Sushi Party & Easter Plans

My housemate, David, and I hosted a sushi party on Tuesday. We made the sushi from scratch which was new for me. It turns out not to be that hard. Not any harder than making raisin cinnamon rolls really. We must have made well over a hundred rolls and it was only the second time I'd ever been stuffed to the top of my throat with sushi. I sat there with a tight belt as in post-Thanksgiving satiety. A success.

This weekend the whole apartment is vacating to Pinnow, a small village a couple hours north of Berlin by train. My landlord and -lady have a cabin there and we're all going to celebrate Easter and the 18th birthday of Elenor, their daughter. There will be about ten of us there in all and it should be pretty fun. The area is filled with lakes and will probably be something like Minnesota.

Spain-Politics 2

My dinner break turned out to be a few days long, but I'd like to follow up on my line of thought from Monday. Upon rereading, I realized that some people reading this might find my couple of paragraphs cold and unemotional. I am writing, after all, about the deaths of nearly 200 human beings.

The reason for my austerity is that I think any attempt by me to give weight to these people's deaths by describing the attacks as 'brutal,' 'murderous,' or other suchlike would result not in an honoring of their deaths, but rather would result in the opposite because such words are insufficient. A person who murders a human being is murderous. It seems an abuse of language to apply the same to someone who ends the lives of 200, 3000, or 5 million. If we keep in mind that there is a human being behind each one of those numbers then that number can better express than any trite adjective the loss of these people.

Where I left off Monday was with the question of whether in fact the Madrid attacks had been successful. 1) On the level of the actual carrying out of the attack: obviously 'yes' or I wouldn't be writing about it. 2) On the political level by influencing the elections: I think 'yes' again. It's my interpretation that it was less the handling of the attacks by the government that accounted for the change in opinions as much as the desire to disengage from the fight against Islamic terrorism.

The ruling PP had been very tough on the Basque nationalist terror group, ETA, and had built part of their political support on this basis. They had also taken a very tough public stance against al-Qaeda and supported the Iraq War which was waged partly in the name of fighting terrorism (I will be writing more on this fact later). Almost every commentator I read between the time of the attacks and the elections three days later had something along these lines to say about the implications of the identity of the responsible group:
::::: Many political analysts say that if ETA was responsible for the attack, it would favour the Popular Party in the election because of its hard line against the group.

"If, however, the rumours about Al Qaeda gain credence, then things would be perceived in a very different way," pollster Julian Santamaria said. ::::: full article here

But why would it make a difference if the PP had been tough on both ETA and al-Qaeda? The key difference is that the threat from ETA is domestic and there is no choice but to deal with the problem. ETA is not going away. However, the implication of the election results seems to be that al-Qaeda is not so recognized. It is rather seen as something that can be dealt with by not being so cosy with the country toward which the sharpest hate of al-Qaeda is directed, namely, the US. If we aren't such good friends with al-Qaeda's primary enemy then we'll no longer be al-Qaeda's enemy. That is what I meant in saying that I think Spain tried to disengage from the fight against terrorism. I have no doubt that they will continue to fight it on their own soil, but I have serious doubts about whether they will be willing to help in legitimate overseas anti-terror operations (what exactly constitutes a 'legitimate overseas anti-terror operation' is something that also deserves attention). Such operations would make Spain a more likely target of terrorism in the voters minds and be therefore unsupportable.

What I've written does not concern the way one conducts the fight against terrorism. I don't know what the best strategy is. We have to find the best strategy and that requires debate, but the question of whether to fight terrorism is not a question at all. I may disagree with the way the Bush administration has conducted their war on terrorism and I do, profoundly. But I'm proud to see that across the political spectrum, the rational portion of it at least, there is 100% consensus that we are determined to fight terrorism. I'll likely be writing more about the how well the publicly expressed determination has matched with deeds by politicians.

Spain-politics

Today news came out that the group who claimed responsibility for the March-11 train bombs is threatening further action unless the Spanish troops are pulled out of both Iraq and Afghanistan. This is clever because the incoming Prime Minister promised before being elected that he would pull Spanish troops out of Iraq. He reaffirmed this promise just after being elected, but has been pretty quiet about it since then so as not to provoke a direct confrontation with the US right now. With the new threat this terrorist group can claim (and perhaps actually believe) that they are the real reason for the pullout and that the West is scared to fight them and that the terrorists are winning. But rather than making an attack less likely because success has been partially achieved this could be a further encouragement for them to carry out the threat because the Spanish have not pulled out of Afghanistan (which is politically impossible for them to do). Grand point is that even perceived success can breed more attacks.

But weren't the March-11 attacks successful in actual fact? Up until the attacks the governing Popular Party(PP) was ahead by a comfortable margin in the elections, but the Socialist Party(PS) won the elections three days after the attacks. There are at least two interpretations of the meaning of that reversal.

One interpretation sees the reversal as a reaction to the way the PP government handled the attacks. They were surely too quick to try to blame ETA the internal Basque-nationalist terrorist group. An email was sent out shortly after the bombings to the Spanish embassies around the world telling the ambassadors to push the ETA connection. Spain pressed for a resolution in the UN Security Council against ETA and received it against the initial objections of Germany. These actions point to an organized effort to cover up the real reasons for the attacks for pure political gain and the PP was punished by the voters for this set of actions.

Another interpretation is that the reason the PP was voted out was because of the close cooperation of that government with the US in the war in Iraq which was seen as the cause of the attacks. The PP was voted out because their actions had cost the lives of nearly 200 people. This is the interpretation that seemed to be floating most frequently in the press.

More after dinner...

Quote of the day

Communism is man's exploitation of man. Capitalism is just the opposite.

Last week I went with my German class to Wittenberg which is a small city where Luther published his 95 Theses and did a lot of his work. Wittenberg is also the home of a 'Hundertwasser Haus.' Hundertwasser was a post-modernist architect that died just a couple years ago. His buildings incorporate nature into their designs and don't use straight lines. The Hundertwasser in Wittenberg is a school. They've also taken on his philosophy in the administration of the school and the students are involved in the decoration of the school, they have visiting artists regularly come and teach art classes and such things that must make the other schools in Wittenberg fairly envious. Hundertwasser lived in New Zealand during his last years and in fact supervised the construction of the Wittenberg school via a web cam. He didn't live to actually see the school. Anyway, here's an amusing article I read the other day about one building he designed in New Zealand. The Hundertwasser Toilet

Today is the official arrival day for all the foreign students so I guess the semester is finally getting under way. Apparently I'm the only student from the US on exchange in Potsdam this semester. Classes actually begin in about two weeks. I plan to take three courses in politics and one in economics. Two will be in German and the other two in English. I might also take part in a language class, but haven't decided as yet which to take.

This blogging stuff seems a bit narcissistic, eh?

Spring is rising up in Berlin. Today is the third beautiful day in a row. The grass is green and the trees are budding. There are a lot of willows along the canal that runs near my house and they have all leafed out. It looked almost like summer yesterday with people picnicking on the grass and some of the boats going up and down the canal. People have staked up fences around the small patches of earth around the base of the trees along the street. That's to keep the host of dogs with whom we share Berlin from depositing excessive amounts of fertilizer and toxic acid on the newly planted flowers. It's surprisingly open and green all over Berlin when Spring and Summer are in full bloom. And the dogs are mostly ok.