Many observers share the belief that very dangerous or, on the contrary, very positive, situations can be determined by minor accidents. For instance, that a war could finally follow a disruption of equilibriums between politicians and generals in Turkey. That in Italy severe strife, even the end of the Berlusconi era, might be the ultimate consequence of paradoxically light mishaps in the filing of candidacies to elected offices that are not important enough. That the emergence of a brilliant orator who makes capital of social discontent could torpedo the partitocratic regime the Allies installed 65 years ago (many surveys show that here derisory percentages approve the Italian institutions and their political ways).

The above fuses may or may not ignite large explosions. But, by a sort of counter-analogy it’s arguable that, if certain marginal or escapable events of the past had not occurred, the contemporary world would be incredibly different. Had the Emperor of the French, Napoleon III, assessed a diplomatic slight by chancellor Bismarck for what factually was a simple discourtesy rather than a threat to the vital interests of France, the Franco-Prussian war of 1870 would not have followed (no serious conflict existed then between Paris and Berlin). Just two battles annihilated the French armies and their prestige. The Emperor was deposed, France was occupied, Alsace-Lorraine lost. Then, thousands died in the Paris Commune insurrection.

In the following 44 years France was dominated by ‘revanche’, the obsession of vengeance. So, had it not been for the foolish choice of 1870, possibly in 1914 French president Poincaré wouldn’t pressure St.Petersburg, and even London, to fight Austria-Hungary and the German Reich. Without the Tsarist defeat, it is not proven that a Bolshevik revolution would triumph in Russia. Had WW1 and the Treaty of Versailles not humiliated Germany, probably Hitler would not become the Fuehrer, Germany would not resort to WW2, and our history would be entirely different.

There’s more.

If Hitler had a quirk different from antisemitism, millions of Jews would not be killed. Not dissimilar could have been the consequences had the Jewish world community decided to buy Hitler with (a lot of) money or otherwise instantly confronted him. For many centuries, Jews easily bought Christian sovereigns’ tolerance, namely in Castile, France, and England.

Nobody of course can demonstrate the above successions as inevitable. But as nobody can prove the contrary, the assumption is legitimate that the XXI century world would be almost the opposite of what we have, if only Napoleon the Third with his courtiers, diplomats and marshals had been wiser.

Academic historians traditionally decry this way of thinking. But in no way can they prove the superiority of their approach. They idolize just what is archived and recorded. Which is at the same time scientifically correct and devoid of human lessons. Things that do not happen can be more fateful than actual events.

Massimo Calderazzi is member of the Société Européenne de Culture, to which many eminent
scholars and a few Nobel prizewinners belong.

Parliament Speaker Filippos Petsalnikos yesterday condemned German press reports on Greece’s financial crisis that he said “surpassed all limits” and invited Germany’s ambassador to Greece, Wolfgang Schultheiss, to discuss the “offensive” coverage, says Greece’s Kathimerini.

Petsalnikos was responding to two articles – one in Stern magazine in the form of an open letter to Greeks from disgruntled German taxpayers, which also appeared in the February 19 issue of Athens Plus, and the other featured in an issue of Focus magazine whose front page depicts a statue of the Venus de Milo making an obscene gesture under the title “Greek cheats.” The House speaker condemned the two reports as “anything but objective” and containing “inaccuracies and false information.”

Petsalnikos accused Stern of offering an “oversimplified and populist take” on Greece’s financial crisis by lambasting Greeks for frittering away German taxpayers’ savings. In a letter sent to the magazine, Petsalnikos argued that Germany too had reaped benefits from European Union membership, stressing also that it was Greece’s main arms supplier. He noted that Germany was one of the countries that benefited most from EU membership, with more than 60 percent of its exports going to member states in 2007.

Meanwhile, clashes today erupted on Greek streets as protests against the Greek government’s prospective austerity plans engulfed the nation’s capital of Athens.

Police fired tear gas at a group of some 50 protesters as a rally attended by some 25,000 people ended in Athens. It is the second general strike in two weeks and coincides with growing anger at the EU’s response to the crisis. The action was the biggest since Greece’s socialist government introduced cuts to bring the country’s debt and deficit under control. Greece closed airspace to all flights, while trains and ferries stood idle and archaeological sites remained shut for the day.

The BBC’s Malcolm Brabant in Athens says that for the second time this month, Greece is isolated from the rest of the world for 24 hours as all flights into and out of the country have been cancelled. Commuters have been left without most forms of public transport, while public schools, ministries, and municipal offices have been closed. Many hospitals are operating only with emergency staffing.

The march was peaceful but scuffles broke out between some demonstrators and police as the rally came to an end, and tear gas was fired.

Groups of youths then threw stones and smashed shop windows, police said. Three people were arrested.

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The head of the Protestant church in Germany, Bishop Margot Kässmann, has announced her resignation. Her decision to step down came after she was caught driving with three times the legal blood alcohol limit on Saturday night in Hanover, writes Der Spiegel.

Kässmann, the first woman to lead Germany’s 25 million Protestants, addressed reporters on Wednesday afternoon. Just six minutes into the press conference she made it clear that she felt her position was untenable following the news that she had been stopped by police after driving through a red light.
She said she “could not stay in office with the necessary authority.” She said that she was sorry that she was disappointing the many people who had urged her to stay on as head of the church. Kässmann thanked her staff who had stuck with her and her children. “I thank my four daughters who have shared in this decision,” she said.

She said she knew from the past that “you cannot fall deeper than into God’s hand.”

Earlier on Wednesday, the Council of the Protestant church released a statement on the matter. The 14 members of the council said that, after a hastily organized conference call on Tuesday, they were unified in their desire to stand behind their bishop’s ability to make the right decision on the affair. The press statement said that, “the council places its undivided trust in its head, to make decisions about how to move forward together.”

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Dubai will issue arrest warrants soon for 11 Europeans suspected in the killing of a senior Hamas official, and cannot rule out Israeli involvement, the police chief said on Monday.

“We do not rule out Mossad, but when we arrest those suspects we will know who masterminded it. [We have not] issued arrest warrants yet, but will do soon,” police chief Dahi Khalfan Tamim told reporters.

He said police had arrested two Palestinians suspected of providing logistical support in the killing of Mahmoud al-Mabhouh at a Dubai hotel last month.

Dubai Police Chief Lt. Gen. Dhahi Khalfan Tamim told reporters that the alleged assassination team comprised six British passport holders, three Irish and one each from France and Germany.

The mercenaries were apparently dressed in tennis gear and visited several hotels on the day of the assasination in order to remain inconspicuous.

He says forensic tests indicate al-Mabhouh died of suffocation, but lab
analyses are still under way.

Top Hamas figures have denied that al-Mabhouh was en route to Iran, a major Hamas backer.

Last week the a Paris-based journal dedicated to tracking intelligence activity worldwide, Intelligence Online, reported that ten agents, including three women, participated in the assassination in January.

The journal published what it termed “new details” about the operation, which has been widely attributed to Israel’s Mossad intelligence service. It said that one of the female agents dressed herself in the uniform of a reception clerk at Al Bustan Rotana, the hotel where Mabhouh was staying, and then knocked on his door.

When he opened it her fellow operatives rushed him and stunned him with an electric device, the journal said, then they injected poison into his veins, in order to disguise the cause of death.

All 11 agents carried European passports, the journal said.

Previous reports spoke of seven agents, all carrying Irish passports.

Read the full story here.

For decades, German bishops tried to look the other way when their pastors engaged in sexual abuse, as well as to downplay the problem by characterizing it as isolated incidents. Now they are finally revealing their own figures, though hesitantly. According to a SPIEGEL survey of Germany’s 27 dioceses conducted last week, at least 94 priests and members of the laity in Germany are suspected or have been suspected of abusing countless children and adolescents since 1995. A total of 24 of the 27 dioceses responded to SPIEGEL’s questions.

A group called the Round Table for Care in Children’s Homes recently published an interim report which contains dramatic findings. The report deals with the wrongs committed since the 1950s against children and adolescents living in homes, almost half of which were run by the Catholic Church.

According to the report, more than 150 victims of sexual abuse have come forward with their stories in recent months. One of them is a woman who, as a 15-year-old girl, had to sit in the confessional and watch a priest masturbate. When she tried to get away from him, she was beaten by the nuns who ran the home. There has never been a systematic investigation into how many Catholic schools, homes and rectories were the scenes of abuse, even when there was evidence in the files. The Round Table group plans to present its final report at the end of the year.

Read more here.

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As the leading member of the European Union, an outrage of the kind that recently occurred in a French factory a few weeks ago would have once been unthinkable.  Those Gallic workers announced (to the world, too): “In our plant we have buried explosive charges. We will detonate them if the management will go ahead with plans to destroy our jobs.” The question is: why we don’t hear about anything similar in the Bundesrepublik?

After all, Germany is one of the worst-hit industrial countries of the present recession. Her economy has contracted more than the American, British or French ones. But left-wing activists have scant success when they try to organize strikes and protests in Germany. In fact, today things are really different in comparison with the Weimar period, where hate dominated all. Back then, Walter Rathenau, the leading minister and the chief of the giant AEG, was killed  in 1922 by a handful of young men which included a distinguished writer, the Nazi Ernst von Salomon.

A logical explanation for Germany’s current tranquility is that the national Welfare State is so good that being fired is not as traumatic as elsewhere. In addition, Germans are confident that their productive apparatus is masterful enough as to rebound soon. The Ostpolitik consistently conducted by chancellors Brandt, Kohl, Schroeder and Merkel alone assures so much business with Russia (nuclear, railroad, gas programs) that today’s doldrums will not last long.

The German Welfare State is the longest standing one in the capitalist universe. Prince von Bismarck initiated it almost 150 years ago, and did so in cooperation with Ferdinand Lassalle, who personified the democratic alternative to Karl Marx (the latter much deplored that the brilliant young social reformer would work with the feudal and domineering Kanzler). Bismarck and Lassalle are said to have met four days a week for months. Otto von Bismarck  was so disdainful toward the liberal bourgeoisie as to ‘invent’ the Welfare State in partnership with a Socialist. Lassalle died a few months later (August 1864) while duelling, probably over a woman.

The above factors largely justify the tranquillity of German workers. But an even more fundamental element is that, before Adolf Hitler perverted his nation’s minds and hearts, the German people was specifically virtuous, the most profound and ethically motivated people in Europe. The practice of serene discipline and rightfulness was ingrained in the collective character.

The famed Prussian miller who refused King, Frederick the Great, the possibility to buy his modest property, so expounded his self-assurance by stating that “There are judges in Berlin.” And Martin Luther had based his religious revolution on the belief that his imperial, half-German master, Charles V, had to respect the rights of the German soul. Four centuries later it was the inequitable Treaty of Versailles that inflamed the German anger to the point of opening the way to Hitler, the pitiless Avenger.

New Germans, after tragically learning the lessons of two World Wars and of Auschwitz, have gone back to their lofty heritage.

Massimo Calderazzi is an author and journalist.

The Netherlands hopes to conduct safety checks using special ‘see-through’ security scanners on air passengers bound for any destinations. Currently, these scanners are only used on flights bound for the US.

Justice minister Ernst Hirsch Ballin announced the move to his European colleagues speaking at a meeting in the Spanish town of Toledo on Thursday. The Netherlands is seeking the support of other EU-countries, before implementing the scanners that can see through clothing to detect explosives and other contraband.

EU-countries are currently at liberty to deploy the scanners as they see fit, but Hirsch Ballin pushed for European regulations on the matter, saying they would do much to improve the efficiency of security checks and provide clarity for passengers. The European commission hopes to propose regulations governing their usage to EU-countries this spring.

According to Hirsch Ballin, the security scanners should become mandatory on all European airports. Not all of his colleagues are fully convinced they should be. They want to await the results of a study into the scanners health and privacy concerns. According to Hirsch Ballin, his colleagues were “mostly interested” in Dutch experiences with the technology

Germany, which initially had its reservations, is said to start experimenting with the scanners soon. As soon as a European agreement has been reached, the Netherlands intends to start a phased introduction of the scanners on all flights emanating from the Netherlands. First all flights bound for the US will be effected (requiring 75 scanners in all), the scanners will then be deployed on all intercontinental flights, and finally all intra-European flights.

Hirsch Ballin was unable to determine the number of scanners this would require.

Read more here.

A weekend of snow, ice and heavy winds brought large parts of Europe to a standstill and was continuing to cause flight and train delays on Monday. Some villages in northern Germany are still cut off after huge snowdrifts made roads impassable.

Schools were kept closed in large parts of northern Germany on Monday and there were further delays in air and rail transport after winter storm “Daisy” caused transport chaos in much of Europe over the weekend.

A spokesman for Frankfurt airport, Germany’s biggest, said passengers should expect further cancellations and delays to flights on Monday. More than 300 flights were cancelled over the weekend because of heavy snowfalls, affecting some 60,000 passengers. Thousands had to spend Saturday night on camp beds in the airport or in hotels nearby.

A weekend of snow, ice and heavy winds brought large parts of Europe to a standstill and was continuing to cause flight and train delays on Monday. Some villages in northern Germany are still cut off after huge snowdrifts made roads impassable.

Schools were kept closed in large parts of northern Germany on Monday and there were further delays in air and rail transport after winter storm “Daisy” caused transport chaos in much of Europe over the weekend.

A spokesman for Frankfurt airport, Germany’s biggest, said passengers should expect further cancellations and delays to flights on Monday. More than 300 flights were cancelled over the weekend because of heavy snowfalls, affecting some 60,000 passengers. Thousands had to spend Saturday night on camp beds in the airport or in hotels nearby.

Read more here.

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Germany is on the threshold of a tremendous upheaval, and 2010 will show how it will cope with the decline of old industries and the emergence of new ones. It will be a year of renewal for Germany, but also a year of uncertainty for companies and their employees. The foundations for the future of Germany are now being laid. Now is the time when German firms will find out which products remain globally competitive, and which ones won’t. It’s already been made clear that there’s no world market anymore for container ships, mass-produced clothing, mobile phones or consumer electronics made in Germany. Others can produce those things more cheaply, and better.

This crisis is accelerating the pace of structural change. These days, an increasing number of foreign competitors are capable of producing things that had previously been the domain of German companies. The crisis is exacerbating the process because it has made customers focus even more heavily on price, thereby subjecting businesses to merciless scrutiny in terms of their cost efficiency and quality.

So far, Germany, which has long been the world’s biggest exporter, has coped surprisingly well with the global downturn. Germany today is in a far better position than many had feared a year ago, when unemployment had been forecast to reach 5 million. The start of 2009 had been accompanied by gloomy predictions of mass layoffs and even social unrest. None of that happened. German consumers even carried on spending.

Until recently, many observers, especially Anglo-Saxon ones, had criticized the German economy as being too sluggish and unfit for the challenges of the 21st century. The welfare system, they said, was a major burden on Europe’s largest economy. But Germany’s “old economy” has so far performed well in this crisis, and its social safety net has helped to guarantee stability.

But the economic calm in Germany could be deceptive — because it’s financed by credit. The government has run up unprecedented debts to save the banking system and stimulate growth. New borrowing by the federal government alone will total almost €86 billion ($123 billion) in 2010. And the banks’ balance sheets still contain risks of several hundred billion euros.

Germany’s state finances will remain a problem for years. Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble will have to save €60 billion in the years 2011 through 2016 — that’s €10 billion a year — to bring the budget back in line with the EU’s deficit requirements and Germany’s own self-imposed deficit limits. Chancellor Angela Merkel’s new center-right government is worsening the budget problems with its plan to cut taxes by €20 billion beginning in 2011.

Read more here.

Despite the sluggish demand from overseas, China will probably surpass Germany as the world’s largest exporter in 2009, said the Ministry of Commerce.

The MOFCOM also predicted the exports in 2009 will drop by 16.5 percent from a year earlier, which means that the nation is expected to export goods worth $1.19 trillion in 2009 and that December is expected to witness the first year-on-year growth of as high as 10 percent since last November.

“The year 2009 was the hardest in the Chinese trade history, but the nation has made positive achievements,” said Zhong Shan, vice-minister of commerce, during the China Economic Forum held in Beijing.

“It’s very likely that China will take over Germany this year as the world’s biggest exporter and that the share of China’s exports in world exports will rise to nine percent this year from 8.86 percent last year,” he predicted.
Buoyed up by the turnaround of the world economies, declines in exports have begun to ease off since the second half of this year, but China’s exports fell by 18.8 percent during the first 11 months to $1.07 trillion, according to the Customs.

Although the figure for December is yet to be disclosed, Zhong predicted China’s exports for the whole year in 2009 will drop by “16.5 percent year-on-year” to $1.19 trillion, and imports “down 15 percent” to $963 billion.

That means that China’s exports for December are expected to grow by 9.6 percent year-on-year to $121.86 billion, which will be the first year-on-year growth for Chinese exports since last November.

According to the World Trade Organization, during the first half of 2009, China had, for the first time in the past seven years, edged narrowly ahead of Germany in exports. China and Germany exported goods worth $521.7 and $521.6 billion respectively during the January to June period.

Economists predicted such momentum will be sustained during the second half of 2009 and the years ahead.

Read more here.