PoliticsPolitics
The present eats up the future
The “natural disasters” of this summer show that our political and economic model has reached its limits – By Harald Welzer
Here is the good news from the summer of 2010: The economic crisis has been overcome in Germany; automobile sales are booming, especially of luxury cars; German exports are reaching high levels thanks to the weak euro, and skilled and specialized workers, especially engineers, are in demand; BP has supposedly capped the oil bubbling up from the Gulf of Mexico, the DAX and the Dow are at permanently high levels.
The arithmetic of power
Nigeria counts down to a presidential election – By Toby Selander
In Africa’s most populous nation, tensions are rising between north and south, and between Christians and Muslims. Nowhere is the brutal fight for political power more obvious than in Plateau State.
On an ordinary Thursday, the roads to Abuja are busy with slow moving trucks and drivers overtaking dangerously as broken down vehicles litter the side of the highway.
Still, on this day, May 6, hundreds of luxury 4x4s with darkened windows were heading for the Nigerian capital along the road from Jos in the north. The convoys were protected by police escorts, at least one car in front and one covering the rear, their blue lights flashing. The passengers would most probably have preferred to go by air but domestic air traffic had been effectively suspended. Most of Nigeria’s private airlines fleet had been ordered to fly to Abuja and await further orders.
Fit to serve?
Germany may soon suspend compulsory military service – By Kevin Lynch
Defense Minister Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg needs to make spending cuts worth €8.3 billion. He has proposed getting rid of the draft. But critics say conscription is a vital link between the military and society.
On Aug. 23, the German defense minister unveiled a number of initiatives for restructuring the Federal Republic’s army, the Bundeswehr, designed to shave €8.3 billion off the federal defense budget by 2014. The most far-reaching proposal, and the one which Guttenberg favors, would shrink the German military from its current strength of 250,000 troops to 165,000.
Hamburg shuts down 9/11 mosque
The prayer house was a magnet for extremists – By Paul Hockenos
After nearly nine years, the doors of the Hamburg prayer house that had been one of the incubators of the September 11 attacks are finally closed. But where are they meeting and scheming now?
In the planning and execution of the September 11 terrorist attacks in the United States, Germany played a small but critical role: It was in the northern port city of Hamburg that the attacks’ mastermind, the Egyptian-born university student Mohamed Atta became radicalized and committed to jihad.
Atta and a circle of fellow radical Islamists, several directly involved in the World Trade Center attack, met, studied and networked with al Qaeda operatives at the Al-Quds Mosque, a prayer house in the St. George’s district of downtown Hamburg. The fact that German authorities only managed to shut down the infamous mosque, renamed the Taiba Mosque two years ago, and ban the cultural organization behind it this summer attests to the enormous difficulties Germany has faced in confronting radical Islam in its midst.
New ‘partyotism’
Germany was again a mass of black-red-gold during the South African World Cup – By Christian Semler
The German experience of nationalism in the past century was a fairly miserable one. As a result, showing the national colors became something of a taboo. But football has helped to dispel reservations over the German flag.
Two lonely figures were waiting for the train at Berlin’s Potsdamer Platz Station on the evening after Spain knocked Germany out of the World Cup. Both were covered in red-black-gold colored cloaks. Instead of yelling out in despair, they were singing the third verse of Germany’s national anthem: “Unity and justice and freedom, for the German fatherland.” They seemed to be consoling one another.
Germany’s transformation during the weeks of the World Cup would have set any anthropologist’s heart aflutter. You could see the tricolor everywhere: garishly painted on faces; on temporary black-red-gold tattoos placed all over people’s bodies; on necklaces, bracelets, rings, shawls, headbands and key chains, all emblazoned with Germany’s colors.