Some Peace Movement
GEDMIN, JEFFREY
Some Peace Movement Where are Germany's peaceniks now? BY JEFFREY GEDMIN Berlin Earlier this month, several hundred people gathered in Nurem-Jberg, the site of an Iran-Mexico soccer match, for a...
...The former chancellor, now chairman of the supervisory board of Russia's Gazprom—let's call him father of the modern German peace movement— was just named honorary chairman of the German Near and Middle East Association...
...The peace movement was back in top form recently when George W. Bush said he would compel Saddam Hussein to comply with U.N...
...The mullahs stone women to death...
...Still, Iran should be a no-brainer...
...Those denouncing Iran's head of state were a motley crew of "Christian Crazies," "anti-German Germans," and "cheering Persians," the last being "loyalists of the mass-murdering regime of the shah...
...The peace movement is modern, multicultural, and secular...
...In 2004, while Gerhard Schroder was still in office, German exports to Iran rose by 33.4 percent (3.6 billion euros...
...It's a stone's throw from my apartment in Mitte near Friedrichstrasse...
...What's really amusing (or creepy) is not the glaring hypocrisy of the peace movement's inaction over Iran (or Sudan, North Korea, and Syria for that matter), but rather what some of these oily groups are serving up at smaller meetings and online publications these days...
...President Ahmadinejad believes in the Hidden Imam and relishes a good clash of civilizations...
...The peace movement condemns the "arms race...
...This is an umbrella group for German industry...
...The peace movement cherishes human rights...
...I am waiting for someone from the peace movement to catch on...
...When Iran goes nuclear, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Jeffrey Gedmin is director of the Aspen Institute Berlin...
...More than 10 million in the region will suffer the effects of radiation...
...These included the lover of Petra Kelly, the desperate, strident young woman who helped start the Greens...
...One peace-movement blogger says that while Iran is indeed "a friend of ours," maybe the Iranian leadership "is getting a bit carried away of late...
...Iran wants the bomb...
...That's always been an amusing bit of shtick...
...The Berlin office of the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War has released a paper describing what will happen if the United States launches a nuclear attack against Iran...
...More than 2 million people will die in the first 48 hours apparently...
...It tends to the needs of some 1,400 member firms from both countries...
...You would think that for progressives, human rights would trump profits...
...At night there were candlelight processions at the Brandenburg Gate...
...In a policy paper written for the Peace Research Group at the University of Kassel, Meggle says, "Iran would be stupid" not to pursue its current course...
...Turkey will also want the bomb...
...The Nobel-winning novelist Gun-ter Grass told the international PEN writers congress in Berlin last month, "Nothing could be more stupid or dangerous than to call Iran, North Korea, or Syria evil powers...
...He does not elaborate, but I wonder if he is referring to that small matter of President Ahmadine-jad denying the Holocaust...
...Or so you would think...
...But you would think that for the peace movement a little prudence would be in order...
...Last year the figure hit 4.5 billion euros...
...Angela Merkel has been great on Iran...
...And Schroder is now speaking out against sanctions on Iran...
...It is hard to remember any of these folks lifting a finger for the good people of Iraq before or since...
...When America went into Afghanistan after 9/11, the cover of Stern magazine, the popular German weekly, blared "Stop this War...
...Volkswagen is in Iran...
...Inside the magazine were statements by 44 prominent intellectual, political, and cultural figures demanding an end to American aggression...
...To be fair, some of our peace friends may be more reasonable than I have suggested...
...Professor Georg Meggle of the University of Leipzig agrees...
...DaimlerChrysler is there...
...member state to be wiped off the face of the earth...
...resolutions...
...and international law...
...German companies sell the Iranians machinery, production facilities, and electrical engineering products...
...Iran is the other...
...BY JEFFREY GEDMIN Berlin Earlier this month, several hundred people gathered in Nurem-Jberg, the site of an Iran-Mexico soccer match, for a protest...
...Kelly and General Bastian killed themselves in an apparent suicide pact in Bonn in the fall of 1992...
...Okay, it is tedious to state the obvious, but the German peace movement —always the largest, most vocal, and best organized in Europe—is once again exposed as a farce and a fraud...
...Europe depends on Middle Eastern oil even more than the United States...
...I guess we all have our limits...
...Their concern was that Iran's president might fly to Germany to attend the World Cup match...
...Teachers in Berlin let students out of school to march for peace...
...She has not yet sat down to discuss with top industry leaders, though, the impact of possible sanctions on German companies and an ailing German economy...
...And all those banners declaring "No Blood for Oil...
...According to a German peace activist newsletter, the crowd of protesters was most unimpressive, a bunch of losers really...
...What about the damage expected from an Iranian nuclear strike...
...another million will be seriously injured...
...And I thought we were just talking about a land invasion and occupation...
...The German Peace Society says Iran needs the bomb to defend itself against America and Israel...
...The Iranian leader has called for a U.N...
...The German-Iranian Chamber of Industry and Commerce, according to a newsletter of the Iranian German Business Forum, is one of Germany's largest in the world...
...So were the trade unions...
...The churches were there...
...Although North Korea is the last Stalinist regime on earth, and is building nuclear weapons while starving its population to death, I've not seen a single concerned citizen from the peace movement with a sign or a flower before the embassy's entrance...
...According to my colleague Alexander Arndt, no more than two of these great humanitarians have taken time publicly to raise concern about Iran's human rights record or the prospect of the mullahs getting nuclear weapons...
...The Network of the German Peace Movement is worried that a "pro-Western government" could come to power in Iran...
...German imports also rose by 35 percent (391 million euros) two years ago, with the first expansion of crude oil deliveries...
...Saudi Arabia is one of Germany's most important trading partners in the region...
...It's not the first time I have wondered about Germany's real peace activists...
...The German peace movement has always been antinuclear...
...Speaking of mass murder, I walk by the North Korean embassy nearly every day in Berlin...
...In Berlin, half a million people took to the streets (their counterparts were out in full force across Europe and in the United States, of course, too...
...The peace movement loves the U.N...
...Meanwhile, the number of protests here calling for an end to the slaughter in Sudan stands by my count at about zero...
...The peace movement likes peace...
...I recall a few dozen lonely souls protesting here against Saddam Hussein...
...In the '80s, for example, East Germany's secret police helped finance the work of "Generals for Peace," a group of eight former NATO generals opposed to the stationing of NATO missiles in Western Europe...
...Tehran defies the International Atomic Energy Agency...
...During the Cold War it thrived on anti-Americanism and a good dose of Soviet bloc support...
Vol. 11 • June 2006 • No. 39
