[Berlin Bulletin #206 January 17 2023 The lack of homes for
working class and also for middle-class seekers is a nation-wide
emergency. Somehow, allegedly due to rising costs, there is never
enough money to build affordable homes, repair schools, open needed
kindergartens and reverse damaging reductions in public health care.]
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BLUNDERS, SPLITS AND WAR  
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Victor Grossman
January 17, 2023
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_ Berlin Bulletin #206 January 17 2023 The lack of homes for working
class and also for middle-class seekers is a nation-wide emergency.
Somehow, allegedly due to rising costs, there is never enough money to
build affordable homes, repair schools, open needed kindergartens and
reverse damaging reductions in public health care. _

Demonstrators against rent increases in Berlin., Sopa Images/Alamy

 

            Berlin has still seen no real snow – but
instead - lots of  “mist.” In German “Mist” means manure, BS,
or, to quote Google: “crap, sh-t, dammit!”). Some suggest it
derives originally from visiting American basketballers a century ago
who, when a shot failed, said “Missed” - and were misunderstood.

            True or not, dammit, we were hit by it. In
September 2021, in a complicated election, the Berlin minister in
charge screwed up; ballots were wrongly delivered, polling stations
lacked ballots, voters waited in long lines (like certain areas in US
cities) to elect each district’s national Bundestag delegate, its
city council delegate and its borough council delegate, each on a
separate ballot requiring two X’s each (for person and for party),
then dropped into three boxes (no machines). And also a Yes or No vote
on a referendum to “Confiscate Deutsche Wohnen,” Berlin’s
biggest owner (and exploiter) of Berlin apartment houses. The courts
finally ruled that (except for the referendum) the vote must be
completely repeated, so thousands of new posters with smiling faces
and empty words now decorate lamp poles all over town - until the
repeated election day on February 16th.

            The Christian Democrats (CDU), Social Democrats
(SPD) and Greens, at about 20% each, are vying for first place. But
the CDU, now slightly in the lead, can find no partners in Berlin; no
party dares to team up with the fascistic Alternative for Germany, and
it would never ever join hands with the LINKE (Left)! It seems
inevitable that the SPD and Greens will again tie up with the LINKE,
whose votes (currently polling at 12%) would add enough seats to top
the half-way mark and renew the present triumvirate.

           But these three have no real love for each other;
it’s a compulsory ménage à trois, with the Greens hoping for first
place so they can replace Franziska Giffey (SPD) as mayor. Her
pleasant manner and good looks may help her win some voters, but with
Berlin politics shakier than ever, not enough. 

           New Year’s Eve in Germany, above all Berlin, is
marked for hours before and after a midnight climax by millions of
private fireworks. Groups near almost every building set them off with
loud explosions, often from boxes with 6, 9, up to 36 linked rockets,
shooting up and ending in sparkling, many-colored showers. Many
enthusiasts save up for them for months, often smuggling in products
made in Poland but forbidden here. There are always injuries and
fires; a common defense is: “… but far less deadly than in the USA
– here with fireworks not firearms!” Every year churches,
environmentalists and animal lovers denounce them, always in vain,
except that the official fireworks at Brandenburg Gate have been
replaced by a fancy light display.

           But perhaps because of a two-year covid hiatus,
the display got out of hand this time, especially in a low-income
neighborhood where Mayor Giffey was once borough mayor. Instead of
firing in the air, groups of young men aimed fireworks at the police
and even at firemen trying to put out some of the blazes. 41 policemen
and 14 firemen were listed as injured and over 140 people arrested.

            As always, the usual “law and order” voices
grabbed the mics to denounce “weak-kneed politicians on the left”
(for them the SPD and Greens were still “left”) who were going
easy on “youth crime and violence,” with more than a hint that
“those foreigners” and their “different cultures” were again
to blame, joined of course by “antifa terrorists”. Social reasons
for young people’s anger: “stop and frisk” discrimination and
police strong-arm tactics, lack of decent schools and jobs were
dismissed, while rightist hopes to use racism to win votes in Berlin
and three more state elections were obvious.

             Other young people in Berlin (and Munich)
were making trouble in very different ways, like gluing their hands to
the street, blocking traffic to protest official foot-dragging in
saving the environment.

             In a far more popular effort in the same
cause, protesters in the tiny village of Lützerath near the Dutch
border held out for weeks, often in empty buildings (the villagers had
to leave long ago), in little makeshift tree huts, and most recently
sitting on the tops of tall tripods or in deep tunnels. Their aim was
to prevent monstrous excavators from extending mile-wide open pit
mines for lignite coal.

             Last week they were countered by a giant
police force from all around Germany, and after an ultimatum expired
the men in uniform moved in, with cranes, tear gas, dogs, even on
horseback, tearing down the huts, ordering all protesters to leave and
arresting those who refused. At first there was little violence except
for a few fireworks recalling Berlin on New Year’s Eve - and
allegedly a Molotov cocktail tossed into a street in angry
retribution. Then, on Sunday, up to perhaps 35,000 gathered in a mass
protest, defying rain showers in a peaceful demonstration (also with
 Greta Thunberg). But when one group also defied police orders and
gathered in protest at the edge of the excavation the police again
resorted to violence and there were many injuries, including dog
bites.

            Behind the battalions of finally triumphant
cops the protesters faced two other foes. One consisted of
politicians. It may still surprise a few that they include not only
loud-mouth right-wing “Christian Democrats” but also soft-spoken
Green cabinet ministers who rule with them in a joint coalition in
that state, North Rhine-Westphalia. And also on the national level,
the man largely responsible for continuing such excavations is none
other than Robert Habeck, a leading minister in another coalition
government at the top as well as co-chair of the Green party, which
was once so active in joining and leading just such protests. That was
decades ago, however; it is still embarrassing if only because of the
party name. That was audible in Habeck’s excuse about two giant
power plants; supposed to be shut down by January 1st they will now
emit smoke and fumes from the mined lignite at least until April.
“It was not my personal plan nor the plan of our coalition to return
the plants back into the network,“ he said, “but there's a war on
in the Ukraine, and thus half of German gas imports are missing.”
The same reasoning is offered for huge new docks now unloading
liquidized gas from the USA, and endangering famed extensive mud flats
used – and needed - by migratory shore birds.

           Behind the Green-CDU coalition in the state where
Lützerath is – or was - located, there is a third adversary: the
mine-owner. RWE once helped finance Hitler’s rise, raked in millions
by using slave labor during Word War Two and since then has become
alternately first or second among Germany’s four giant energy
providers. It decidedly does not want to lose the many-digit profits
it wins from atomic and lignite power; its CEO alone pockets
personally over €5 million a year. Who would want to lose any of
that? So - damn the environment or anyone trying to save it! And as
many have found; ten thousand or so euros donated in the right places
can be greatly appreciated and well worth it.

           Here’s an interesting footnote; the largest
single shareholder of RWE stocks in 2021 was the US asset management
company BlackRock. Together with its sibling in Pennsylvania,
Vanguard, BlackRock will soon control world investments worth 20
trillion dollars. According to a Bloomberg report, that will make it
“the fourth branch of government”.

           And another footnote; the referendum in Berlin in
September 2021 - “Confiscate Deutsche Wohnen” - got over a million
“Ja” votes (56.4%) and affected all companies owning more than
3,000 Berlin apartments. Deutsche Wohnen owns 155,000. It has since
been taken over by a far bigger real estate raptor, Vonrovia, which
owns 11,000 apartments in Berlin but 550,000 in all Germany. And
strange to say, BlackRock has been financially connected with both of
them. It’s a small world!

            One more biggy footnote; Elon Musk built his
first European Gigafactory for electric Teslas southeast of Berlin,
after chopping down half a forest. There are already rumors of
dissatisfaction and a union start-up. BlackRock may also have a finger
or two in there - but no talk yet of confiscating Tesla.

            That demand for confiscation, despite its
million supporters, is seen differently within the trio governing
Berlin. Franzisca Giffey, the Social Democrat mayor (at least until
the February 16th vote and a possible change in ranking), has never
hidden her opposition to such a radical move, which means more public
ownership, smells too much of old GDR low rent public housing, and
displeases those real estate raptors with whom she gets along so
cosily. The Greens, though also getting along better and better with
big business, not only in Lützerath, could not ignore voters and
young rebels in their ranks in Berlin and verbally approved
(compensated) confiscation but refrained from any active support.

             That left only the Linke within the ruling
coalition trio. And even that is misty, for Berlin’s “reformer”
Linke leaders had agreed to submit confiscation questions to a special
commission for a year, which some feared meant letting it die of
dehydration. But now, possibly motivated by the election re-run,
Berlin’s Left leaders have revived it as an issue. Berlin suffers
fearfully from a lack of apartments and, like so many other items,
rents are soaring – and are doubtless for many the most crucial
issue.

            The lack of homes for working class and also
for middle-class seekers is a nation-wide emergency.
           Somehow, allegedly due to rising costs, there is
never enough money to build affordable homes, repair schools, open
needed kindergartens and reverse damaging reductions in public health
care.

             What there is aways enough for, somehow, is
rearmament and ever bigger weapons for the Ukraine, which is also
called “National Security” – in a powerful land surrounded by
allies and threatened by no-one. In the government coalition the
Greens blow the loudest military bugles; the Free Democrats are always
enthusiastic if more big money is to be made and it is taxed less.
Some Social Democrats (SPD) have been reluctant to rush full steam
down the military track, and some industrial groups preferred trade
(and peace) to moving toward conflict with Russia and China; but they
have been almost fully intimidated by a media offensive stamping any
questioning of official policy as “Putin-friendship”. In line with
this massive increase in Mist (the German definition), Chancellor
Scholz called for € 100 billion for the armed forces, a demand
happily welcomed by arms manufacturers, German or American, who always
rejoice at escalation of USA-Russian confrontation. Though paired with
sympathy for the Ukrainians, of course, the aggressive tones regarding
Russia, reverberating almost everywhere, remind some historians of the
atmosphere in Germany during most of the past century, as in 1914,
with all the ”Hurrah” shouting against “our enemies,” but
rejected almost alone at first by a courageous Karl Liebknecht, who
dared to openly oppose war credits for the army which nearly all
Social Democratic leaders had approved – and for which he was first
drafted, then jailed and, since he remained rebellious, finally beaten
to death, 109 years ago.

             His memory, and that of the great Rosa
Luxemburg, also murdered on the same day, was again remembered in
Berlin on Sunday. But what about his political heritage? And his
legendary anti-war words:  “The main enemy is in one’s own home
country”?

             Today the Linke is tragically split, on both
political approaches and personalities. Some demand less concentration
on parliamentary chambers and more aggressive activity in the streets,
factories, shops, colleges and job centers, aimed at building
resistance to forces like RWE, Aldi, Vonova, Deutsche Wohnen, or
ThyssenKrupp, Daimler-Benz and Rheinmetall, which want to rule the
nation and Europe – or more. Some argue about the question of ending
their rule entirely, the goal for which Karl and Rosa lived and died.
Others stress gender questions or positions on immigration.

             But most worrisome is the split about the
present war. Some in the Left downplay the role of NATO, call for
total condemnation of Russian imperialism and total military support
for the Ukraine, in agreement with most media positions. Such views
are strong in the Linke, at least on its upper levels.

             Sharply opposed are those who fully support
Putin and see his policies and actions, and the war, as basically
self-defense. They describe the long history of US policy as already
viewing a socialist Russia as a threat to its ”free market” system
since 1918, when it invaded it, and until 1993 when it could defeat
it. With Boris Yeltsin as its lackey, socialism was no longer an
issue, but after Putin took over in 2000 the huge country again became
a barrier to world hegemony – after lesser barriers had mostly been
eliminated (as either leftist in Chile or simply too independent as in
Libya and Iraq).

             According to this analysis, Ukraine and
Georgia were to be used, via EU and NATO, to overcome this giant
barrier while also moving on against the even bigger one to the East.
They see Putin as trying to prevent increasingly suffocating
encirclement, with an annihilating arsenal moving closer and closer to
Moscow, St. Petersburg and the sole warm water base of Sevastopol. To
achieve this US policy a freely elected, largely neutral Ukrainian
government was overthrown in Kiev’s Maidan Square in 2014, followed
by an arms build-up, repression of undesirable opposition, attacks on
Russian speakers while pro-fascist Bandera admirers were promoted.
That, it is believed, was the basic situation until last February,
when Putin decided to forestall a fatal provocation or major military
move against Donbas and Crimea and by making the first move and, as he
probably saw it, preclude a repeat of June 1941, when Russia was not
fully prepared - and 27 million people were killed!

             We cannot know the facts on secret plans or
strategies, but I too am convinced that the USA leaders, with NATO,
laid a clever trap, as in Afghanistan four decades earlier, with no
easy exit of any kind. And the trap worked. It seems possible that
Putin believed his forces could win out very quickly and not too
painfully. What a misjudgment! And alas, in one year how many efforts
to achieve a world of peace have been split and weakened! And how
happy that makes generals and armaments makers!

             In all my own tortured inner debate, I must
always oppose attempts at US world hegemony and all their bloody
attacks, and neither forget nor minimize the terrible killing and
destruction in Vietnam, Korea, in Iraq and Afghanistan, in Libya and
Serbia, and the murder and torture which accompanied them. Yet somehow
I recall no Iraqi or Libyan flags nor calls to sentence or jail Bush
or Obama.

             I know too of the years of attacks by
Zelensky’s Azov troops against the Donbas people – and the
estimated 14,000 deaths in those years.  And yet, regardless of a
very possible strategic necessity for crossing into the Ukraine, with
a fear of possibly far worse events as the alternative, I cannot
approve endless death and destruction, even in defense of the Donbas
people. When I see the damage done at Christmas in Kharkiv I cannot
help but recall Hanoi at Christmas 1972. But then US bombers destroyed
2,000 buildings and killed 287 people in one night – mostly women,
children and elderly. Olof Palme of Sweden drew comparisons to
Guernica, Babi Yar, Katyn, Lidice, even Treblinka with the words, "Now
another name can be added to this list: Hanoi, Christmas 1972." No,
Kharkiv is not the same, the difference is immense (but forgotten),
and yet – all the same – my heart is heavy at the sight of
destruction in the Ukraine, at the thought of the misery there, in
east and west. 

             These tortuous issues have created a deep
split within the Linke. The party’s best-known theoretician and most
popular YouTube speaker, Sahra Wagenknecht, gave a short, passionate
speech in the  Bundestag, demanding an end to the promotion of war
enthusiasm with its almost gleeful increase in German martiality, with
its demands for heavier, tougher weapons for the Ukraine and a
permanent, sanctions-based break in commercial relations with Russia,
a policy which might be good for some American producers but is
immensely harmful for the people of Germany. She was furiously
attacked by the “reformer” wing of the Linke, with some calls to
expel her. Her opponents, at present the stronger wing of the party,
largely omit any blame on the belligerent eastward expansion of NATO
and the USA and extend blanket support to Zelensky; in other words
they climb on the bandwagon. Many hope in this way to win more votes
in this year’s state elections – after Berlin in Hesse, Bavaria
and Bremen. But the opposite outcome is very possible.
There is talk among some who support Sahra (as she is mostly known)
 and some who oppose her -about a break away to form a new more
militant party, favoring peace negotiations above all as well as
outspoken, adversarial support for working-class rights, with some of
the spirit shown at Lützerath (where Linke co-chair Janine Wissler
was also present).

             I have friends with very differing views on
the war. I debate them willingly, often less gladly than sadly. My
views also change, but I feel strongest on one main issue; no matter
how difficult for both sides and regardless of our own deep
differences, we must join in demanding a cease-fire and negotiations.
This goal is not furthered by spending €100 billion more here or $
857.9 billion in the USA for more and speedier, bigger and
further-reaching weapons.

             The threats are great, in Germany – in
most of the world, almost everywhere. One must again resort to that
word, “Mist” – both German and English meanings. In February,
after the Berlin election, we may see more clearly. But every week
before and after should see demonstrations demanding a ceasefire and
negotiations! With the Left in the vanguard!

Sent from my iphone, Victor Grossman
 

* Germany politics; Berlin Housing; Coal mines;
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