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---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: <wechsler_gross...@yahoo.de>
Date: Fri, Jun 5, 2015 at 12:37 PM
Subject: HOT WEEKEND AND CHILLY SUMMIT
To: Victor Grossman <wechsler_gross...@yahoo.de>



A HOT WEEKEND AND A CHILLY SUMMIT
Victor Grossman - Berlin Bulletin No. 91, June 5 2015
This could be a hot weekend in Germany, especially in southern Bavaria, and
not only because the thermometer is approaching 90 Fahrenheit. Will the
heat be coming from the weather gods alone? Will it reach Elmau, where top
leaders of seven top nations at the G7 Summit will discuss “the global
economy as well as… foreign, security and development policy”?
That doesn’t sound exciting. And since the big shots will be sorting it all
out in a five-star ”luxury spa, retreat and cultural hideaway” a thousand
meters high in the Alps, as far from the real world as possible, it could
remain quite cool. To guarantee this, one possibly caustic trouble-maker,
Putin, was shown a cold shoulder. Down-graded areas in controversial
latitudes and longitudes like China, India, all Africa and Latin America
were not even considered. If they wish to let them have G20 meetings - or
whatever - the seven seemed to think. “We know who really counts in this
world!”
But counting, like chickens before they hatch, is a dubious exercise. A big
crowd wants to intrude on their Alpine solitude – as loudly as possible.
Recalling the excited G8 Heiligendamm summit of 2007 at the Baltic Sea,
much closer to urban civilization and constantly bothered by angry
citizens, Angela Merkel has seen to it that 17,000 police now guard a wide
security zone around the Elmau “retreat” and all routes leading to it. They
have a close-knit video net, a fleet of helicopters and drones,
“confinement” containers and quick-sentencing, rapid-fire judges at the
ready. All hotel and pension rooms in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, the nearest
town,  were blocked well in advance and everything else done to frighten
local farmers from renting free camping space for tents, trailers, meetings
and facilities like the well-ordered tent colony in Heiligendamm. When one
courageous property owner offered the protest campers a large meadow the
agreement was first barred by the town because of possible “flood waters”.
Another court decision reversed this, however, and the colony has been set
up, though over fifteen miles from the summit palace.
The first rally on Thursday, almost a hundred miles away in Munich, the
nearest city of any size, surprised everyone with up to 40,000 determined
but non-violent demonstrators. They came from a wide range of groups like
the teachers’ union (GEW), the LINKE (Left) party, Oxfam, the Green Youth,
the Green Party of Bavaria, the anti-speculation organization attac and the
left-leaning Nature Friends. They sent many demands up to the lofty
mountainside: drop the “Austerity” policy so enduringly espoused by Angela
Merkel, move convincingly against climate warming and ecological disaster,
keep anti-biotic meat and gene-altered attacks on agriculture by firms like
Monsanto out of Europe, and above all, cancel plans for US-European (TTIP)
and Canadian-European trade agreements (CETA), companion pieces to Obama’s
US-Pacific treaty (TPP), which would endanger ecological efforts, labor
standards, cultural independence in films and books and hand key decisions
to special courts and big business who could over-rule any progressive
gains in the separate countries.
Since the demise of the USSR and its bloc twenty-five years ago the mighty
companies and the governments they so strongly influence have used
technological progress and global possibilities to push down standards of
living in the poorest countries of the south and, aided by the resulting
pressure, of working people in their richer countries as well, whose union
movements and political Left almost everywhere have been weakened or
de-clawed. Wage levels, job security, retirement age, women’s rights,
public schools and higher education have all been under pressure.
The current demonstrations are another sign that people are fighting back.
Rallies and marches are planned for each day, moving as close to Elmau as
permitted, maybe even somewhat closer. The “black bloc” groups who like to
burn cars or garbage cans and break windows have not been invited this time
but, unlike Putin, they could show up uninvited, and many non-violent
protesters are also in a defiant mood. As ever, the media predators will
hunt big bold scare headlines.
The G7 men and two women (hostess Angela Merkel and World Monetary Fund
head Christine Lagarde) will rely on the armed, uniformed, visored men in
surrounding woods and meadows to keep the crowds unseen and unheard. But
two burning themes can hardly be avoided. Present or menacing war, from
Donetsk or Odessa to Ramadi and Palmyra is of bloody importance. Nor can
they ignore their real worry; not only do protest rallies seem to be
growing, but undesirable election results look like troublesome, rebellious
omens, most recently in Spain, far more urgently in Greece. Such uppity
presumption will surely be discussed as much up in Elmau as down below in
the crowds.
Indeed, some may already be thinking up new slogans; on June 20th the World
Social Forum will mark a week of solidarity for Greece. In its bitter tug
of war against the Syriza government elected on  January 25th the rulers of
the European Union, headed by Germany and its tight-lipped, tight-fisted,
tightwad Finance Minister, Wolfgang Schäuble, see it and movements like
Podemos rather like Liberia saw Ebola or South Korea sees the new MERS
epidemic. It must not spread! Syriza must be stopped, yes, wrecked! The
rallies planned for Berlin, Rome, London, Brussels and  elsewhere hope to
prevent this; the victories in Greece and Spain, signs of a new spring of
resistance, demand strong support. The slogan will be “Remake Europe –
democratic, borderless, in solidarity”.
This development is more than embarrassing to the Social Democrats and
their leader Sigmar Gabriel. To retain any claim to a leftward inclination
and maintain vital ties with the labor movement, his party should be
joining such protests and rallies. But Vice-Chancellor Gabriel is part of
the government, and Merkel is hostess in Elmau. He has joined Schäuble in
badgering poverty-stricken Greece to pay up all its debts to its wealthy
debtors and has been a main supporter of TTIP, the USA-Europe trade
agreement. Due to growing opposition, even from fellow Democrats, to his
friend Obama’s Asian treaty, but mostly due to general German rejection of
signing away the country’s birthright for a Biblical mess of potage,
consumed by big biz, Gabriel is making all kinds of claims as to the
treaty’s basic innocence if not its outright blessings. Sadly for him, the
USA negotiators are not backing him up in his assurances and his party is
increasingly divided.
The Greens are also showing signs of what, among amoebae, is called
mitosis; when cells, or their nuclei, begin to divide. While left-leaning
Greens – there are still some – are taking part in some of the protests,
others, like co-chair Cem Özdemir, is so far to the right on some issues
that he once joined men like Dick Cheney and Paul Wolfowitz in an open
letter violently attacking Russia. He speaks with deep respect for Angela
Merkel and President Gauck and might perhaps be open to a coalition with
their Christian Democratic Party. Or, to be fair, to any coalition, even
with the Social Democrats and LEFT if it would get him a government cabinet
seat. He currently hopes to end the double-chair rule in his party, with
one man, one woman, and thus rule the roost alone.
This would be opposed but hardly lead to full mitosis, in contrast with the
young Alternative for Germany (AfD), which now does seem to be splitting
apart, with its present head, who is far to the right, opposed by the two
vice-chairs, who are even further to the right. But then this is surely
related less to amoebae than to the sphere of the e-coli.
The Left may also face a hot time on this hot weekend, hopefully no
mitosis. At its party congress in West German Bielefeld the delegates will
be debating desirable or undesirable coalitions with Greens and Social
Democrats, their foreign non-intervention policy in the face of pressures
from those other two parties, but hopefully also its new program of
fighting hard on key issues affecting so many, here too: jobs, rent
increases, pensions, environment. Perhaps this would help sooth inner
wounds as well as possible and break the 8-10 % status quo in the polls
whose corset has confined its ribs for so long.
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