label doesn't stick, now what?

Günter Grass Lashing Out Against Critics


In an interview on German television last night, poet/novelist Günter Grass, whose poem, published internationally April 4 as an op-ed, denouncing the threat of an Israeli nuclear strike against Iran, drew a firestorm of charges that "What Must Be Said" showed he was anti-Semitic, lashed back at his critics in the media and in Israel.


"Old clichés are being bestirred, and some of them are injurious," Grass said. He said, as his poem hinted would happen, the term "anti-Semitism" has quickly been thrown against him. 


"It has occurred to me that in a democratic country in which freedom of the press prevails, there is a certain forced conformity which stands in the foreground along with a refusal to even consider the content and the questions that I cite."


Grass especially referred to an editorial attacking him in the {Bild Zeitung} mass-tabloid.


"The term eternal anti-Semite was used in a Springer newspaper, an inversion of the 'eternal Jew,'" Grass said.



"That's already injurious and unworthy of the democratic press." In an editorial in {Bild}, Springer CEO Mathias Döpfner, one of Germany's leading executives, wrote that Grass is "using the whispering tones of a moralist to disseminate just one thing: politically correct anti-Semitism. He's trying to qualify the guilt of Germany by turning the Jews into perpetrators."


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Germany's Easter Peace Marches Protest War Threats Against Syria and Iran


This year's traditional anti-war marches over the Easter days will also voice protest against the war rhetoric against Syria and Iran. 


Angelika Claussen, a physician based in Bielefeld and longtime chairwoman of the German section of the International Physicians Against Nuclear War (IPPNW), who will also be one of the speakers at Easter Marches in North Rhine-Westphalia this weekend, said the "preparations for war against Iran and Syria must be stopped. 



The majority of the Syrian people do not want any military intervention."


As for the Israeli approach to Iran, Claussen said that the German government should "tell Israel that such conflicts cannot be solved militarily," but only by diplomacy. It is worrisome, she added, that generally "we see a militarization of policymaking on the international scene."


The Easter Marches in North Rhine-Westphalia will begin tomorrow in Duisburg, moving on to Düsseldorf. 



On Eastern Sunday, April 8, a large-scale rally is scheduled in Bochum, another one in Wattenscheid. On Easter Monday, an event in Werne will rally protesters, and the entire action will be concluded then in Dortmund. Numerous other cities in Germany will feature similar actions, including a special protest in the Baltic seaport of Kiel, against the German government's sale of nuclear-capable submarines to Israel.


NATO Escalates Georgia Provocations in Russia's Backyard




Calling the Saakashvili government of Georgia a "special partner," a "model country," and an "aspirant" for full NATO membership, NATO Secretary General Anders Rasmussen declared on April 3, that Georgia now had "much better working cooperation with NATO than ever before," and he expects a "strong declaration" on the Georgia-NATO partnership to be issued from the May NATO summit in Chicago. Rasmussen was speaking in his joint press conference with Georgia's unstable President, Mikheil Saakashvili, in Brussels.


That same day, Georgia made the decision to pull out of the of 1992 "Open Skies" Treaty with Russia, the Georgian Foreign Ministry reported two days later, specifying that Georgia will no longer allow any observation flights with the participation of the Russian Federation over the territory of Georgia.


Russians have already warned that some are considering the option of Israeli jets using Georgia as a staging ground for an attack on Iran. Not to be forgotten, either, is that during a March visit to London, Georgia's Economy and Sustainable Development Minister announced that Britain would be re-training Georgian pilots and sailors.


When NATO Foreign Ministers first described Georgia, which sits on Russia's southern border, as an "aspirant" country for NATO membership in December 2011, Russia protested. Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov reminded NATO that he had "openly warned" them that such statements might encourage Saakashvili to undertake "an adventure similar to the one of August, 2008," a reference to that government's Pearl Harbor-like sneak attack on Abkhazia, the autonomous region of Georgia which has been policed by Russian peacekeepers since a 1994 truce in its civil war. 


That attack brought the world to the brink of a direct NATO-Russian confrontation at the time.


The British are blowing up this war front again, too. Saakashvili raised Abkhazia and its neighboring autonomous region, South Ossetia, at the Seoul Nuclear Security Summit on March 27. 


On cue, the Obama State Department stuck its nose in that dispute the next day, with a statement from the U.S. Embassy in Tbilsi that the United States did not recognize the legitimacy of March 24 and 25 elections in those two autonomous regions.



NATO's Rasmussen jumped in, too, with statements backing Georgia's territorial integrity and rejecting the recent elections.


And NATO, British, and Obama administration officials protest that Russia is paranoid, to even think it is being encircled?