The building of the Berlin Wall: 50 years on

On 3 August 1961, the leaders of the Communist bloc, the Comecon, met in Moscow. It was the heart of the Cold War. The US Bay of Pigs invasion failed a few months earlier, and in July JFK requested a 25 percent increase in military spending. The East still stood strong but it had a soft underbelly it needed to do something about: Berlin.

Divided by the Potsdam Conference after World War II, succoured by the 1948 blockade and institutionalised by the foundation of the FDR and DDR in 1949, Berlin remained a porous city. Over half a million crossed daily in to West Berlin to get their dose of capitalism. Many East Berliners went shopping or into the cinema and discos in the West, 60,000 commuters even worked there. There was no need for some to defect as they would rather live in the cheaper east as long as the exotic frills of the west such as panty hose and tropical fruit were available just a short U-bahn ride away. Westerners too enjoyed the fruits of the border. West German Deutsch Marks were exchanged into East German DM at a rate of 1:4 and that meant westerners could get goods very cheaply in the East.

But the East was losing most of its thought leaders. The gap in income between the two sides was stark and anyone with ambition wanted to be in the west. Although some were stopped on their way, hundreds of thousands made it across the border forever. By the early 1960s, East Germany had lost 2.5 million trained professionals, 15 percent of its population. The Comecon decided this had to stop before the labour force was completely drained. At 4pm on Saturday 12 August, East German leader Walter Ulbricht issued the order to close the border. At midnight on Sunday, police and armed forces began bolting the city shut. Not only did they build the wall in a day, but they shut streets, the railway and the S-Bahn and U-Bahn. The former pulsating heart of the city at Potzdamer Platz suddenly became a no-go zone.

But it was the wall that captured the imagination and defined the Cold War. It sprung up in the middle of the night. Trucks filled with soldiers and construction workers rumbled though the sleeping city and tore up telephone wires and streets to West Berlin, dug holes to put up concrete posts, and strung barbed wire all across the border. The 100km wall completely wrapped up West Berlin. When everyone woke up in the morning, there was widespread shock. Whichever side of the border you went to bed on 12 August, you were stuck there for decades.

The wall would go through four transformations in its 28-year history. It started as a barbed-wire fence with concrete posts, but after a few days, it was replaced with a permanent structure of concrete blocks, topped with barbed wire. A third version in 1965 was a concrete wall, supported by steel girders. The fourth version built by 1980 had 3.6m high and 1.2m wide concrete slabs with a smooth pipe across the top to stop people from scaling it. By 1989 there was a 91m No-Man's-Land, an additional inner wall, soldiers patrolling with dogs, a raked ground that showed footprints, anti-vehicle trenches, electric fences, massive light systems, watchtowers, bunkers, and minefields.

About 200 people were shot dead trying to cross this labyrinth and another 5,000 escape either over or under the wall. The only people legally allowed to cross the border were foreign tourists, diplomats and military personnel. There were three crossing points. Helmstedt, Dreilinden and a third at Berlin Friedrichstrasse. Based on the phonetic alphabet Helmstedt checkpoint was called Checkpoint Alpha, Dreilinden got Bravo and Friedrichstrasse got the name Charlie. On 25 October 1961, East German border guards at Checkpoint Charlie tried to check the identification as western soldiers entered the Soviet sector. The Americans said the Allied right to move freely had been violated and for 16 hours there was an imminent threat of war. The next day, both sides withdrew after Kennedy and Khrushchev hastily cobbled together an agreement.

While the Revolutions of 1989 were startling in the speed in which they succeeded, the fall of the Wall was the most stunning of all. On the evening of 9 November, East German central committee spokesman Günter Schabowski made a surprise announcement: "Permanent relocations can be done through all border checkpoints between the GDR (East Germany) into the FRG (West Germany) or West Berlin." "As of when?" asked an Italian journalist. Schabowski hesitated and then improvised: "As far as I know ... as of now."

As locals decoded his bureaucratic announcement, it came as a shock to realise he meant the border was now open. The first East Germans tentatively approached it and found border guards were letting people cross. Within an hour, people from both sides crowded on to the Wall. Some brought hammers and chisels. Others simply hugged, kissed, cheered and cried. Schabowski, who was later imprisoned, said he remembered a Stasi member came to him and said: “Comrade Schabowski, the border is open. Nothing to report.”

Now the Berlin Wall is mostly gone and the few scraps that remain are tourist attractions. The East and West were reunited though the East continues to lag. Some argue Germany is much weaker as a united country with a reunification bill of €1.3 trillion. Yet despite the Trabants that still litter the streets, there are few people calling for the return of the DDR. The Wall the regime built was the supreme monument to the corrosive power of its paranoia and rampant distrust.

Russian and Polish leaders commemorate 70th anniversary of Katyn Massacre

The Russian and Polish Prime Ministers attended a memorial service yesterday to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the Katyn massacre near the modern-day Russian city of Smolensk. Polish PM Donald Tusk accompanied Vladimir Putin to a memorial at the site where 4,500 Polish prisoners of war were killed by Soviet security forces during World War II. Putin admitted the Soviets told cynical lies for 50 years about what happened at Katyn while Tusk urged Putin to ensure all Soviet-era archives related to the massacre are open to researchers. It was the first time leaders of both countries attended the service. (photo: Reuters)

The massacre remains a deeply troubling event for Polish-Russian relations. In 1940 Poland had temporarily ceased to exist (not for the first time) as the Nazis and the Soviets carved it up under the terms of their Non-Aggression Pact. The NKVD interned about 125,000 Polish prisoners of which 40,000 were still in their hands in early 1940 and these were held at various camps across the west of the Soviet Union. The internees underwent a lengthy interrogation to weed out those who had no Communist sympathies.

On 5 March 1940 Stalin’s head of the NKVD secret police (which would eventually become the KGB after Stalin’s death) Lavrentiy Beria wrote a letter to his boss. The letter stated a large number of former officers of the Polish Army, Police, political groups and intelligence services were held in NKVD prisoner-of-war camps in Ukraine and Belarus. They were all, he wrote, “sworn enemies of Soviet authority full of hatred for the Soviet system.” Beria accused them of counter-revolutionary activities and “anti-Soviet agitation”. He urged 25,000 of them be tried before special tribunals and be applied the “supreme penalty: shooting”.

Stalin was one of six other Politburo leaders who signed off on Beria’s letter. The 25,000 on Beria’s list were deemed enemies of the state. Stalin knew exactly what he was doing. If Poland ever became independent again, its leaders would not forgive the Soviets for their treachery in attacking in unison with the Nazis. The obvious solution in his eyes was to eliminate those leaders. The three main camps where they were held were Kolezsk, Starobielsk and Ostashtov. Kolezsk camp housed about 5,000 Polish military officers and was close to Katyn Forest, about 20km from the city of Smolensk. Between April and May 1940, the NKVD transferred about 4,500 prisoners to the forest to be executed one by one, all under the cover of darkness. Similar numbers died at the two other camps and more still died in Belarus and Ukraine. The final death toll was in excess of 22,000.

What made Katyn special was that it was found out. Polish workers found mass graves there as early as 1942 but no one would believe their claims. The official Russian story (now that they had switched sides after the German Barbarossa invasion) was that Polish officers were released in the east and went missing in Manchuria. In April 1943, retreating Wehrmacht soldiers found a mass grave at Katyn and Goebbels used it as a propaganda weapon to sow discord between the USSR and Poland. It very nearly worked with Free Polish leader General Sikorski threatening to break off the alliance. His unexplained death two months later proved very convenient for Stalin.

When the Russians re-took Katyn they destroyed the cemetery Polish Red Cross had put in place. They held a commission which whitewashed the incident and blamed the Nazies. With bigger fish to fry, the Western Alliance overlooked the matter and resisted internal pressure to investigate the matter further. The Russians tried to include it as a German war crime in the Nuremburg trials but had to drop it due to lack of evidence. In Communist Poland it was dangerous to mention Katyn, but that very danger meant the memory remained cherished through the years. As the Warsaw Pact collapsed in 1989, Russian scholars admitted the truth about Katyn and a year later President Gorbachev finally publicly stated the NKVD had executed the Poles, and confirmed there were two other burial sites similar to the one at Katyn.

In his speech yesterday at Katyn, Putin firmly put the blame on the Soviet Union’s totalitarian regime. This is part of Putin’s agenda to placate the Poles. Last August Putin praised Polish soldiers and citizens for their bravery in resisting the Nazis at an anniversary ceremony in Poland observing the start of World War II. Russia has also invited Poland to take part in the WWII Victory Day parade on Red Square this year for the first time. And last week, a Kremlin-run television channel showed “Katyn,” an Oscar-nominated film by the Polish director Andrzej Wajda which had screened only a few times in Russia. With Poland encouraging the US to host its missile shield, it is likely all be part of a grand Faustian bargain. But for now we may enjoy a rare Putin truth while it lasts.

UPDATE Saturday, 10 April.
The anniversary ceremony has been completely overshadowed by the shocking plane crash which killed the Polish president and many of the country's elite on the way to Katyn.

Urbi et Orbi: Pope on the ropes

As the Easter Sunday Catholic faithful wait outside St Peter’s for Benedict XVI to deliver his tenth papal address, the Church itself has come under unprecedented attack and criticism. Numerous controversies have emerged about the protection of child-molesting priest in many countries including Germany, the US and Ireland with the Pope implicated in many of the scandals.

Although the Church has addressed some of the concerns, its preference is to adopt a siege mentality as the charges multiply. The Pope downplayed the charges as “petty gossip” while the Vatican daily, L'Osservatore Romano, has accused the media of a "clear and ignoble intent of trying to strike Benedict and his closest collaborators".

One of the Pope’s apologists, Vatican priest Raniero Cantalamessa noted Easter and Passover fell during the same week this year and said this led him to think of comparisons with the Jews. “They know from experience what it means to be victims of collective violence, and also because of this they are quick to recognise the recurring symptoms,” Cantalamessa said. “The use of stereotypes [and] the passing from personal responsibility and guilt to a collective guilt, remind me of the more shameful aspects of anti-Semitism.” However a US advocate for sexual abuse victims said the comparison was “breathtakingly callous and misguided.” David Clohessy said “men who deliberately and consistently hide child sex crime are in no way victims and to conflate public scrutiny with horrific violence is about as wrong as wrong can be.”

The public scrutiny into child sex crimes is becoming deeply uncomfortable for the Church and indeed for Benedict himself. In Germany, Father Peter Hullermann has become the focus of an expanding sexual-abuse scandal that has embroiled the Pope. Hullermann was a priest in northern Germany with an addiction to sexual abuse of children. He was transferred to Munich for therapy where Pope Paul VI had appointed Joseph Ratzinger as Archbishop in 1977. Ratzinger was copied in on a 1980 memo which said Hullermann would be returned to pastoral work within days of beginning psychiatric treatment. A German court eventually convicted Hullermann of further child abuse in 1986 but the church still took no action to stop him from working with children. The Archdiocese has acknowledged that “bad mistakes” were made with Hullermann, but said it was the fault of people reporting to Ratzinger rather than to the cardinal himself.

In the US, the news is no better for the Pope. As the then leader of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (1981-2005), he was also implicated in the scandal of the St. John’s School for the Deaf in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Lawrence C. Murphy worked at the school from 1950 to 1974 initially as chaplain and later as director. Murphy admitted he sexually abused deaf boys for 22 years. Victims tried for more than three decades to bring him to justice, but recent documents show Ratzinger’s office neither defrocked him nor referred him for prosecution but instead encouraged “pastoral action” to resolve the problem. In the end Murphy solved the problem for the Vatican by conveniently dying before the trial could proceed.

In Ireland too, sex scandals have left the reputation of the Church in tatters (though it hasn’t stopped them from trying to enforce Good Friday alcohol bans). There have been three official Irish state-sanctioned investigations into the Church’s abuse of children. The most recent and most comprehensive, the Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse released its damning report last year which found widespread physical and emotional abuse were a feature of outdated Catholic-run institutions and sex abuse was endemic, particularly at boy’s institutions and known to Church authorities.

Sexual offenders were usually transferred elsewhere where they were free to continue abusing other children. The Church relied on a culture of secrecy, a compliant Education department and a fear of retribution to keep matters quiet. While the Pope has recently blasted the Irish bishops for “grave errors of judgement”, his apology did not address the Vatican's own role nor did it endorse the report finding that the church leadership was to blame for the scale and longevity of abuse heaped on Irish children throughout the 20th century.

That would have been a step too far for the Vatican as it would mean having to confront its own rulebook. The Catholic Church’s unnatural insistence on celibacy for its priests has contributed greatly to the problems in the US, Germany, Ireland and elsewhere. It is hardly surprising that men without sexual access to women looked for gratification elsewhere, particularly among young and vulnerable people without the access or knowledge about how to complain about their treatment. And while the Church professes to be pro-life, care for its flock seems to stop at birth. The Church continues to see sexual offence as a risk only in terms of the potential for scandal and bad publicity. The danger to children has never been taken into account. This obsessive, cynical and secretive accretion of power at all costs is now coming back to bite the Church badly.

Kristallnacht - 70 years on

Coming barely a couple of days after my visit to Yad Vashem (Jerusalem’s intensely evocative and memorable Holocaust Museum), this weekend marks the 70th anniversary of Kristallnacht (the night of broken glass) in Nazi Germany. It was this night that showed Germany’s fatal intentions towards its Jewish population. The pretext was the 1938 assassination of the third secretary of the German embassy in Paris, Ernst Vom Rath. Vom Rath’s killer was a Jew, 17 year old Herschel Grynzspan. Grynzspan was outraged over the scandalous treatment of his parents at the hands of the Nazis and took the law into his own hands. His actions served as a pretext for mass violence across Germany.

Though conditions were ripe for such a reaction, Kristallnacht would have been inconceivable barely two years earlier. Indeed in February 1936 a young Jewish man David Frankfurter assassinated Wilhelm Gustloff, the Nazi Gauleiter for Switzerland. There was no obvious backlash to Frankfurter’s action. Even though Vom Rath was a lower ranking Nazi official than Gustloff (who headed up a country’s Nazi apparatus), conditions had changed drastically by November 1938. It was now easy to enact, what today’s Jerusalem Post called “brutal vandalism [against] the Jewish community”.

Germany had been exposed to a steady barrage of anti-Jewish propaganda since 1933 with the Nuremburg Laws of 1935 relegating Jews to second-class citizens. The law and propaganda worked hand in hand to crush Jewish life. Authorities rushed to become “Judenreit” (Jew free) and movies and cartoons portrayed Jews as vermin, extortionists and rapists.

The world beyond Germany tacitly participated in this downgrading of an entire race of people. The 1938 Evian Conference held in the French Alps was called to discuss the growing problem of Jewish refugees anxious to get away from the troubles of the Third Reich. However none of the countries attending the conference were anxious to take the Jews in. As an exhibit in Yad Vashem points out, Australia does not come out well from this shameful conference. Australia’s representative T.W.White is quoted as saying “We have done all we can. Australia does not have a racial problem and is not desirous of importing one”. His view was mirrored by the other western powers. A Nazi observer returned to Berlin overjoyed with the news he gave Hitler. “you can do what you like with the Jews, no one is interested in them,” he told the Fuhrer.

This view was reinforced by the experience of the SS St Louis. The St Louis set sail from Hamburg with its cargo of 900 refugees. Its destination was Havana and Cuba had already issued visas in advance, on the understanding the visitors were tourists not refugees. However by the time the boat landed in Havana, the Cuban government had changed its mind and refused to allow the refugees land. The boat then drifted off Florida waters before it became obvious US authorities were not going to allow it to land either. The captain had no alternative but to set sail back for Hamburg. But when the passengers threatened to commit mass suicide, the captain landed in Belgium and homes were grudgingly found for the Jews in Belgium, Holland, France and Britain.

There was an upsurge in anti-Jewish violence after Evian. On 30 October 1938, Germany expelled 20,000 Polish Jews who did not have German citizenship. Among these were Grynzspan’s parents. Young Herschel wanted to call world attention to the plight of these people and acquired a gun with which he intended to kill the German ambassador. As this proved impossible he shot Vom Rath instead on 4 November. Iironically Vom Rath had been under Gestapo surveillance for having Jewish sympathies. He died two days later from his wounds.

Vom Rath’s shooting was the perfect pretext to launch a major action against Germany’s Jews. The day he died, Gestapo headquarters sent out a sinister message to all its staff: “At very short notice actions against Jews, especially against synagogues, will take place throughout Germany. They are not to be hindered.”

The “actions” received popular support. The night of 9 November 1938 became known as Kristallnacht with many Germans zealously supporting the Nazis in targeting the Jewish community. 267 synagogues were gutted by fire, 7,000 Jewish shops were looted, 91 Jews were killed and anywhere between 20,000 and 200,000 were arrested and sent to concentration camps. Insurance reports estimated the damage caused by shattered glass at $6m. Goering publicly regretted the action but went on to impose a penalty of 1 billion Reichmarks ($400m) to be paid by the Jewish community for the damage caused to them.

His regret was about the violence’s amateur nature. From then on, violence against the Jews would be left to the specialists. The road to the Wansee Conference and the Final Solution was already laid out. Already the Manchester Guardian of August 1938 announced the existence of three concentration camps at Dachau, Sachsenhausen and Buchenwald. When told of Kristallnacht, American president Franklin Roosevelt said “I could scarcely believe such things could occur in 20th century civilisation”. But civilisation or not, things were to get a lot worse than this for the Jews during FDR’s watch.

Germany bans red man's revenge again

Germany is latest country to introduce anti-smoking laws. Its 16 federal states have agreed to outlaw smoking in public buildings but stopped short of a blanket ban in pubs and restaurants as introduced in a number of other European countries. The state premiers must still approve the ban. While the move is unlikely to meet the approval of Germany’s 25 million smokers (almost one third of the population), it does has the backing of Angela Merkel’s government. Federal Consumer Affairs Minister Horst Seehofer hailed what he called a long overdue move saying “there is no substance in a room more poisonous to health than smoke”.

But Germany has a strong post-war sense of freedom of expression that will find this law an infringement of basic rights. Germans may also object for historical reasons. This is not the first time the nation has tried to implement a smoking ban. Germany had the world's strongest anti smoking movement in the 1930s and early 1940s under Hitler. The Nazis had surprisingly enlightened ideas about cigarettes such as banning smoking in public spaces, no tobacco advertising, and restricted tobacco rations for women (though not for men, presumably the boys needed a puff after a hard day’s work with the Wehrmacht). Nazi German scientists had a highly refined science called epidemiology which studies the factors that affect the health of populations. They were particularly strong on the effects of tobacco. Nazi scientists were the first to establish there was a link between tobacco and lung cancer.

Many Nazi leaders like Himmler were vocal opponents of smoking. But Hitler was the most adamant, characterising tobacco as revenge: "the wrath of the Red Man against the White Man for having been given hard liquor." But then Hitler spoke with the typical anti-tobacco zeal of an ex-smoker . Nevertheless despite official disapproval the industry thrived. In the 1940s German anti-tobacco activists struggled to point out that whereas Hitler was now a non-smoker as were fellow fascist leaders Mussolini and Franco, the three allied heads Churchill, Stalin, and Roosevelt were all fond of tobacco. It is unlikely this campaign met with any success.

Not many of today’s world leaders will openly admit to a fondness for nicotine products. Fidel Castro was renowned for his love of cigars but even he kicked the habit in 1986 for health reasons. And while he continues to struggle for life in hospital, Cuba banned smoking on public transport, in shops and other closed spaces last month. More than half of Cuban adults are thought to smoke, and 30% of preventable cancer deaths are linked to smoking. The commerce ministry announced the move saying it was "taking into account the damage to human health caused by the consumption of cigarettes and cigars, with the objective of contributing to a change in the attitudes of our population." It is a big step for a country with a $200 million cigar export industry.

Ninety miles to the north, the US also has political problems with tobacco. Although Nazi scientists were quick to chide Roosevelt’s habit, no US president since him has smoked. It’s possible that Barack Obama’s high profile presidential campaign could be more likely derailed by his well-publicised battles with nicotine addiction as any issues related to his background or his views on Iraq. He is one of a quarter of the American adult population (almost 50 million) who smokes cigarettes. Obama doesn’t puff publicly but stories of his 'dirty little secret' in political circles could prove poisonous in an era when smokers are looked down upon in America.

But the US is also home to two of the world’s biggest tobacco companies; Altria Group (formerly Philip Morris) and RJ Reynolds (the third biggest British American Tobacco is based in London). They have vast political influence that has kept uniform smoking laws off the Washington agenda. But individual jurisdictions are taking action. California has some of the toughest and most extensive anti-smoking legislation anywhere in the world. Smoking is banned in public buildings, restaurants, bars and enclosed workplaces and also on its famous beaches.

The recent court defeats have also left the tobacco companies looking overseas for easier pickings. Germany has been one of Philip Morris’s happy hunting grounds and one of the countries that share the manufacturer’s views. In 2002, Germany argued to weaken the draft of the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC) on the issue of advertising, promotion and sponsorship. Using arguments often promoted by transnational tobacco corporations, Germany made the case that tobacco advertising is protected as freedom of expression. Its position on the issue of tobacco advertising was in part attributed to expressed concerns over constitutional conflicts. The new laws would appear to have overcome these conflicts.

The German decision follows the lead of a number of European countries. England is to implement a smoking ban in workplaces and enclosed public spaces follow similar decisions by Italy, France and Spain. Ireland led the way in the EU by imposing tough anti-smoking legislation in March 2004 which banned smoking in pubs, restaurants and other enclosed workplaces. While the Irish laws were blamed for plummeting bar sales, the laws have been generally welcomed, especially by pub employees. According to a 2005 study, the new law has proven popular, even with smokers: 83% of Irish smokers say the law was a "good" or "very good" thing. Berlin café owner Cynthia Barcomi is impatient for similar laws in Germany. "I think it's really cowardly," she said. "How much more information do they need about the dangers of passive smoking? Does the rest of the world have to ban smoking before Germany does it?"

Rice squeezed between Two Iron Ladies

Last week, Forbes magazine published its annual list of the world’s most powerful women. This year German Chancellor Angela Merkel has replaced US State Secretary Condoleezza Rice who held the ‘title’ for the previous two years. The index is based on visibility in the media as well as economic impact. Merkel did not have any ranking in the Forbes top 100 index in 2005. As well as Rice dropping one place, so too did the number 3 Chinese vice-premier Wu Yi.

Although Merkel was born in Hamburg in West Germany, she grew up in the former DDR. She is therefore not only the first female Chancellor of Germany; she is the first East German chancellor too. Her father was a Lutheran pastor whose parish was 50km north of Berlin. As a student, she was a member of the compulsory communist youth movement Free German Youth. In the 1970s she graduated from the University of Leipzig with a doctorate in physics and worked in quantum chemistry. Her involvement in politics started after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989.

She joined a new party “Demokratischer Aufbruch” (Democratic Awakening) and she stood in East Germany’s one and only free election in 1990. Lothar de Maizière was elected the country’s first post-communist Prime Minister and held the role for six months until the East was reunited with the West in October 1990. Merkel’s party merged with the Western Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and she was elected into the combined parliament in December 1990. She was appointed Minister for Women and Youth in Helmut Kohl's cabinet. Her background in the former GDR has served her well in post-reunification politics and she speaks English and Russian fluently. When Kohl was defeated in the 1998 election, she was appointed secretary-general of the CDU. She became party chair in 2000 after a finance scandal took the scalp of then-incumbent Wolfgang Schäuble. In the 2002 election, the Opposition was led by CDU’s sister party the Bavarian-based Christian Social Union (CSU) and leader Edmund Stoiber squandered a large poll lead to lose to Gerhard Schröder. After the defeat, Merkel became leader of the conservative opposition in the Bundestag.

In 2003, Merkel attracted criticism in Germany for her support of the US invasion of Iraq. She attracted the label “Iron Lady” alluding to similarities with former British PM Margaret Thatcher. However the comparison is superficial. Merkel is no welfare reformer, plus she is constrained by Germany’s electoral system. Josef Joffe, editor and publisher of the weekly paper Die Zeit, explained why: "Germany is a corporatist construction, with power finely balanced among society's forces. It is consensus-bound and thus veto-driven."

Meanwhile in China, Wu Yi has also attracted the "iron lady" label. She is one of four vice-premiers of the State Council, which is the country’s chief administrative authority. Wu is 67 years old and has been a member of the Chinese Communist party for 44 years. She graduated from the Beijing Petroleum Institute with a degree in petroleum engineering and spent much of her career as a petroleum technician. She was elected deputy mayor of Beijing in 1988 and was in the role at the time of the Tiananmen Square Massacre a year later. It was she who persuaded coal-workers not to strike after some of their colleagues had been among the two to three thousand who were killed when the tanks rolled in to crush the protest on 4 June. Through the nineties she was steadily promoted through the ranks from deputy to full minister and was a member of several key decision making committees. Wu was a protégé of Zhu Rongji and when Rongji became Chinese premier in 1998, he appointed her onto the 50-strong State Council.

There her abilities were quickly recognised. Wu helped hammer out five trade agreements with Russia in 1999 and oversaw delicate negotiations for China's accession to the World Trade Organization. She was appointed Health Minister during the 2003 SARS scare and earned the tag "goddess of transparency" from Time Magazine for her leadership role during the crisis. She remains the only female figure in China's core of political power.

34 Years since Munich

Today is the 34th anniversary of the Munich massacre. On 6 September 1972, nine Israeli Olympic athletes were killed by Palestinian gunmen. The two-day drama came to a grim end in a botched rescue mission at a military airport. 17 people died in all. They were eleven Israelis (two died in the initial attack), one German policeman and five terrorists.

The Munich Olympics was the first in Germany since Hitler’s Games of 1936. They were intended to present a new, democratic and optimistic Germany to the world. The official motto was "the Happy Games." And for the first ten days, it lived up to its happy hype. The 22 year old US swimmer Mark Spitz won a record seven gold medals in the pool (with seven world records to boot). The young and dwarfish Russian gymnast Olga Korbut charmed television viewers worldwide and came back from a fall in her favourite event to win two gold medals. She was 17 years old. At the time she seemed very young for a major sportsperson.

But it was a country that wasn’t represented at the Olympics that stole the show. The Palestinian group Black September was named for the conflict of that name in Jordan in 1970. That was an Arab on Arab conflict. In September that year the Hashemite King Hussein of Jordan quelled a Palestinian attempt to overthrow the monarchy. The Hashemites go back to pre-Islam times but conveniently trace their ancestry the great-grandfather of the prophet Muhammad. The Palestinian refugees from the devastating loss of the 1967 Six Day War with Israel had become a significant population in Jordan. Fatah militants launched attacks on Israel and Israel retaliated. But with help from the Jordanian army the Israelis were repulsed. Arafat’s PLO claimed the victory. But after a visit to Nixon in Washington, Hussein clamped down on the Palestinians. In September, the PLO attempted to assassinate Hussein and launched a series of aeroplane hijacks. Hussein hit back, declared martial law and ordered his army to quell the camps. They succeeded but at the cost of many dead Palestinians. Black September the organisation was born in memory of the war and their dead.

So September 1972 had anniversary significance to the now two year old group. Israel remained the real bitter enemy ahead even of the Hashemites. What better stage to show the world that the Palestinians meant business than the great carnival of the Olympics. The attack on the Israeli athletes was well planned and easy to carry out. The Olympic Village had a poor excuse for security. By day ten many athletes had finished their work and wanted to party. Munich had plenty of places where people could party till the early hours. Then it was just a simple matter of climbing over the gates to get back to the officially closed village. Jumping over gates was easy for lithe athletes and some unsuspecting American athletes helped eight tracksuit clad Palestinians over the two metre high fence. Inside the Palestinians' duffel bags were guns and grenades. Once inside, they used stolen keys to enter two apartments being used by the Israeli team at 31 Connollystraße. Their attempt to break in was overheard by an Israeli, he shouted in Hebrew for his team-mates to get away. Some escaped thanks to his warning. Two athletes were killed in the ensuing struggle and nine were held captive.

The terrorists made demands. They wanted over 200 prisoners released from Israeli jails and also the freedom of the German terrorists the Red Army Faction’s Andreas Baader and Ulrike Meinhof, Israel turned down their part of the offer. Germany turned down Israel’s offer of help. The Germans proceeded to screw it up. Their Special Forces team launched an attack on the building unaware that the world’s TV cameras were beaming the coverage directly onto the TV sets watched by the hijackers. With utterly no hope of surprise (other to themselves) the attack had to be called off.

After two days of fruitless negotiation, the authorities pretended that they had given in to their demands to fly to Cairo. The kidnappers and Israelis were bussed and then taken by helicopter to the obscure military base of Fürstenfeldbruck. The Germans relied on five snipers to kill what they thought were five terrorists (whereas there were eight). Most of the five snipers did not have sharpshooter training and they were strategically placed where they would be in each others crossfire. Nor did they have any radio contact. A dummy jet was placed on the tarmac with another ‘five or six’ (no-one is exactly sure) policemen inside. When the two helicopters that carried the payload landed, the German police in the dummy jet voted to abandon their mission. That just left the five snipers, blissfully unaware of their colleagues’ decision. The Palestinians realised they were duped when they saw the now empty jet and ran back to the helicopters. The Germans opened fire and unleashed instant chaos. Two terrorists and a policeman were killed. The athletes were tied up in the two helicopters and could only sit trussed and watch their fate unfold. After an hour one of the surviving gunmen emptied his machine gun on one of the helicopters. A second gunman took care of the other helicopter. All nine Israelis were dead. The Germans cleaned up a few more Palestinians.

Initial news reports, published live on TV all over the world, indicated that all the hostages were alive, and that all the terrorists had been killed. Eventually an IOC spokesman had to issue the grim understatement: "initial reports were overly optimistic." While the siege was in progress, the Olympics stopped for a day (September 5) but after the midnight massacre, the IOC decided to resume the Games with the support of the Israeli Government - though not the surviving Israeli athletes – they went home immediately. The Egyptians left too, fearing reprisals. The high-profile and Jewish Mark Spitz was sped away by the Americans.

The Germans jailed the three surviving hijackers but conjured up a bizarre plan to get two of them out of the country. On 29 October, six weeks after the incident, hijackers of a German Lufthansa passenger jet demanded the release of the three surviving terrorists who were being held for trial. The three were immediately released by Germany. It was unseemly haste. Germany did not try to negotiate at all. Israel was furious and sent its own Mossad death squads to hunt them down.

Volksverhetzung

Volksverhetzung is a peculiarity of German Law where holocaust denial is a criminal offence. This is how Study Crime defines it:
"Though freedom of speech is guaranteed by the fifth article of the German Grundgesetz (Basic Law for the Federal Republic of Germany), there are some restrictions, eg. personal insults or incitement of the people (German: Volksverhetzung - known as hate speech in other legislatures). Volksverhetzung includes the spreading of neonazist ideas and the use of related symbols like the swastika, except for purposes of art, research or education. The restrictions' aim is to protect the democratic constitution of Germany."

Though I had heard of this law, I didn't know the German name Volksverhetzung. And to be fair to the law the term "Holocaust denial" is not mentioned explicitly in the blurb above.

I had only recently discovered the name in a Wikipedia debate about Berlin. The web page for Berlin in Wikipedia is of satisfactory qualities in several European languages but not, apparently yet, in English.

That might be because in the introduction, we are given the knowledge that a starship and at least two locations were named for the city in Star Trek. Is this statistic now de rigeur for the Great Cities of the World?

But you'd think that one of the ten most important cities of the world wouldn't have failed to meet Wikipedia's quality standards.

So I took a peek at the arguments in the "Berlin:talk page" to find why it has stalled and found some very interesting legal terms being bandied about.

Such as Volksverhetzung, something that Tsja, a Wiki reviewer was threatening another of should they live in Germany because

"This 'Judea declares war on Germany' stuff is nonsense. A local newspaper can not declare a war, and Hitlers anti-semitism was already obvious at the time of the writing."

What local newspaper has declared war? and what on?

It doesn't say, really.

But its hardly a surprise seeing as they can't even agree on whether it is the second biggest city or not. The problem with early 21st century life is that we no longer know where our cities begin and end.

When President Bush (George II) visited the border of North and South Korea, his main point was the night satellite photo of the Koreas. He said that the south was a beacon of light while the North froze in darkness.

While I would not have particularly wanted to live in North Korea, I didn't mind allowing it to be invisible in the dark from space. Thomas Edison's 1870 lightbulb liberated the planet from the dark and the necessary tyranny of the spin of the globe.

The light in the western world is now a patchwork quilt, slowing linking up. True dark does not exist for many who pack these cities.

None of this helps poor Berlin reach Wikipedia required standard. It's still waiting for someone to clean up the mess. Kurfurstendamnation.

Woolly Slush Fund

At last, my life.
The way I want it lived.
With nothing, without nothing.
The less said the better, Buddha-wise.
The noise of silence within its globes and hopes
and twice-trodden tropes tropicana.
These, lest we forgive, are melancholic about three week old ideas.
Fears borrowed from De Beers,
Here’s Lucy, a girl’s best friend.
Let that be a lesion,
fried-fiery fierceness will grrrr at me with a soliloquy and a silly grin.
Forced jolliness and a bell at the back
to greet whatever nonsense emerges,
long-legged and bedwetting.
“I want you” changes all the compasses
denuding them of sense of direction.
East is east but Easter in the west is best.
Shrieking firestones tired out
lasting no longer than the Bill of Wrongs,
prongs and electrically charged highly strung and well hung.
Tall timbre the quality of which is mercy.
Wet December, red hat and dead rats.
Slats and go-crazy groceries with the best of wholesale intentions.
Bent, seriously bent, hazarding dangerous guesses as to what will come next.
This show is gliding in a hung parliament with a landslide majesty
whose inferiority will mask our certainties
and Alaska Be Dampened.
Joseph Conrad nigs the Narcissus and we all look good in the mirror.
Let me emphasise that my go-dolphin is energised and traumatised in ginger.
Marinade is soaking blind golden behind
while a left-leaning government administers tingle bells.
Cigarettes will fall from trees with the birds and the fleas.
Piccadilly circus performers
loose-leaf liquorice let down from faraway traces.
The coroner’s example is tool-downed and dancing,
cleaved and toe-tapping,
they shout it all about through my captive eyes,
guy-ropes and fireflies.
A hissing seductress free-form and freeze-framed
where the emperor’s new chlorine disinfects
plummets skywards to the gravitational force
within itches the spindly thorax.
Let last flings presume gloriously the fetid outcomes of small clean fruit.
Lichen and luscious lychee listen,
packdogs in top-pockets,
Haemoglobins by the dozen,
smile-lifting flyweight mirrorball,
emissary to the emir,
no rime or reasonableness.
Jealous jewellery smart-bombed
candy-cutting smell of the kine.
Crimson criminal in crimplene,
last call for the Searchers,
lips in the levee,
breasts of pigeon with marmoreal eyes
macaques with wings
and curly peasants etched goldleaf in sharp bas-relief
Loose lips sling chips for their supper
Evangelists with brain tumours
Untreatable and rust-scarred
Pixels a pumping
Garden-green sharia crusttrumpets
Seek fatwa from a hang-gliding prince of the realm
The gills of life are prompting exegesis
Naphthalene coffers bringing mercury to the boil
Temperature dissolves into gas
Tripwires, trapdoors and holy floors
Friends of the kalishnikov
Brown-nosed troubadours, lettuce-preying worms
Hiding in parasite horses
Calamities in the shoehorn
Which penguin callgirls mistake for a good time charlie
Geeks bearing griffons
Archaeopteryx now
Some cutter me brothers
A Plantagenet friend once said
“lie down close to the sanddunes”
as he stuffed his merry face
with pretzels and potted cheese
brief dreams and battlescars.
Defenestration once again
Lupine lapis-lazuli lacks only the Leopard King
Payola
On average it takes seven amoeba to make resin in heaven
Spying on life minus me.
Deriving with trigonometrical intent
I lie, my clothes face downwards
Limpid signals from my exo-skeleton
My hair muffed up
Tankards raised and clinks in Turkish delight
Ataboy, Kemal
The wrench, the wrench, the king of all burdens
Riptide Flavian sewers with monstrous funnels
Gasp the words in thin breathing riddles
Onomatopoeia for Mum
Dragonfamilies are a grills best frenzy
A rod in the right direction
Lily-livered hosepiped helicopters
Dissolved in Omerta
Haiku hidden in mangrove manga
In summary, a goose of the wilderness
Cut to the chase