“I Am Attending to It”

SPIEGEL in-depth interview with Chancellor Gerhard Schröder on the CDU’s power struggle, the rising unemployment figures and his prospects of being re-elected:

“What is going on there could well be described as a “hostile take-over” of the CDU by the CSU. The CDU is well on its way to not only betraying its party chairman, but also giving up a piece of its own identity. … We are seeing a radicalisation of the democratic right wing. … Edmund Stoiber as an election candidate would polarise society. … In the circumstances in which I said it, in 1998, the targeted unemployment figures could have been achieved. … I haven’t the slightest reason to doubt that we will achieve our election results of ’98 once again. … The expression “unreserved solidarity” was meant to express that we would not only be holding our cheque books ready, but that we would also take part in military measures. However not in adventures. … The Red-Green coalition is my first choice. If possible we will continue it. But it’s important that the SPD also has other options.”

“Someone Has to Open Their Mouth”

SPIEGEL interview with Arafat’s representative in Jerusalem, university president Sari Nuseiba, on the mistakes of the Palestinians and on new ways of reviving the peace process:

“Both sides are adding fuel to the fire. However, I fail to see any strategy or purposeful concept on the part of the Palestinian leadership. … To me, suicide attacks are an extreme form of desperation, which is morally unacceptable and politically counter-productive. This kind of attack has done a lot of harm to the Palestinian cause. I would certainly like to say quite clearly, that Palestinian violence has caused the Israelis great suffering. … If we say we insist on the full right of return for three million refugees and that all territories occupied after 1967 be cleared to make way for a Palestinian state, then we can be sure we’ll never reach an agreement. From Israel’s point of view that would mean we wanted to destroy the Jewish state in its present form. We cannot expect Israel to sign something like that. … I want to mobilise public support for a peaceful solution. Many Palestinians are still in favour of a compromise with Israel which would permit the establishment of a Palestinian state along the borders of 1967.”

“A Long Mission”

Interview with Hamid Sidiq, confidant of former Afghan king Zahir Shah, on the tasks of the international peacekeeping force and the disarming of the warlords:

“The peacekeeping force has to be large enough to be present not only in Kabul but in all the major cities of the country, from Masar-i-Sharif through to Herat and Jalalabad. … And it must remain in place until a national Afghan army is able to take over its duties. … These warlords who lay claim to a village, or a province and who are enforcing their claim through force of arms have not yet been disarmed. … The Afghan people are fed up with their war games. But as yet some of them are not prepared to give up their weapons.”

“This Is the Fourth World War”

SPIEGEL in-depth interview with French philosopher Jean Baudrillard on America’s campaign against terrorism, the resistance against globalisation and the invincibility of evil:

“The war of the Americans is concentrated on a visible object which they would like to shatter. But the events of September 11, with all their symbolic significance, cannot be wiped away like that. The bombs on Afghanistan are only a completely inadequate substitute act. … There is a universal allergy against an ultimate order, against ultimate power, and the twin towers of the World Trade Center were a perfect embodiment of such an ultimate order. … The system itself created the objective conditions for this terrible counter-attack, through its claim of totality. … Globalisation is being extolled as the end-point of Enlightenment, the resolution of all contradictions. In truth it turns everything into a negotiable, buyable commodity. That process is extremely violent. … It claims to liberate people, but in fact it only deregulates. … Evil is the world the way it is and was. Misfortune is the world as it should never have been. Reinterpreting evil as misfortune is the most lucrative industry of the 20th century.”

When the head of Opel, Carl-Peter Forster, presents his first balance sheet this Wednesday, it will be awful. In 2001, Opel made a loss of some 630 million euros with the production and sale of cars. The years of mismanagement with which the American parent company General Motors brought its German subsidiary to the brink of ruin – almost systematically – are of course to blame for this. But the former manager of McKinsey and BMW underestimated the drama of the situation and the inertia of the apparatus.

“Arrest and Forget”

Contemporary history: Stalin’s secret police imprisoned 60,000 people in the former concentration camp of Sachsenhausen. Most of them were victims of brutal despotism. Well over half the prisoners in Sachsenhausen had committed neither war crimes nor crimes against humanity, nor any other Nazi crimes. They were locked away for years because the Soviets were unable to implement any de-Nazification policies. Yet to this day Moscow refuses to rehabilitate the innocent victims.

“Pierogi with Cyanide”

Freedom of the press: The rise of free media to become the “fourth power” represented the democratic breakthrough after the end of the Soviet Union. Now the relaxation is over, newspapers and television networks are being brought into line again – using political censorship, economic pressure and brute force. Over the past five years, 80 journalists have been killed in Russia, twelve in Ukraine, at least one in Byelorussia.

“Second Anschluss”

Austria: Discontent is growing between Neusiedler Lake and the Arlberg pass over globalisation and its executors, the managers of German companies. The “Germans” – here the expression stands for the icy breath of the free market in the formerly snugly warm Austrian living room, where a high government expenditure rate and powerful unions and employers have so far kept down unemployment levels.

“The Lost Said”

Terrorism: Every day, Anneliese Bahaji waits for a call from her son Said, and the CIA and German criminal police office wait with her. The German Moroccan who lived with Mohammed Atta in Hamburg and who disappeared shortly before the attack, is at the top of the list of wanted persons. The Federal Supreme Court has issued a warrant for his arrest on “suspicion of membership in a terrorist organisation, thousandfold murder and other serious crimes”. He is one of the few who could know the background of the attacks on New York and Washington – if he is still alive. And he is the only suspected al Qaida terrorist with a German passport. Anneliese Bahaji says: “I know my son. The circumstances speak against him; but I’m sure he has nothing to do with it.”

“Normal People Don’t Burn”

Medicine: In Germany’s most up-to-date accident hospital in Berlin-Marzahn doctors fight to save the lives of burn victims. Some accidents or attempted suicides leave patients so severely injured that the medics often wonder whether it wouldn’t be better to let the victims die. The people who arrive here will stay for weeks or months, if they survive at all, and when their cure has eventually been completed from a medical point of view, their suffering is far from over, and perhaps never will be. At least two thirds of the burn victims in Marzahn are junkies or alcoholics who have fallen asleep while intoxicated with a burning cigarette in their hands – unkempt, lonely. Sometimes the mentally ill obey hallucinated “voices” telling them to set fire to themselves. A jealous husband attacks his wife with petrol. Or an arsonist accidentally sets himself alight. More often than not, the burn victims are people whose lives were already in ruins before the incident.