Back on Track, Thanks to Goethe

After a lengthy pause which I used to adapt to new professional challenges, it took a classic of German literature to write a new posting.
Inspired of my holiday reading of Melville's "Moby Dick," I ventured into reading more classical literature. So I found myself reading Johann Wolfgang von Goethe -- whom I've never adored -- last Sunday afternoon. Just before I dozed off, I stumbled over a sentence in "Die Leiden des jungen Werthers" that made me think, "Yes, Goethe, you are damn right."

"Und ich habe bei diesem kleinen Geschäfte gefunden: daß Mißverständnisse und Trägheit vielleicht mehr Irrungen in der Welt machen, als List und Bosheit nicht thun. Wenigstens sind die beiden letzteren gewiß seltner."

Yes, sir. I am too tired to translate it, but the bottomline of the sentence is: misunderstandings and lethargy do more harm than cunning and malice and that the latter are more seldom.

In modern terms -- lack of communication within large organisations will inevitably lead to fatal mistakes. Pre nine-eleven intelligence existed, but was not communicated.
The lack of communication can also affect innocents, as the London Times wrote today:

New claims over bungled shooting of Brazilian
By Mark Sellman, Time Online, and Daniel McGrory
The Brazilian electrician mistakenly killed by police in the aftermath of the second London bombings was being restrained by an officer before he was shot eight times as he was sitting on a Tube train, it emerged tonight.
Witness statements and photographs from an independent police investigation leaked to ITV News also show that Jean Charles de Menezes did not run away from police at Stockwell Tube station in South London and was wearing only a denim jacket before he was shot dead on July 22.

The evidence contradicts claims from the Metropolitan Police at the time that the Brazilian’s "clothing and his behaviour at the station added to their [officers’] suspicions", that he vaulted the ticket barrier and was wearing a heavy overcoat, which could have concealed a bomb.

It also emerged that one of the undercover team keeping Senhor de Menezes’s home under surveillance was relieving himself instead of filming the operation, so officers could not tell if they had tracked down one of the alleged bombers.

His advice was "it would be worth someone else having a look" to ensure they had the right man. No other officer apparently did take a picture of him even though he had to take a bus journey to the station.

Even so, Gold Command at the Yard which was running this operation, declared a "code red" and handed responsibility to CO19 - the firearms team. The armed team had been given photographs of the alleged bombers, yet no one realised that Senhor de Menezes bore no resemblance to any of those men.

The investigation report states that the firearms unit of the police had been told that "unusual tactics" may be required and if they "were deployed to intercept a subject and there was an opportunity to challenge, but if the subject was non compliant, a critical shot may be taken."

CCTV footage clearly shows that Senhor de Menezes was wearing a thin denim jacket so he could not be concealing a bomb and nor was he carrying any bag.

Far from running to avoid police who were tailing him, the electrician did not realise anyone was following him. He used his season ticket and did not vault the barrier. He only began to run when he saw a train pull into the station and as many commuters do he quickened his pace to catch it.

At this point a surveillance officer guided four armed police into the same carriage in which Senhor de Menezes took his seat.

A man sitting opposite him is quoted as saying: "Within a few seconds I saw a man coming into the double doors to my left. He was pointing a small black handgun towards a person sitting opposite me.

"He pointed the gun at the right hand side of the man's head. The gun was within 12 inches of the man's head when the first shot was fired."

The report also reveals for the first time that a member of the surveillance team, who sat nearby, got involved and grabbed Senhor de Menezes before he was shot: "I heard shouting which included the word ‘police’ and turned to face the male in the denim jacket.

"He immediately stood up and advanced towards me and the CO19 officers …I grabbed the male in the denim jacket by wrapping both my arms around his torso, pinning his arms to his side.

"I then pushed him back onto the seat where he had been previously sitting … I then heard a gun shot very close to my left ear and was dragged away onto the floor of the carriage."

Photographs showed how Senhor de Menezes was shot at virtually point blank range as he was still in his seat. A coroner said he was shot seven times in the head and once in the shoulder.

Mark Oaten, Home Affairs Spokesman for the Liberal Democrats, said: "If true, these preliminary findings will create obvious concerns. It is in the best interests of the police and the community for the full report and any recommendations, to be published as quickly as possible."

Guest Bloggers Sought

Since I won't be able to keep up the previous amount of blogging due to new engagements, I wonder whether I should open up Berlin Sprouts for guest bloggers.
The first round of submissions is open now. Texts submitted should focus on the usual scope of this blog -- European politics, ideas, and culture. If there are good texts coming in, I will make this a permanent institution. If not, I scrap the idea and go on blogging on my own, albeit with a reduced coverage.
Update:
Thanks to Mr. G., who asked the way to submit articles.
Please send them as *.rtf file to ub@itinerarium.de.
And of course, there will be no remuneration for submitted articles and no guarantee that they will be published. So please go ahead, Mr. G.!

Listen, Governments!

Requiring that bloggers register their outlet is an excellent idea! Really -- what about other governments to follow the Chinese example? A source for additional revenues for the holes in the state budget!

The Chinese authorities have ordered all weblogs and websites in the country to register with the government or face closure in Beijing's latest attempt to control online dissent.

Commercial publishers and advertisers could be fined up to 1m yuan (£66,000) for failing to register, according to documents on the Chinese information industry ministry's website.

Private bloggers or websites must register the complete identity of the person responsible for the site, and the ministry - which has set a June 30 deadline for compliance - said 74% of all sites had already registered.

"The internet has profited many people, but it also has brought many problems, such as sex, violence, feudal superstitions and other harmful information that has seriously poisoned people's spirits," the ministry said in an explanation of the new rules.

Ah, we understood. Internet users are stupid and cannot take care of themselves, and are threatened with "harmful information that has seriously poisoned people's spirits" with ideas detrimental to absolute power!

No, nee, ne?

Just came back from the eastern Balkans, or to be more concrete, Bulgaria, where people are really worried that the French and Dutch no to the constitutional charter might postpone their entry into the EU.
I don't know how many many times they asked me why the French said no, and how many times I tried to explain that the no does not necessarily mean no to Bulgarian or Romanian EU membership, but rather no to Chirac and no to the government.
And most of all no to the fact that neither Chirac nor his government could explain why Europe needs a constitution that is not a real basic law but a compilation of do's and don'ts.
But there are, of course, people who can explain this much better than I, for instance Juergen Habermas in today's Sueddeutsche Zeitung.

Light Blogging to Continue...

I'm afraid I must tell you that the light blogging of the last days will continue for some time to come. Will see whether I'll put up something over the weekend, but this is not a promise.

And Here's Something Unflattering on Jacques Chirac

In the Guardian's news blog. Very good!

The EU Budget and the German Elections

Reuters points to a connection with the possible early general elections in Germany and the negotiations about the EU budget.
This makes me wonder what kind of election campaign this will be -- dirty, hard, mudslinging. The Social Democrats being challenged from the left, possibly a leftist alliance of Socialists, splinter Social Democrats, all led by former SPD Chairman Oskar Lafontaine?
It is clear that the conservative Christian Democratic Union will win the elections, but at what price? What kind of shadow cabinet will Angela Merkel present? In my humble opinion, it will be a very weak government, and it will be controversial at that. In recent years, Merkel managed to survive at the top of the CDU only because she managed to sideline all major competitors, including a number of very able people -- as she had learned from her old mentor, former Chancellor Helmut Kohl.

Some Links to the Early General Election Drive

Here's what the public ARD TV had on Franz Muentefering's announcement that the governing Social Democrats will go for early general elections, and the public ZDF, too.

Surprise? Surprise!

Within one hour after the polling stations closed in Northrhine-Westphalia, the results become clear. The conservative Christian Democratic Union garnered about 45 percent, followed by the still-governing Social Democratic Pary (SPD) of Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder. The smaller parties, namely the Free Democrats (FDP) and the Greens lost some support, garnering both about 6 percent.
Thus, it is clear that the CDU (together with the FDP) will take over the government from the SPD and the Greens. Not a surprise, since pollsters have predicted this result for weeks on end.
The real surprise also came within the first hour after the end of the elections:
Chancellor Schroeder and SPD Chairman Franz "Muente" Muentefering have agreed to go for early elections this fall. Muentefering argued that with the victory of the CDU in Northrhine-Westphalia, the constitutional institutions are deadlocked. The victory confirmed the already existing conservative majority in the upper house of the parliament, the Bundesrat, which represents the federal state governments. Muentefering said the voters should now be given the chance to decide whether they support the reform projects of Schroeder's cabinet, or whether CDU Chairwoman Angela Merkel was the better choice.
I didn't expect this move at all, and neither did most commentators in Berlin. But the SPD apparently had planned it well in advance.
I wonder what they really intend. My first thought was that the rats are now rapidly leaving the sinking ship of Captain Schroeder, and Schroeder was the first to jump into the cold waters. What do they expect of an early election? Get the worst results in their history of, say, less than 20 percent or so?
The other question quickly raised by commentators was how they want to achieve the early general elections. The German constitution does not provide for a dissolution of parliament only because the chancellor or the president want it. There is the institution of a constructive vote of no confidence, which means that the parliament must elect a new chancellor when it wants the old one to go. Only if this fails (because of a lack of majority) can the chancellor resign. And then there is still the president to say no to the whole scenario. We'll see how they do it. And whether they do it all -- because now it's up the SPD leadership to agree to Schroeder's and Muentefering's plan.
Later more on that.

Read This On One of Europe's Most Shameful Chapters in Recent History

The Guardian reports on the forced sterilisation of Gypsy women in the Czech Republic -- a shameful example of the racist state politics towards a minority group.

Cuban Expulsions Must Backfire on Fidel

Cuban authorities took a tough line on all foreign observers of a reunion of Cuban dissidents. Not only did they expel one German and one Czech member of parliament, but they also forced the correspondents of two major Italian dailies, Corriere della Sera and La Repubblica, to leave the island.
I think it's time to press Cuba harder again. The EU's soft line apparently doesn't work. But what is important is to inform would-be tourists to Cuba's wonderful beaches to inform about the political, economic, and social situation in the country.
This is not a call to impose the equally counter-productive embargo policy of the United States, which has not yielded any positive results.
I really hope that the latest expulsions backfire on the regime in Havanna, which has long lost its credibility and legitimization.

Germany: Elections in Key State

Voters go to the polls today in Northrhine-Westphalia, Germany's most populous state. It is expected that the conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU) -- possibly together with the Liberals (FDP) -- will replace the Social Democrats (SPD) and their Green allies.
The SPD's only remaining hope to win the vote is to mobilize some 40 percent of undecided voters and to gain from the greater popularity of their top candidate, incumbent state premier Peer Steinbrueck. His opponent, CDU state leader Juergen Ruettgers -- a former federal minister in Chancellor Helmut Kohl's cabinet -- remained lackluster in the TV debates only days
Peter Glotz, who manages the SPD affairs on the federal level and is an influential thinker in the party, has already warned that a defeat of the Social Democrats in Northrhine-Westphalia could lead to a major rift within that party. The SPD's left, anti-capitalist wing could force a split in the parliamentary faction, thus undermining Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder's parliamentary majority. This, in turn, could force Schroeder to resign, Glotz told the Sueddeutsche Zeitung.
It's not clear whether Glotz' argument is part of a scare tactic to unite the SPD again. But there are enough indicators that some influential leftits such as Otmar Schreiner could step up pressure on Schroeder to withdraw key elements of the far-fetching reforms of the welfare system known as Hartz IV.
The SPD-owned daily Frankfurter Rundschau and some other papers have their specials on the vote in Northrhine-Westphalia.

Eurozine -- Looks Interesting

Just found this through an e-mail by the HSK network -- Eurozine. Have a look!