{"id":1573672,"date":"2024-03-26T05:55:04","date_gmt":"2024-03-26T05:55:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.counterpunch.org\/?p=317117"},"modified":"2024-03-26T05:55:04","modified_gmt":"2024-03-26T05:55:04","slug":"taurus-and-the-bullfighters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/2024\/03\/26\/taurus-and-the-bullfighters\/","title":{"rendered":"Taurus and the Bullfighters"},"content":{"rendered":"\"\"<\/a>\n
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A Taurus on display at the 2006 ILA air show. Photograph Source: axesofevil2000 – Public Domain<\/p><\/div>\n

Watching genteel Bundestag ladies and gentlemen speechifying, often with forceful words and gestures but mostly polite, it is hard to imagine that their topic is war or peace, possibly world war or peace, even atomic war or peace. A key word was Taurus, Latin for \u201cbull.\u201d But they weren\u2019t arguing about Zodiac astrology or the myth about the god Jupiter, cheating on wife Juno by taking on the shape of a bull to abduct a princess. Nor about the starry constellation named for his disguise. The name of that princess was Europa, and the continent bearing her name was indeed involved in the subject of debate: steel-covered missiles called Taurus, weighing 1000 lbs., 17 foot long, which, if fired from a plane well inside Ukraine can reach and pierce the walls of the Kremlin or destroy concrete bunkers as deep or deeper than Moscow\u2019s subway system.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Of course, Volodymir Zelenskiy wants them and any weapons or aid in a war now looking less and less like the triumph he predicted a year ago. Should his wishes, which often sounded more like demands, be fulfilled?\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

That mythical Jupiter fathered three sons with Europa (I hope he was back in the body of Jupiter by then). Three sons of modern Europa met in a hastily arranged \u201cParis-Berlin-Warsaw\u201d summit in early March to reach an agreement about Ukraine, especially about Taurus. Poland\u2019s Tusk, only four months into his top job, is seen as more moderate than his predecessor. But he seems no less eager to supply anything if it damages the hereditary Russian enemy and solidifies Poland\u2019s role as main USA outpost in Eastern Europe. However, he soon had to hurry home to mollify farm tractor drivers blockading borders to protest cheap Ukrainian grain imports.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Macron, who had spoken boldly of sending in \u201cEuropean\u201d troops to oppose the Russians, toned that down with the words: \u201cMaybe at some point \u2013 I don\u2019t want it, I won\u2019t take the initiative \u2013 we will have to have operations on the ground\u2026to counter the Russian forces\u2026 France\u2019s strength is that we can do it.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Evidently Scholz had stepped on the brakes with Tusk and Macron: \u201cTo say it sharp and clear: as German chancellor, I will send no Bundeswehr soldiers into Ukraine!\u201d So, at least for now \u2013 no Taurus!<\/span><\/p>\n

Was his seemingly bold front a fa\u00e7ade for a general German downward skid in Europe? There was a decline of the economy in 2023. A predicted puny plus of 0.2% for 2024 could mean that Germany is already in a recession, for only the second time since 1945. Economy Minister Habeck warned: \u201cWe cannot continue this way!\u201d One expert\u2019s brief analysis: \u201cGermany has lost cheap energy from Russia, flourishing trade markets in China and an almost cost-free guarantee of security from the USA.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Olaf Scholz\u2019s three-party government has rapidly declined in popularity. The Greens, who promised a \u201cgreen economic miracle\u201d a year ago, have made one ecology compromise after another, like their go-ahead for big docks for liquid gas from US frackers to replace the Russian gas-oil cut by war, politics and that suspicious explosion of the Baltic pipeline. The new docks threaten both major bird emigration stopovers and some of Germany\u2019s most idyllic beach resorts (once peopled, back in GDR days, by happy, mostly nudist bathers).<\/span><\/p>\n

Ecology disputes turned dramatic with Elon Musk\u2019s Tesla gigafactory on Berlin\u2019s outskirts, his first and largest in all Europe and now capable of turning out 500,000 E-cars a year, beating out VW. That meant chopping down 740 acres of the protective forest ring around Berlin and draining into crucial aquifers. But Musk now aims at a million cars \u2013 costing 420 more forest acres and drying-up ponds and creeks. The village hit hardest voted \u201cNo!\u201d and one group plans to defy a planned police onslaught in tree houses and platforms. On March 5th a secret, more extremist group set fire to a high-voltage power pylon, cutting local electricity for a few hours and shutting down production for a few days. Such disputes are getting hotter.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Rounding out the picture, Germany has been facing its biggest strike wave in years: railroad engineers, bus and tram drivers, airport personnel, public service workers, kindergarten teachers, even clinic doctors. Their demands are mostly for enough pay to catch up with inflation and frightening rent increases but also \u2013 for many \u2013 for a 35-hour work week with no cut in pay.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

While the compromising Greens strain to hold onto their dwindling professional college-graduate base and the Social Democrats struggle to win back working-class support, the weakest of the three partners, the Free Democrats (F<\/u>DP), closest to big-biz, keep flirting with the Christian Democrats across the aisle, blackmailing attempts by the other two to seem socially conscious by resisting remaining environmental restrictions, preventing rules against child labor on products from abroad, limiting aid for the many poverty-ridden children in Germany, reducing assistance for the elderly and, above all, insisting on keeping or lowering low taxes on the super-wealthy, using the old trickle-down argument. More and more, the coalition is coming to resemble a free-for-all wrestling match.<\/span><\/p>\n

But they agreed on one main issue: in Ukraine, keep that war going! Till victory! The Greens, always most valiant with Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock hoping to see Russia \u201cruined,\u201d are being overtaken as word and banner bearers by the Free Democrats, who now boast a \u201cDefense Committee\u201d spokesperson who is formidable in word, appearance, personality and even name:\u00a0Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann<\/a><\/span>. Her imperative calls for more weapons until total victory over the Russians rouse up TV viewers almost every single evening. And even when a majority in the Bundestag ended the Taurus debate by voting \u201cNein\u201d to a Christian Democratic bill to give Kyiv the missiles, she broke the ranks of coalition party discipline and voted \u201cJa\u201d with the opposition.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Somehow I haven\u2019t yet heard anyone remark that D\u00fcsseldorf, which she represents, is also home to Rheinmetall, Germany\u2019s leading armaments manufacturer since 1889. After great sales records in World War I it had giant success in World War II, largely by working thousands of miserable POWs and forced laborers to the bone. Now super-good times are back again thanks to its Panther tanks and all kinds of weapons and explosive ammo. Company\u00a0<\/span>boss\u00a0\u00a0Armin Papperger, who took home a tidy \u20ac 3,587,000 in 2022 (about\u00a0\u00a0$3.9 m) and expects this year\u2019s company earnings to finally top its \u20ac 10 billion goal made a happy prediction of \u201ca continuing strong growth increase in sales and earnings.\u201d But who could dare to suspect any connection between Rheinmetall and its D\u00fcsseldorf neighbor,\u00a0\u00a0Frau Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann. (BTW, big hunks of those handsome sums also go to Blackrock in Manhattan\u2019s Hudson Yards and other solid Transatlantic benefactors.)\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

But in his crumbling coalition Olaf Scholz\u2019s leading Social Democratic Party has also been vigorously supporting\u00a0\u00a0the Ukrainian cause! It was he who dramatically called for a \u201cZeitenwende\u201d an \u201chistoric turning point\u201d \u2013 with an extra fund of\u00a0\u00a0\u20ac 100 billion for a major military build up – in Ukraine, Germany, the European Union and NATO, with drones, jets, artillery, ammo, tanks, missiles (but at least not yet the Taunus for Kyiv.<\/p>\n

But his Defense Minister Boris Pistorius (Social Democrat) is never sated; for him the Bundeswehr is always far too weak. \u201cIt must be made fit for the challenges ahead. Germany needs a Bundeswehr that can fight, one which is operational and sustainable. Germany must defend itself, because \u2018war is back in Europe.\u2019\u00a0\u00a0The Bundeswehr must become fit for war again. I know that sounds harsh\u2026 But I am concerned with nothing other than preventing war. That is why credible deterrence is the motto of the hour \u2013 to be able to fight in order not to have to fight. An important signal in this context is the formation of the brigade in Lithuania.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Despite all disavowals, s<\/span>ome beans have recently been spilled about NATO military experts secretly helping Kyiv ever since 2014. A mysteriously leaked report on a meeting of top German brass revealed plans for helping\u00a0\u00a0Ukraine use the Taunus to destroy the Russian bridge to Crimea. The whole atmosphere in Germany is becoming frighteningly \u201ckriegst\u00fcchtig,\u201d to use Pistorius\u2019 word – \u201cready for war.\u201d He also raised the question of renewing the military draft whose last vestiges were ended thirteen years ago \u2013 this time perhaps including women. The proposal was a trial balloon \u2013 and soon dropped, at least for this pre-election season. Another trial balloon came from the Education Minister, Bettina Stark-Watzinger, who called for air raid drills in schools, with renovated or new shelter rooms in the cellars and more visits by officers to prepare children\u00a0\u00a0for the worst \u2013 or recruit them. When protests against this proposal grew too strong she modified it a bit \u2013 to stress, aside from war, readiness for possible floods or other climate catastrophes.<\/span><\/p>\n

Weapons, weapons, weapons \u2013 the more the better! With ever louder talk about \u201cthe foe\u201d and \u201cprotective measures\u201d, as if Putin were amassing troops or maneuvering warships along German borders \u2013 instead of just the opposite taking place in the Baltic and Lithuania – and no longer so secretly in Ukraine. The blitzkrieg-laden spirit of 1941 Germany is all over the media, with no audible recollections of Stalingrad in 1943 or a wrecked and wretched Berlin (and Dresden, Hamburg and all the others) in 1945.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The reports on Gaza since October contrasted markedly with the anger over the Russian attack on Ukraine; they almost never mentioned Hamas without the prefaced adjective \u201cterrorist\u201d but showed few pictures of devastated Gaza which, for me, bitterly recalled those German cities I saw a few years after the war, like Dresden. Over and over we were shown Israeli soldiers bravely firing away; at what? Or digging in wrecked hospitals;\u00a0\u00a0for what? Or showing those \u201ccompassionate\u201d parachute drops, a sad joke when small crowds of Israelis were somehow permitted to block hundreds of truckloads of really tangible assistance \u2013 and while Germany joined the USA in sending weapons to Netanyahu while stymying UNO efforts to end the slaughter.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

But the heart-wrenching pictures of weeping fathers and dead or maimed children in Gaza could not be ignored. Demonstrations, led by Arabs in Germany but including many other, also Jewish Germans, grew larger, despite all attempts to prevent, limit or sideline them. Their calls for negotiations and peace sometimes included the war in Ukraine \u2013 and a rejection of SPD-FDP-Green-CDU-CSU militarist unity. But then came the giant rallies against the fascistic Alternative for Germany (AfD). In the past often harassed or at best ignored, they were now amazingly well-organized and coordinated, clearly promoted from above and blessed in the media. I suspect they were consciously aimed at deflecting a progressive, pro-peace trend born of horror at the hugely disproportionate Israeli response to October 7th, misusing a popular anti-AfD cause for the purpose, together with an increased stress on opposing anti-Semitism, while equating it with any criticism of Israeli repression and extreme brutality. It was good that the rallies\u00a0\u00a0opposed racism and fascists, but they were no longer leaning toward united left opposition.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Is there now any opposition to top level policies?\u00a0\u00a0Yes, of a sort. Or rather of approximately four sorts.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Within the ranks of the Social Democrats, while many admire dynamic (and ambitious?) Minister Pistorius, some others may be coming to their senses. Most courageous recently was Rolf M\u00fctzenich, chair of the SPD caucus in the Bundestag and long known as a rare opponent of militarism. During the Taurus debate he asked the Bundestag delegates: \u201cIsn\u2019t it time not only to speak about waging a war but to start thinking about how we can freeze a war and then end it as well?\u201c He had hardly finished his brief remarks with question when the counterattack began, from fellow politicians and from most of the mass media. Two nasty words recurred shamelessly: \u201cAppeasement\u201d and \u201cCowardice\u201d. Unlike Pope Francis, who dared to voice similar sentiments, M\u00fctzenich had no shred of any \u201cinfallibility\u201d status, and the truly vicious attacks forced him to stage a partial retreat to save his neck. But the words had been uttered and some may have listened. As for appeasement, Neville Chamberlain and Daladier let Hitler expand in Spain, then tolerated his expansion eastward to Austria and Czechoslovakia because it meant closing in on the hated USSR. His all-European attack in June 1941 was more analogous to EU-NATO eastward-aimed unanimity than the reverse!<\/span><\/p>\n

Olaf Scholz often vacillates. But at times, unlike some ministers, he seems to listen to and echo people like M\u00fctzenich. \u201cGerman soldiers must at no point and in no place be linked to targets this Taurus system reaches\u2026Not in Germany either\u2026This clarity is necessary. I am surprised that this doesn\u2019t move some people, that they don\u2019t even think about whether \u2026 a participation in the war could emerge from what we do.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

But then, Scholz certainly learned arithmetic at school. The European elections are due this June, Bundestag elections next year, with key state elections in between. In the polls his Social Democratic party is stuck at about a weak 15%, half its traditional Christian rivals and even behind the Alternative for Germany (AfD). Opinions change frequently but 80% now favor diplomatic negotiations for Ukraine and 41% want less weapons sent there. Scholz \u2013 or Germany – cannot really change course in such basic matters. But\u00a0\u00a0he may think that dragging his feet rather ambiguously might win back more voters.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

A second group demanding negotiations and an end to the Ukraine war, perhaps very surprisingly,\u00a0\u00a0is the AfD. Although it supports big business, NATO, the draft and German rearmament enthusiastically, it calls nevertheless for negotiations, peace and a resumption of normal trade relations.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span>It is possible that the AfD simply wants only to further increase its popularity , especially in eastern Germany, where there is the least military enthusiasm \u2013 and it is already amazingly strong\u00a0\u00a0(and dangerous) position, at about30%. Of course they are called \u201cPutin-lovers.\u201d Who knows, perhaps they are. But their top woman in leadership, Alice Weidel, is intelligent, shrewd, a skilled speaker, and made an eloquent plea for peace, while thanking M\u00fctzenich and congratulating Scholz for not sending Taurus to Kyiv. Thus creating a difficult complication.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

And then there is the Linke party, which has seen itself from birth as the \u201dparty of peace\u201d. Indeed, over the years it has opposed every deployment of German troops or ships outside its borders, it has opposed the payment of giant sums to Rheinmetall and its siblings at home or abroad, it has opposed the export of German weapons to nearly every oppressive government that could be found, it has opposed every form of militarization. A brave and exemplary record, alongside its fight for a higher minimum wage, more money for seniors, for child care and women\u2019s rights. Its stand also forced Social Democrats and Greens to take better positions, if only to avoid a drift of their voters to the small yet potentially growing Linke.<\/span><\/p>\n

Perhaps it was its successes which became its weak point. Not only the delegates who got elected on the national, state or local level but also\u00a0\u00a0their staffs and assistants had good jobs. Some tended, too often, to become a part of the mistrusted \u201cestablishment\u201d in the eyes of dissatisfied and disappointed voters \u2013 or then non-voters. Their increasingly respectable status led to interest in \u201cidentity rights\u201d, immigrant rights, gender rights, but too often to a growing distance from neglected, underpaid, overburdened working people, including temps and the jobless. Some leaders, hoping to crown state cabinet posts with those in a national coalition, watered down their rejection of NATO and its relentless eastward moves and threats. Their rejection of even meager approval of the giant peace demonstration led by Sahra Wagenknecht last year on flimsy grounds borrowed from the mass media proved the last straw for many members and led to the formation of a breakaway party, called (temporarily it is hoped) B\u00fcndnis Sahra Wagenknecht.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Some in the Linke, convinced Marxists, think it was a mistake to split and leave the party instead of fighting it out, even though they were outvoted by conformist, status quo leaders who now want to force them out just as they did to Sahra Wagenknecht and her adherents. And some believe that if the Linke again becomes more militant in something whose name is hardly even whispered these days\u00a0\u00a0(class conflict) then it can be rescued from menacing-oblivion. It is already in great trouble, nationally down to 3%, which would bar it from the next Bundestag.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

As for Sahra\u2019s BSW, it stands full square for negotiations and peace, like no other, and certainly for working people\u2019s rights and needs. But much of its program remains vague as yet and seems to be turning out to be less militant than expected. It polls 5 to 7% nationally, not bad for a newbie with rudimentary state structures but less than some had expected in view of Sahra\u2019s popularity. The European Union elections in June and the state elections in September will show how the two stand, now as rivals in a divided Left.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

As for the bellicose forces, some pro-American \u201cAtlanticists\u201d are worried about being cast adrift after November 5th by that unpredictable man from Mar-a-Lago, or they are studying geriatric tables. Others, the Germanic wing, who reject American infiltration, from music styles to dirty slang, are scheming and dreaming of the good old days of smart uniforms, clicking heels, Iron Crosses and people knowing their proper place. But they all join Rheinmetall, Lockhead and the others in hoping the warring may last until they get new chances to win out in broad Eurasian expanses, re-establish Germany\u2019s proper position in the world and perhaps for some, a hope to avenge that disaster for their grandfathers back in 1945. More and more, we are engulfed by all their\u00a0\u00a0war talk \u2013 and preparatory action.<\/span><\/p>\n

What is desperately needed, not only in Germany but especially in Germany, is a new consolidation of all those in any party, or no party, who still have unaddled brains in their heads and a heart in their chests for an end to the killing and starving of Ukrainians, Russians, the Palestinians and the still as yet far too small number of\u00a0\u00a0brave Jewish Israelis (like the \u201crefuseniks\u201d) to build up a dynamic peace movement like that against the Vietnam war, or against missiles in West Germany in the 1980s, or the marches to prevent the Iraq war or,\u00a0\u00a0I recent months, to rescue the tortured million and more innocent people of Gaza \u2013 yes, and those100 hostages as well.\u00a0\u00a0Such a movement is desperately necessary; the clock is ticking away. Can the Jupiters of the world be dethroned? For Europa and for the world. Is that possible?<\/span><\/p>\n

The post Taurus and the Bullfighters<\/a> appeared first on CounterPunch.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n

This post was originally published on CounterPunch.org<\/a>. <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Watching genteel Bundestag ladies and gentlemen speechifying, often with forceful words and gestures but mostly polite, it is hard to imagine that their topic is war or peace, possibly world war or peace, even atomic war or peace. A key word was Taurus, Latin for \u201cbull.\u201d But they weren\u2019t arguing about Zodiac astrology or the More<\/a><\/p>\n

The post Taurus and the Bullfighters<\/a> appeared first on CounterPunch.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1222,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1573672"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1222"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1573672"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1573672\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1573673,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1573672\/revisions\/1573673"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1573672"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1573672"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1573672"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}