Berlin Blossoms

In the December 1995 issue of Gay Times travel writer Stuart Linden looked at the post-Wall Berlin of the 1990s and asked what had been lost and what had been gained in the reunification process. I had kept this article in my paper archive since then and decided to type it up and post it online as it offers today's readers/travellers a new insight into what those analogical times were like as compared to our smartphone-centered digital age.

Die Löwenbrücke im Tiergarten / The Lion Bridge at Tiergarten Park

In the Stiller Don bar you can still find a huge painting of Lenin on the wall, although recently it's been moved from pride place into a dark corner , where it now gathers dust and a creeping nostalgia. Stiller Don is typical of the gay venues which you find in Berlin's former eastern sector. It's a small cafe bar with wooden furniture and low-hung, metal lampshades. On the pavement outside there are tables and chairs which become filled with men and women of all ages, deep in conversation. All of them quite happy to talk to a stranger, and share the secrets of where to find the best of gay Berlin. They are an intriguing, welcoming, un-westernised group of people.

For those into catching cultural change, there is perhaps no better time to visit Berlin. Six years after The Wall came down, the commercial differences between the west and east sectors of this city are quickly vanishing and, eventually, so too will the still-noticeable them and us differences in outlook. The former eastern sector houses one third of the gay scene and can still boast of a charm that is reminiscent of the gay scene in Prague, another former eastern block domain. Stiller Don is just one of the many gay bars that open at 6pm and close... well, when the last person goes home.  In contrast, the western sector bars are more like other pink-packaged venues of the civilised world --specialised, interior-designed, efficient and, above all, predictable.

In the months that followed the removal of the wall, there was an initial two-way flurry of mixing between east and west. But unfortunately, whereas former east Germans are till keen to visit West Berlin bars, the former west Berliners are not so interested in the bars of the east now they have tried them out. With this one-way ticket in operation, it may only be a matter of time before the scene of the east is forced to conform with the styles of its wealthier neighbours.

According to gay folklore, the colourful history of Berlin alone sets it alongside other European "gay capitals" such as Amsterdam, Paris or London. Times may have changed, but Berlin is still a happening place. Since reunification, both the eastern and western parts of the city have once again started to blossom. Berlin is to be the administrative focus of all German life once more, with the country's Parliament relocating to the rebuilt Reichstag by the year 2000. Money is being invested in buildings and infrastructure and, with this, the population is bound to increase. Whilst no German truly expects Berlin to continue as the avant-garde gay Garden of Eden that it has been in the past, there is a renewed air of excitement and daring found on the gay scene. This is a city set on maintaining its liberal traditions and the unified Berlin now has over 50 gay and lesbian bars, clubs and restaurants --all eager to suit every taste, no matter how bizarre.

The main hope for east Berlin is that it retains an architectural heritage mostly lost in the west of the city. After the Second World War, the west Germans brought in architects to rebuild their share of the city, whereas in east Berlin, the Communists slowly restored the bomb-damaged buildings or left them as they were. The result is that there remains and old-fashioned air about the east which seems to be reflected in the attitudes of the people too. East Berliners still value the art of casual conversation and their bars rely less on loud music and noisy architecture and more on one-to-one conversation, although you are still likely to hear Boy George crooning away in the background. In the west sector bars, cruising tends to be faster, and people seem shallower. 

Curiously, the reunified Berlin is now a city of not two but three distinct gay areas because the bars in the former west are themselves focused around two separate areas. Kreuzberg is the cheaper part, being alternative and almost hippy-like in decor and people. Here you will find the punks and the new bohemians of the gay scene, loitering in weird and wonderful places such as Cafe Anal (there are clear perspex partitions in the toilets, and flirtatious glances over chilled beers and frothy coffees are almost guaranteed). Bar Drama, a larger and very popular drinkers' bar, and Roses Club, a tiny bar to meet in and mellow the night away, both pull regular crowds which spill out onto the pavement on busy nights. 

It is in this area that you will also find an excellent mixed restaurant. The Last Supper serves a splendid mixture of vegetarian and fish dishes, divine to eat and each with delightful names like Madonna Duet (or how about Der Koch Auf Saude Maso Trip?). For me, the whole experience was made complete by the background music which included Marlene Dietrich singing Lili Marlene, followed by Liza Minelli belting out highlights from Cabaret. As with everything else with Berlin however, food does not come cheap, and a meal for two with a bottle of wine will set you back £50 or more. But, without doubt, the busiest gay district of Berlin is Motzstrasse. After taking the underground to Nollendorfplatz, you will find yourself in the Berlin equivalent of Soho, and here you are bound to stumble across somewhere to suit your personal taste. A useful starting point is the Berlin Lesbian and Gay Centre, which includes both a cafe, Man o Meter, and a dropping centre where they supply an excellent gay map covering the whole city. The information service also includes help to find budget accommodation.

This area is also home to Tom's Bar, a strictly men-only haven. A loing narrow bar with two rooms on the ground floor leads to a very popular room in the basement, which appeared to be lacking in ventilation as everyone who came out was blinking with blinking and perspiring somewhat. Next door to Tom's, Hafen is a very similar bar which attracts a younger crowd, but again one popular with the leather and tattoo brigade.

If you are interested in a more modern vision of gay Berlin then, just across the road, Lentz is possibly the busiest cafe bar in the city, oozing with Calvin Klein-clad bous of all shapes and sizes. The music here is up-beat and loud, the waiters are even louder and the crowd is youngest and the loudest of them all. The atmosphere is reminiscent of London's Village Soho or ManchesterManto --great fun, but bar prices that can sting at around £4 for a beer. 

In the Motzstrasse area, nobody hits the main gay bars much before 11pm because the clubs are open from midnight until 6am. But early evenings (and lunchtimes) can be spent in Cafe Bar Connection, a modern street cafe bar that makes excellent sandwiches too. The crowd is varied and, if you get there early enough, you can grab an outside table and get an eyeful of the kind of guys and gals you will be seeing later on in the clubs. 

Curiously, Berlin's main gay disco is called Club Connection, although there is no connection between the two. Surprisingly, the place is only open on Friday and Saturday, probably because the scene is very weekend-oriented. Five quid gets you in and buys your first drink. Music-wise, Techno is currently big in Berlin, but dancing is awkward  because the dance floors tend to be small and cramped. Only a quarter of Club Connection is given over to drinking and dancing, with the rest of the venue being more like a giant sex supermarket. There is a well-stocked shop selling all kinds of boy toys, two floors of cabins and video screens,  and the cellar provides a variety of naughty rooms with some lovely soft leather swings in one and a smelly bath in another.

In the daytime, the best place to find gay life is at the (in)famous Tiergarten, Berlin's answer to Hyde Park. A huge section of the park is known to all as Queen's Meadow if only because, in summer at least, you seem to find the entire resident gay and lesbian population of Berlin here --nude sunbathing, playing volleyball and riding around the many secluded pathways and ponds on bicycles. Should you visit Berlin in warm weather, relaxing with a picnic in the Tiergarten is a must, if only to soak up the atmosphere of the gay space. Cruising is blatant in the park and goes on all day and night. Whilst daylight is safe enough, caution is advised at night. Walking to the park past the Zoo, for example, you see reminders of the seedier side of Berlin night life in the form of of used needles carelessly discarded amongst the (more welcome) used condoms.

For another daytime pursuits, Berlin offers space and an element of calm that is lacking in most other cities. The city is comparable in size to London yet has a considerable smaller resident population, which means less traffic and less stress. The public transport system is extensive and has won many awards in Europe for its design and reliability (although I found it particularly difficult to master the underground due to the lack of sign-posting in the stations, often fining myself heading in the wrong direction). A trip on the underground (U-Bahn) or trams (S-Bahn) will cost around £1.75. If you are as hopeless as I was, then just throw yourself in the back of a taxi, wave a map in the driver's face and he will magically transport you to your destination. The only flaw in this approach is the cost. Taxi drivers in Berlin are honest to the point where they will even knock money off your fare if they have taken a wrong turn or got lost, but a taxi still costs £2.50 just to sit in, and from the Brandenburg Gate to the Stiller Don bar will cost a stonking £12.

Other methods of transport include rickshaw taxis and riverboat cruises but, if serious sightseeing is your thing, then try catching the Bus 100, which will take you through the Brandenburg Gate and past the Tiergarten. You can hop on and off this bus at will to get a closer look at places such as the Reichstag and Unter den Linden. The walk from Juni 17te Strasse (where there's an excellent flea market on Sunday mornings) and the Victory Monument (as seen on the U2 video) to the Brandenburg Gate and on down Unter den Linden, is well worth the shoe leather for the architecture alone.

If you go looking for The Wall, Check Point Charlie or the remains of Hitler's Bunker, then disappointment is almost guaranteed,  because [some of these landmarks] have been swept away by a country more keen to look forward than to dwell on its past. The Führer Bunker is actually buried under a children's playground (behind a record store at Wilhelmstrasse 92); the feeling is that to dig this up and open it to the public is more likely to create a place of pilgrimage for neo-fascists, than to simply remember an era of Berlin's history. There are plans to mark where the Berlin Wall once stood , but the city has other forward-looking priorities. One nod in the direction of history is the current rebuilding of the legendary Hotel Aldon to its original designs and on its original site, next to the Brandenburg Gate. 

I was in Berlin for just four days which proved to be fine for a first visit, allowing ample time to sample both the former east and west of this huge city. There must, however, be many intriguing gay haunts here that I never had time to discover and, if you really want to get a feel for where Berlin has been or where it may be going, you would be wise to stay for at least a full week. After all, Berlin may soon be the gay capital of mainland Europe once again. (Gay Times, December 1995)

Related articles:

Behind the shimmering 90s and Berlin’s great divide

Berlin, the 90s. An insight from the OSTKREUZ photographers

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Brexit, a still life

 

Ventajas de que tu hijo o hija viaje al extranjero (más allá de que aprenda inglés)

Además de mejorar el idioma, los/las adolescentes que se apuntan a un programa de inmersión lingüística conocen mundo, aprenden sobre otras culturas y diversidad y ganan en independencia. Por Gema Lendoiro, El País, 2 de mayo de 2024

Entrados ya en la primavera, apenas quedan dos meses para que den comienzo las deseadas vacaciones de verano. Ansiadas especialmente para los alumnos y alumnas, pero no tanto para los padres que ven cómo la conciliación se vuelve muy complicada esas semanas. Para conseguir alcanzarla, muchos buscan alternativas en las que sus hijos o hijas puedan disfrutar y a la vez, por qué no, aprender: ¿Tal vez un idioma? Eso no parece mala idea. En España, el nivel de inglés entre los jóvenes sigue por debajo de la media europea, tal y como concluyen diversos estudios, especialmente el último informe PISA de diciembre de 2023, que determinó que España ocupa la posición 35 de 113 países del mundo en cuanto a dominio de esta lengua y la número 25 de 34 países en Europa.

“A lo largo de estos años hemos observado como, poco a poco, ha habido una mayor concienciación sobre la importancia del inglés y las medidas que se han ido tomando desde un punto de vista educativo. Y aunque es verdad que el nivel de los españoles ha mejorado en los últimos años, no es suficiente”, sostiene la filóloga e intérprete Alison Funell. Otro aspecto muy importante, en opinión de Funell, es que en los centros educativos se sigue dando más importancia a la gramática que al uso del lenguaje: “Y los alumnos no tienen la agilidad, fluidez y confianza para expresarse de forma oral en conversaciones cotidianas. Resulta chocante que sean capaces de escribir cualquier frase en pretérito pluscuamperfecto de subjuntivo, pero luego no sepan hablar con soltura pese al conocimiento gramatical que poseen”. Además, la experta recuerda que el aprendizaje de un idioma tiene que ser, como mínimo, un 50% teórico y otro 50% el uso del lenguaje. Para conseguir este objetivo, cuando son adolescentes, lo mejor, asegura, es viajar al extranjero. Con el fin de mejorar el nivel de inglés de los hijos e hijas, hay padres que, efectivamente, optan por enviarles al final de curso o unas semanas en verano a países de habla inglesa, como el Reino Unido, Irlanda o Estados Unidos. ¿En qué consisten estos viajes y, sobre todo, cómo ayudan a los chavales?

Bluestone Languages, asentada en Baza (Granada), es una de las muchas academias en España que organizan viajes de inmersión lingüística a países como el Reino Unido e Irlanda para jóvenes entre 12 y 20 años —con niños o niñas más pequeños de 12 años no se organizan viajes, porque consideran que es muy pronto—. A pesar de ser una empresa pequeña, desde 2019 llevan embarcados en estos viajes para que los menores de pequeñas poblaciones como la suya también tengan la oportunidad de vivir la experiencia.

Los participantes en estos programas suelen comenzar con un nivel básico o intermedio de inglés. Emma Clarkson, su directora, señala que con estos viajes los estudiantes logran afianzar sus habilidades lingüísticas y aumentar significativamente su fluidez y confianza al interactuar en un entorno angloparlante. Además, Clarkson enfatiza la importancia de la inmersión cultural total: “Más allá del aprendizaje del idioma, es fundamental que los estudiantes se sumerjan en la cultura local, lo que les permite expandir sus horizontes y adaptarse mejor a diversas realidades culturales”.

“Nosotros trabajamos con institutos a los que les ofrecemos programas para que lleven a un grupo de alumnos —a partir de 3ª de la ESO, de 14 y 15 años— al Reino Unido, Francia o Malta, entre otros destinos”, explica Fernando Ávila, director comercial de Azur Education, una empresa de Sevilla que lleva más de una década organizando este tipo de viajes con centros públicos de toda la geografía española. Según informa, el precio medio por semana ronda los 700-800 euros e incluye los traslados, estancias y clases.

Virginia Bersabe es profesora de uno de los centros públicos que viajaron con Azur Education, el Luis Vélez de Guevara de Écija, y explica que los alumnos de Primero de Bachillerato disfrutaron de una experiencia increíble en Dublín el pasado mes de marzo: “En el viaje se primó el bienestar del alumnado y que tuvieran una experiencia de relacionarse entre ellos fuera de España”. Y asegura que piensan repetir. Por su parte, Rosa Sánchez, profesora del IES Nazarí de Salobreña, en Granada, explica que este 2024 será el tercer año consecutivo que su centro educativo apuesta por la inmersión lingüística: “La primera vez fuimos a Salisbury, al sur de Inglaterra. Un total de 86 alumnos y alumnas aprendieron disfrutando y pasándolo bien. Estuvieron alojados con familias e iban a una academia a perfeccionar el idioma. También se hicieron visitas culturales a Londres, Stonehenge y Southampton”. La segunda vez, según relata, se decidieron por la capital de Irlanda, Dublín: “En esa ocasión íbamos con 116 alumnos y visitamos también Irlanda del Norte —Belfast, la Calzada del Gigante y Glendalough—. Además, conocimos también muchos rincones poco conocidos, visitamos museos e hicimos un gran equipo”, recuerda Sánchez.

“Estos viajes no solo son para aprender un idioma, también es una experiencia vital muy relevante”, explica la psicóloga Tamara Arroyo. “Lejos de ser una simple elección educativa, marca un punto de inflexión en el desarrollo de los adolescentes, es un romper simbólico del cordón umbilical con los padres, un paso crucial en el camino hacia la autonomía y la madurez”, sostiene. “Además, estos viajes ofrecen una oportunidad única para que desarrollen el sentido de independencia y autoconfianza, porque al enfrentarse a desafíos en un entorno desconocido, lejos de la comodidad y seguridad del hogar, aprenden a confiar en sus propias habilidades y juicio, algo fundamental para la construcción de una identidad propia, distinta de la de sus padres o de la que se esperaba de ellos en su entorno familiar”, añade Arroyo. Los 12 años es la mejor edad para empezar a viajar fuera de casa porque estos menores ya entienden las diferencias de la cultura en los distintos países y son más autónomos. “La inmersión en una cultura diferente amplía horizontes y fomenta la apertura mental”, prosigue Arroyo, “y enseña a los jóvenes a valorar y respetar la diversidad”.

Reality check: the Northern Ireland protocol isn’t the problem, Brexit is

The Tories are addicted to conflict with the EU, for fear of taking responsibility for the consequences of liberation

By Rafael Behr

The Guardian, 17 May 2022

The Conservative party was happy with Brexit, but not for long. A deal that was great in 2019 is now not great. What could fix it? What change would bring enduring satisfaction? The answer is obvious to anyone familiar with the patterns of English Euroscepticism – nothing. There is no concession big enough, no deal good enough, just as no single fix can end the cravings of a drug addict. The long-term solution is to get sober.That is not on Liz Truss’s agenda. On Tuesday, the foreign secretary informed parliament of a government plan to assert its own version of the Northern Ireland protocol. That is a threat designed to prod the EU into renegotiating the 2019 withdrawal agreement, which was itself the outcome of a renegotiation made necessary because Theresa May had done a deal that Conservative MPs also didn’t like.

One reason continental leaders don’t want to talk about changes amounting to a new treaty is their certain knowledge that the Tories would be dissatisfied again soon enough. Another reason is that a revised deal would involve trusting Boris Johnson, which EU governments have done before and which no one does twice.

Truss’s account of the problem in Northern Ireland elides frustration with border checks across the Irish sea and a wider complaint about the residue of EU jurisdiction in Northern Ireland that Brexit hardliners see as a stain on UK sovereignty. She is egged on by Tory backbenchers who are convinced that the protocol was foisted on Britain; that it amounts to a regulatory land-grab and that its provisions are applied with pernickety spite as punishment by Brussels of an ex-colony that had the temerity to break free.

Believing that version of events requires two psychological traits that come easily to the fervent Eurosceptic. One is a capacity to forget that every problem currently associated with Brexit, including the specific danger in Northern Ireland, was signalled by remainers and dismissed with contempt as scaremongering by leavers. The other is a need to still feel victimised by Brussels even after leaving the EU, since ending that ordeal removes any excuse for Brexit not delivering its promised bounties.

That is the addiction – the sadomasochistic compulsion to be oppressed by foreigners for fear of taking responsibility for the consequences of liberation.

It is true that customs checks in the Irish Sea are a symbolic injury to unionist feeling in Northern Ireland. But it is also true that Johnson knowingly inflicted that injury, denied he had done it, then whipped the grievance up when he should have been hosing it down. A constitutional crisis at Stormont was not prefigured in the letter of the protocol, but it was made likely by the prime minister’s irresponsible and negligent handling of the politics of the protocol from the day he signed it.

Meanwhile, if Tory backbenchers had not found all the resentment they needed in Northern Ireland, they would have gone hunting for reasons to be dissatisfied with Brexit in England instead.

One of Johnson’s complaints about an Irish Sea border, as expressed in an interview earlier this week, was that regulatory checks create “extra barriers to trade and burdens on business.” That generates “a great deal of faff and botheration”, which increases living costs. Those barriers are uniquely upsetting to Northern Ireland unionists on the level of national identity, but the faff and botheration incur costs also at Dover, Grimsby, Felixstowe; any place where goods move between Britain and the EU.

In other words, the prime minister’s economic rationale for wanting to fix the Northern Ireland protocol contains a complaint about conditions that are intrinsic to the Brexit model he chose.

That is yet another reason why no one in Brussels wants to reopen the 2019 deal. The negotiation would founder on first principles. Brussels says that if Britain is no longer automatically applying EU rules, it must prove that its exports comply. The Brexit ultras think that Brussels is only imposing that requirement out of petty vindictiveness and that the very Britishness of British standards should be sufficient guarantee of quality. That has been the impasse in every chilly phone call and deadlocked meeting between the two sides since 2016.

The Tories cannot budge on that point because doing so would involve accepting two indisputable facts about Brexit. First, exiting the single market was bad for UK businesses (and the losses are not made up by free-trade deals with other countries). Second, Britain had the levers to steer EU policy as a member state and surrendered that power when it left.

No minister serving in the current cabinet can admit those truths. Until that changes, UK policy towards the EU will amount to little more than rattling the cage of delusion that Brexit imposes on its believers. Some Eurosceptics find perverse pleasure in captivity, but that is their fetish and not something anyone else needs to indulge.

When policies fail on such a Titanic scale, it is usual to have some debate about a change of direction. That isn’t happening, because the opposition has no alternative destination in mind, or none that it advertises in public.

Keir Starmer is mindful that his support for a second referendum back in the day is still a vulnerability in constituencies where the Tories want to drive Brexit ever deeper as a wedge between Labour and its estranged core voters. One function of Truss’s bill overriding the Northern Ireland protocol is that anyone opposing it can be cast as an unrepentant remainer.

Labour’s absence from the conversation is not only metaphorical. Two opposition seats on the European scrutiny committee, which notionally holds the government to account on EU matters, are effectively vacant because the Labour MPs who sat there have moved on to frontbench jobs, and haven’t been replaced.

Labour strategists take the view that sanity in EU policy only becomes available by winning an election fought on other issues – things voters actually care about – and not by dancing to a drum that Johnson beats to distract from all his other failures. That is probably true. But it means the parameters of Brexit debate are set by marginal differences between maniacs and hardliners over the optimal pace for fleeing reality.

It is a formula for perpetual crisis. The constitutional mess that Johnson has made of Northern Ireland is so far the gravest episode, but unlikely to be the last. The problem isn’t that the protocol cannot be made to work as written, but that it was written to enact a Brexit that doesn’t work.

Related article: Spiralling inflation, crops left in the field and travel chaos: 10 reasons Brexit has been disastrous for Britain

Yes, Europe is in danger. It always is.

By CAROLINE DE GRUYTER

The New York Times, Tuesday, May 3, 2022

BRUSSELS — In July 2020, along with European officials and experts, I was asked to take part in a policy game. Convened by a German think tank, we were asked to play out what would happen if either Matteo Salvini or Marine Le Pen, the far-right leaders in Italy and France, came to power. We spent a few hours frenziedly debating how the European Union would respond to each occurrence. Of one thing we were sure: It would be a disaster.

Neither scenario, of course, materialized. In Italy, Mario Draghi is prime minister and Mr. Salvini is sliding in the polls. In France, President Emmanuel Macron defeated Ms. Le Pen to win re-election. On the same day, Slovenia’s right-wing prime minister, an admirer of Donald Trump, lost too. It was a good few hours for Europe.

That’s about as long as it lasted. In Brussels and other European capitals, relief turned quickly to angst. The French parliamentary elections in June, in which Mr. Macron could lose his majority and be forced into awkward compromises with the far right or the radical left, are the new worry. Prime Minister Viktor Orban of Hungary, after securing re-election in early April, remains a disruptive presence on the scene. And Russia’s war in Ukraine grinds on.

Such anxiety is common in Europe. Many people seem to think that the European Union, which in different forms has provided Europeans with prosperity and peace since the 1950s, is always on the cusp of ruin. The past decade — encompassing a debt crisis, a refugee crisis, Brexit, the rise of the far right and, not least, the pandemic — has set off regular cries about the coming end of the union. And yet, despite everything, it endures. In a world of war and calamity, it needs to pull together even more.

The European Union’s solidity is perhaps its greatest asset. But it can’t rely on institutional stability alone. Europe is a dangerous place again. As a former prime minister of Sweden, Carl Bildt, once said, the union used to be surrounded by friends, but now it is surrounded by fire. Some neighbors are actively trying to undermine the union and destroy all that Europe stands for — with the war in Ukraine the latest terrifying example. In the face of such peril, which threatens to return the continent to barbarism, the case for binding together more tightly is all the more compelling.

Fortunately, Europeans have gotten to know one another better in recent times. During the debt crisis a decade ago, people across the continent watched heated debates in Greece’s Parliament. The fate of the country, bound to painful economic reforms, resonated far beyond its borders. Europeans likewise take great interest in Poland and Hungary curbing the independence of their judiciaries and press, and want the rule of law to be respected in member states.

Russia’s brutal war in Ukraine, and China’s growing economic and political coercion, have brought Europeans together even more. They realize they cannot weather these storms alone: Feeling their way of life is on the line, their reflex is to stick together. They may still not be very happy with the European Union — the way it works, the kinds of compromises it relies on — but they are certainly happier in it.

Such common feeling is of a piece with the union’s structure. The European Union has a federal, statelike construction that should be strong enough to defend common European interests in the face of geopolitical adversity. It has an executive (the Commission), a Parliament representing citizens, a senate representing states (the Council), an independent court of justice, a central bank and even a common border guard. This sturdy federal architecture is the bedrock of Europe’s stability.

In practice, however, it’s not like the federal structures in America or Germany. In Brussels, the de facto capital of the union, member states make most of the decisions. When European heads of state and government meet, they do so as national leaders. They are elected to act in the interests not of Europe but of their own nations. Whatever the issue at hand, they sit down, put their national concerns on the table and start bargaining. In the end, each will find some of its demands in the eventual compromise.

The system certainly has its advantages. It more or less guarantees national ownership of European decision-making; every member recognizes its fingerprints on the final agreement. This sense of ownership helps to explain why the union has survived so many crises in recent years: Member states have invested in it, depend on it and, crucially, want it to survive. But the downside to this approach is that by seeking consensus on almost every issue, Europe becomes as strong only as its weakest link. Leaders regularly make half-baked decisions because some countries refuse to go further, with results that do not always meet Europe’s real needs.

Examples are legion. Hungary, for instance, has blocked several foreign policy statements against Russia or China that all other member states agreed on. Poland, for its part, has single-handedly diluted Europe’s climate goals. And before the presidential elections in France, the government there delayed a decision on a European oil embargo against Russia, fearing the resulting rise of energy prices could favor Ms. Le Pen in her campaign against Mr. Macron. Often, Europe is the plaything of member states seeking to promote their own narrow interests. Mr. Macron, however “pro-European,” is no exception.

That’s why elections often cause such headaches. Democracy, to be sure, is Europe’s strength. It is the union’s core value, its beating heart. But democracy is also Europe’s weakness. That’s because the union is not really European: Instead, it involves 27 separate national democracies. If one of them produces a Eurosceptic government, it can endanger the entire European project, which depends on unanimity. The union is effectively held hostage every time elections are held somewhere — hardly a sustainable way to do things.

The French election, Mr. Macron said, was “a referendum on Europe.” The problem with Europe is exactly that: Every election is a referendum about Europe, in every corner of the continent. It would be strange if a state election in Montana or Mississippi risked undoing the Republic or derailing its foreign policy. In Europe, this is normal practice. That’s partly why, despite its success as a global economic powerhouse and a beacon of stability, Europe often lacks confidence and looks vulnerable in the mildest headwind.

Yet this paradox needn’t be permanent. In a world defined by instability, great power competition and rising prices, Europe must look after itself — and it has the means to do so. A phased embargoon Russian oil, likely to be finalized this week, is just a start. In the wake of the war in Ukraine, collective provision of defense and security is also a must, as is an energy union. What’s more, some kind of fiscal union — augmenting the current monetary union — might also be necessary, to coordinate the serious investments needed to shore up Europe’s resilience. Recognizing the need for bolstered unity, a group of European intellectuals last week even called for a United States of Europe.

I’m not sure the union will ever come to that. But it would be nice if at the policy game in Berlin this year, instead of fretting over worst-case scenarios, we could perhaps let ourselves imagine a bolder, stronger European Union. If we could all allow Europe to stand a little more on its own feet, it would make a world of difference.

PUTIN MY PUTAIN

American artist Ryan Mendoza playing cunningly with words and sounds in his wall-to-wall, pro-Ukraine piece "PUTIN MY PUTAIN", on display at Naples' Spazio NEA. 

https://segnonline.it/ryan-mendoza/

The Western mind no longer understands Putin

By JOHN GRAY

A world torn apart: a woman stands outside her home following
a rocket attack in Kyiv, Ukraine. Photo: Emilio Morenatti/AP

The New Statesman, 2 March 2022

The belief that liberalism will inevitably prevail is an illusion that Europe must abandon if it is to win a war of his creation.

Vladimir Putin’s second invasion of Ukraine in eight years is seen by many in the West as an act of madness, the last throw of an ageing and increasingly irrational dictator. Raining down destruction on Ukraine’s cities can only end in downfall for him and disaster for Russia. The effect has been to unite the West in a way unseen for decades. Putin’s aggression will backfire, leaving Russia a pariah state on the wrong side of history.

The West does seem to be acting in a much more coordinated fashion. Western countries are supplying ammunition and arms, anti-tank and anti-air weapons and medical aid to Ukraine. Leaders once sympathetic to Putin, such as Victor Orbán in Hungary, have aligned themselves against him. But on their side there is no clear strategy or realistic endgame in view. The assumption is that Putin will be toppled, but escalating sanctions could prove ineffective or self-defeating. The most coherent objective that can be detected in the West’s response – a reversion to the status quo before the invasion – is impossible. History has moved on.

However this war develops, it marks a breakdown in the international system comparable with the end of the first era of globalisation in 1914. It is telling that the abstention of China, a far more powerful autocracy, in the UN vote condemning the invasion has been hailed as a victory for the West. India and the United Arab Emirates also abstained. The liberal order is dead and buried.

The adage that Russia is “Upper Volta with nukes”, which Joe Biden repeated in June 2021 when arriving in Geneva for talks with Putin, underestimated Russia’s capacity to sow chaos. As Putin has reminded us, it remains a fully operational nuclear state. But he has many other, less apocalyptic weapons at his disposal. As well as its grip on European energy supplies, Russia is the world’s largest wheat exporter and a key supplier of strategic metals. This gives it a formidable power to retaliate against sanctions. If Putin was to stop the flow of gas into Europe, the continent and the world would be plunged into recession and inflation would spiral out of control.

Isolating Russia means accelerating the break-up of world markets. Last weekend the EU, the US, the UK and other countries agreed to expel some Russian banks from Swift, the messaging system that enables cross-border transfers. The full details are not yet known, but it may be significant that the scheme imposed a selective cut-off. A complete financial embargo, if it could be enforced, would push Russia into using other regional systems, such as that guided by China. The West would be actively promoting a process of deglobalisation.

If Putin’s initial objective was to bring Ukraine back into a Russian sphere of influence, he must have expected to do so relatively quickly. A shock-and-awe blitzkrieg deploying air power and missile attacks on cities, with special forces targeting key facilities and people, would disable Volodymyr Zelensky’s government and allow regime change to be imposed in short order. But Putin’s timetable has not been met. Through its army, popular militias and civil society, Ukraine is resisting valiantly. If Kyiv continues to fight on, Putin may resort to bombing the city into submission, effectively destroying it, as Russian forces did the Chechen capital during the Battle of Grozny from late 1999 to early 2000. Even after such a disaster, Ukrainian partisans could wage a fierce guerrilla war for many years.

A protracted conflict would obviously be risky for Putin, but threatening it could give him a winning hand in his game of force and fear. The West’s worst nightmare – an unending Syrian-style bloodbath in the middle of Europe, with millions of refugees spilling out across the continent – may be his most potent weapon. We have already seen a similar tactic tried in Belarus earlier this year. Looming behind negotiations is the threat of a scorched earth strategy.

There are many who could not have imagined Putin launching a campaign of such brazen barbarity. They must have forgotten the murder of Alexander Litvinenko in London, the attempted murders and the death of a British civilian in Salisbury, the poisoning of Alexei Navalny and the methodical repression that has made Belarus into a Russian colony. They cannot have noticed the parallels between the Russian assault on Ukraine and the invasion of Georgia in 2008, which Putin presented as a peacekeeping operation designed to prevent ethnic cleansing in his proxy state of South Ossetia. They did not grasp that interspersing terror with deceptive diplomacy is Putin’s way of waging war.

A prolonged struggle in Ukraine would not necessarily work to the West’s advantage. Biden has handled the crisis reasonably well. Yet there can be no certainty regarding American policy after the presidential election in November 2024.

The Republicans are divided on whether – or more precisely, how – to continue Donald Trump’s style of politics. When he defends Putin, the influential Fox News host Tucker Carlson speaks for a large and growing section of the American right, who regard the Russian autocrat as an ally in the American culture wars. On 22 February Trump praised Putin’s recognition of the two Donbas pseudo-states as “genius” and described his invading troops as “the strongest peace force I’ve ever seen”. Many in both the main US parties regard Ukraine as a distraction from the challenge posed by China. The US is bound to Europe by Nato, which remains the cornerstone of Western defence. The alliance is strengthening its forces in Poland, the Baltics and elsewhere. But can future presidents be relied on to honour the US’s commitments? If not, Europe could be left to fend for itself.

Many will say this would be no bad thing: Europe has freeloaded on America’s security guarantee for too long. But building an autonomous European defence capacity will take time. France is a serious military power but lacks anything like the logistical, intelligence and high-tech warfare capabilities of the US and its allies. Emmanuel Macron’s project of a European army remains a chimera. Lulled into torpor by the belief that major wars between states belong in the history books, Europe has run down its capacity to engage in conventional warfare. (So, too, has the UK.) While Putin was systematically upgrading Russia’s military forces, Europe was disarming itself.

The fundamental question is whether European states have the will to defend themselves. Aside from Poland, the Baltic states, Scandinavia and the Netherlands, there is room for doubt. Some in the French political classes may have a personal interest in good relations with Russia. François Fillon, the former prime minister and one-time frontrunner in the 2017 presidential election, joined the board of the Russian petrochemical company Sibur in December 2021. In Germany Nord Stream 2 has been paused, not decommissioned. Chancellor Olaf Scholz has announced a raft of measures, including increased defence spending and building up energy reserves, that have rightly been described as a turning point in German foreign policy. Yet Germany is still reliant on Russian gas as a result of Angela Merkel’s policies. The ex-chancellor Gerhard Schröder heads the shareholders’ committee of Nord Stream AG. He is also chairman of the board of the Russian state oil company Rosneft, and in early February was nominated to serve on the board of Gazprom. He has issued statements deploring military conflict in Ukraine, but there is so far no sign of him renouncing these posts.

If Putin’s larger plan is to overturn the post-Cold War settlement in Europe, sections of its elites might not be too discomfited if he succeeds. Against this background, his ruthless gamble does not look so irrational. But could this war nevertheless be his undoing, as so many in the West want to believe?

Certainly, there are risks. Contrary to the stupefying cliché, he does not rule Russia with the authority of a tsar. His power is transactional and precarious. If the invasion stalls, a coup mounted by oligarchs fearful of a costly conflict must be a real possibility. (Ironically, isolating Russia from the world’s financial system could strengthen Putin’s hold over the oligarchs, since it would force them to keep their wealth in the country.) The scale of popular dissent is hard to judge. There have been demonstrations against the war in cities throughout Russia and thousands of protesters have been arrested. Many Russians, on the other hand, consider the West the enemy – a view that could become more widely held if sanctions impoverish the majority.

Putin’s war has torn up the view of history that guided the West for the past 30 years. When Tony Blair told Labour’s party conference in September 2005, “I hear people say we have to stop and debate globalisation. You might as well debate whether autumn should follow summer,” he encapsulated the ruling myth of the age. Across the world thousands of economists nodded sagely. Fervent internationalists cheered the dawn of a universal regime of human rights. But the millennial transformation Blair announced did not come to pass.

In order to see the world clearly, we need to understand the fall of communism. The West misread the forces that overthrew the Soviet state: it was brought down not by intellectual dissent or economic inefficiency, which dogged the system from the start, but by nationalism, religion and working-class revolt. In Russia the trigger for the communist collapse was the failure of Mikhail Gorbachev’s Westernising reform programme. As Alexis de Tocqueville wrote in the 19th century, “the most dangerous time for a bad government is when it starts to reform itself”. Positioned ambivalently between Europe and Asia, Russia was never going to become a facsimile of the West.

The triumph of liberalism was a mirage. There were wars in the Gulf, the Balkans, the Caucasus and the Middle East. Many were wars of resources or religion – types of violent conflict that were supposed to be fading away. The war in Ukraine continues this pattern. The role of resources will become apparent as sanctions fail or rebound. The influence of religion will remain obscure or incredible for most in the West. Some have noted Putin citing Ivan Ilyin, a 19th-century émigré Orthodox theologian and supporter of the White armies in the Russian Civil War, as one of his favourite writers. Not many noticed when last August Tass reported that Putin’s Mephistophelian foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, had denounced the West for backing Ukraine’s church, which in October 2018 split from its Russian counterpart after three centuries of accepting Moscow’s authority. While calling for peace, Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and all Russia has come out in support of Putin. Ukraine is being invaded, it seems, in order to reclaim Kyiv for Holy Russia. Western observers are baffled by the way Putin has invoked Russian spiritual values to justify the bloody conquest on which he seems bent. Some dismiss his profession of faith as a cynical ploy, others diagnose insanity. A few – of whom I am one – suspect his Orthodoxy could be genuine. But while he may hold the fate of Europe in his hands, it is a mistake to focus on him as the sum of all our fears.

Putin is the face of a world the contemporary Western mind does not comprehend. In this world, war remains a permanent part of human experience; lethal struggles over territory and resources can erupt at any time; human beings kill and die for the sake of mystical visions; and saving the victims of tyranny and aggression is often impossible. These are hard truths, to be sure. But the time for pretence and illusion has passed. The enervating dream of a global liberal order must be abandoned, and the reckless disarmament of the past decades reversed. Only then will we be prepared for whatever Putin’s war brings.

¡NO PASARÁN!

No pasarán: Spanish anti-fascist slogan takes on new significance in Ukraine crisis

By Giles Tremlet, The Guardian, March 12, 2022

New generation of volunteers are answering Ukraine’s call to join war effort, in echo of Spanish civil war.

When the anti-Putin activist Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, a member of the Pussy Riot punk group, was tried for blasphemy in Moscow in 2012, she wore a T-shirt emblazoned with a defiant raised fist and the Spanish slogan “no pasarán”: they shall not pass.

The phrase is associated with the Spanish civil war, which Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine has made terrifyingly relevant – especially as volunteer fighters from across the world gather to defend the country from his attack.

No pasarán became a slogan for the 35,000 volunteers of the International Brigades who travelled to Spain from more than 80 countries to defend its legal government from fascist-backed aggression. About 2,300 or more set out from Britain and Ireland. Another 2,800 left the US, forming the Abraham Lincoln Battalion – the first racially mixed US military unit led by a Black officer, Oliver Law.

The brigaders chose the right side of history. Both Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini sent troops to fight alongside the violent rightwing reactionaries led by Spain’s future dictator, General Francisco Franco. Like Putin, they wanted to demolish democracy across Europe.

In Ukraine, the president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, also wants a volunteer “foreign legion” to join the war. “This is the beginning of a war against Europe, against European structures, against democracy, against basic human rights, against a global order of law, rules and peaceful coexistence,” he said. “Anyone who wants to join the defence of Ukraine, Europe and the world can come.”

The bad news for Putin is that some are already on their way, abandoning cozy homes and loving families in North and South America, Europe and Asia to fight in a foreign field. Over the past few days, I have been talking to the Canadian paramedic Anthony Walker as he travels through Poland towards Ukraine. The 29-year-old from Toronto is in contact with dozens more people who are also travelling, including military veterans from Canada, the UK and the US.

He has left a “distraught” wife and three children behind and hopes to become an army paramedic. “I guess I’ll spend half my time healing people, and the other half shooting at people,” he told me as he stocked up on supplies at a Polish medical store.

Like many International Brigaders, Walker believes he will be protecting his own family back home from the global spread of Putin’s fascist-style violence if he is not stopped now...