Nation Topics - Germany | The Nation

Presents news briefs related to politics and current events. Report that the Christian Democrats and the Social Democrats decided to form a coalition government in Germany with Angela Merkel as chancellor; Reference to the book "What's the Matter With Kansas?" by Tom Frank, which argues that the working-class in the U.S. are voting Republican against their economic interests because the party is conservative on social issues; Reasons why U.S. President George W. Bush nominated Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court.

The article looks at international relations with Iran. In a small victory for European diplomacy and constructive engagement, the International Atomic Energy Agency verified that Iran has suspended its uranium enrichment activities. It did so in accordance with an agreement reached with Britain, France and Germany, which held out the prospect of expanded trade and investment in return for Iranian cooperation. The Iranian-European Union agreement has derailed for now an effort by the U.S. President George W. Bush Administration to isolate and sanction Iran for its alleged nuclear weapons activities. But the Administration has made clear that it is not about to join the European effort to engage Iran, and it issued a barrage of statements designed to discredit the agreement. The State Department claimed it had information that Iran was adapting missiles to carry nuclear warheads, and the White House pointed to reports that Iran had accelerated the production of uranium hexafluoride, a gas used in the production of nuclear weapons. The European-Iranian agreement buys time for further constructive diplomacy.

In 1998, during his first week in office, German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer, also the leader of the country's Green Party, made perfectly clear that he was "the foreign minister of Germany, not of the Greens" and that he would pursue a German, not a Green, foreign policy. Since then, he has not broken his word. Germany is now, after the United States, the largest supplier of troops to peacekeeping missions worldwide. For two decades, the German Greens have engaged with geopolitical issues, the moral crux of the matter for the left: post-Holocaust Germany's proper place in the world. No single example demonstrates the Greens' uneasiness with Germany's full-fledged debut on the world stage and the responsibilities that come with it than their mixed responses to the Balkan wars in the 1990s. The Germans envision a European foreign and security policy designed to facilitate conflict prevention, diplomatic initiatives and the integration of peripheral states into multilateral bodies. Fischer is Germany's keenest political tactician, and he always acts with one eye trained on the big picture.

Reviews the book, "The Coming of the Third Reich: A History," by Richard J. Evans.

Reviews the book "The Origins of Nazi Violence", by Enzo Traverso.

Since 1968 the United States Democrats have been shut out, more or less, as majority party. But with a small bump in left-of-center turnout, they would be running the country. The dropoff in voting has been greatest among the young. What if the Democrats pitched an issue to the young? For example, student loans. Instead, the Democrats over and over pitch their issues to the elderly--only, in the last election, to see the old people, hardhearted, reject them again. Since 1968, the numbers in college have shot up. But newspaper reading has dropped, and voting is about a third. Kids in college have issues that affect them materially. The average loan debt for a college student is $30,000. In Germany, the high court declared any tuition above cost in a German university to be unconstitutional. At least one U.S. presidential candidate, John Edwards, seems to get it. He says freshman year should be free.

This article describes the German anti-war movement in opposition to the Iraqi War. One glaring problem, not faced by British and Spanish activists, is that the peace lobby here has nobody concrete to protest against, except the disembodied figure of United States President George W. Bush, who they know isn't listening. In Germany not a single politician from one of the five major parties, major intellectual, entertainment figure or sports star openly backed military action against Iraq without a United Nations resolution. One vibrant exception in the German peace movement is Amis Against the War, a group of American dissenters living in Berlin, who staged a forty-eight-hour "Filibuster for Peace" at the Brandenburg Gate. The day bombs began to fall on Iraq--a school day, God forbid--50,000 high school pupils showed up on Berlin's Alexanderplatz in full demo-regalia to reinforce the 20,000 adult protesters already there.

Editorial. Even before the crucial February 14 meeting of the Security Council, a significant milestone was reached in the form of the proposal by France, Germany and Russia--later joined by China--to strengthen UN inspections in Iraq, and the opposition of France, Germany and Belgium to NATO war aid to Turkey. These diplomatic setbacks to the US war timetable drew cries of outrage from the Administration and its supporters in the media. Instead of discussing France's proposal reasonably, Secretary of State Powell dismissed it. Far from wanting to 'contain' France, many Americans applauded its proposals and found that its president spoke for them better than their own. Even before the antiwar rallies on February 15-16, it was clear that there was tremendous European support for the French and German position, including in Italy and Spain, whose governments are pro-US. George, W. Bush has deployed policies that isolate the United States and undercut the UN. He would take this country into a war under false pretenses. Bush's doctrine endangers US security because it encourages them to acquire such weapons faster and defy the United States, as North Korea is now doing. There is a desperate need here for a broad-based peace movement.

The administration of U.S. President George W. Bush has been going hellbent down U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld's road, ignoring the United Nations (UN) Security Council where not only France but Russia, China, Germany and others favor giving inspections a chance. Ankara, Turkey is preparing to host a summit meeting of regional powers seeking to pressure Iraq to cooperate with UN inspectors in an effort to head off a war. On Capitol Hill, U.S. Senator Edward Kennedy's (D-Mass.) blast at Bush's Iraq policy signals a shift by Democrats to stronger opposition. In the House, a resolution to repeal last year's war authorization was introduced and a letter calling on Bush to hold to a diplomatic approach is circulating and already signed by several members who voted for the original authorization for war.

In more than fifteen years of rock-and-roll touring, my worst night of sleep followed a June 10, 1989, show at Centro Sociale Leoncavallo, an anticapitalist squat in Milan. On that impossibly long tour, ending just months before the Berlin wall fell, my band Soul Side played at social centers lodged in squatted buildings in Italy, Holland, Spain, Denmark, Norway, Switzerland and Germany. None, however, rivaled the squat in Milan where we were taken after our concert at Leoncavallo to "sleep" in a bat-infested room, on mattresses that had seemingly been marinated in bodily fluids. Since the mid-1970s, groups of anarchists, communists, punks and artists across Europe have availed themselves of liberal housing policies to seize and inhabit abandoned buildings, former factories, churches, schools, etc, and turn them into nonprofit, anticapitalist social centers. They are essentially illegal, and plenty are mercilessly crushed by the police. After several evictions, one of which spurred national solidarity demonstrations in 1994, Leoncavallo resides in an assortment of buildings behind huge walls that can be quickly barricaded in the event of another police raid. Social centers like Leoncavallo host a wide range of cultural and political activities: theaters, bookstores, art galleries, guaranteed shelter/or homeless immigrants, meeting spaces for antiglobalization organizing, Internet cafes, soup kitchens, yoga classes and live music of varied genres.Many social centers have disappeared, while a few have been given official recognition and support from local governments. Under the reign of Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, who is hostile to anything and anyone falling under the "no global" umbrella, Italy has nearly 150 active social, centers, most of them stationed in squatted buildings. My band, Girls Against Boys, discovered that Leoncavallo is considered a menace to Italian society.