenberg. The list was rigged to exclude Hitler and most of his entourage, but Nazi, and later US, rocket scientist Wernher von Braun was ranked the 63rd. Another surprise entry in the top 100 were the so-called Truemmerfrauen - the myriad of women in bucket brigades who cleared away the rubble from bombed out cities after the war. They got the 88th place, ahead of former world champion boxer Max Schmeling, now 97 years old. Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder was ranked 82nd behind Olympic figure skating champion Katarina Witt in 70th, nationalistic composer Richard Wagner at 69th and sultry actress Marlene Dietrich in 50th position. Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer (52), trailed rock singer Nena (38), known abroad for her 1984 antiwar song 99 Luftballons, Nazi-era businessman Oskar Schindler who saved Jews from death camps (37), Beckenbauer (36), Becker (35), Graf (32), Schumacher (26) and composer Ludwig van Beethoven (12). Former German Chancellor Helmut Kohl was 13th, ahead of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (20) - a controversial pick because Austria claims the composer as its native son. An early glimpse of the voting for the final contest that began on Friday showed the trend favouring Einstein, a physicist who fled Nazi Germany for the United States, ahead of Adenauer and Goethe. Marx, the German-born communist philosopher and author of Das Kapital, and Bismarck were in 10th and ninth place after the first five minutes of voting. Source: http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/D2FE5D27-F9A3-4317-AF95-B17F2007AD8D. htm
Art in former east Germany
In the beautiful New National Gallery by Mies van der Rohe, in Berlin just south east of the Tiergarten, and west of the new Potsdamer Platz, is a remarkable extensive exhibition of "Art in the German Democratic Republic". It runs to October 26th. I am no expert in evaluating art, and knew nothing of the different groups, but the overall effect is impressive for its breadth and variety out of a population of 17 million. Of course there may be selection factors, but the various reviews I have seen do not suggest that the organisers are guilty of gross bias. My impression is that soon after the fall of the Nazi regime, there was little appetite for heroic modernist style socialist realist art, which after all had some similarities with Nazi art. There were no obvious signs of a sudden period of repression, as there were, if I recall correctly, in the range of postwar Hungarian modern art (that goes through a period of triviality after 1956). The Berlin programme seems fair in saying that the varieties of contributions are more complex than a division into art that was for the regime and art that was against it. The art however gives me an impression of an active civil society, often varying from one city to another. As the decades went on there seems to be a tendency to focus on self-doubt and boredom, but perhaps I am reading something into this. No utopia, and no doubt some suffered for their political leanings. But it is more of a mixed picture, in various art forms, than I first expected. And many of the pieces were a mixture of the attractive, ingenious, and demanding, that is perhaps a feature of art rather than of mere representation. Chris Burford London
Germany
Return of recession dashes German hopes Stagnant economy defies Schröder's reform efforts · Investment bank's fate in the balance David Gow, industrial editor Friday August 15, 2003 The Guardian Germany sank into recession in the first half of this year, dragging Italy, Holland and most of the rest of mainland Europe with it, official figures showed yesterday. Chancellor Gerhard Schröder and his economics minister, Wolfgang Clement, insisted that the 0.1% contraction in the second quarter after 0.2% in the first showed the economy in stagnation rather than recession. But economists warned that the strength of the euro, which has depressed German exports, falling personal incomes and subdued consumer spending would carry over into next year. Amid forecasts of 4.75 million unemployed next year - a rise of half a million - the federal statistics office said Germany had entered a technical recession for the second time in two years - killing off government forecasts of 0.75% growth this year. Berlin's DIW institute has forecast that the economy will shrink by 0.1% this year before growing 1.3% in 2004, helped by a larger number of working days. Kiel's IfW sees zero growth this year followed by 1.8% in 2004. Mr Schröder, fighting to push through planned economic and social reforms, including ?16.9bn (£12.5bn) of early tax cuts next year, said sentiment pointed to a recovery in the second half. Mr Clement blamed the weak global environment, appreciation of the euro and continuing uncertainty after the war in Iraq for Germany's plight - along with strikes in eastern Germany's manufacturing sector earlier this year. "However, we expect a slight recovery in the second half and the beginning of the economic turnaround that we desperately need," he said, pointing to low interest rates and the planned reforms. The social democrat-led government is banking on a pick-up in business confidence to kick-start the economy but several German companies, many of them laying off staff, warned of depressed demand. ThyssenKrupp, the steel group, reported third quarter pre-tax earnings down from ?316m to ?221m, and warned that its target of ?1.5bn full year profits next year would have to be revised if weakness in its core markets persisted. "If the weakness continues in the coming months, particularly in our important automobile, construction and engineering markets, we will reconsider our plans ... The economic parameters have consistently deteriorated," said Ekkehard Schulz, the chief executive. Wolfgang Reitzle, the former Jaguar chief and now head of forklift truck maker Linde, said the company was beginning to see good results after reporting a 9.6% fall in first half profits to ?253m. But he warned that the weak economy and strong euro were damaging prospects. Deutsche Telekom said the weak economy - and renewed competition - cut domestic sales 5.5% to ?6.2bn, but it beat forecasts by announcing a net profit of ?256m in the second quarter, compared with a loss of ?2bn last year. The company, which has cut thousands of jobs, bucked the gloomy trend by saying it had cut its debt to ?53bn, reaching its target six months early, and planned to reinstate dividend payments that were suspended last year in 2005. E.On, Germany's largest utility, announced a 19% rise in operating profit to ?2.68bn as it acquired a majority stake in Swedish energy company Graninge. It already owns Powergen in the UK. The recession in Europe's largest economy helped propel the rest of the mainland towards prolonged contraction, held up only during the second quarter by 0.4% growth in Greece. The European commission predicted a rise in activity in the second half, driven by consumer spending.
Germany-Thatcherization?
Germany faces a Thatcherite conversion David Gow doesn't think Germany should be put through the kind of radical economic restructuring that the UK underwent in the 1980s Monday March 17, 2003 The Guardian Hans-Olaf Henkel, the former head of Germany's most powerful business lobby group, the BDI, has spent years trying to drum up support for a radical dose of Thatcherism in what remains Europe's biggest economy. But the resistance to stripping unions of their power, as well as deregulation, privatisation and liberalisation of markets, has been ferocious, not least among businesses themselves. Germany once resolved conflicts violently; now it seeks consensus in everything. The whole society and economy is built on consensus and company executives have seen great strengths in the system of co-determination, not least the ability to plan for the medium to long term and avoid upheaval in the form of strikes. But in recent years, this consensual system has degenerated into a form of stasis. Last Friday's speech by the chancellor, Gerhard Schröder, unveiling a set of long-delayed and overdue structural reforms, was designed to kickstart a new beginning for an economy that has become the sick man of Europe with the lowest growth record. Superficially, the Schröder package amounts to a pretty radical set of measures, particularly for a man of the social democratic left. He has already enraged the main union body, the DGB, with his proposals and faces an uphill struggle to convince his own party, many of whose Bundestag deputies are themselves trade unionists. Companies will, for instance, be allowed to opt out of centralised collective pay bargaining if they are not making enough profits. If employers and unions fail to make bargaining more flexible, the government will force them to through legislation. In fact, unions like IG Metall already turn a blind eye to breaches of national pay deals, especially if a company is in trouble and could be forced to lay off its entire staff. But this is a much more comprehensive approach. The re-elected Schröder government is also doing the unthinkable: making it easier to sack workers, particularly in small businesses with more than five employees. Staff are given the choice between legal action and redundancy money. Regulations obliging firms to sack younger workers before older employees will also amended. Full unemployment benefit - giving 67% of former pay to people with children and 60% to the childless - will be available for only 12 months, not 32, for those aged under 55 and for 18 months for those older than that. Unemployment aid, at 57% of the old wage, now cuts in after unemployment benefit has lapsed; henceforth it will be merged with means-tested social welfare benefits. Taken with a 15bn euro (£10.2bn) economic stimulus package and well-trailed reforms to the health and pension systems to reduce their spiralling costs, this could be interpreted as a Thatcherite conversion. Certainly, Berlin seems to have acknowledged the need for structural reforms rather than the traditional response of throwing money at a problem. But, as we have seen with the Hartz programme for combating unemployment, the government is good on promises, short on delivery. It is also far from certain whether it can get the necessary parliamentary - and party - support for the package. Already, the bill raising taxes to meet the deficit target set out in the EU stability and growth pact has been blocked in the Bundesrat or upper house controlled by the Christian Democratic Union opposition and its Bavarian allies in the Christian Social Union. This latest package could be blocked equally easily. Inevitably, the package has already been lambasted by the DGB as bitterly disappointing and a breach of Schröder's election pledges but the union body has become ultra-conservative in its thinking, refusing to accept any changes that could dent unemployment as it approaches an official 5 million. Analysts believe, naturally, that the reforms fall short of what is really required. Modern Germany, however, is not cut out for Thatcherism (nor was the UK really) and is not about to embark on an experiment in social and economic engineering that could undo all the genuine benefits of the post-war consensual system. Schröder, the ultimate pragmatist, knows he has to act to get the economy out of the doldrums but it will come as no surprise if, in a few months' time, the package has become smaller and far less radical. · David Gow is the Guardian's industrial editor
Re: Germany
Eichel's claim rings true. Does anyone know the current figure for the transfer to the Neue Laender (former GDR) each year? I think I recall hearing ten years after the fall of the wall that it was continuing at the incredible rate of 150 milliarden (billions) of marks a year, or was it three years? Or did I get the figures wrong? Essentially the enforced currency unification under Kohl's populist demagogy was a disaster, abruptly destroying a whole swathe of productive forces, and leaving the east on charity handouts. The instructive comparison is with the Czech Republic, which of course kept its own currency without a destruction of large sections of relatively advanced productive capacity, at the price of accepting an inequality of wages compared to its richer western neighbours. That gave the possibility of smoother change. But does anyone know of any recent economic comparison? The massive bailout of East Germany also brought to an end the EU dynamic of the 80's that Germany was able to continue to be a centre of capital accumulation and subsidise a large portion of the regional development subsidies to the outlying areas of the EU. Perhaps it could not have gone on forever but is seemed to work for the EU in the 80's. Chris Burford London At 2003-03-05 19:45 -0800, you wrote: Germany: a powerhouse in crisis Larry Elliott and John Hooper Thursday March 6, 2003 The Guardian Germany continues to pay a high economic price for reunification and it will take "an entire generation" to solve the problems of the former communist eastern states, the country's finance minister, Hans Eichel, says today. In an interview with the Guardian, Mr Eichel says that Germany is a "very competitive economy" which is at no risk of following Japan into long-term decline. But he claims that 13 years after joining the ramshackle economy of the German Democratic Republic with West Germany the legacy of de-industrialisation and high unemployment remains. Figures out today are likely to show unemployment in Germany rising towards 5 million. Mr Eichel says reunification "was in effect a programme for the de-industrialisation of eastern Germany and it led to very high unemployment, which it will take an entire generation to remedy". Unemployment has added 1.5% of GDP to Germany's social security bill and led to increased borrowing, he says. With the European Central Bank likely to cut interest rates for the eurozone today, Mr Eichel rejects the idea that Germany's problems would be eased if it was able to set its own rates. He also defends the EU's stability and growth pact, despite the pressure on the German government to keep its budget deficit below the 3% of GDP set by Brussels. He adds that if growth is lower than 1% this year, as many forecasters expect, he will allow borrowing to rise above the ceiling.
Germany
Germany: a powerhouse in crisis Larry Elliott and John Hooper Thursday March 6, 2003 The Guardian Germany continues to pay a high economic price for reunification and it will take "an entire generation" to solve the problems of the former communist eastern states, the country's finance minister, Hans Eichel, says today. In an interview with the Guardian, Mr Eichel says that Germany is a "very competitive economy" which is at no risk of following Japan into long-term decline. But he claims that 13 years after joining the ramshackle economy of the German Democratic Republic with West Germany the legacy of de-industrialisation and high unemployment remains. Figures out today are likely to show unemployment in Germany rising towards 5 million. Mr Eichel says reunification "was in effect a programme for the de-industrialisation of eastern Germany and it led to very high unemployment, which it will take an entire generation to remedy". Unemployment has added 1.5% of GDP to Germany's social security bill and led to increased borrowing, he says. With the European Central Bank likely to cut interest rates for the eurozone today, Mr Eichel rejects the idea that Germany's problems would be eased if it was able to set its own rates. He also defends the EU's stability and growth pact, despite the pressure on the German government to keep its budget deficit below the 3% of GDP set by Brussels. He adds that if growth is lower than 1% this year, as many forecasters expect, he will allow borrowing to rise above the ceiling.
Re: France Germany Russia China
At 24/02/03 18:29 +, I wrote: For China to move out of the shadows is remarkable. premature. It appears that the French are briefing that China supports the memorandum. (That would be consistent with its position). China or the other three may have decided it is better tactically that its name does not appear directly on the statement. Either way it seems likely there has been close consultation with China. Some commentators think the US will certainly be able to coerce and frankly bribe enough votes on the Security Council. If it does that, hopefully the progressive movement will expose the corruption. If Tony Blair declared the only reason for not accepting a UN verdict would be an "unreasonable" veto (his definition of unreasonable) others can decide if a majority vote has been achieved wth more massage than the US presidential election. Judging by Turkey the price is high. But other commentators think that it will be uphill for the axis of virtue. As the New York Times conceded yesterday. Right now, things don't look promising for those of us who believe this is a war worth waging, but only with broad international support. http://www.iht.com/articles/87667.htm Chris Burford London
France Germany Russia China
... tonight, according to breaking news, are moving to table a joint memorandum in the Security Council detailing a peaceful timetable for Iraqi disarmament, clearly designed to block the resolution to be tabled tonight by the US Britain and Spain. The French are expert tacticians. A memorandum jointly tabled by the three other veto holders, apart from US and UK, could not be a clearer call to the rest of the world to reject the hegemonism of the English speaking governments. For China to move out of the shadows is remarkable. The move will be trading regime continuity for WMD. It will be trading peace for coordinated negotiations not just focused on one country. It will be supported by the muslim world and the non-aligned world. The chips are going down. Who says that the balance of power is over? It has just reorganised itself. The hegemons may conquer Iraq, but with global mass movements for peace and justice, they cannot conquer the world. Chris Burford London
Germany
25,000 German firms expect the worst Eichel risks showdown with EU as Brown defends UK spending Mark Milner and Heather Stewart Wednesday February 19, 2003 The Guardian A leading German business organisation yesterday predicted that Europe's largest economy would stagnate this year, raising fears that Berlin could find itself on a collision course with Brussels over public finances. The DIHK, which represents 82 regional chambers of commerce and industry, said a survey of 25,000 firms found expectations were at their lowest since the recession of 1993 - and investment intentions the worst for a quarter of a century. "One has to fear a recession in Germany should hopes about exports - which would be at risk if there is a long conflict in Iraq - be deceived," said Martin Wansleben, the DIHK secretary-general. In Brussels for a meeting of EU finance ministers, Hans Eichel admitted Germany would be unable to keep the budget deficit below the ceiling of 3% of gross domestic product laid down by the single currency rules if the economy failed to grow by the 1% Berlin has been forecasting. Mr Eichel warned that a war on Iraq could make a damaging dent in European growth. Britain managed to fight off an official censure under the stability and growth pact rules after the chancellor, Gordon Brown, made a robust defence of his ambitious spending plans. Some countries argued that the Treasury's intention to go further into the red to fund investment in Britain's crumbling schools and hospitals risked a breach of the 3% of GDP deficit ceiling imposed on members of the single currency. Mr Brown insisted that the expanding deficit, which the Treasury has pencilled in at 2.2% of GDP for 2003-4, was necessary to reverse historic underinvestment in public services. Belgium, Spain and Denmark voted for Britain's budget plans to be declared in breach of the rules, but the final statement simply raised a question over Mr Brown's "optimistic" growth forecasts. Unlike the stability and growth pact, the Treasury's fiscal rules allow it to borrow as much as necessary in bad years as long as it balances the books over the economic cycle. Germany was rapped over the knuckles by Brussels for the deficit last year and would face further embarassment should it fail to meet the 3% target this year. Pressure would increase on the eurozone authorities for reform of the stability and growth pact, which is aimed at producing balanced budgets. Holger Fahrinkrug, a senior economist at SG Warburg in Frankfurt, said that while the fall in expectations was a cause for concern, the collapse in investment intentions to the lowest level since the DIHK began its survey in 1977 was even more worrying. "If there is no investment there is no jobs growth, and that leads to a loss of competitiveness," he said. He warned that Germany had to improve its labour market flexibility and slim down its social security system - even though that would inevitably cause problems in the short term. "There is no quick fix. There is no gain without pain," he said. The gloom over the German economy was not entirely unrelieved yesterday, however. The ZEW economic think-tank revealed that a survey of analysts and institutional investors had showed a modest rise in expectations - although the institute was not carried away by its own findings. "The situation remains unstable; we are somewhere between hope and anxiety," said Wolfgang Franz, the head of ZEW. Germany's problems are starting to have an impact on the wider eurozone economy. The latest figures from Eurostat show industrial production in the 12-nation zone fell by 1.5% in December.
Re: economic war against Germany
Wait a second, they're punishing Germany by withdrawing U.S. troops? Isn't that a good thing? So far as economic punishment is concerned, what would happen if the Germans turned all their dollars into Euros? Joanna At 11:47 AM 02/16/2003 +, you wrote: A new step in the escalating inter-imperialist conflict: America is to punish Germany for leading international opposition to a war against Iraq. The US will withdraw all its troops and bases from there and end military and industrial co-operation between the two countries - moves that could cost the Germans billions of euros. The plan - discussed by Pentagon officials and military chiefs last week on the orders of Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld - is designed 'to harm' the German economy to make an example of the country for what US hawks see as Chancellor Gerhard Schröder's 'treachery'. The hawks believe that making an example of Germany will force other countries heavily dependent on US trade to think twice about standing up to America in future. This follows weeks of increasingly angry exchanges between Rumsfeld and Germany, in which at one point he taunted Germany and France for being an irrelevant part of 'old Europe'. Now Rumsfeld has decided to go further by unilaterally imposing the Pentagon's sanctions on a country already in the throes of economic problems. 'We are doing this for one reason only: to harm the German economy,' one source told The Observer last week. http://www.observer.co.uk/international/story/0,6903,896573,00.html This is turning into a struggle for world leadership, dangerous for the USA if it is not sure of its own economic future. Chris Burford London
Re: economic war against Germany
- Original Message - From: "Chris Burford" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> >Now Rumsfeld has decided to go further by unilaterally imposing the >Pentagon's sanctions on a country already in the throes of economic problems. > >'We are doing this for one reason only: to harm the German economy,' one >source told The Observer last week. The dismal battlefield : mobilizing for economic conflict / John C. Scharfen Naval Institute Press, 1995 Annapolis, Md ISBN 1557507694.
economic war against Germany
A new step in the escalating inter-imperialist conflict: America is to punish Germany for leading international opposition to a war against Iraq. The US will withdraw all its troops and bases from there and end military and industrial co-operation between the two countries - moves that could cost the Germans billions of euros. The plan - discussed by Pentagon officials and military chiefs last week on the orders of Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld - is designed 'to harm' the German economy to make an example of the country for what US hawks see as Chancellor Gerhard Schröder's 'treachery'. The hawks believe that making an example of Germany will force other countries heavily dependent on US trade to think twice about standing up to America in future. This follows weeks of increasingly angry exchanges between Rumsfeld and Germany, in which at one point he taunted Germany and France for being an irrelevant part of 'old Europe'. Now Rumsfeld has decided to go further by unilaterally imposing the Pentagon's sanctions on a country already in the throes of economic problems. 'We are doing this for one reason only: to harm the German economy,' one source told The Observer last week. http://www.observer.co.uk/international/story/0,6903,896573,00.html This is turning into a struggle for world leadership, dangerous for the USA if it is not sure of its own economic future. Chris Burford London
China joins with France, Germany and Russia
NY Times, Feb. 11, 2003 NATO Fails to Settle Iraq Rift; China Seeks More Inspections By RICHARD BERNSTEIN with CRAIG S. SMITH BRUSSELS, Feb. 11 - NATO failed today to settle its deep differences over Iraq, the worst rift in the alliance's history, but a spokesman said informal talks would continue through the night and a new meeting would be called for Wednesday. France, Germany and Belgium continued to block an effort to have NATO begin military planning for the defense of Turkey in the event of war of Iraq. And China joined calls for an increase in the number of United Nations inspectors working in Iraq. In a statement issued in Paris on Monday, France, Germany and Russia argued that the inspections should continue in a more vigorous form before war is contemplated and that the inspectors be given more time to complete their job. After informal talks throughout the day, ambassadors from the 19 NATO countries met for only 20 minutes this evening before ending the session, a spokesman said. "Right now we do not have a conclusion," the spokesman, Yves Brodeur, added. President Jiang Zemin of China, in a telephone conversation with the French president, Jacques Chirac, reiterated China's stance on finding a peaceful solution to the Iraq crisis. China now joins Russia and and France, all of which have veto power in the Security Council, in opposing the United States and Britain on military action against Saddam Hussein. "The inspection in Iraq is effective and should be continued and strengthened," the official New China News Agency quoted Mr. Jiang as saying today. "Warfare is good for no one, and it is our responsibility to take various measures to avoid war." full: http://www.nytimes.com/2003/02/11/international/middleeast/12cnd-iraq.html -- The Marxism list: www.marxmail.org
Russia joins with France and Germany
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/02/10/international/europe/10cnd-fran.html 3 Nations Call for Alternative to Iraq War By CRAIG S. SMITH PARIS, Feb. 10 France, Russia and Germany issued a joint declaration today calling for intensified weapons inspections as an alternative to war in Iraq and publicly closing ranks against the United States for the first time in post-Cold War history. "Russia, Germany and France note that the position they express coincides with that of a large number of countries, within the Security Council in particular," the declaration read. The declaration appeared to be a veiled warning to the United States that the three could block any attempt to pass a second Security Council resolution authorizing the use of force against Iraq. All three countries are members of the United Nations Security Council and France and Russia, as permanent members, have the the power to veto resolutions. The declaration said the debate over the presence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq "must continue in the spirit of friendship and respect that characterizes our relations with the United States," and Mr. Chirac added that the transatlantic alliance remains sound. But the French president stated flatly that "nothing today justified a war," adding that "in my view, there's no indisputable proof" that weapons of mass destruction exist in Iraq. -- The Marxism list: www.marxmail.org
Germany, education and comparative advantage
The International Herald Tribune | www.iht.com Low education rating stuns Germany John Schmid/IHT International Herald Tribune Friday, February 7, 2003 FRANKFURT Treasured stereotypes are dying in Germany. That the country's finances are solid, its workers productive and its economy a powerhouse are all broken myths. Even Mercedes-Benz sedans have fallen in quality ratings. And now the nation has awakened in disbelief to findings that its prized education system has fallen to the bottom third of the industrial nations, panicking a generation of parents and posing an unexpected competitive threat as societies push further into the brave new world of the information age, education experts concur. "It is a question of the future of individuals but really also of the future of the whole society," said Hans-Konrad Koch, a planner in the Ministry of Education. Education Ministry staffers in Berlin say they are working "day and night" on a spectrum of reforms of kindergartens, grade schools and universities, even as they concede that the cash-strapped nation lacks funding for an aggressive overhaul. The education minister, Edelgard Bulmahn, warns that it will take a full decade to restore the nation's schools to the level of the top five or six advanced countries. Germany has emerged as an academic underachiever in a succession of studies released over the last 14 months by the Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. The Program for International Student Assessment, or PISA, showed that German 15-year-olds came in 21st among those in the 32 leading industrial nations, well behind Britain, Japan, South Korea and much of Continental Europe. Worse, German students scored "significantly below the OECD average" in all three of the disciplines studied: reading literacy, mathematics and science. American teenagers rank higher than the Germans in all three subjects despite studies that found one in 10 young Americans cannot find his country on a blank map of the world. "Nobody knew" about Germany's slippage, explained Andreas Schleicher, who carried out the study. "There is no central examination system, there is no way of knowing what the system actually delivers and so no one really worried." Schleicher, himself a German who attended a private grade school in Hamburg, said the lack of uniform standards and an oversight agency to monitor performance were among the shortcomings laid bare by the study. "It is a scandal" that the system lacks monitors, Koch said. As one of many planned reforms, the Education Ministry this month will hold a national conference for a debate on nationwide standards and evaluation. The "PISA shock," as the Education Ministry calls the stunned sense of disillusion, is a common topic among parents during morning school drop-offs. The Allensbach polling institute found that 60 percent of Germans were "alarmed" at the results and that 25 percent did not want to accept them. While the OECD study focuses on grade schools, universities have come under fire during the economic downturn as corporate leaders have issued a chorus of protests that German university graduates fail to meet the criteria of the modern work force. The prospect of a looming skill shortage highlighted shortcomings in higher education, said Klaus Landfried, president of the Association of German Universities. In fact, the skills shortage is already glaring. The government actively recruits foreigners with skills in biotechnology and computers, even enduring an emotional backlash against immigration that the effort has triggered. A nation of engineering icons like Mercedes-Benz and Porsche has seen the number of homegrown graduates with engineering and mathematics degrees shrink by a fifth from 1993 to 1998, said a spokesman for the ministry, Florian Frank. The Education Ministry will release a study next month that attempts to explain why up to 30 percent of university students drop out before they get their degree, a ministry spokesman said. That compares to a 19 percent dropout rate in Britain. According to the OECD, only 16 percent of Germans hold a university degree, roughly the same proportion as Turkey and Mexico, and well below 35 percent in the United Kingdom and 33 percent in the United States. The average German earns his university degree at age 28, with anecdotes abounding of those who stay on far longer. Germans on average study at a university for more than six years, compared to four in the United States and 3.5 in Britain, OECD figures show. Students commonly complain of aloof professors whom they seldom meet outside crowded lecture halls. German universities are underfunded compared with those in Finland, Sweden, Japan or the United States, Landfried said. The ratio of faculty to students in German is "three to four times" worse in Germany than in the United State
U.S. Troops in Germany Told to Pack for Turkey
U.S. Troops in Germany Told to Pack for Turkey By Karl Vick and Bradley Graham Washington Post Foreign Service Friday, January 31, 2003; Page A19 ISTANBUL, Jan. 30 -- U.S. troops in Germany that would form part of a northern front in a war against Iraq have received orders to pack up and prepare to head to Turkey as the Turkish government nears a crucial decision on whether to accept the forces. Turkey's National Security Council, which is dominated by powerful senior generals, has scheduled a meeting Friday to consider a recommendation to the Turkish parliament, which has the final say on a U.S. petition to base troops in Turkey for a possible invasion. U.S. military officials said today that nearly 2,000 troops from the 1st Infantry Division in Germany were preparing to depart for Turkey. That deployment would largely involve headquarters staff, intelligence, communications and other support units -- lead elements of a larger, armored force, the bulk of which will likely come from the 4th Infantry Division in Texas, military officials said. The Turkish public has steadfastly opposed allowing the country to become a platform for war against Iraq. But analysts and diplomats said they expected the council to endorse the dispatch of 15,000 to 20,000 U.S. infantry and open military airfields to warplanes supported by thousands more U.S. military personnel. That level of cooperation would be welcomed by Pentagon planners, who scaled back an original request for 80,000 troops to accommodate Turkish political realities. But U.S. officials have expressed worry that the recently elected government, in its consideration of public opinion, could wait too long to bring the matter before parliament. "It will probably be positive, but I'm not sure the Americans will get everything they want," a senior Turkish official said, on condition of anonymity, about the National Security Council meeting. Surveys show that more than 80 percent of Turks oppose a war in Iraq, largely because of concerns about the potential damage to the economy, especially to the crucial tourism industry. Losses associated with the 1991 Gulf War topped $50 billion by some estimates, and Turkey's economy already is in recession. Turkey's biggest concern is that a new war may revive separatist sentiments among its Kurdish minority if Iraq's Kurds are allowed to form a new republic , and especially if they seize the northern Iraqi oil centers of Kirkuk and Mosul. But on questions of national security, the Turkish public grants great deference to its military establishment. When opinion polls ask Turks whom they trust most, the general staff finishes behind only President Ahmet Necdet Sezer, who also sits on the Security Council. No Turkish parliament has failed to endorse a council recommendation. That calculation has anchored the Bush administration's dealings with Turkey from the earliest stages of planning for a campaign in Iraq. From the start, U.S. officials have bet that however much Turkey opposes the idea of a war, in the end it cannot afford to stay on the sidelines. Turkish generals have moved forward with plans to move a substantial force several dozen miles into northern Iraq to prevent incursions by Kurdish separatists and to manage the flow of refugees seeking to escape fighting. The general staff announced Wednesday that it was sending fresh equipment and materiel to Turkish troops on the Iraqi border "to prepare them ahead of possible security developments in the region." Turkey has also prepared a plan to appeal to NATO for help in defending against any retaliatory attack by Iraq. The alliance has twice in two weeks deferred a U.S. request for such aid, which would include deploying Patriot anti-missile systems and AWACS radar planes. But Turkey's ruling Justice and Development Party, which controls almost two-thirds of the Grand National Assembly, has yet to schedule a vote or untie itself from frequent public statements that a vote must await a fresh Security Council resolution authorizing force against Iraq. U.S. officials, who have deferred to Turkey's democratic process, have been watching the clock nervously. A team of 150 U.S. military personnel completed surveys of Turkish bases last Friday, and preparations are underway for the Corps of Engineers to perform perhaps $300 million in upgrades to accommodate U.S. forces. Graham reported from Washington.
Britain, France, Germany
Eternal triangle How can Europe work with Germany, France and Britain in a ménage à trois? Timothy Garton Ash Thursday January 23, 2003 The Guardian France and Germany celebrated their wedding anniversary yesterday. But the truth is that there are three in this marriage, which, as Princess Diana once observed, makes it a bit crowded. Britain has always been the third party in Europe's eternal triangle. Like Julia Roberts in the film My Best Friend's Wedding, Britain makes saccharine speeches of congratulation to the happy couple, although only yesterday she was trying to steal the bridegroom. Except that this is not the wedding but the 40th anniversary. At every point in the history of Europe since the second world war you can only understand what any two of France, Germany and Britain are doing if you know what the third has been up to - and how they all stand with America, that brooding Ben Affleck hunk in the background. This was true in the early 1950s, when the German chancellor Konrad Adenauer first asked Winston Churchill to assume the leadership of Europe, before turning to France. It was true in 1963, when the Elysée treaty between Adenauer and Charles de Gaulle coincided, not at all accidentally, with de Gaulle's "Non" to Britain's first application for membership of the European community. It's true today, when the reaffirmation of Franco-German leadership in the EU is closely connected to the popularity of Blairite positions in other parts of Europe and Britain's rewarmed special relationship with the United States. One can, with all sincerity, raise a glass to what the Franco-German couple has done for Europe over the last half-century and wish them many more years of happiness. One can, with equal goodwill, say that this is no longer enough. When France and Germany first got together, they were the two largest countries in a European community of six states. A deal was cut between the interests of German industry and French agriculture. And Germany - a divided and occupied country, the shame of nazism still fresh in everyone's mind - was prepared to subordinate its superior economic strength to French political leadership in Europe. "One should always bow twice to the tricolour," Helmut Kohl used to say. Until the end of the cold war and German unification, the marriage worked on these terms - and it was, on the whole, good for Europe. Franco-German initatives repeatedly drove forward European integration. Can they do so again? Even if France and Germany, having renewed their vows in Versailles, were to work in the most exquisite harmony, it seems unlikely. Soon they will be only two among 25 member states. Perhaps they are still the two most important, but their relative power to set the agenda is much diminished. Britain, under Blair, is a very active European player. Italy, Spain and Poland are all heavy middleweight powers that increasingly want to have their own say. The smaller countries, a clear majority of EU member states, increasingly resent being told what to do by the big ones. Anyway, France and Germany are not working in exquisite harmony. The terms of the marriage were redrawn with German unification and - as sometimes happens when one partner in a relationship suddenly gets a bigger job or becomes much richer than the other - it has been uneasy ever since. Germany no longer concedes to France the prerogative of political leadership. Thus, for example, Germany wants a stronger president of the European commission and France a stronger president of the inter-governmental European council. So what do they now jointly propose? To have both. Sipping her champagne in a damp corner of the marquee, their old friend Britain muses on the state of the marriage - and how she can cut into the dance. The most obvious proposal is that France, Germany and Britain should work together to give strategic direction to the larger European Union. This idea has been around for ever and a day. De Gaulle records in his memoirs how the then British prime minister, Harold Macmillan, said to him: "Let us bring Europe together, my dear friend! There are three men who can do it: you, Adenauer and I." More recently, the ever inventive Lord Weidenfeld constituted a Club of Three to discuss how Europe's big three might best cooperate. In his first term, Tony Blair pursued exactly this agenda, cutting into the Franco-German dance with some success - the European defence initiative with Jacques, the third way with Gerd. But now it looks as if we've reverted to form: France and Germany waltzing on the dance floor, while Britain seeks solace in the muscular arms of America. (The gender typecasting is sometimes confused, but France and Britain generally seem to be the women and Germany and America the men.) There comes a point in some articles when you begin to think "this metaphor has been with us too long; it's so t
Re: Schroeder: Don't expect Germany to agree to a resolution legitimizing a war
- Original Message - From: "Sabri Oncu" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > "Everything possible must be done to avoid war," French President > Jacques Chirac said at a news conference with German Chancellor > Gerhard Schroeder in Paris. Germany, which takes over the UN > Security Council presidency next month, won't vote for any UN > resolution authorizing war against Iraq, Schroeder said. > > "What I say now is going a bit further than what I've said > elsewhere," Schroeder told voters late yesterday in his home > state of Lower Saxony. "Don't expect Germany to agree to a > resolution legitimizing a war." It will be interesting to watch France and Germany's financial markets until this blows over. I stumbled on the Garfinkel piece while looking up a reference to her "Political Economy of Conflict and Appropriation"; she used to work at the Federal Reserve and has also written a piece "Financial Warfare" for a book titled "Global Corporate Intelligence: Opportunities, Technologies and Threats" [edited by George Roukis, Bruce Charnov and Hugh Conway] back in 1990. Ian
Schroeder: Don't expect Germany to agree to a resolution legitimizinga war
Top World News 01/22 13:59 Bush Says Iraq's Hussein Is Real Risk to U.S., Allies (Correct) By Alex Canizares and Ryan J. Donmoyer (Restores Annan's name in 10th paragraph.) St. Louis, Jan. 22 (Bloomberg) -- President George W. Bush called Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein a "dangerous man with dangerous weapons" and said "friends of freedom" will act if he fails to disarm. "The dictator of Iraq has got weapons of mass destruction" and the world must hold him to account, Bush told a business audience in St. Louis. He threatened "serious consequences" for Iraqi generals who carry out orders to use weapons of mass destruction against Iraqi civilians or U.S. troops. Those who do so will be prosecuted as war criminals, the president said. Bush's call for resolve comes as France and Germany oppose using military force to compel Iraq to abide by United Nations resolutions and cooperate with UN inspections for chemical, biological and nuclear weapons. "Everything possible must be done to avoid war," French President Jacques Chirac said at a news conference with German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder in Paris. Germany, which takes over the UN Security Council presidency next month, won't vote for any UN resolution authorizing war against Iraq, Schroeder said. "What I say now is going a bit further than what I've said elsewhere," Schroeder told voters late yesterday in his home state of Lower Saxony. "Don't expect Germany to agree to a resolution legitimizing a war." Runaround for Inspectors The UN inspectors report to the Security Council Monday on whether Iraq has been complying. Bush reiterated his charge yesterday that Hussein has deceived the inspectors and hasn't disarmed. Empty chemical warheads recently discovered are "evidence of a man not disarming," the president said. "He asked for more time so he can give the so-called inspectors more runaround," Bush said. "He's interested in playing hide-and-seek in a huge country." At the center of the debate over Iraq is the effectiveness and duration of weapons inspections. Seven in 10 Americans favor giving UN inspectors at least a few more months to hunt for weapons in Iraq, a Washington Post-ABC News poll found. Forty-three percent of respondents said inspectors should have as much time as they desire to search. Fifty-seven percent of Americans favor military action in Iraq, down from 62 percent in mid-December. Bush said Hussein poses a "real risk" to the U.S. and its allies, the president said. Bush will meet with UN Secretary- General Kofi Annan over dinner tonight at the White House, press secretary Ari Fleischer said. U.S. Military Buildup The U.S. yesterday ordered two aircraft carriers and 16,000 more troops to the Persian Gulf, bringing to about 185,000 the number of troops it will have in the region by mid-February for any military assault if Iraq fails to comply with UN resolutions. U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman General Richard Myers told reporters in Washington the U.S. could sustain a large military force in the region "several months, no problem." The Pentagon has called 20,012 Army, Navy and Marine Corps reservists to active duty in the past week, a 34 percent increase in the active reserve force, according to a tally issued today. Fleischer denied Iraq's assertion that it downed an unmanned U.S. Predator drone. "There is no truth to the Iraqi claim," he told reporters on Air Force One. Iraq said the surveillance plane was being used to spy on civilian and military installations, the Iraqi News Agency cited an unidentified military spokesman as saying, according to Agence France-Presse. U.K. Concerns The U.K. government, the closest U.S. ally in putting military pressure on Iraq, said Hussein had a duty to cooperate with the inspectors. "We can't go back to the situation in the 1990s when the inspectors were in there for years and Saddam was effectively concealing his weapons," British Prime Minister Tony Blair told lawmakers. "It is not just a question of finding the weapons. It is a question of the duty Saddam has. It's about being open and honest. The duty of Saddam is to cooperate fully with the weapons inspections regime." The government of Russia joined France, Germany and China in saying diplomatic efforts to resolve the crisis should continue and UN inspectors should be given more time to determine whether Iraq has weapons of mass destruction. The U.S., U.K., China, Russia and France are permanent Security Council members, each with veto power over resolutions. Schroeder said in Versailles that France and Germany had agreed to work in concert on Iraq. "We are pushing together so that the UN Security Council can successfully fulfill its central task, to preserve international peace," he said.
SPD slumps in Germany
After Schroeder won the German elections on 22 September, neck and neck with the CDU at 38.5% of the electorate aided by the better improvement of their allies the greens compared to the FDP, thei vote has spiralled down, as a result of government spending cuts and a perception that the government is incapable fo handling the financial danger. The SPD at 28% is now 21% behind the CDU at 49%. The Greens have increased to 10% and the FDP, rent by its poor electoral perfomance and an embarrasing expulsion of a leading figure, have slumped to 5%, the same as the PDS. http://www.wahlrecht.de/umfragen/emnid.htm Chris Burford London
Re: ECB rate cut: trying to save Germany?
a military campaign in the middle east or africa will do wonders for the german economy. Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Mail Plus - Powerful. Affordable. Sign up now
ECB rate cut: trying to save Germany?
Rate relief for Europe Half-point reduction to save German economy after year-long wait Larry Elliott and Mark Milner Friday December 6, 2002 The Guardian Europe's central bank yesterday cut interest rates for the first time for more than a year as it sought to prevent Germany from sliding into a full scale recession. Wim Duisenberg, president of the European Central Bank, said concern about the sluggishness of the economic performance of the 12 nation eurozone had prompted the half point reduction to 2.75%. "Our decision should ... help to improve the outlook for the euro area economy by providing a counterweight to some of the existing downside risks to economic growth, thereby supporting confidence." The move will provide a partial answer to critics who have argued that the central bank has been too cautious. They claim it has focused too much on its inflation ceiling of 2% at a time when the eurozone's leading economy, Germany, has been struggling and where unemployment has reached a five-year high. The International Monetary Fund which, along with many forecasters, has been predicting slower growth in the eurozone both this year and next praised the decision. "We welcome the action taken by the ECB this morning, which is in line with what we have indicated and recommended, given what we see as both receding inflation prospects and a weaker economy," IMF spokesman Tom Dawson said. Germany's chancellor Ger hard Schröder also welcomed the move but made it clear he believed the ECB should have acted sooner. "It is an important signal of economic policy, especially now. It has been expected for a long time but now it has happened, with the freedom and sovereignty of the ECB. I believe this will contribute to a revival of economic activity not only in Germany but across Europe." However some analysts said the reduction underlined the difficulties of a one-size-fits-all interest rate policy with borrowing costs now too low for some countries. Holger Fahrinkrug, senior economist at UBS Warburg in Frankfurt said the ECB was clearly aiming to boost confidence, adding that by cutting rates yesterday, "I think they are making a contribution". "But it does not solve the problem of the one-size-fits-all policy. For Germany interest rates are still too high, but for other countries they are too low." Nick Parsons, chief currency strategist at Commerzbank, said: "I think there is another cut coming, but the ECB will wait for evidence rather than basing its decision on forecasts. The danger is that the ECB will always be accused of being behind the curve." The ECB's move comes a month after the US Federal Reserve acted to help the world's largest economy through a "soft spot", but still leaves rates in the eurozone 1.5 percentage points higher than those in the US. Mr Duisenberg stressed yesterday that the ECB had done enough to underpin growth in the eurozone, and urged member states to do their part by tackling budget deficits and embarking on structural reform of their economies. "We note with some concern the slow progress in many euro area countries and call on governments to take determined action." He called for speedier action to free up labour, product and financial markets, arguing they were vital to economic growth.
Re: Re: Germany banking crisis?
Chris Burford wrote: > But from a marxist point of view what we can observe is that the > centralisation of capital, through mergers or acquisitions can often > also involve a destruction of a portion of old capital (which is not > accumulating surplus value at a competitive rate or is > "non-performing" in current banking jargon). Again, I must point out that Schumpeter made the same observation. J.A. Hobson was also an astute chronicler of the movements of capital. I am quite sure that many other liberal analysts of the capitalist economy have benefited from reading Marx as well. To observe that capitalist accumulation is constantly taking place is not particularly "Marxist". If Chris Burford would simply drop all references such as "As Lenin pointed out..." or "From a Marxist point of view...", I'd probably ignore most of what he posts here. For that matter, when was the last time I used such formulations myself? To my way of thinking, they are a sign of insecurity more than anything else. If your arguments and facts are strong, people will get that you are defending a Marxist outlook, especially on an email list whose home page is adorned with an icon of the bearded curmudgeon himself. -- Louis Proyect www.marxmail.org
Re: Germany banking crisis?
At 11/10/02 16:53 -0700, Ian Murray quote: Heather Stewart and Charlotte Denny Friday October 11, 2002 The Guardian For first-time investors in Frankfurt it has been a lesson: that shares go down, too. Any chance of Germany converting wholesale to Anglo-Saxon equity culture now seems remote. Useful commentary. However I am not sure I agree with the suggestions in the last sentence. The quality tv commentaries this morning in London note the drama over Commerzbank and the protestations of leading figures in German banking, including by the head of their rival Deutsche Bank, that there is no problem. Clearly German banking is protesting calm too much in private, and almost certainly paddling fast below the waterline, just to stay in one place. The overall comment, which makes sense from a marxist point of view, is that the earnings on German bank credits are just not sufficient to cover their liabilities. It is not just that Commerzbank, and also Dresdner, are under specific suspicion. It is likely that there will be mergers and consolidation in the sector overall. The speculation is that this might be an opportunity for non-German banks to move in on the closely enmeshed German banking system. How far that leads to "Anglo-Saxon equity culture" will probably be the resultant of competing forces, I guess and is a question partially independent of the first question. But from a marxist point of view what we can observe is that the centralisation of capital, through mergers or acquisitions can often also involve a destruction of a portion of old capital (which is not accumulating surplus value at a competitive rate or is "non-performing" in current banking jargon). German finance looks as if it can head off a financial crisis. But the price might be to recognsie that a portion of old capital has to be written off and German capital en masse has to become more a component of total world capital rather than being specifically tied to German production of goods and services. So the speculation about Commerzbank this week, may be one of those little preshocks that figure an earthquake. But more probably if the tension can be released in other ways, it marks a process of continued movement of the tectonic plates of world finance capital. Chris Burford
Germany
How Germany paid for the boom The Dax's 50% fall shattered the dream of a share-owning democracy Heather Stewart and Charlotte Denny Friday October 11, 2002 The Guardian Investors in Britain and the US watching their pension savings rapidly shrinking might think things couldn't be any worse. But they would be wrong - they could have invested in the German stock market. Germany is in the middle of the worst market crash since the Depression. Two weeks ago, the German stock exchange pulled the plug on its hi-tech offshoot, the Neuer Markt. The index, which aspired to be the European equivalent of the US Nasdaq - has lost 96% of its value since its peak in March 2000. The Neuer Markt's debut five years ago was a high-profile symbol of Germany's fledgling shareholder culture. Spurred on by the decade-long bull market in New York and London, investors started to see the equity markets as an attractive place to put their savings. In the same way that Margaret Thatcher's sell-offs of state utitlities in Britain in the 1980s spread share ownership to the wider public, the privatisation of Deutsche Telekom in 1996 helped raise the proportion of households owning shares from 9% to 21% by 2001. For these newcomers to the equity game, it has all gone rather sour. Since the start of the year, the index of Germany's leading stocks, the Dax, has halved in value, compared to reductions of 30% in London and New York. Germany's top 30 blue-chip shares are now valued at less than the combined worth of America's top two corporates, Microsoft and Wal-Mart. It must seem a bit unfair for the new converts to Anglo-Saxon style equity financing that they arrived just as the party was about to abruptly end. Germany's investors now appear to have a worse hangover than America's. Danny Gabay at JP Morgan says German investors are suffering from the fact that the firms they bought into went on a transatlantic spree just as share prices reached their peak in 2000. They spent the equivalent of 3% of national output buying up or taking over US hi-tech firms. "German corporates seem to have come to the conclusion that if you can't beat them then buy them. They came across the Atlantic with their shopping trolleys and just hoovered them up." With no domestic savings to rely on to fund its investment boom, America's stock market bubble in the late 1990s was funded by sucking in massive foreign invesment. The hi-tech bubble may have been an American phenomenon, but it was European - and in the main German - companies that paid the bill. "Every penny they made in Europe from 1997 to 2001 they shipped over to buy up US companies," says Mr Gabay. And as long as the US stock market was rising, this seemed a good strategy. It certainly excited local investors, who powered the Dax to a peak of 8,064 in March 2000. But what it disguised was how weak growth was at home. Germany's economy has been faltering since the fading of the post-reunification boom of the early 90s. in the last five years, output growth has averaged 1.6%, well below the 2.8% achieved by the other countries in the euro zone. David Walton of Goldman Sachs says Germany is still struggling with the burden of absorbing east Germany's clapped-out economy. The decision to convert the old eastern ostmark to the deutschmark at a rate of one to one locked in long term uncompetitiveness. Germany faces a situation where its workers cost 40% more than their French counterparts and 60% more than the average Italian. Faced with an uncompetitive cost base at home, German firms seem to have decided to hitch their wagon to the US tech boom. "Their view seems to have been that all they had to do was sit back and watch the profits roll in," says Mr Gabay. But when US investors woke up to the fact that dotcoms were never going to make money, Germany's corporate sector was saddled with worthless investments and a pile of trouble at home. The European version of the tech bubble was a telecoms industry which had massively overpaid for third generation mobile licences. Germany's equity markets were further hit by fiscal limits imposed by Brussels and the world economic slowdown. "All the euphoria about recovery has gone up in smoke," says David Brown, Bear Stearns' chief European economist. "Germany is flirting with recession. It is bad sentiment, it is the worries about geopolitical risks - and it's structural." It was not only the firms that indulged in tech speculation that got their fingers burnt. The banks who paid too much for shares have been forced to liquidate their portfolios as prices have collapsed, reinforcing the market slide and taking them dangerously close to their solvency levels. As a result they have begun tightening lending criteria, pushing firms far removed from the new economy into bankruptcy. According to the Bundesb
Germany.......
Global crash fears as German bank sinks Faisal Islam, economics correspondent and Will Hutton Sunday October 6, 2002 The Observer Stockbrokers around the world are braced for a potentially calamitous week as alarm mounts over a looming, Thirties-style global financial crisis. A leaked email about the credit-worthiness of Commerzbank, Germany's third largest bank, yesterday increased fears of the international stock market malaise exploding into a fully-fledged banking crisis. Commerzbank lost a quarter of its value last week, raising the spectre of Credit-anstalt, the Austrian bank that collapsed in 1931, sparking global depression. US stock markets have fallen for six consecutive weeks, to their lowest levels in five years. European markets have collapsed even further, wiping out nearly half of the value of European corpora tions in this year alone. Japan is struggling to put together a plan to save its banking system, riddled with bad debt after a decade of recession and falling prices. Now the German economy threatens to follow. 'There are strong parallels to the Thirties after an unsustainable "new era" boom,' says Avinash Persaud managing director for economics and research at State Street Bank. 'Then, the stock market decline was not just steep, it was long, taking three years to reach the bottom.' 'Commerzbank being affected is a sign of the severity. But in today's crisis risks have been offloaded from the banks to the markets and ultimately our pensioners, which makes the problem more difficult to deal with,' he says. The leaked email about Commerzbank was in response to an inquiry from a US investment bank about rumours of huge losses on credit derivatives, which aim to spread risk. Figures due to be published on Friday will show that a toll of stock market falls, rising joblessness and war fears is finally denting the spending habits of Americans. Economists fear that the result may be a 'double-dip' US recession, taking much of the world with it. Europe's finance Ministers, including Chancellor Gordon Brown, will meet in Luxembourg on Tuesday amid deepening concern about the stability of the financial system. Tomorrow evening, the Eurogroup of finance ministers, excluding Brown, will discuss reforming Europe-wide tax and spending rules along the lines of the British system, taking stronger account of economic difficulties. In the US, the concern is that Alan Greenspan, chairman of the US Federal Reserve, has insufficient room to cut interest rates if the economy falls into recession. 'The [Bush] Administration has two lines of action: tax relief for the rich [and] reliance on the Federal Reserve. Both are without effect,' says US economist JK Galbraith in an interview with The Observer.
Re: News from Germany
On Thu, 26 Sep 2002, Michael Perelman quotes Johannes saying: > I do not know whether this is common knowledge outside Germany, but the > German Greens are definitely to the right of the Social Democrats. This > is not just my opinion as a malevolent Marxist, but it is confirmed by > today's Financial Times. Johannes is of course right, this has long been completely accepted. But to be precise, where the Greens are clearly to the right of the Social Democrats is on economic and welfare state reform. They are to their left on foreigners, pacifism, and nuclear energy, although perhaps not by much anymore, except on the first. Basically the Greens have become the left version of the FDP, and vice versa. They've become the two center swing parties and together they arguably decided the election. Not because of who they would ally with, which seemed pretty given, but because of which of them people decided to vote for. The FDP seems to have been punished for its hints of anti-semitism and did much worse than expected. The Greens were clearly buoyed by their old identification as the anti-war party once Iraq became an issue; they did better than anyone had hoped. Had they both come in the way people had predicted, it would be the right forming a government now, and the FDP telling them it wanted more labor market reform. Michael
News from Germany
I stole this from Lou's Marxism list. I do not know whether this is common knowledge outside Germany, but the German Greens are definitely to the right of the Social Democrats. This is not just my opinion as a malevolent Marxist, but it is confirmed by today's Financial Times (see below). Johannes East Germans and Greens likely to secure gains By Haig Simonian and Hugh Williamson in Berlin Published: September 26 2002 5:00 | Last Updated: September 26 2002 5:00 [...] The Greens have indicated they expect to play an enhanced role in government after their strong election result. [...] Ahead of Wednesday's talks, the Greens urged the SPD to endorse more business-friendly reforms to the rigid labour market, signalling that the government's plans to reduce unemployment could be a stumbling block. Christine Scheel, the Greens' finance expert, said proposals to encourage the creation of low-income "mini-jobs" should be made more attractive to companies - a stance opposed by trade unions and sections of the Social Democrats. Full article http://makeashorterlink.com/?N27352BE1 -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University [EMAIL PROTECTED] Chico, CA 95929 530-898-5321 fax 530-898-5901
Re: Re: Germany: Election results
I suspect that the US government demanded the head of the German justice minister on a plate. Bush refused to take a telephone call from Schroeder, and extraordinarily, on the very day of voting, the justice minister was forced to indicate that she would probably be resigning, for making a theoretical reference to Hitler. I think this is ominous for the degree of internal pressure in all countries to sign up to US military hegemony. Chris Burford London At 23/09/02 01:38 -0400, you wrote: >Schroeder, whose outspoken defiance against war with Iraq was >credited with giving him a late-push in the tight campaign, said >he won't back down. He has insisted he would not commit troops >for a war even if the United Nations ( news - web sites) backs >military action. > >(do they usually send troops? is this an issue really?) > >Washington with a conciliatory letter to Bush. Washington reacted >coolly - indicating to analysts that a Schroeder team will have >to work hard to repair the traditionally strong bond. > >(oh please)
Re: Germany: Election results
Schroeder, whose outspoken defiance against war with Iraq was credited with giving him a late-push in the tight campaign, said he won't back down. He has insisted he would not commit troops for a war even if the United Nations ( news - web sites) backs military action. (do they usually send troops? is this an issue really?) Washington with a conciliatory letter to Bush. Washington reacted coolly - indicating to analysts that a Schroeder team will have to work hard to repair the traditionally strong bond. (oh please)
Germany: Election results
Are there any European friends here to comment on this? Brits don't count, Australians are OK. Sabri + Schroeder's Party Wins 2nd Term Sun Sep 22,10:26 PM ET By TONY CZUCZKA, Associated Press Writer BERLIN (AP) - Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder's Social Democrats won one of Germany's closest postwar election Sunday, after a campaign that focused on fears of a war with Iraq and unleashed anti-American rhetoric. With 99.7 percent of the vote counted, a jubilant Schroeder appeared arm-in-arm with Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer of the Greens party, the partner in his governing coalition, before cheering supporters at Social Democratic Party headquarters. "We have hard times in front of us and we're going to make it together," Schroeder shouted above the din. Official results showed the Social Democrats and Greens combined won 47.1 percent of the vote to continue their coalition for another four years. The conservative challengers led by Bavarian governor Edmund Stoiber, together with the Free Democrats, had 45.9 percent. Absentee ballots were already counted. The Social Democrats and environmentalist Greens won 305 seats in the new parliament of 601 seats, compared to 294 for the conservative challengers led by Bavarian governor Edmund Stoiber, according to projections by ARD public television. In Germany's closest race, a Social Democrat-led government won a 10-seat majority in parliament in 1976 over the Christian Democrats. Stoiber stopped short of conceding in a speech to rowdy supporters in Munich, but predicted that Schroeder's majority would be too slim to form a lasting coalition. "Should the result not allow us to form a government, then I predict before you that this Schroeder government will rule for only a very short time," he said. Stoiber said Schroeder will have to repair relations with Washington, damaged by a new German assertiveness that emerged over American determination to oust Saddam Hussein ( news - web sites). Schroeder, whose outspoken defiance against war with Iraq was credited with giving him a late-push in the tight campaign, said he won't back down. He has insisted he would not commit troops for a war even if the United Nations ( news - web sites) backs military action. While Schroeder's anti-war stand resonated with German voters, the rhetoric reached a damaging peak in the final days of his campaign when Justice Minister Herta Daeuberl-Gmelin was reported to have compared President Bush ( news - web sites) to Hitler for threatening war to distract from domestic problems. She denied saying it. The Social Democrats already have made clear she would not have a post if they are re-elected, however Schroeder sought to appease Washington with a conciliatory letter to Bush. Washington reacted coolly indicating to analysts that a Schroeder team will have to work hard to repair the traditionally strong bond. "It seems to me that for the relationship and the Iraq issue itself there's no doubt that Schroeder was trying to tap radical pacifist and anti-American sentiment in the population and preliminarily it doesn't seem to have hurt him. And it may have even helped him," said Jeffrey Gedmin, director of the Aspen Institute think tank in Berlin. Speaking on CNN Sunday, Sen. Joe Biden, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said the "core relationship between the Republic of Germany and the United States is solid. What you had is Schroeder doing what a lot of politicians do, trying to get out his base." Biden, D-Del., said the relationship between the two countries can be repaired. Stoiber, who used the ruckus over Iraq as ammunition, again accused the chancellor of whipping up emotions against the United States for electoral gain. Stoiber, like the chancellor, opposes unilateral U.S. action, but he insists Germany must be ready to support any U.N.-backed action against Saddam though not with front-line troops. Greens were elated by a trend showing the strongest showing in their 22-year history. Leader Rezzo Schlauch said his party got momentum from the Iraq debate and the popularity of Fischer. "We are so happy ... There was the issue of war and peace, and we have a highly competent foreign minister. It was a combination of the issues and the people in charge," Schlauch said. Some 80 percent of Germany's 61 million voters turned out Sunday casting two votes, one for a local candidate and one for a party. The party vote is critical because it determines the percentage of seats each party wins in the Bundestag, or parliament, chosen from a list of candidates it has submitted. Parliament is being downsized to a minimum 598 seats, however the complex voting system allows for seats to be added if a party wins more direct seats in a state than it is entitled under the distribution of seats based on the second vote. Even with 298 of 299 preci
Re: Is Germany turning Japanese?
Is Germany turning Japanese? - Original Message - From: Devine, James But, like Japan, Germany is governed by consensus, which makes it difficult to enact controversial reforms. "The consensus society is unlikely to provide the flexibility needed in today's rapidly changing business world," says Quitzau. === IOW "we the capitalist class reserve the right to withdraw our consent to democracy until the public gives us what we want." Ain't blackmail grand? Ian
Is Germany turning Japanese?
Title: Is Germany turning Japanese? From the current BUSINESSWEEK -- Japanese-Style Woes in Germany Chronically weak growth, minimal inflation, mediocre productivity, and a plunging stock market: Today's Germany looks much the way Japan did in the early 1990s. If Berlin doesn't take urgent action to deregulate sclerotic markets and give the economy a boost, economists warn, the nation could get sucked into a vicious Japan-style circle of near-zero growth, declining competitiveness, and falling prices. [[deregulate? why does that help?]] "Gone are the days when Germany was a locomotive for the rest of Western Europe," says Jörn Quitzau, an economist at Deutsche Bank in Frankfurt. "The fear now is that it could become a second economic trouble spot [like Japan], with little momentum and reliant on other countries for most of its growth." The situation isn't as bad as it is in Japan. Unlike Japan, Germany is expected to show positive growth in 2002, and the country has still not sunk into deflation (chart [[not shown here]]). Moreover, because Germans are covered by generous social security schemes, they don't need to build up huge precautionary savings accounts, as the Japanese have done. As a result, domestic demand has held up better in Germany. And while problem loans are mounting, German banks are far stronger than their debt-laden Japanese counterparts. [[It's about time we heard something good about social security!!]] But Germany's prospects are deteriorating by the day, and policymakers are unwilling or unable to take action. The Bundesbank can't cut interest rates to kick-start growth--it lost the freedom to do that when the euro was launched in January, 1999. And it's difficult for the government to oil the wheels with extra public spending or tax cuts since its budget gap is very near 3% of gross domestic product, the ceiling imposed by the European Union's Stability & Growth Pact. With a general election in September, neither the government nor the opposition is willing to champion much-needed but unpopular reforms, such as labor market liberalization. [[good!]] Many economists predict that whoever wins the election will come under intense pressure from business, the financial markets, and Germany's European Union partners to force through major changes, especially painful restructurings. But, like Japan, Germany is governed by consensus, which makes it difficult to enact controversial reforms. "The consensus society is unlikely to provide the flexibility needed in today's rapidly changing business world," says Quitzau. Germany and its trading partners could be about to find that out the hard way. [[Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] & http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine]]
Re: Is Germany turning Japanese?
[EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: >>From the current BUSINESSWEEK -- > >But, like Japan, Germany is governed by consensus, which >makes it difficult to enact controversial reforms. "The consensus society >is >unlikely to provide the flexibility needed in today's rapidly changing >business world," says Quitzau. Germany and its trading partners could be >about to find that out the hard way. > Great line - Such a drag that the public stupidly refuses to vote against it's own interest. If only countries were run like corporations. Ellen
Re: Germany
Is this the inevitable result of a lesser of two evil electoral strategy? -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Germany
[the Guardian] Strikes damage Schröder's election hopes Industrial disruption in Germany may help usher in a government with neo-Thatcherite plans, reports David Gow Monday May 13, 2002 Is Germany, the sick economy of Europe, really heading for the rocks this time? Today sees the start of the second week of the strikes by engineering union IG Metall - the first such stoppage for seven years. Klaus Zwickel, its chairman, is calling out 145,000 workers in 135 companies after last week's downing of tools by 100,000 in 88 firms in the south-west region of Baden-Württemberg. Symbolically, for the first time since the Weimar Republic in the 1920s, strikes will take place in Berlin, the capital, and the surrounding region of Brandenburg. We all know what happened after the republic named after the home town of Goethe and Schiller collapsed, ushering in what some Germans still euphemistically call the Period 1933-1945. Well, there's no chance of history repeating itself on that scale just as the 18% poll of Jean-Marie Le Pen in France scarcely bodes the dissolution of the fifth republic in a wave of barbarism and fascism. But the strikes testify to there being something rotten in the state of Germany just 12 years after the country's euphoric reunification. Superficially, the strikes are entirely justified. In the past seven years net living standards for the 3.6m employees affected have scarcely risen - enabling a redistribution of wealth upwards. The boardrooms of leading German companies, meanwhile, have seen an outbreak of Anglo-Saxon fat cattery, with the shift towards shareholder value accompanied by hefty pay rises and bonuses for directors. What's more, the relative moderation of German pay settlements has helped the economy continue to grow albeit at a very low level. But this year IG Metall has had enough, demanding initially 6.5% and, when pay talks broke down over the offer of 3.3% and a one-off 190 euros increase, "a four before the comma" or a bit more than 4%. Zwickel insists that not only is such a rise justified by the profitability of the sector and increased productivity but also by the need to boost the purchasing power of employees and, with it, consumer confidence as a whole. By ratcheting up expectations, the union leadership has ensured that the strikes could last for some considerable time despite tentative efforts last week at restoring negotiations. IG Metall has sought to confine the economic impact of the stoppages by calling out strikers on a rolling basis - "flexi-strikes" mirroring the new so-called flexibility of the labour market. But, economically, they could not come at a worse time. Germany last year crowned a decade as the country with the lowest growth in the EU with just a 0.7% rise in GDP; this year's pre-strike forecast is for, at most, 1%. There are still 4m unemployed though this headline total masks a greater number economically inactive or in the black economy. Even with a greater degree of part-time working and short-term contracts, there are millions of long-term unemployed effectively denied access to paid employment. Commentators, including on the left, point to the unions' rigid insistence on national pay agreements and rejection of lower entry-rates as a prime reason for the persistent high levels of joblessness. These, in turn, are damaging the country's growth prospects. It's a common complaint that Germany's unreformed unions are, effectively, redistributing work - and wealth - among those who already have jobs and excluding those who don't. The strikes, moreover, will hasten further unemployment in the engineering sector, a key motor of Germany's export-led recovery, and decline in union membership, which has already sunk in the past decade from 12m to below 8m. Politically, the strikes are damaging to Gerhard Schröder's chances of being re-elected on September 22 as chancellor. The SPD and its Green coalition partners, supposedly supported by IG Metall, are likely to be forced out of office by the Christian Democrats and Liberals - unless Schröder can translate his far greater popularity over Edmund Stoiber, the right's candidate, into votes for his party. The chancellor, who has already seen his promise of 3.5m jobless by the general election evaporate, is forlornly urging Zwickel and his colleagues to return to the negotiating table. Both should know that the strike could easily turn out to be the last twitch of the dinosaurs. A right-led government under Stoiber is certain to re-engineer Germany's labour relations in a neo-Thatcherite manner. ·David Gow is the Guardian's industrial editor.
Germany
IG Metall brings German factories to a grinding halt Employers speak of 'madness' as engineering employees take to streets in pursuit of a 6.5% wage rise John Hooper in Berlin Tuesday May 7, 2002 The Guardian The first big strikes in Germany for seven years began yesterday, despite warnings that they could cause Germany's - and Europe's - tentative economic recovery to wither on the vine. IG Metall, the country's biggest industrial union, is pressing for a wage rise of 6.5% for engineering workers at a time when inflation has fallen to 1.8% and is forecast to drop even further. The settlements the union achieves are often regarded as benchmarks by negotiators in other sectors, and economists have warned that any settlement above 3.5% could encourage the European Central Bank to put up interest rates. The strikes also have an important political dimension. The chancellor, Gerhard Schröder, and his Social Democrat party are banking on an improvement in the economic situation before the general election in September. Michael Rogowski, head of the Federation of German Industry, the country's main employers' body, has described the union's demands as "madness" while some economists argue that any settlement above 4% threatens more than 100,000 jobs. But IG Metall's leaders have argued that their members deserve significantly more than inflation because of a moderate deal reached two years ago. "We are not on strike against Schröder ... or against anyone," IG Metall's chairman, Klaus Zwickel, said yesterday. "We are on strike for a good result." Pay deals are hammered out region by region in Germany. Yesterday's strikes focused on the area round Stuttgart, home to many of Europe's biggest car manufacturers. DaimlerChrysler, Porsche and Audi were all hit. In the first of a planned series of rolling one-day stoppages, more than 50,000 workers were expected to down tools or stay at home. Talks broke down last month after the union rejected an offer from the employers of a 3.3% pay rise over 15 months plus a one-off payment of ?190 (£120), slightly better than the settlement reached by chemical workers. The union lowered its demand to about 4% during the talks, but reinstated its full demand after they collapsed. Outside DaimlerChrysler's main Mercedes-Benz car plant in the town of Sindelfingen, Jürgen Peters, IG Metall's vice-chairman, began the morning dancing the conga with workers chanting "6.5%, 6.5%". Picket lines were established outside some 20 plants. A union statement said that, by noon, 30,000 workers from night and early shifts had joined the action. IG Metall said more strikes later this week by 25,000 workers would target another 50 firms. Berthold Huber, IG Metall's regional leader, told a crowd outside the gleaming Porsche plant in the Stuttgart suburb of Zuffenhausen: "The employers have to stop making workers beg." Yet for all the sound and apparent fury on both sides, this was shaping up as a very German strike. IG Metall said it had taken steps to mitigate the impact on weaker companies and make sure it did not lead to lay-offs among workers at supplier firms. At Porsche, where the cost in terms of lost sales was put at ?10m (£6.3m), a spokesman said the company could make it all up over the next few weeks by boosting production. "A one-day strike is not a problem for us", he said. Mr Schröder, anxious not to alienate his party's natural supporters in the run-up to an election, has expressed little more than mild regret over IG Metall's campaign. "I hope there can be a speedy return to the negotiating table and that an outcome can be reached that is reasonable for the economy but also takes into consideration the expectations of the employees," he said in an interview published yesterday.
Re: Germany welcomes euro
At 27/01/02 15:24 -0500, you wrote: >Chris Burford wrote: > >>According to the German polling organisation, Emnid, the popularity of >>the euro has leapt up with its introduction in Germany. >> >>Last quarter last year only 33% thought it right to introduce the euro. >>This month 65% support the decision. >> >>Three quarters believe that the intoduction of the euro will also lead to >>close political union. >> >>This is an interesting lesson in guided democracy, since a referendum in >>Germany at any time up to this month might well have derailed the euro >>project. But the interests of large capital prevailed, and once achieved >>the mass of the people see the advantages of a large market and a large state. > >It's not just that - it shows how polls operate within the status quo. >Slavoj Zizek has an analysis of this somewhere making the point that while >some policy may not poll well at first, if a politician were to make a big >case out of it, it could change the whole frame of debate. > >Doug Yes, Tony Blair will be looking at this swing with great interest. The point you make from Zizek is clearly a description of what can happen, especially if there are material interests pushing the politicians. At least with the fall of the Soviet Union we can take a more pragmatic and less idealised view of what constitutes the wonders of 'democracy'. Chris Burford
Re: Germany welcomes euro
Chris Burford wrote: >According to the German polling organisation, Emnid, the popularity >of the euro has leapt up with its introduction in Germany. > >Last quarter last year only 33% thought it right to introduce the >euro. This month 65% support the decision. > >Three quarters believe that the intoduction of the euro will also >lead to close political union. > >This is an interesting lesson in guided democracy, since a >referendum in Germany at any time up to this month might well have >derailed the euro project. But the interests of large capital >prevailed, and once achieved the mass of the people see the >advantages of a large market and a large state. It's not just that - it shows how polls operate within the status quo. Slavoj Zizek has an analysis of this somewhere making the point that while some policy may not poll well at first, if a politician were to make a big case out of it, it could change the whole frame of debate. Doug
Germany welcomes euro
According to the German polling organisation, Emnid, the popularity of the euro has leapt up with its introduction in Germany. Last quarter last year only 33% thought it right to introduce the euro. This month 65% support the decision. Three quarters believe that the intoduction of the euro will also lead to close political union. This is an interesting lesson in guided democracy, since a referendum in Germany at any time up to this month might well have derailed the euro project. But the interests of large capital prevailed, and once achieved the mass of the people see the advantages of a large market and a large state. This is a turning point in the development of post war Germany, which had put its faith in the strong DMark. The aim since Bismarck, of placing Germany at the centre of a stable Europe, at last nears achievement ironically as Germany loses its own currency. The fact that the euro has performed weekly against the dollar in the last year has apparently not weighed against its popularity. In fact it may be seen as helpful for the attempts at getting the German economy growing again. Chris Burford London
Germany
[from the Guardian] Crippled German giant needs radical surgery Europe's former economic powerhouse needs drastic reform if it is ever to regain its preeminence, argues David Gow Monday January 21, 2002 Germany is the laughing stock of Europe. For years it was chastised for failing to punch its political weight: economic giant, political dwarf, as the Germans said. Now it's rapidly becoming an economic pygmy, too, or, at the very least, a substantially reduced creature and faces more than castigation from the European commission for its underperformance. Last week senior Brussels officials dropped broad hints that Berlin was in danger of being red-carded for breaching the 3% (of GDP) budget deficit ceiling, which could mean substantial fines from the EC. This yellow card was all the more galling for chancellor Gerhard Schröder because he came to office in 1998 after laying into the economic incompetence of the Christian Democrats. Even more humiliating for the country as a whole, the architect of the deficit ceiling was none other than none other than Germany. That was the price it imposed for agreeing to economic and monetary union and giving up the mark, symbol of the nation's democratic stability and prosperity for more than 50 postwar years. And now, after a respectable 3% growth in national output in the year 2000, the German economy grew by just 0.6% in 2001, its worst performance since reunification in 1990. Who's the sick man of Europe now? This year promises little relief from the German sickness. Mr Schröder won on a platform of liberal economic reforms, long-needed, to revive and modernise industry and, critically, bring unemployment well below 4m, nearer to 3.5m, by the time of the next general election, now set for September 22. Already at 3.96m in December, joblessness will this month go well past 4m and analysts forecast that it will reach 4.3m or more before the summer. Small wonder that analysts such as Holger Fahrinkrug of UBS Warburg in Frankfurt are now talking of the economy, the heart of Europe, urgently requiring a triple bypass. Even the highly successful launch of the euro is unlikely to be more than a minor stimulant this year and Mr Schröder's policy-makers can hardly blame September 11 for the cardiac disease: the UK continues to outperform the rest of Europe even though it is as much exposed to world recession and the French are doing rather nicely, too. The Social Democrats in power in Berlin have carried out some reforms, cutting both personal and corporate taxes, but they have been too little, too late. Since 1995, according to the Economist, France has seen a 9% increase in jobs, the UK and Italy rises of 8% - and Germany a mere 2.6%. The top-heavy social costs of employment in Europe's biggest economy now mean that it costs 40% more to employ a person there than in neighbours such as Britain. The postwar settlement that brought Germany untold wealth enabled it to spend hundreds of billions of marks absorbing and trying to revitalise the ex-communist eastern part of the country in the past decade or more. But the institutional legacy of that settlement now needs to be swept away or, at the very least, subjected to drastic reform. Germany, west and east, needs modernisation if it is to regain its pre-eminence within the European economy. Edmund Stoiber, the Bavarian premier now challenging Schröder for the chancellorship from the combined right, is being trumpeted in some quarters as the man to do this partly because many of Germany's leading, most successful firms are based in Bavaria and partly because of low levels of unemployment there. But there's no evidence that he can deliver on a national scale the depth of reforms needed to rejuvenate Germany. These include a bonfire for outmoded regulations, a more open and flexible labour market and the creation of a genuine service sector geared to customer needs. Germany may now be a laughing stock but Europe needs it to resume its role as locomotive of growth and prosperity.
Work-life in Germany
[Financial Times] German work/life balance is too good to last Germans enjoy perhaps the best working conditions in the world. But reform is slowly catching up with a system that also fosters long-term unemployment, says Emma Tucker Published: December 10 2001 19:28 | Last Updated: December 10 2001 20:52 No one pretends that the heavy traffic clogging Berlin's roads at about midday on a Friday is anything other than an indication of the generous warm-up locals like to give their weekends. Nonetheless, the results of an investigation by a group of journalists from the Berliner Morgenpost still came as a shock. The reporters made 50 phone calls with 50 different requests to 50 public servants at 11am on a Friday. Officially public servants finish work at midday on Fridays but already at 11am most calls went unanswered and when a phone was picked up it was usually to tell the caller to ring back on Monday. The report underlined what one might call the "healthy" attitude towards work that prevails in Europe's economic powerhouse. The problem of balancing work and life may exercise the pockets of Frankfurt bankers or high-flying Munich public relations executives but it is not generally a stock topic at dinner parties. On the whole, people think they have got it right. Given the conditions under which both public and private employees in Germany work, it would be worrying if they did not. Germans in employment work fewer hours a year than virtually all their counterparts in other European Union countries. Only in Sweden and the Netherlands are fewer annual hours worked than in Germany. Jobs are highly secure, with employers reluctant to make people redundant because of the costs involved. When they do, workers are protected by generous social security provision. A study by the International Institute for Management Development in Switzerland concluded that Germany's labour market was the third most highly regulated when compared with Japan, the US and other countries in Europe. As if this were not enough, a study into unpaid overtime by the Anglo- German Foundation for the Study of Industrial Society carried out by economists from the universities of Stirling and Hanover confirmed that not only do Germans work fewer paid hours but they also work fewer unpaid hours. The study, which looked at the private and public sectors, found that unpaid overtime, when employees work beyond their agreed hours for no extra payment, has become an important economic phenomenon in the UK, where there are roughly as many unpaid overtime hours worked as there are paid overtime hours. While the average British female works an extra 1 hr 20 mins a week unpaid, her German counterpart does only 12 minutes for no extra cash. For German men unpaid overtime averages about 36 minutes a week but for British men it is two hours. Professor David Bell, a member of the department of economics at the University of Stirling and one of the report's authors, believes the results reflect the massive changes that have taken place in the UK labour market over the past 20 years. "Flexibility has become part of British working life. That cultural change has happened in the UK and may well not have happened in Germany," he says. So what is it about the German set-up that allows workers to go home and help put the children to bed while their British colleagues slog into the night for nothing? The answer lies in Germany's faith in a system that has ensured economic and political stability since the second world war, as well as impressive levels of productivity. In spite of all those unpaid hours put in by British workers, productivity is still higher in Germany than in the UK. Figures from the UK Treasury that rank the UK against other countries on gross domestic product per worker put Germany at 110 against the UK's 100. Employers, however, argue that the system is hugely costly, excludes thousands of people from the workplace and will eventually erode Germany's productivity advantage. German unemployment - 7.9 per cent - is among the highest in Europe. Part-time work has increased only marginally over the past five years and women tend to drop out of the jobs market once they have children. But those within the system have good reason to defend it. The hours are orderly and civilised and work is devoid of the stress that comes with US-style job insecurity. This, they argue, is a better recipe for social stability than America's. Going down the path of greater flexibility would surely disrupt the traditional German way of life - from its prohibition of Sunday shopping to its regulated hours, which in effect allow even white-collar staff to clock in and clock out. That the structure lumbers Germany with a permanent and large rump of unemployed people who will find it hard to enter the privileged world of the employed is glossed over. So great is the loyalty to Germany
Germany
German economy slows to point of zero growth Special report: global recession Charlotte Denny Friday August 17, 2001 The Guardian German output has ground to a halt, the country's central bank admitted yesterday, but it insisted that there was no danger of the euro zone's largest economy sliding into recession. Second-quarter gross domestic product is expected to be "unchanged from the first quarter and to have grown by 1% on the year in real terms", the Bundesbank said in its August monthly report. First-quarter year-on-year growth was 2%. The bank said visions of "the German economy on a recession course are unjustified", stressing that it saw no clear sign of a downward spiral. The government is to release official second-quarter GDP figures on August 23. The Bundesbank's warning helped check the euro's exuberant recovery against the dollar which has seen it gain 4.5 cents during the past week. After hitting a five-month high at above 92 cents on Wednesday, it slipped nearly half a cent yesterday, hurt by better than expected US economic figures. The US consumer price index fell by 0.3% in July, led by lower petrol prices; it is the largest monthly decline in more than 15 years. Over the 12 months to July, prices rose 2.7%, the smallest annual gain since January 2000. "It's a very encouraging sign that consumers will be able to stretch their incomes a little bit further - and that bodes well for the economy," said Gary Thayer, chief economist for AG Edwards & Sons in St Louis. Better than expected price data leave the door open for the inflation-wary Federal Reserve to again lower interest rates when its policy-setting federal open market committee meets on Tuesday. The Fed has cut rates six times, by a total of 2.75%, this year to prop up a shaky economy. There was good news from the US labour market. First-time jobless claims fell to 380,000 in the week ending August 11, pulling the less volatile four-week average down to its lowest level since early March, raising hopes the worst of the downturn may be over.
Germany finally drops Nazi law
An illuminating detail is that almost 70 years after it was introduced by the Nazi's Germany has finally dropped a law restricting discounts in small businesses. The current press does not call it a Nazi law, but it admits it was designed very clearly to bolster the class base of national socialism. Chris Burford London Copyright © 2001 The International Herald Tribune | www.iht.com Germany Scraps Law on Discounts The Associated Press The Associated Press Saturday, June 30, 2001 BERLIN A 1933 law that severely limited store discounts in Germany was abolished by Parliament on Friday, a victim of traditional and Internet retailers who increasingly ignored the antiquated restrictions. The 1933 law, passed eight months after Hitler came to power, was meant to protect small shopkeepers against a "degeneration" of competition. The law was part of the Nazis' campaign to drive Jews out of business because major department stores at the time were owned by Jews. Decades later, Internet retailers have been especially keen on dumping the restrictions, which set a cap of 3 percent on discounts outside certain limited sale periods during the summer and the winter. Germany's center-left government drafted the moves last year, saying consumers deserved more freedom to bargain and could be trusted to recognize misleading advertisements.
Germany stumbling
When Germany feels the chill so do we all Knock-on effect for the euro Saturday June 23, 2001 The Guardian Yesterday's business confidence figures from Germany were very worrying - not least for Wim Duisenberg and his colleagues at the European Central Bank. It is not simply a question of whether Germany is teetering on the brink of recession, though the signs do not look exactly healthy. It is the knock-on effect on the rest of the euro area and on the euro. Germany is the single currency area's biggest economy. As Germany slows it will inevitably act as a drag on the rest of the eurozone - and on others as well. One of the hopes of those praying for a rally in the euro was the prospect of eurozone growth outstripping that of the US economy. In such circumstances eurozone assets would become more attractive than dollar denominated ones, prompting a shift in investment flows which would benefit the beleaguered single currency. The evidence, from both sides of the Atlantic, is far from clear but it is no longer a racing certainty that the eurozone will be able to show the US a clean pair of heels in the growth stakes. At the very least that will give pause to those who might have thought of switching out of the US into Europe. Given the slide in its value since its launch two-and-half years ago, the euro is scarcely in a position to challenge the dollar's safe haven status. There is a psychological aspect too. The euro was designed as a surrogate German mark in order to give it some thing of the aura enjoyed by the German currency, the anchor of the old exchange rate mechanism. That, however, has helped create a situation where international investors looking for a health check on the euro simply look at the performance of the German economy. The picture emerging from Brandenburg to Bavaria is not one to encourage any enthusiasm for the euro. So where does that leave the ECB? It could cut interest rates which might help growth. But such a move is already priced into the market. After that there is not much left than fervent prayer. Telecom debt During the tech boom, we all became very blasé about big numbers. Every figure seemed to have a "bn" behind it. Millions were old economy. The big numbers are still around, except now they refer to debt rather than equity. The telecoms problem is well known, but in dealing with it there is a scare-mongering view that the job has only just begun. Here's one view being talked around the London market by corporate debt specialists at the moment. The back end of the tech splurge last year saw banks in the US and across Europe go berserk, issuing huge short-term credit lines on the basis that these would be replaced shortly by big bond issues (which never happened). Typically these credit lines were 364-day facilities, since lending beyond one year increases the amount of money banks have to set aside to maintain their capital adequacy ratios. One estimate says that $120bn (£85bn) worth of European telecoms bank debt comes up for renewal between July and September this year - and well over 10% of this relates to France Télécom, the owner of Orange. How and when all this might be dispersed among bond and equity investors is anyone's guess. But it will be a painful process. Off-menu Steak-frites chain Groupe Chez Gerard is carving out a nice little niche for itself in exotic profit warnings. Its back catalogue of reasons for poor trading includes the Kosovo war, the Soho pub bombing and the refurbishment of the royal opera house. Yesterday, the company announced it had been hurt by another national event - foot and mouth disease. It is a well documented fact that Americans have shunned Britain, after watching reporters clad in space suits spout nonsense about the dangers of the outbreak. So there was little surprise among analysts that Chez Gerard's profits will be lower. Much more worrying was a brief reference in the warning to poor trading at the company's Manchester restaurant. One of only three openings outside London, the site has failed to win the hearts of trendy Mancunians because of its heavy menu and uncomfortable bar. At one point, Chez Gerard was talking about opening 20 restaurants in two years, mainly in the provinces. The fact that it has slipped up on its third has set alarm bells ringing, and a 23% dive in the shares is an understandable reaction. Sceptics have always stressed that it is much harder to roll out a luxury chain than to produce carbon copies of a glorified fast-food joint such as Pizza Express. Diners spending £40 a head want a touch of exclusivity, which is hard to achieve in a national brand. By expanding too fast, Chez Gerard is in danger of over-cooking its entrées.
Hutton on Germany/England
Why the Germans are right about us It hurts to be told that our public services are third-rate. We already knew that. So why are we so patient? Why don't we complain more? Observer Election Special Guardian Unlimited Politics Will Hutton Sunday May 27, 2001 The Observer Stern magazine last week devoted 12 pages to reporting on what the Germans now habitually call 'the English patient'. Its images of a country where its poor live in Third World conditions, a fifth of the adult population is illiterate, its public services are third rate, 25,000 people unnecessarily die annually from cancer and the environment is casually disregarded don't fit with our own idea of ourselves. The consensus was that it was over the top and one-sided - and we could do the same hatchet job on the Germans if we chose. But the truth has to be faced. There are areas of excellence, but by and large Britain doesn't cut it. Our public services are third-rate. And tellingly the same parsimony, shoddiness and acceptance of low standards infect the abysmal quality of much of what goes on in the private sector. The two are of a piece. The scale of the growing productivity gap with the rest of Europe is one indicator, but the deeper measure is the cultural stoicism with which we endure the second best, the hand-me-down and the botch. Try as we might, we can't hit back at the Germans in the same way. Their country has its malfunctions, but it works. Our seaside hotels are one of the more telling barometers of our irredeemable second rateness - and which make the transport system seem almost utopian. My room in Hove last year during the Labour Party conference plumbed new depths; fraying and pockmarked carpet, torn, cheap curtains, a shower that rained water over the ceiling which then dripped onto the bathroom's stinking carpet, a rickety wardrobe without hangers, and walls so thin that you could hear every aspect of the other sufferers' nightly ablutions. Has the hotelier no shame that he presides over such an establishment? Why do we feel so much embarrassment about telling him to his face that his hotel is terrible? Try a comparable three star hotel in a similar resort in Germany, and you enter a different world where investment, quality and service are all inbred - and there are the institutions and culture to support them. It would have borrowed from the local savings and mortgage banks established to support local business investment, and it would have ploughed the cash into the building - so there would be proper bedroom walls and working bathroom fittings, built by a workforce with the proper vocational skills trained by local, state-funded skill schools. And German hotel guests would have complained vociferously if standards fell below what they knew they should get. And this is the rub. The speed with which the 'rip-off Britain' campaign took off should alert even the most complacent defender of the British private sector to its shortcomings. It doesn't invest enough. It seems structurally incapable of treating its workforce creatively and humanely, or demanding that they have high skills. It treats its customers with highhanded indifference - try finding someone who will go beyond the standard answer to any complaint at, say, Dixons or a Sky call centre. And those at the top seem only interested in rewarding themselves with stratospheric salaries. Glance at the numbers. German workers have 70 per cent more capital invested at their elbow for every hour worked compared with their British counterparts. The combination of their high skills and high investment mean they produce 29 per cent more for every hour they work - allowing them to work 175 hours less every year. Over the 1990s employment grew in Germany by 0.3 per cent a year - in Britain 0.4 per cent year, despite our famed 'flexible labour market'. If Germany hadn't been consumed by the overwhelming cost of integrating the East, it would have generated just as many jobs as we did. For 20 years we have been told that in order to improve our productivity we must shatter trade unions, emasculate the welfare state and offer the lowest marginal tax rates in order to incentivise workers and managers alike. The ratio of our chief executives' salaries to average production workers' pay is now twice that in Germany; our benefit levels are about half as generous; our tax rates uniformly lower. We are a much more unequal society, just as the Conservatives said we needed to be in order to grow more productive. But instead the productivity gap is widening, and the gulf between their public services and ours has become a chasm. Where Germany scores is that it understands the importance of ensuring that the institutions - whether in training, science or banking - that support its economy and society should be of the highest quality and support the common interest. Article 14 of the German constitut
Günter Grass on the Colonization of East Germany
New York Times 14 December 2000 Günter Grass on His New Book and His 'Strenuous Homeland' By ALAN RIDING CASAIS, Portugal - As a late autumn sun warms the red tiles of Günter Grass's getaway here, northern Germany could not seem farther away. Yet even in this isolated corner of southern Portugal, where the author escaped a year ago to prepare his Nobel address to the Swedish Academy, where he vacations every summer with his grandchildren, where he now fills his afternoons painting watercolors, Mr. Grass never quite leaves Germany. His "strenuous homeland," as he likes to call it, is the principal theme of his literature. It is his favorite topic of conversation. It is also the frequent target of his wrath. Germany, of course, is no less haunted by Mr. Grass. Since the publication of "The Tin Drum" in 1959 turned him into a household name at the age of 32, he has gone out of his way to lecture, even hector, his fellow Germans on their past and present failings. He has done so in novels, plays and essays as well as in political speeches and newspaper articles. And all too often he has said what many people did not want to hear. When his latest novel, "Ein Weites Feld," was published in German in 1995, he provoked a fresh scandal by portraying German unification in 1990 as West Germany's de facto occupation of East Germany. Naturally, Mr. Grass was unrepentant. Indeed, attacks on the book - including a photograph on the cover of Der Spiegel, the mass circulation news weekly, showing a well-known literary critic tearing up the novel - helped sales reach 350,000 in one year. Five years later, with the book finally appearing in the United States under the title "Too Far Afield" (Harcourt), this 1999 Nobel laureate in literature feels further vindicated: he believes that time has proved him right. "The reality is much darker than I presented it," said Mr. Grass, 73, peering over half-moon glasses and puffing on his trademark pipe. "The wall has gone, but Germany is still divided. People in the East were happy in 1989 when the wall came down, but then the West Germans arrived like colonizers. They didn't accept that the East Germans had a different biography, that they had gone from Hitler to Stalin, that they had never had a democratic experience." "They had to live their own lives," he went on. "But West Germans said: `Forget about it. It was all a mistake. Now do as we did in the West and you will be happy.' But we didn't know each other and we still don't know each other. The ignorance in the West makes it very difficult. Further, West Germany now owns East Germany. This is a terrible kind of colonization, and it will go on. So what I try to show in my novel is how it began, its criminal beginnings." In its central political message, the 658-page book targets Treuhand, the government body charged with privatizing or shutting down thousands of East German companies after unification. Translated in English as the Handover Trust, it is presented in "Too Far Afield" as a heartless instrument of capitalism that put millions of East Germans out of work and handed over the economic remnants of the Communist regime to avaricious West German investors. "Treuhand worked for four years without any democratic control," Mr. Grass said. The novel's literary embrace, however, is far wider. At one level, it tells its story through two former East German government workers: Theo Wuttke, erudite, eccentric and dreamy, who had been a guide and a lecturer at the Cultural Union; and Ludwig Hoftaller, Wuttke's "day- and-night shadow," who had worked as a spy for the Stasi. Both now 70, they end up with jobs in the Handover Trust. But the novel also works on other levels. Wuttke, for instance, is not only an expert on the 19th-century historian and novelist Theodor Fontane (who is referred to here only as "The Immortal"), but he also identifies with Fontane to the point of being known as Fonty and of frequently reliving this writer's life. Hoftaller's personality, on the other hand, merges with that of Tallhover, a 19th-century spy for the Prussian empire and its successor, the Second Reich. Mr. Grass, in turn, uses Fontane- Wuttke and Tallhover-Hoftaller and their collective memories to lead readers through Germany's convulsed history from its first unification in 1871 to its second unification in 1990. Some of this is symbolized by the Treuhand headquarters in former East Berlin. Built for the Nazis' Air Ministry, it was called the House of Ministries under Communism and, after Treuhand had done its work, it became the country's new Finance Ministry ...At center stage throughout the book is Berlin, a city that was home to Mr. Grass for 35 years until he m
Engels on Peasant wars in Germany & religion
This thread of 11/24 was chock full of contradictions-- but we all may be able to climb thru this muddle to learn a few things about history and the power of philosophy/ideology gripping the masses in motion. first, on the question of religion serving class /partisan ideology and material interests-- . Should not the issue of Muenzer and his peasant forces in revolt be put in some kind of historical perspective? In the 16th century liberatory and class movements came up against the feudal order dressed in religious ideological-politica l garb. It could not be other wise religion and fuedalism still predominated, even the rising burghers, merchants, and their princely allies developed their ideology to the mass under the guise of religious Protestantism as the against the Catholic church, a bastion of the feudalist mode of production. Though Luther led the Protestants , he still opposed the mass struggles of the oppressd/exploited on the bottom. Muenzer and his gallant comrades were actors in history pre-dating the scientific or rationalist epoch, the 'enlightenment' era. . But he was no opportunist since this movement was bound to be cloaked in religious ideology , a new 'religion' promoting a kind of utopian peasant primitive communism . The movement used the "sword of god" (Muenzer) to build a 'kingdom of god on earth", in other words maybe the toppling of the ruling classes and THEIR clerical church religious allies as a kind of 'millenial day of judgement'. This approach sees that ' It is not the consciousness of man that determines his existence but his social existence which determines his/her consciousness' , to paraphrase K. Marx! But today, in the modern epoch to build the masses struggle on religious- populist ideology and platform is quite backward , and opportunistic , since the rise of science, rationalism ,industry , and the working class under the wages system of exploitation have created the material social potential to supercede religious obscurantism. To again learn the lesson of what Engels' meant when he stated in the pamphlet on "Historical Materialism' that what political movements and programmes progressive in a previous histroical epoch can then become reactionary in a later historical epoch. such has been the track record of all religious mysticism , even so-called 'liberation theology' to be sure. Neil
Engels on The Peasant War in Germany (was Re: Divine's {sic}obscurantist community?)
wever, is easily discernible in all his writings, and it is obvious that the biblical cloak was for him of much less importance than it was for many a disciple of Hegel in modern times. Still, there is a distance of three hundred years between Muenzer and modern philosophy. Muenzer's political doctrine followed his revolutionary religious conceptions very closely, and as his theology reached far beyond the current conceptions of his time, so his political doctrine went beyond existing social and political conditions. As Muenzer's philosophy of religion touched upon atheism, so his political programme touched upon communism, and there is more than one communist sect of modern times which, on the eve of the February Revolution, did not possess a theoretical equipment as rich as that of Muenzer of the Sixteenth Century. His programme, less a compilation of the demands of the then existing plebeians than a genius's anticipation of the conditions for the emancipation of the proletarian element that had just begun to develop among the plebeians, demanded the immediate establishment of the kingdom of God, of the prophesied millennium on earth. This was to be accomplished by the return of the church to its origins and the abolition of all institutions that were in conflict with what Muenzer conceived as original Christianity, which, in fact, was the idea of a very modern church. By the kingdom of God, Muenzer understood nothing else than a state of society without class differences, without private property, and without Superimposed state powers opposed to the members of society. All existing authorities, as far as they did not submit and join the revolution, he taught, must be overthrown, all work and all property must be shared in common, and complete equality must be introduced. In his conception, a union of the people was to be organised to realise this programme, not only throughout Germany, but throughout entire Christendom. Princes and nobles were to be invited to join, and should they refuse, the union was to overthrow or kill them, with arms in hand, at the first opportunity. * Unfortunately, at the dawn of the twenty-first century, masses & leftist intellectuals alike have not made much progress since Thomas Muenzer, whose doctrine was far ahead of the standards of his days. Asceticism still attracts leftists, just as it did in the sixteenth century Yoshie
From Michael Gavin in East Germany on Haider protests
I understand that this evening there have been mass protests against the prospect of a coalition government in Austria containing the fascist Jörg Haider, leader of the FPÖ. I've posted some background articles in alt.politics.socialism.trotsky for those who want more information. This afternoon I received the following message from a socialist activist, a member of the group LINKSWENDE, in Vienna (I have translated it from German): - quote - Things here are pretty hectic, so just a quick note. Yesterday (Tuesday) the ÖVP (conservatives) and the FPÖ (populist fascists) agreed a common programme of government. Today they have to go to the president and he decides in principle whether a coalition should be commended. Yesterday morning the ÖVP headquarters in Vienna were occupied. Two comrades are involved. Yesterday evening there was then a spontaneous demonstration in front of the parliament building, where about 500 people (tatqally unorganised) gathered. We were also there. Everybody shouted: Haider is a fascist. The mood was super. After that, at about midnight, the ring-road round the city centre wqas occupied. Today a bigger demo has been organised, called by SOS Mitmensch, the organisation that organised the big demo on 12th November. And another big demo is planned for 19th. Quite a lot of opposition is arising and more and more people are even prepared to say publicly that they don't want to have a fascist in the government. It may be that we can still stop a blue-black coalition, if the movement against blue-black quickly gains momentum und above all if the trade unions were to go onto the streets. At the moment there is nothing coming from this direction, but it isn't excluded that this might still happen. OK. I don't have any more time. Bye, I'll keep you informed. - end quote - If and when I hear something new I'll post another message. Louis Proyect Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org/
[PEN-L:8914] Japan and Germany (was Re: Marx and 19th century racism)
Carrol wrote: >Re the Rape of Nanking and other Great Atrocities of History. > >It is incorrect to make any attribute an attribute of everything. That >whichexplains everything explains nothing. > >There have been huge crimes directed by members of the same "family" >against each other, crimes which by no stretch of the imagination can >be said to be directed by one "racial" group against another. It thus >makes sense to say that the Rape of Nanking was a war crime, not >a racial crime. I'd argue that the Rape of Nanking is comparable to, for instance, the fascist German + Croat treatment of Serbs, with the same intensity of fanatical cruelty. The Japanese reactionary ideologues argued for "Asia for Asiatics"--the "Daitowa Kyoei-Ken" in which they nominated themselves as the leader and liberator of oppressed fellow Asians suffering under European colonial yokes. (Of course in practice that meant "Asia for Japanese," as we all know.) The Japanese reactionaries were and still are *anti-modern + anti-Western modernizers*--on the face of their thought unlike the pro-modern + pro-Western ideologues who have argued for *Datsua Nyuoh* ["Out of Asia, Into the West," in the words of Fukuzawa Yukichi], but the desire to dominate the Asian market is common to both currents of the ruling class thought. Yoshie
[PEN-L:6735] Germany on Embassy Bombing
Nato has not told enough: Schroeder GERMAN Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder offered China an ``unconditional apology'' on behalf of his country and Nato for the bombing of the embassy in Belgrade and said alliance explanations had been ``far from enough''. Mr Schroeder also said in a meeting with Foreign Minister Tang Jiaxuan that China ``has every reason to demand a comprehensive, thorough and in-depth investigation into the incident and affix the responsibility for it'', Xinhua News Agency reported. Mr Schroeder arrived in China on Wednesday after four days of sometimes violent protests in Beijing and just hours before the remains of three journalists killed in Friday's attack were returned to Beijing. Mr Schroeder had sent a personal message of regret to Chinese President Jiang Zemin before leaving Germany. China has rejected Nato's explanation that the bombing was a mistake and demanded a full explanation and punishment of those responsible. German officials said the bombing and an outpouring of rage across China would dominate Mr Schroeder's visit, his first to China since becoming chancellor last year. The visit had been intended to focus on trade. As chairman of the Group of Eight _ a forum of Western powers and Russia that agreed on the outline of a peace plan for Kosovo last week in Bonn _ Mr Schroeder plays a key role in forming a consensus on a peace plan. China's support is needed to endorse any plan for Kosovo in the UN Security Council. ``Just the fact that we are talking shows that both sides remain interested in a dialogue,'' Mr Schroeder had said before leaving Germany. He added that differences over Kosovo should not be allowed to affect ties. ``I think we will make it clear that a close economic and political relationship between Germany and China, between Europe and China, will also be needed in the future,'' he said. Earlier, the chancellor told his cabinet that his main goal was to ensure ``that no doors are slammed shut and that China is tied into efforts for a political solution'' for the southern Yugoslav province. Following the bombing, China downgraded the long-planned trip from a state visit to a simple working visit, and it was cut from four days to just 24 hours. A German business delegation that was to accompany Mr Schroeder cancelled, and Mr Schroeder cancelled a visit to Shanghai. Mr Schroeder was briefed by Nato Secretary-General Javier Solana on the latest in the investigation into the errors that led to the attack on the embassy. The Nato claim was that it mistakenly believed the embassy to be a Yugoslav command centre. - AP 5/13/99 Via HK Standard
[PEN-L:6734] Germany on Embassy Bombing
[PEN-L:6519] An Appeal from American Jews to the Green Party of Germany
The following letter could make a difference in helping to stop the bombing of Yugoslavia. We have just 6 days to gather signatures and deliver it to the Green Party of Germany, which is meeting on Thursday, May 13. Many Green Party members are very angry about their party's support of bombing, and if the conference votes to oppose the bombing, the ruling Social Democratic-Green Party alliance will be under tremendous pressure to change its policies or risk the collapse of its coalition government. We are circulating this letter from American Jews because in Germany (as in the US), many liberal and progressive people are being told that those who oppose the bombing of Yugoslavia are committing the same mistake as those who failed to intervene in the events leading up to the Holocaust. We disagree strongly, as explained below. Please circulate this letter as widely and rapidly as you can, especially through e-mail and web sites. To sign on, simply return your name, and any title or organizational affiliation (it will be made clear that this is for identification only) to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] An Appeal from American Jews to the Green Party of Germany We are Jewish Americans who are deeply concerned that the memory and tragedy of the Holocaust is being invoked in order to justify an unjust bombing campaign against the civilian population of Yugoslavia. Many of us have friends who lost family members in the Holocaust, or have lost relatives ourselves. We are deeply aware of our own history and the need for the world community to intervene in situations where there is a threat of genocide, in order to prevent it. However, this is clearly not what is happening in Yugoslavia today. We do not believe that our government's war against Yugoslavia is motivated by humanitarian concerns. This is evidenced by their refusal to airlift food and water to desperate refugees within Kosovo, as well as the paltry sums allocated for refugee relief as compared to the billions of dollars spent on the bombing. The Clinton Administration's great reluctance to pursue a negotiated solution to the conflict also indicates that this intervention is mainly about power: showing the world that the United States (and NATO, which it largely controls) is the self- appointed international policeman, and stands above international law and the United Nations. They are waging their war against civilians, destroying the Yugoslav economy and killing hundreds of innocent people, in order to demonstrate and consolidate their power. Many supporters of the bombing have drawn analogies to the Holocaust, arguing that the world cannot simply stand by in the face of ethnic cleansing in Kosovo. But the bombing has greatly worsened the situation of the Kosovar Albanians, as is now universally recognized. It has also destroyed the pro-democracy movement within Yugoslavia, and is destabilizing neighboring countries. We urge you to reject these false and exaggerated analogies to the Holocaust and World War II, which are being used to garner support for a bombing campaign that is intensifying the suffering of all nationalities in Yugoslavia. We appeal to the Green Party of Germany to oppose this war, and to support a negotiated solution of the conflict. (Organizations listed for identification only). Noam Chomsky Institute Professor of Linguistics Massachusetts Institute of Technology Edward S. Herman Professor Emeritus, Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania Robert Weissman Editor, Multinational Monitor Michael Albert Z Magazine/Znet Michael Brün Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Sciences University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Mark Weisbrot Research Director, Preamble Center Dean Baker Senior Research Fellow, Preamble Center Robert Naiman Research Associate, Preamble Center --- Robert Naiman <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Preamble Center 1737 21st NW Washington, DC 20009 phone: 202-265-3263 fax: 202-265-3647 http://www.preamble.org/ ---
[PEN-L:5304] GERMANY PROPOSES PLAN FOR PEACE IN KOSOVO BASED ON USE OF U.N.FORCES
The Canadian Press Wednesday, April 14,
1999
GERMANY PROPOSES PLAN FOR PEACE IN KOSOVO BASED ON USE OF U.N. FORCES
White House reiterates U.S. insistence that peacekeeping
forces in Kosovo be under NATO command.
BELGRADE (CP) Yugoslavia said Wednesday that a convoy
of ethnic Albanian refugees were bombed by NATO planes in
Kosovo, killing 70 people and injuring 31others. NATO said its
aircraft carried out attacks in Kosovo. "The pilots state they at-
tacked only military vehicles," NATO said in a statement.
"We cannot confirm press reports alleging that these attacks
may have caused civilian casualties."
Yugoslav Foreign Ministry spokesman Nebojsa Vujevic de-
nounced the strike as a "crime against humanity."
"The bodies are literally littered on the highway," he said.
While there was no independent confirmation, if the account
were true, it would mark by far the largest single loss of civilian
life reported during the three-week-old NATO bombing campaign.
This happened the same day Germany proposed a new plan for
peace in the troubled province. But reports of refugee casualties
from the Kosovo convoy stole much of the media attention.
Pentagon spokesman Kenneth Bacon said NATO was investi-
gating but there was no indication its planes hit civilians.
Bacon said Gen. Wesley Clark, one of NATOs top command-
ers, told him in a telephone conversation on Wednesday that he
had received "verbal reports of the possibility" that after military
vehicles in the refugee convoy were hit, "military people got out
and . . . began to attack civilians in the middle of the convoy."
"We dont know what the full facts are," Bacon said.
Earlier, Bacon said UN relief workers had reported to NATO
that refugees entering Albania had claimed refugee convoys were
being attacked by Yugoslav planes and helicopters.
Video taken under Serb control showed smashed bodies scat-
tered along a roadway, damaged farm vehicles and bombed-out
farm buildings nearby. People in rough peasant clothing, some
with blood streaming down their faces, loaded bodies of the dead
and wounded into trunks of cars or wheelbarrows to transport
them.
Old men and women wept by the roadside. A young boy sat on
a trailer rig, sobbing.
Kosovos Serb-run Media Centre reported 70 ethnic Albanians
died in two NATO strikes on refugee convoys.
"In the village of Meja, 64 people were killed and 20 wounded
including three Serb policemen who were escorting the convoy," a
media centre official said by telephone from the Kosovo regional
capital, Pristina.
"In the village of Zrze, six people were killed and 11
wounded," he said.
The Media Centre said the NATO attacks were on columns of
ethnic Albanian refugees, one of them containing several thousand
people on tractors and in cars. It said the three wounded police-
men had also died.
Meanwhile, in a drive to bring peace to Kosovo, Germany un-
veiled a plan calling for a one-day suspension of air strikes if
Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic begins withdrawing
troops from the province.
"If there is an agreement, then there will be a pause while Mi-
losevic withdraws his troops," Foreign Affairs Minister Lloyd Ax-
worthy said in Ottawa.
NATO called the German plan a "food-for-thought paper," but
did not immediately endorse it.
Spokesman Jamie Shea said it was a "very useful and necessary
contribution" to the debate on how to get Milosevic to back down.
German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, current president of
the 15-country European Union, convened a special EU summit
Wednesday evening to discuss the peace plan and to meet with UN
Secretary General Kofi Annan.
Alliance officials feel the air campaign has begun to stagger
Milosevic and are hesitant to ease up and give him a chance to re-
cuperate.
The proposals call for a UN military force to move in as
Yugoslav army and special police forces withdraw. That would be
followed by a return of the hundreds of thousands of ethnic Alba-
nian refugees who have fled to Albania and Macedonia and an in-
terim UN administration of Kosovo.
Axworthy said Canada helped prepare the plan last weekend. It
has yet to be sold to Russia.
"We certainly have to seek out the agreement of Russia to be
one of the participants and clearly to get the agreement of Mr.
Milosevic to the conditions that were set out."
German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer said Russia had
"almost fully agreed" to the plan.
But he said Russia still had concerns over the makeup of an
international peacekeeping force for Kosovo, for which Germany
is trying to
[PEN-L:4589] Re: Germany sheds its pacifism
I AIN'T MARCHING ANYMORE by John Lacny There must be some people in Belgrade old enough to remember the last time the bombs fell there. In 1941, they bore the Swastika; now most of them bare the Stars and Stripes. A better illustration of the direction world politics has taken since the end of the Second World War would be hard to find. Is this hyperbole? Perhaps, but it is no more so than Bill Clinton's comparison between Milosevic's Serbia and Nazi Germany. It seems almost too easy to point out that these denunciations of Serb atrocities come from the head of an Administration which acknowledges that its own Iraq policy alone has resulted in hundreds of thousands of deaths, yet still notoriously maintains that "the price is worth it." Serbian nationalists are convinced that the entire world is against them. It's always best to take their claims with a grain of salt, especially considering that these people lay claim to Kosovo on the grounds that the Serbs fought a battle there six hundred years ago. Yet the fact that a group of people is paranoid does not mean that everybody is *not* out to get them. The Serbs have reason to wonder why *their* atrocities are a source of outrage in the West, while those of everyone else are ignored. Consider the case of Franjo Tudjman, the man who more or less constitutes the current government of Croatia. Tudjman is the author of a book which claimed that "only" 900,000 Jews died in the Holocaust (the real number is 6 million) and that 70,000 Serbs died under the collaborationist regime of the Croatian Ustashe in the same period (the real number is at least 750,000). This same individual was invited to the opening of the Holocaust Museum in Washington in 1993. There, at the height of the war in Bosnia, Clinton denounced the Serbs as the heirs of Hitler. And Tudjman-- the West's neo-Nazi client-- was soon to become responsible for the single greatest act of ethnic cleansing during the last Balkan War: the expulsion of hundreds of thousands of Serbs from the Krajina region of Croatia. Every variety of ethnic nationalism in the former Yugoslavia bears its part of the blame for the bloody dismemberment of the country. (This includes the Bosnian Muslims, whose regime was once hailed in the West as an embattled haven of pluralistic tolerance, event though it was headed by the Islamic fundamentalist Alija Izetbegovic.) With this noted, it is still difficult not to sympathize with the Kosovar Albanians. If anything, their nationalism is mostly a reaction to the Serb chauvinism which made them the first victims of Yugoslavia's impending disintegration as far back as 1989. The Milosevic regime's crackdown is the latest in a long line of outrages. However, it is necessary to realize that irridentism, while a contagious bacillus, is also a deadly one. The ascendancy of the Kosovar Liberation Army-- encouraged, it is true, by the regime's repression-- cannot but bode ill for all ethnic minorities (not only Serbs!) in Kosovo. This is not even to mention the uneasy communal truce which reigns in neighboring Macedonia, a country with a large Albanian minority which is the only former Yugoslav Republic thus far to have avoided direct involvement in this ongoing series of wars. To side with one flavor of ethnic nationalism or the other in this region is merely to heighten communal violence. Furthermore, to embrace Balkan nationalist agitation of one kind or the other is to ignore the very real fact of Great Power manipulation. In the case of Kosovo, the Clinton Administration has used Albanian grievances as a vehicle for legitimizing NATO violence and militarism generally. This is part of a long-term strategy aimed at the isolation of Russia and the eventual crystallization of a European power bloc under US hegemony. Needless to say, the prospect is not a good one for any kind of lasting European peace. In the meantime, people on the ground in Serbia and Montenegro-- as in Iraq-- are paying the price. For US citizens of conscience, it is ironically Clinton himself who has said it best: "If you don't stand up to brutality and the killing of innocent civilians, you invite them to do more." John Lacny dreamt he saw Tito last night, alive as you and me. (Lacny is an activist at the University of Pittsburgh) Louis Proyect (http://www.panix.com/~lnp3/marxism.html)
[PEN-L:4583] (Fwd) CONFLICT IN THE BALKANS: THE ROLE OF GERMANY
--- Forwarded Message Follows --- Date sent: Fri, 26 Mar 1999 14:29:56 -0800 To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] From: Sid Shniad <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject:CONFLICT IN THE BALKANS: THE ROLE OF GERMANY The New York Times March 26, 1999 CONFLICT IN THE BALKANS: IN GERMANY By Roger Cohen Berlin -- For the first time since the end of World War II, German fighter jets have gone to war, taking part in the attack on Yugoslavia as part of a NATO force and marking this country's definitive emancipation from post-war pacifism. Rudolf Scharping, the German Defense Minister, said four Tornado jets took off from their Piacenza base in northern Italy late Wednesday and participated in the NATO mission, before returning safely. The German Parliament has authorized up to 15 military aircraft to take part in the air strikes. Germany reacted calmly, indicating a profound change in its psyche since the fall of the Berlin wall. Throughout the period of post-war reconstruction, the saying that "only peace" would go out from German soil amounted to a kind of mantra. The one time during the cold war that German troops marched in a foreign land was in 1968, when East German troops assisted in the Soviet-led invasion of Czechoslovakia. The devastation, physical and moral, caused by Hitler's Reich and the country's delicate position at the front line of the cold war contributed to Germany's peace-only outlook. But Europe has changed and Germany has changed with it. "The last victim of the fall of the wall is German pacifism," Stephan Speicher commented Thursday in the Berliner Zeitung. Not everyone is ready. There have been dissenting voices and clear tensions within the governing coalition of Social Democrat Chancellor Gerhard Schröder. Gregor Gysi, the leader of the Party of Democratic Socialism, on Thursday denounced Germany's participation. "After what has happened this century, Germany above all has no right to drop bombs on Belgrade." He was referring to Hitler's flattening of Belgrade, which began on April 6, 1941, after Serbs tore up a pact with the Nazis. This event is etched on Serbian consciousness as if it happened yesterday. Still, Gysi's voice appeared relatively isolated amid what the conservative newspaper Die Welt called "a kind of public emptiness." German equanimity was clearly reinforced Thursday by the fact that it was a "Red-Green" coalition of Social Democrats and Greens that approved the decision to participate. "The Federal Government has not easily taken the decision that, for the first time since World War II, there are German soldiers in an operational mission," Schröder said. But "our fundamental values of freedom, democracy and human rights" were being flouted in Kosovo, he said. Just seven years ago, at the start of the Bosnian war, Joschka Fischer, then a Green member of Parliament, opposed any Western military intervention or deployment of German forces in Bosnia. But Germany eventually played a role, in the air and on the ground, in the United Nations peace-keeping force in Bosnia. As the Foreign Minister since October, Fischer has argued passionately for the West's responsibility to stop Serbian aggression in Kosovo. Daniel Cohn-Bendit, a Green colleague of Fischer and a fellow militant in the revolutionary struggles of the 1960's, said Bosnia had "simply transformed" the way the Foreign Minister approached the question of the use of force. Still, the German participation in air raids on Yugoslavia is potentially explosive, for it will confirm every dark Serbian suspicion about the West. If there has been a single obsession in Serbian policy this century, it has been to prevent what Belgrade sees as German expansionism in the Balkans. "We are not ready to make a distinction between the bombs of Adolf Hitler from 1941 and the bombs of NATO," Vuk Draskovic, the Yugoslavian Deputy Prime Minister, said. Strong German support for Croatian independence from Yugoslavia, and Croatia's adoption of the hymn "Danke Deutschland" when that independence came in 1991, only reinforced Serbian misgivings. The last time NATO bombed in the Balkans -- hitting Serbian positions around Sarajevo in 1995 -- the action prompted a response very similar to Draskovic's Thursday. "By its length, this bombardment is even more brutal than the bombardment conducted by Hitler on April 6, 1941, on Belgrade, given the fact that Hitler's bombardment was stopped on April 8, 1941, to allow the burial of victims under Christian custom," Gen. Ratko Mladic, then the comma
[PEN-L:4566] Germany sheds its pacifism
NY Times, March 26, 1999 CONFLICT IN THE BALKANS: IN GERMANY By ROGER COHEN BERLIN -- For the first time since the end of World War II, German fighter jets have gone to war, taking part in the attack on Yugoslavia as part of a NATO force and marking this country's definitive emancipation from post-war pacifism. Rudolf Scharping, the German Defense Minister, said four Tornado jets took off from their Piacenza base in northern Italy late Wednesday and participated in the NATO mission, before returning safely. The German Parliament has authorized up to 15 military aircraft to take part in the air strikes. Germany reacted calmly, indicating a profound change in its psyche since the fall of the Berlin wall. Throughout the period of post-war reconstruction, the saying that "only peace" would go out from German soil amounted to a kind of mantra. The one time during the cold war that German troops marched in a foreign land was in 1968, when East German troops assisted in the Soviet-led invasion of Czechoslovakia. The devastation, physical and moral, caused by Hitler's Reich and the country's delicate position at the front line of the cold war contributed to Germany's peace-only outlook. But Europe has changed and Germany has changed with it. "The last victim of the fall of the wall is German pacifism," Stephan Speicher commented Thursday in the Berliner Zeitung. Not everyone is ready. There have been dissenting voices and clear tensions within the governing coalition of Social Democrat Chancellor Gerhard Schröder. Gregor Gysi, the leader of the Party of Democratic Socialism, on Thursday denounced Germany's participation. "After what has happened this century, Germany above all has no right to drop bombs on Belgrade." He was referring to Hitler's flattening of Belgrade, which began on April 6, 1941, after Serbs tore up a pact with the Nazis. This event is etched on Serbian consciousness as if it happened yesterday. Still, Gysi's voice appeared relatively isolated amid what the conservative newspaper Die Welt called "a kind of public emptiness." German equanimity was clearly reinforced Thursday by the fact that it was a "Red-Green" coalition of Social Democrats and Greens that approved the decision to participate. "The Federal Government has not easily taken the decision that, for the first time since World War II, there are German soldiers in an operational mission," Schröder said. But "our fundamental values of freedom, democracy and human rights" were being flouted in Kosovo, he said. Just seven years ago, at the start of the Bosnian war, Joschka Fischer, then a Green member of Parliament, opposed any Western military intervention or deployment of German forces in Bosnia. But Germany eventually played a role, in the air and on the ground, in the United Nations peace-keeping force in Bosnia. As the Foreign Minister since October, Fischer has argued passionately for the West's responsibility to stop Serbian aggression in Kosovo. Daniel Cohn-Bendit, a Green colleague of Fischer and a fellow militant in the revolutionary struggles of the 1960's, said Bosnia had "simply transformed" the way the Foreign Minister approached the question of the use of force. Still, the German participation in air raids on Yugoslavia is potentially explosive, for it will confirm every dark Serbian suspicion about the West. If there has been a single obsession in Serbian policy this century, it has been to prevent what Belgrade sees as German expansionism in the Balkans. "We are not ready to make a distinction between the bombs of Adolf Hitler from 1941 and the bombs of NATO," Vuk Draskovic, the Yugoslavian Deputy Prime Minister, said. Strong German support for Croatian independence from Yugoslavia, and Croatia's adoption of the hymn "Danke Deutschland" when that independence came in 1991, only reinforced Serbian misgivings. The last time NATO bombed in the Balkans -- hitting Serbian positions around Sarajevo in 1995 -- the action prompted a response very similar to Draskovic's Thursday. "By its length, this bombardment is even more brutal than the bombardment conducted by Hitler on April 6, 1941, on Belgrade, given the fact that Hitler's bombardment was stopped on April 8, 1941, to allow the burial of victims under Christian custom," Gen. Ratko Mladic, then the commander of Serbian forces in Bosnia, wrote to a Western general. With 2,500 German troops now in Bosnia, and another 3,000 in Macedonia, the possibility of some Serbian reprisal against German forces exists, especially if the NATO bombing proves prolonged or erratic. This possibility has already created political tensions here. Volker Rühe, the former Defense Minister in the Christian Democrat Government of Helmut Kohl, said that the troops in Macedonia had been sent as
[PEN-L:1068] Churchill: "Drench Germany with poison gas"
The Guardian (London) November 2, 1998 Churchill planned to drench Germany in gas Richard Norton-Taylor reports BODY: Winston Churchill: no time for 'psalm-singing defeatists': A second world war German motorcycle team wears gas masks . . . a month after D-Day, Churchill mooted drenching German cities with poison gas: 'We do not believe that chemical warfare would have a decisive effect': General Ismay's reply to Churchill: 'We could drench the cities of the Ruhr and others in such a way that most of the population would be requiring constant medical attention': Winston Churchill WINSTON Churchill contemplated drenching Germany with poison gas in the last year of the second world war, dismissing moral objections from what he called "psalm-singing uniformed defeatists", according to documents discovered recently at the Public Record Office. He considered the appalling prospect in a personal minute to General Sir Hastings Ismay, secretary of the war cabinet, on July 6, 1944 - exactly a month after the D-Day landings, when the allies were on their way to winning the war but Germany was still mounting strong resistance. "It is absurd," he wrote, "to consider morality on this topic when everybody used it in the last war without a word of complaint from the moralists or the Church. On the other hand, in the last war the bombing of open cities was regarded as forbidden. Now everybody does it as a matter of course. It is simply a question of fashion changing as she does between long and short skirts for women." Churchill said he would not use gas unless it could be shown it was "life or death for us" or "it would shorten the war by a year". He told Ismay he wanted "a cold-blooded calculation made as to how it would pay us to use poison gas, by which I mean principally mustard. We will want to gain more ground in Normandy so as not to be cooped up in a small area. We could probably deliver 20 tons to their one and for the sake of the one they would bring their bomber aircraft into the area against our superiority, thus paying a heavy toll." Answering his own question why Germany had not used gas against the allies, Churchill told Ismay: "Not certainly out of moral scruples or affection for us. They have not used it because it does not pay them . . . the only reason they have not used it against us is that they fear the retaliation. What is to their detriment is to our advantage." He added: "Although one sees how unpleasant it is to receive poison gas attacks, from which nearly everyone recovers, it is useless to protest that an equal amount of HE (high explosive) will not inflict greater cruelties and sufferings on troops or civilians. One really must not be bound within silly conventions of the mind whether they be those that ruled in the last war or those in reverse which rule in this." Churchill's memo is featured in a Scottish Television programme, in the series Secret Scotland, to be broadcast tomorrow night. It reveals that the wartime government also contemplated spraying gas from aircraft over Irish beaches in the event of German landings there. It is known that in 1919, Churchill, then Secretary for War and Colonial Secretary, encouraged the use by the RAF of mustard gas bombs in Iraq as an alternative to deploying the army against the Kurds. Documents for that year, marked "Gas: use in Iraq", were originally released at the Public Record Office in 1969, but were later removed without explanation. The newly released documents show that in 1944 Churchill was concerned about the threat posed by V2 "doodlebug" rockets. "If the bombardment of London really became a serious nuisance and great rockets with far-reaching and devastating effect fell on many centres of government and labour," he told Ismay, "I should be prepared to do anything that would hit the enemy in a murderous place. I may certainly have to ask you to support me in using poison gas." He added: "We could drench the cities of the Ruhr and many other cities in Germany in such a way that most of the population would be requiring constant medical attention. I do not see why we would always have all the disadvantages of being the gentleman while they have all the advantages of being the cad. There are times when this may be so but not now." In a chilling passage, Churchill continued: "I quite agree it may be several weeks or even months before I shall ask you to drench Germany with poison gas, and if we do it, let us do it 100 per cent. In the meanwhile, I want the matter studied in cold blood by sensible people and not by that particular set of psalm-singing uniformed defeatists which one runs across now here now there." He told Ismay: "Pray address yourself to this. It is a big thing and can only be discarded for a big reason. I
[PEN-L:1285] Re: Russia <---> Germany II
Ah, school's in and there's Dennis at the blackboard, once again making us wonder why we're wasting our time on this side of the Atlantic at all. Not that I'm drawing parallels in material or political circumstance, but the Nazis won at the ballot box in '33 after the Germans had observed nearly a decade of scary Stalinist demolition and state-building at fairly short range, a spectacle that had to mesh well with NSDAP campaign themes. Today, what with the Net, remote TV cameras, etc, might not a very short period of Russian chaos upset the current will to progress in Germany? I can recall how the Eisenhower incumbency benefitted from unsettled foreign conditions in the fall of '56 (dog-wagging was a more cooperative enterprise back then). valis > The SPD and Schroeder have this sewn up. Practically every poll ever taken > shows that the German electorate thinks long and hard and makes up its mind > in the year before the election, and that's that. So sind die Deutsche. .. > I expect full citizenship rights to be granted to immigrants, just like other > European countries, plus more funding for higher education, and some small > increase in the tax bite on the rich. Nothing too huge, basically a kind of > Jospinism a l'allemand. Of course, the class struggle will grind on, only > with the working class in a more favorable position -- IG Metall has been > growling about the need for major real wage increases for some time now > (and those people don't make policy threats lightly), the students > went on strike last year, heck, people in general are pissed and not going > to take this neoliberal crap anymore.
[PEN-L:1276] Re: Russia <---> Germany
On Thu, 27 Aug 1998, valis wrote: > Anyone care to don a wizard's hat and predict the consequences > at the ballot box on September 27th? Really a tricky issue. > Even trickier is guessing what difference would be made > by having the SPD in power. Let's see, where's my magic wand... oh, there it is, next to the Burger Kind tiara. (Ahem). Now, as to the German elections -- the net result, or so says this particular radical mammal, will be a mighty gnashing of the mediatic teeth, much unhappiness in the executive offices of Deutsche Bank, and finally, absolutely no effect on the outcome whatsoever. The SPD and Schroeder have this sewn up. Practically every poll ever taken shows that the German electorate thinks long and hard and makes up its mind in the year before the election, and that's that. So sind die Deutsche. The Germans are thoroughly fed up with Kohl, the CDU's austerity, and with 11% unemployment, and whereas the East voted for the Right in 1994, expecting the economy would blossom, nowadays the pendulum has swung Left. Expect a Red-Green Government this October, plus a spate of PDS-SPD state governments in the East. Mostly, this'll mean more dough for workers and the EU, which is a good thing, but it'll take sustained politicking by the Greens and their Left allies to push the SPD to do more. I expect full citizenship rights to be granted to immigrants, just like other European countries, plus more funding for higher education, and some small increase in the tax bite on the rich. Nothing too huge, basically a kind of Jospinism a l'allemand. Of course, the class struggle will grind on, only with the workingclass in a more favorable position -- IG Metall has been growling about the need for major real wage increases for some time now (and those people don't make policy threats lightly), the students went on strike last year, heck, people in general are pissed and not going to take this neoliberal crap anymore. -- Dennis
[PEN-L:1251] Russia <---> Germany
Insurrection, anarchy (in the popular understanding of the term), totally inert collapse, or some serial admixture thereof may occur in Russia before our eyes within the next few weeks. More importantly, it would also happen before the eyes of the German electorate. Anyone care to don a wizard's hat and predict the consequences at the ballot box on September 27th? Really a tricky issue. Even trickier is guessing what difference would be made by having the SPD in power. valis
[PEN-L:1234] Russia: Kohl (Germany) and Obuchi (Japan) Back Yeltsin
--F95A780CF0001E124D5117C4 Kohl and Obuchi Back Yeltsin TOKYO -- (Reuters) German Chancellor Helmut Kohl and Japanese Prime Minister Keizo Obuchi agreed on Tuesday to back Russian President Boris Yeltsin's efforts to stabilize his country's tattered economy, a Japanese spokesman said. "Russia needs continued economic reform efforts, and we must support such reform efforts (by Yeltsin)," the Japanese prime minister's spokesman quoted Kohl as telling Obuchi in a 15-minute telephone conversation. Obuchi told Kohl: "I agree. Let us continue to exchange views on Russia." The spokesman said Kohl set up the call with Obuchi two weeks ago. He said the conversation was not connected with a warning by Russia's top debt negotiator, Anatoly Chubais, that government indecision following the sacking of Sergei Kiriyenko as prime minister on Sunday could lead to grave new economic dangers for the country. Yeltsin replaced Kiriyenko with acting Prime Minister Victor Chernomyrdin who is rushing to put together a new government. Chernomyrdin, resurrected from a brief spell in the political wilderness, on Tuesday promised to refocus economic reforms as he sought to win parliamentary approval and form a government. "It's unlikely that we need to remodel completely," he said in an newspaper interview published on Tuesday as he returned to the job he held from 1992 until March this year. "However, we must deal with a lot of things." On Tuesday the Russian ruble suffered its worst fall in nearly four years, dropping 10 percent. Kohl and Obuchi also discussed the financial crisis in Asia, particularly involving Indonesia, and the effect of floods on China. The spokesman said when Kohl asked for Obuchi's assessment of the devastating Chinese floods, the Japanese prime minister replied: "I am worried about the negative impact of the floods on the Chinese economy." Voicing concern over Indonesia, Obuchi said Japan would continue to help Jakarta pull out of its financial crisis. "The Indonesian economy is in a severe condition with rising inflation," Obuch said. Obuchi urged Kohl to extend help to Indonesia. Obuchi, struggling to pull Japan out of its worst recession since World War II, said he accepted that Japan's recovery was necessary to ensure the reconstruction of the Asian economy. Earlier on Tuesday, Obuchi told parliament Japan's basic policies on Russia would not be affected by political uncertainty following Yeltsin's shock dismissal of Kiriyenko. "Japan has no intention of changing the current course of Japanese-Russian relations," Obuchi told the lower house. He did not expect changes in Russian policies toward Japan. Russian political uncertainty stems from "internal causes reflecting the confusion of Russia's economic and financial situations," said Obuchi, who visits Russia in November. But a senior Foreign Ministry official was quoted by Kyodo News Service as saying: "The instability in Russia's domestic political situation is not favorable for negotiations for concluding a peace treaty between Japan and Russia." Tokyo and Moscow are working to solve a World War II territorial dispute over ownership of Russian-held islands off Hokkaido as a way toward concluding a peace treaty by 2000. The disputed islands -- Etorofu, Kunashiri, Shikotan islands and the Habomai group of islets -- were seized by Soviet troops at the end of World War II but are claimed by Japan. Japan and Russia have yet to conclude a peace treaty because of the dispute. -- Gregory Schwartz Dept. of Political Science York University 4700 Keele St. Toronto, Ontario M3J 1P3 Canada Tel: (416) 736-5265 Fax: (416) 736-5686 Web: http://www.yorku.ca/dept/polisci --F95A780CF0001E124D5117C4 Kohl and Obuchi Back Yeltsin TOKYO -- (Reuters) German Chancellor Helmut Kohl and Japanese Prime Minister Keizo Obuchi agreed on Tuesday to back Russian President Boris Yeltsin's efforts to stabilize his country's tattered economy, a Japanese spokesman said. "Russia needs continued economic reform efforts, and we must support such reform efforts (by Yeltsin)," the Japanese prime minister's spokesman quoted Kohl as telling Obuchi in a 15-minute telephone conversation. Obuchi told Kohl: "I agree. Let us continue to exchange views on Russia." The spokesman said Kohl set up the call with Obuchi two weeks ago. He said the conversation was not connected with a warning by Russia's top debt negotiator, Anatoly Chubais, that government indecision following the sacking of Sergei Kiriyenko as prime minister on Sunday could lead to grave new economic dangers for the country. Yeltsin replaced Kiriyenko with acting Prime Minister Victor Chernomyrdin who is rushing to put together a new government. Chernomyrdin, resurrected from a brief spell in the political wilderness, on Tuesday promised to refocus economic reforms as he sought to win parliamentary approval and form a government. "It's unlikely that we need to remodel complet
[PEN-L:813] Springtime, Ajit and Germany
> You see, Michael is the only person on this cite who has the > 'adimnistrative' power to throw any person out of this space-- it is > equivalent to deporting somebody. My problem with what you say > about Michael as a scholar is not that it is factually incorrect. Not > at all! But he should be praised in other forums, where he is not in > power. Praising him so repeatedly, and so often, on a forum where > he is admittedly the most powerful person creates a 'Hail Hitler' > culture. It has nothing to do with Michael as a person or a scholar. ^^^ Oh Ajit, stick to the realities you know, and somebody pass the barf bag! valis
students on strike all over Germany (fwd)
> -- Forwarded message -- > Date: Sat, 29 Nov 1997 11:54:50 -0800 > From: Andreas Hippin <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > Subject: students on strike all over Germany > > There is a big strike going on at German universities and Duisburg > University where I am studying has > joined in as well. > > There are national aims such as financial support from the state for > students to enable them to study without being forced > to do jobbing most of the time , more money for the universities for > better education, more democracy within > the universities, e.g. there is a legitimate students' parliament in > Northrhine-Westphalia, the federal state of Germany Duisburg is situated > in. But there are no such public bodies in Bavaria or > Baden-Wuerttemberg, so students there have no means to articulate their > interests. > > There are also local aims which are even more important since students > would like to discuss how they want to be teached, what they want to > learn and how they would like to do research. There has been a large > meeting of more than 1.000 students which decided to bring the strike to > Duisburg last week and it has been confirmed once more in another large > meeting on Friday. > > One of the problems here is that many professors are neither willing nor > able to offer high-quality teaching since they're busy with research for > private corporations most of the time. They don't even consider it > necessary to update their stats. e.g. "This is a > table with data published in 1991, but...errrh...there hasn't been much > change anyway." That's why one of the demands of the students of > economics on strike is to end "lifelong employment" for professors. > > The media are portraying the strike as a single point movement directed > at getting more funds for the universities. As a student participating > in the strike I'd like to tell you that there's much more in it. Why > should I gon on strike for the goals of my professors or the university? > Actually I don't think Duisburg is really crowded and the funds > available are allocated the wrong way, e.g. there is a library of the > East Asia institute but it is only opened one hour a week although a > Japanese librarian has been employed for it. > > Most students are really fed up with these problems which occur in > almost every faculty here. Unfortunately most of them don't think they > can achieve anything by protesting against these deficits. After fifteen > years of conservative rulership over Germany their generation lacks the > experience that the future is wide open and everything can be achieved > if you stand together. So the strike will probably be not very > successful as far as concrete goals are concerned. > > However it's another chance to see who's who. Actually I haven't seen to > many students of East Asian area sciences out there. But they aren't > famous for solidarity anyway. > > On Monday 13.00 hours there will be a demonstration to the bridges over > the river Rhine where Duisburg's steel workers demonstrated ten years > ago against the closure of one of the largest steelworks: Krupp > Rheinhausen. The bridge was blocked by the workers and their struggle > has been a big issue even on national level. The students would like to > express their solidarity with the struggles of other declassed groups in > this society since they know that there won't be a shachoo seat for > everyone although some still seem to believe that they'll be boss > someday. Those are living as if they had achieved their goal already, > another case of virtual reality. > > Andreas > > > >
AP: Debate on European-wide Jobs Program- Germany
November 13, 1997 Kohl Nixes European Jobs Program By The Associated Press BONN, Germany (AP) -- Chancellor Helmut Kohl on Thursday rejected any Europe-wide program to create jobs, saying governments cannot solve the unemployment problem by throwing money at it. At the European Union jobs summit next week, France's Socialist government, in particular, is expected to push for new EU funding to cut unemployment. But Kohl said governments would better help the region's 18 million jobless by restraining spending, easing regulations for business and aiding startup firms involved in new technologies. ``We should not promote the illusion that we can sustainably create new jobs with state funding for short-term employment programs,'' he said in a speech to parliament. ``The way to more jobs lies mainly in structural reform.'' Kohl refused to commit to firm targets for reducing unemployment at the Nov. 20-21 jobs summit. He said fighting unemployment was above all a national task. ``It is obvious that there is no patented recipe for the entire EU,'' Kohl said. Still, he said, the summit should agree on ``realistic goals.'' He cited stable fiscal policies and wage restraint. The European Commission has proposed setting a target to cut EU unemployment to 7 percent in five years, calling for lower labor costs and promoting a pro-business climate. Germany's unemployment rate stands at 11.2 percent; France's is 12.5 percent. EU statisticians say they don't expect much change next year, despite a revival of economic growth on the continent. Socialist Premier Lionel Jospin, in power since June, is seeking to cut France's work week to 35 hours from 39 to spread jobs around. He also wants to create 700,000 jobs in the public and private sector. Kohl's ruling conservative coalition has taken a more free-market approach. But he has acknowledged that he probably won't reach his goal of slashing German unemployment by half by 2000. Opposition politicians in Thursday's parliamentary debate charged Kohl was holding up progress on jobs. The Social Democrats said the EU conference should go beyond rhetoric and agree on job creation goals. ``We must put people's worries on the political agenda,'' the party's parliamentary leader Rudolf Scharping said during Thursday's debate in the lower house.
[PEN-L:11129] Re: -- US factories in Nazi Germany
>BTW, I don't think it was Dresden where GM or Ford had its factories, since >that city was flattened by fire-bombs and as far as I know US-owned >companies' factories were mostly spared by US strategic bombing. As I recall from Charles Higham's TRADING WITH THE ENEMY, Du Pont, GM (recall that GM's largest stockholder at the time was the Du Pont family) and possibly other US companies -- rather, I'm sure other US companies, but I don't remember which ones -- had factories in Germany that were destroyed by Allied bombing and consequently received financial compensation from the US government after WWII. Blair Sandler [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[PEN-L:6186] Re: Crisis In Germany
From Hinrich Kuhls I'd like some information as to where
in Germany I might be able to obtain the journal which
he mentions. I haven't the set-up here to get onto the
web, so I'd like to find Sozialismus, at least as a journal.
I would be interested to find out what stance they take on
the austerity package passed Friday in the German parliament.
In the discussions I read and hear, I find no real opposition
to the notion that Germany must save, the debt must be paid,
no matter what the consequences for the people. After all
even those who endorse the Maastricht Treaty could change
the entrance rules. That would relieve many a country in
Europe.
Marianne Brun ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
[PEN-L:6179] Re: Crisis In Germany
In November the German Trade Union Congress (DGB) will hold a special meeting in the city of Dresden. The only topic of the agenda: Discussion and adoption of a new political programme. In the run up to this congress there has been a rather broad and violent discussion on both the content of the draft of the programme and the way of introducing it to the membership. Those who doubt S. Tell's prejudice against the German trade unions as formulated below and who are interested in some information at first hand can visit a web site with some articles [written in German] that examine the draft in a critical view. Amongst the authors are some trade union officials and Frank Deppe, Oskar Negt, Heinz Bierbaum, Joachim Bischoff etc. I think the articles [first published as a supplement to the June 96 issue of the theoretical and discussion journal Sozialismus] provide a good overview on what's going on in the German trade union movement as seen from the socialist left. The URL is: http://staff-www.uni-marburg.de/~rillingr/pla/dgb/verz.html Hinrich Kuhls At 21:14 14.09.96 -0700, SHAWGI TELL wrote: >The German trade unions as >elsewhere are desperate to work out a new arrangement with the >bourgeoisie to save their own entrenched positions in society and >their lucrative trade union businesses. To this end they are using >the anger of the working class to force a new arrangement and have >suggested "new and radical policies" to save capitalism from its >crisis, and are organizing demonstrations and other agitations to >this end.
[PEN-L:6177] Crisis In Germany
The worldwide crisis of the capitalist system has its expression in Germany with rising unemployment, stagnant production and desperate efforts by the monopoly capitalists to maximize their profits. The most recent government attack is in the form of budget cuts to sick pay, a law to make firings in small firms easier, a rise in the retirement age and other social welfare cuts combined with easing of corporation taxes and abolishing the wealth tax. These anti-social measures will slash $33 billion from public spending and $13 billion from the social security budget in 1997. As elsewhere in the world the German anti-social offensive is described as unavoidable in order to "compete in the global market." All material and human assets of the nations of the world are put at the disposal of the monopolies. No concern is given for the wellbeing of the people of a particular country, to its social fiber or national economic needs. The German working class pays for this drive for profits and its social condition is deteriorating. The German trade unions as elsewhere are desperate to work out a new arrangement with the bourgeoisie to save their own entrenched positions in society and their lucrative trade union businesses. To this end they are using the anger of the working class to force a new arrangement and have suggested "new and radical policies" to save capitalism from its crisis, and are organizing demonstrations and other agitations to this end. A demonstration of over 350,000 people took place June 15, in the capital Bonn, and on September 7, there were six separate demonstrations with a total of over 300,000 participants in Berlin and Leipzig in the east, Hamburg in the north, Dortmund in the west of the country and Ludwigshafen and Stuttgart to the south. Shawgi Tell University at Buffalo Graduate School of Education [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[PEN-L:2866] Re: Normalization in Germany (fwd)
Forwarded message: Warnings-To: <> Sender: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Sat, 10 Feb 1996 12:24:03 -0400 (EDT) From: "Lowell R. Turner" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: Normalization in Germany Richard Hyman's comments are well taken. On the other hand, in response John Lawler's rather one-sided posting, it is interesting to note that the only people who seem to blame the unions in Germany today are employers and economists. When the IG Metall went on strike in 1993 (in the East) and again in 1995 (in Bavaria), in both cases public opinion was strongly behind the strikers and highly critical of the fumbling employers association positions. Today, it is the IG Metall again that has proposed an "Alliance for Jobs," an initiative that both the conservative government and public opinion have greeted with acclaim. The proposal has led to high-level talks between representatives of labor, business, and government, to attempt to negotiate solutions to Germany's current unemployment crisis. The union has offered to hold pay demands to the level of inflation, in return for employer and government efforts to promote new job creation. Sounds promising. In message Sat, 10 Feb 1996 14:20:24 GMT, "Richard Hyman" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > In a global economy marked by trade liberalisation and the power of > multinationals, German labour costs ARE 'too high' and social > benefits 'too generous', and if German unions defend their relative > advantages then they are indeed 'responsible' for growing > unemployment. This is the dilemma of trade unionism in one > country >
[PEN-L:2848] Normalization in Germany
JOBLESS RATE SOARS BONN -- The German jobless rate hit a postwar high yesterday, and the government offered little consolation, saying unemployment will not drop any time soon. The jobless rate reached 10.8 per cent, up from 9.9 per cent at the end of 1995. That translates to more than four million people out of work, the federal labour office said. -- Associated Press
