The Secret History of Hurricane Katrina

Wirepullers: quattro anni fa l'uragano Katrina colpiva la costa orientale degli Stati Uniti, uccidendo quasi 2 mila persone e mettendo letteralmente in ginocchio una città come New Orleans. L'America non dimentica, lasciando intendere che la ferita aperta quell'agosto del 2005 sanguina ancora. Come in occasione dell'11 settembre, il popolo americano ha provato il senso di impotenza che solo un evento di tali proporzioni può trasmettere, denunciando anche limiti organizzativi inattesi. Ma tra celebrazioni e ricordi emerge una verità inquietante, che ha per protagonisti volti noti: quelli della Blackwater. (3)

There was nothing natural about the disaster that befell New Orleans in Katrina's aftermath.

Confronted with images of corpses floating in the blackened floodwaters or baking in the sun on abandoned highways, there aren't too many people left who see what happened following Hurricane Katrina as a purely "natural" disaster. The dominant narratives that have emerged, in the four years since the storm, are of a gross human tragedy, compounded by social inequities and government ineptitude—a crisis subsequently exploited in every way possible for political and financial gain.

But there's an even harsher truth, one some New Orleans residents learned in the very first days but which is only beginning to become clear to the rest of us: What took place in this devastated American city was no less than a war, in which victims whose only crimes were poverty and blackness were treated as enemies of the state.

It started immediately after the storm and flood hit, when civilian aid was scarce—but private security forces already had boots on the ground. Some, like Blackwater (which has since redubbed itself Xe), were under federal contract, while a host of others answered to wealthy residents and businessmen who had departed well before Katrina and needed help protecting their property from the suffering masses left behind. According Jeremy Scahill's reporting in The Nation, Blackwater set up an HQ in downtown New Orleans. Armed as they would be in Iraq, with automatic rifles, guns strapped to legs, and pockets overflowing with ammo, Blackwater contractors drove around in SUVs and unmarked cars with no license plates.

"When asked what authority they were operating under,'' Scahill reported, "one guy said, 'We're on contract with the Department of Homeland Security.' Then, pointing to one of his comrades, he said, 'He was even deputized by the governor of the state of Louisiana. We can make arrests and use lethal force if we deem it necessary.' The man then held up the gold Louisiana law enforcement badge he wore around his neck.''

The Blackwater operators described their mission in New Orleans as "securing neighborhoods," as if they were talking about Sadr City. When National Guard troops descended on the city, the Army Times described their role as fighting "the insurgency in the city." Brigadier Gen. Gary Jones, who commanded the Louisiana National Guard's Joint Task Force, told the paper, "This place is going to look like Little Somalia. We're going to go out and take this city back. This will be a combat operation to get this city under control."

Ten days after the storm, the New York Times reported that although the city was calm with no signs of looting (though it acknowledged this had taken place previously), "New Orleans has turned into an armed camp, patrolled by thousands of local, state, and federal law enforcement officers, as well as National Guard troops and active-duty soldiers." The local police superintendent ordered all weapons, including legally registered firearms, confiscated from civilians. But as the Times noted, that order didn't "apply to hundreds of security guards hired by businesses and some wealthy individuals to protect property…[who] openly carry M-16's and other assault rifles." Scahill spoke to Michael Montgomery, the chief of security for one wealthy businessman who said his men came under fire from "black gangbangers" near the Ninth Ward. Armed with AR-15s and Glocks, Montgomery and his men "unleashed a barrage of bullets in the general direction of the alleged shooters on the overpass. 'After that, all I heard was moaning and screaming, and the shooting stopped. That was it. Enough said.'"

Malik Rahim, a Vietnam veteran and longtime community activist, was one of the organizers of the Common Ground Collective, which quickly began dispensing basic aid and medical care in the first days after the hurricane. But far from aiding the relief workers, Rahim told me this week, the police and troops who began patrolling the streets treated them as criminals or "insurgents." African American men caught outside also ran the risk of crossing paths with roving vigilante patrols who shot at will, he says. In this dangerous environment, Common Ground began to rely on white volunteers to move through a city that had simply become too perilous for blacks.
In July, the local television station WDSU released a home video, taken shortly after the storm hit, of a local man, Paul Gleason, who bragged to two police officers about shooting looters in the Algiers section of New Orleans.

"Did you have any problems with looters," [sic] asked an officer.

"Not anymore," said Gleason.

"Not anymore?"

"They're all dead," said Gleason.

The officer asked, "What happened?"

"We shot them," said Gleason.

"How many did you shoot?

"Thirty-eight."

"Thirty-eight people? What did you do with the bodies?"

"We gave them to the Coast Guard," said Gleason.

Gleason told his story with a cup of red wine in one hand and riding a tractor from Blaine Kern's Mardi Gras World.

Although the government's aid efforts were in chaos, those involved in the self-generated community rescue and relief efforts were often seen as a threat. Even so, Common Ground, founded in the days after Katrina hit, eventually managed to serve more than half a million people, operating feeding stations, opening free health and legal clinics, and later rebuilding homes and planting trees. But they "never got a dime" from the federal government, says Rahim. The feds did, however, recruit one of Common Ground's founders, Brandon Darby, as an informant, later using him to infiltrate groups planning actions at the 2008 Republican National Convention.
And while the government couldn't seem to keep people from dying on rooftops or abandoned highways, it wasted no time building a temporary jail in New Orleans. Burl Cain, the warden of the notorious Angola Prison, a former slave plantation that's now home to 5,000 inmates, was rushed down to the city to oversee "Camp Greyhound" in the city's bus terminal. According to the New Orleans Times-Picayune, the jail "was constructed by inmates from Angola and Dixon state prisons and was outfitted with everything a stranded law enforcer could want, including top-of-the-line recreational vehicles to live in and electrical power, courtesy of a yellow Amtrak locomotive. There are computers to check suspects' backgrounds and a mug shot station—complete with heights marked in black on the wall that serves as the backdrop."

In the virtual martial law imposed in New Orleans after Katrina, the war on the poor sometimes even spilled over into the war on terror. In his latest book Zeitoun, published in July, Dave Eggers tells the story of a local Syrian immigrant who stayed in New Orleans to protect his properties and ended up organizing makeshift relief efforts and rescuing people in a canoe. He continued right up until he was arrested by a group of unidentified, heavily armed men in uniform, thrown into Camp Greyhound, and questioned as a suspected terrorist. In an interview with Salon, Eggers said:

Zeitoun was among thousands of people who were doing "Katrina time" after the storm. There was a complete suspension of all legal processes and there were no hearings, no courts for months and months and not enough folks in the judicial system really seemed all that concerned about it. Some human-rights activists and some attorneys, but otherwise it seemed to be the cost of doing business. It really could have only happened at that time; 2005 was just the exact meeting place of the Bush-era philosophy towards law enforcement and incarceration, their philosophy toward habeas corpus and their neglect and indifference to the plight of New Orleanians.

Through all the time that the federal and local governments, in concert with wealthy New Orleanians, were pitching their battle, there was virtually no one fighting on the other side. Reviewing the "available evidence" a month after Katrina, the New York Times concluded that "the most alarming stories that coursed through the city appear to be little more than figments of frightened imaginations." The reports of residents firing at National Guard helicopters, of tourists being robbed and raped on Bourbon Street, and of murderous rampages in the Superdome—all turned out to be false.

Since then it has become increasingly clear that the truth of what happened in New Orleans—vigilantism and racially tinged violence, a military response that supplanted a humanitarian one—is equally sinister.

Autore: James Ridgeway

Fonte: www.motherjones.com

The New Normal

Wirepullers: quattro anni fa l'uragano Katrina colpiva la costa orientale degli Stati Uniti, uccidendo quasi 2 mila persone e mettendo letteralmente in ginocchio una città come New Orleans. L'America non dimentica, lasciando intendere che la ferita aperta quell'agosto del 2005 sanguina ancora. Come in occasione dell'11 settembre, il popolo americano ha provato il senso di impotenza che solo un evento di tali proporzioni può trasmettere, denunciando anche limiti organizzativi inattesi. Ma tra celebrazioni e ricordi emerge una verità inquietante, che ha per protagonisti volti noti: quelli della Blackwater. (2)

Governments at all levels responded slowly to Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. The people of the Gulf Coast took up the slack but haven't absolved government of its responsibilities.

Walking along the Algiers levees facing downtown New Orleans, Malik Rahim stops at a huge dent in the pavement that he thinks came from a crashed barge during Hurricane Katrina.
"See there," points out Rahim, a Black Panther with grayed locks who has been a community activist since the 1970s. "That's not going to hold water back if we have another major storm." Rahim, a founder of Common Ground Relief, a collective of volunteers formed after Katrina to revitalize New Orleans, sees the levee damage as an opportunity to put local people to work on repairs. People from the neighborhood come regularly to Rahim's house, which is less than a mile away. All of them are African Americans looking for work, which Rahim seems to have readily available in the form of gutting and rehabbing abandoned houses. Common Ground has relied purely on donations and foundation grants and has accepted no money from the government.
"Look at these guys," Rahim says. "You don't see one of them drinking or doing drugs. But they all got one thing in common: They're unemployed."

Many of the hundreds of community- and faith-based organizations that have opened since Katrina have, in fact, done so without significant government help. Instead, throughout the Gulf Coast region, philanthropies and corporate and individual charities have supplied funding and resources.

Call it the "think hopefully, act locally" model. These groups have restored and provided supportive, affordable housing while the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) fumbles funding for these needs. The new organizations also have provided specialized help for the homeless, those with special needs, and the burgeoning Asian and Hispanic populations. Many have also taken up work that's outside their normal mission, like wetlands and coastal restoration. Philanthropy has enabled them to do that.

The New York Regional Association of Grantmakers reports that 145 philanthropies from New York alone awarded over $325 million to 950 nonprofits in 38 states that are doing Gulf Coast recovery work. Of those, 612 are based in Gulf Coast cities. Foundations have made their rules more flexible in order to provide more relief and resources as Congress and insurance companies remain slow with assistance.

The new flow of private resources, of course, is dwarfed by the public money -- but the federal funds were released initially with no deliberate speed. As of Feb. 29 last year, of the $6.6 billion FEMA allocated to Louisiana for infrastructure, Orleans Parish had received less than $800 million, which was about 35 percent of the $2.1 billion targeted for them. New advocacy and philanthropic activism have filled funding gaps while trying to hold government more accountable.

Before Katrina, FEMA or the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers would call a compromised levee adequate, and there would be enough despondency in the communities to suppress second-guessing. Now, such a determination isn't made without community members asking questions, seeking alternative expert opinions, and using tools from their community organizations to declare for themselves what is adequate. This is what's been referred to along the Gulf Coast as "the new normal."

Recovery has been a sore issue for much of the Gulf Coast: In Mobile County, whole neighborhoods remain pummeled while $24 million of Alabama's Katrina recovery Community Development Block Grant funds will go toward building a sewage plant. The $10 million initially awarded for housing covered only 200 of over 1,000 houses needing work. In Gulfport, $600 million of the money from the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) that was supposed to go toward rebuilding houses in Mississippi has been redirected by Gov. Haley Barbour for an expansion of the Port of Gulfport.

However, in New Orleans, recovery has been a better study in democracy. The money has been slow to arrive, but civic engagement has helped produce real benefits for communities -- as determined by them.

Mayor Ray Nagin of New Orleans accommodated this engagement mostly due to political necessity. To get re-elected in 2006 he needed residents' support. On Sept. 30, 2005, he announced the Bring New Orleans Back Commission (BNOB), which worked with residents (including the displaced) to develop a master recovery plan. The city needed this neighborhood manpower since its own staff and resources were being depleted -- less than a week later, Nagin was announcing 3,000 layoffs due to unfulfilled requests to the state and federal government for funds.

On Jan. 11, 2006, Nagin unveiled reports from BNOB's urban planning committee all urging massive citizen involvement. On Jan. 17, the commission presented a working plan toward recovery, which divided the city into 13 neighborhood planning districts, each of which were to submit its own recommendations by May. Meanwhile, President George W. Bush created the Office of the Federal Coordinator for Gulf Coast Rebuilding with about $66 billion in working capital from Congress.

The state's Louisiana Recovery Authority (LRA) handled allocation and disbursement of those funds, most of which went to insurance payments and short-term emergency assistance. The LRA's Road Home program received $2.8 billion of the funds. By the office's own admission, it erred in having overly centralized control. By November of that year, 77,000 home-owners had applied for LRA assistance, but only 28 checks had been distributed.

Concurrently, there were rampant resident complaints about house demolitions, which seemed to come randomly and unbeknownst to the owners, often with little advanced warning. The city also could not move ahead with its recovery plans until FEMA released flood-zone maps showing where rebuilding could take place.

The city was able to start moving forward, though, when it produced its Unified New Orleans Plan, bankrolled in large part by the Rockefeller Foundation, an extension and implementation of the plans that came out of the BNOB recovery plan. It was hailed as one of the largest democratic exercises in the country for allowing thousands of everyday citizens citywide to supply tremendous input through public meetings and votes on the city's future.

In December, Edward Blakely, a veteran planner of major urban-recovery projects, was announced as the "recovery czar" for New Orleans, but arrived stirring controversy. In April 2007, he was quoted in The New York Times referring to New Orleans residents as "buffoons." He also boasted he would soon have cranes covering the skyline, but no such visual emerged even well after a year into his tenure.

The first clear and consistent signs of restoration came in 2008. By November, over 600 public works and infrastructure projects in New Orleans were near shovel-ready status, with many actually completed. According to a Brookings Institution report, by July 2008, money had been awarded to almost 115,000 homeowners, although the average amount issued dropped to $58,688 from $72,669 in July 2007. And $411 million in Community Development Block Grant and FEMA funds were finally approved by the City Council to assist people on the ground doing the rebuilding. Much of this progress was made possible by the residents' own influence and urging.

Gulf coast groups had been organizing and agitating the government into action before Katrina. When 2004's Hurricane Ivan exposed flaws in the city's evacuation plans, UNITY of Greater New Orleans, an advocacy group for low-income and homeless families, was in meetings with the city helping to draft contingency measures for the next big storm.

No documented plans existed then for evacuating the estimated 130,000 people without cars, in hospitals and hospices, or otherwise unable to evacuate. After a worst-case-scenario simulation was presented to Mayor Ray Nagin and his staff in 2004 -- a digital Category 3 hurricane named Pam -- UNITY executive director Martha Kegel proposed contracting with school boards, Greyhound, and charter companies for use of their buses during an evacuation. Nagin's staff verbally agreed. But no contracts were drafted and nothing was implemented.

When Katrina arrived, three days into the crisis Nagin couldn't even locate the keys to the Regional Transit Authority buses, as reported in Douglas Brinkley's book The Great Deluge. While in the upstate shelter to which she was evacuated, Kegel remembers seeing school buses filled with Plaquemines parish residents pulling up, led by the parish president Benny Rousselle. She found out later that no scripted plan was in place. "They had no contracts with the schools or anything," Kegel says. "They just did what they had to do to get out of there."

One exceptional display of leadership came from Army Lt. Gen. Russel Honoré, head of the Joint Task Force Katrina that was created when FEMA proved ineffective. He arrived in New Orleans the Thursday after Katrina struck with thousands of troops and little tolerance for nonsense. With 25,000 people cloistered in the Louisiana Superdome and another 50,000 spread around the drowned city on rooftops, Honoré came when numerous rumors were circulating about flood victims "looting," raping, and killing. Many armed soldiers from the Special Weapons And Tactics police force and the private-contracted security force Blackwater -- who were supposed to be there on rescue missions -- had their guns pointed at citizens.

But contrary to the lawlessness that was reported, Honoré, commanding general of the Army's 1st Division, determined the area "a zero-threat environment." He shouted at soldiers to lower their weapons and appeared as one clear reminder that the armed forces were there to protect, not police, the people.

In the months after Katrina, recovery money came slowly, if at all. Homeowners were denied claims by insurance companies that faulted "deferred maintenance" -- repairs allegedly needed before the hurricanes -- or that said homes suffered from wind damage, which isn't covered by flood insurance.

A Brookings Institution report published in March 2006 states that the Army Corps of Engineers still hadn't razed any severely damaged houses in New Orleans. FEMA had determined that roughly 50,000 houses suffered major damage, but as of March 2006, they had issued just 16,000 building permits. A report from the National Academy of Sciences published in September of that year states that the "emergency post-disaster period" for Katrina "appears to be longer in duration than that of any other studied disaster."

When people finally began returning home, many African American renters encountered Jim Crow?like racial discrimination. On Web sites like katrinahousing.org and nolahousing.com, postings read: "not racist, but white only," "to make things more understandable for our younger child we would like to house white children," and "we live in a redneck country here, especially in my neighborhood, and blacks are frowned on."

The Greater New Orleans Fair Housing Action Center filed an administrative complaint against the Web sites for violating the Fair Housing Act. It was just the beginning of dozens of legal complaints that would pile up in Katrina's aftermath. The Jeremiah Group, a coalition of faith-based organizations throughout New Orleans that had been doing activism around housing since 1993, felt a surge in capacity.

"We have always been able to pull people together," says Jacqueline Jones, the Jeremiah Group's lead organizer. After Katrina "did it escalate? Yes. The numbers of active and core members have increased tremendously."

"Just before the storm, we were having huge fights with the city over affordable housing," says James Perry, executive director of the Greater New Orleans Fair Housing Action Center. "There was this huge drive about getting people who would be affected by this to show up at City Council meetings to talk about this and advocate on their own behalf."

After Katrina, "They started showing up at every meeting and workshop and were telling their elected officials what they needed and how they needed it."

This new aggressive civic participation fortified Perry and urged state legislators to finally activate the Louisiana Housing Trust Fund, which was enacted in 2003 to create housing for low- to moderate-income families. It had no money until after Katrina when Perry's army convinced the legislature to deposit $25 million into the account. The new civic activism scored again when UNITY, after three years of campaigning, convinced Congress last summer to allocate $73 million for 3,000 rental units from the state's Road Home program, most of which will go to the homeless and disabled.

One fight that community groups lost was the struggle to save the "big four" low-income housing projects: St. Bernard, C.J. Peete, Lafitte, and B.W. Cooper. Of these, only Lafitte will get one-for-one replacements of the razed units. In St. Bernard, 466 units will replace the 1,300 that existed before it. However, Jim Kelly, a major developer on the Lafitte project, said in a Times-Picayune article that it was the citizens who deserved the credit.

"Now, you can't keep residents from getting in front of microphones and arguing better than or as good as any lawyer I know," says Tracie Washington, who formed the Louisiana Justice Institute after Katrina and labored to keep the housing projects open. "They've learned how to fight for themselves."

It was one thing that so many community-based organizations were forming and accomplishing so much, but without synchronization they were doomed to meet the same tangled fate as the governments they were challenging. Without coordination among the groups, the threat of cluttered and scattered agendas could have added up to rivalry and stalemate. To avoid this, the new activists began coalescing.
Timolynn Sams, an AmeriCorps worker, became the director of the Neighborhood Partnership Network, which links the city's 73 neighborhoods to one another and also with the city government. The Louisiana Disaster Recovery Foundation, formed the week after Katrina, has proved an effective connector for the network and other neighborhood-based associations, as well as an intermediary for funds making their way from national foundations.

The Equity and Inclusion Campaign was conceived by the Louisiana Disaster Recovery Foundation and formed in June 2007 to see if the swiftly growing accumulation of nonprofits across the Gulf Coast could collaborate and approach Congress as one regional dependent, rather than as a pack of siblings. With regional equity as the guiding principle, organizations from Mississippi and Alabama could finally get the attention they deserved when sold as a package with Louisiana.

When Gustav and Ike hit the Gulf during the 2008 hurricane season, they tested the resolves of not only the Equity and Inclusion Campaign coalition members but also those of the local and federal governments. Mostly, they passed. UNITY, a member of the campaign, worked with the city's Office of Emergency Preparedness for the City Assisted Evacuation Plan. UNITY's staff was in the streets helping police evacuate the homeless and people of special needs and making sure they got to the front of the line when the evacuation buses came. Campaign members from states not affected were in constant communication with members in Louisiana who were, ensuring they had transportation, bedding and kitchenware for the shelters, volunteers, food, and water.

In helping often-overlooked populations, the New Orleans Workers' Center for Racial Justice was instrumental in persuading Immigration and Customs Enforcement to suspend their checkpoints so that immigrants could evacuate free of fear. It was like the "lower your weapons" command of Gen. Honoré, who now serves on the Louisiana Disaster Recovery Foundation board.

"Nonprofits make a big difference in these people's lives," Honoré says. "But overall, the responsibility of storm recovery should be on the state government in collaboration with FEMA and the federal government in order to have a more active process and to try [to] do it quicker."
Perhaps lack of government responsibility was the reason Gustav was not a total success. While many agree things went well, there were reports of poor, if not inhumane treatment of those sheltered after the evacuation. The sheltering was the responsibility of the state's Department of Social Services. The department's director, Ann Williamson, resigned after Gustav with apologies. In the old normal, having just this one flaw, however major, in a disaster would probably have been good enough. However, Martha Kegel is already working with the state to ensure that next time, the sheltering runs better.

The funding for much of this new civic engagement came from major foundations such as Ford, Kellogg, McKnight, Annie E. Casey, Gates, and Blue Moon, with much of it funneled through the Louisiana Disaster Recovery Foundation, the Greater New Orleans Foundation, and the Orleans Recovery Foundation. They've even provided supplemental funding for government.

When the city's recovery-management office needed additional staff, the Orleans Recovery Foundation provided funding for a director of disaster-mitigation planning, which was filled by Earthea Nance, a professor who took a leave of absence from Virginia Tech to volunteer in New Orleans. "I came here for the same reason someone who wants to be a star goes to Hollywood, or someone interested in politics goes to D.C.," Nance says.

If you are someone whose focus is on planning, environmental mitigation, and engineering, then going to New Orleans is "an opportunity of a lifetime," Nance adds. She now works in the recovery office updating the city's hazard-mitigation plan and synchronizing it with the city's master plan.

But while philanthropy has come to the rescue and fostered the growth of both civic and local government action, the new movement hardly absolves the federal government of its duty to help its citizens recover. Even with all that the community-based organizations have done, there are still tremendous gaps that may be beyond their capacity. Despite President Bush's claim on the Larry King Live show that he led a "pretty darn quick" response, there remains a stalemate between what the state and city say they need for repairs and what FEMA says it will consider for reimbursement -- a $1.4 billion gap, according to the state.

"The levees broke -- that was a federal failure," Perry says. "If federal government makes a mistake, they should be held responsible for cleaning it up. They are funded and charged [with] dealing with these kinds of issues, and they have a certain guarantee of funding and ability to do that. But with us and volunteers, there is no guarantee we will be able to continue to respond like this." However, just the fact that Gulf Coast organizations have been able to respond, especially as the wounded themselves, is the triumph of a region that's been written off as poor, colored, and likely not worth saving. Says Nance, "A major part of this recovery has been the recovery of civil society."

Autore: Brentin Mock

Fonte: www.prospect.org

New Orleans’ New Winds of Change

Wirepullers: quattro anni fa l'uragano Katrina colpiva la costa orientale degli Stati Uniti, uccidendo quasi 2 mila persone e mettendo letteralmente in ginocchio una città come New Orleans. L'America non dimentica, lasciando intendere che la ferita aperta quell'agosto del 2005 sanguina ancora. Come in occasione dell'11 settembre, il popolo americano ha provato il senso di impotenza che solo un evento di tali proporzioni può trasmettere, denunciando anche limiti organizzativi inattesi. Ma tra celebrazioni e ricordi emerge una verità inquietante, che ha per protagonisti volti noti: quelli della Blackwater. (1)

The fourth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina falls this weekend.
Usually, a fourth anniversary is not a landmark. But this one is notable for the many leadership transitions afoot.

First, the election of President Obama has heightened hopes for a new federal direction in the Gulf Coast. Thus far, he has been low-key, even skipping out on a visit to the area this anniversary—for the first time in three years—instead pointing to his administration’s accomplishments to improve the business of recovery, such as accelerating infrastructure repairs.

But to fully break from the past, more needs to be done–especially to make sure that the recession does not rollback the recovery gains made to date. While federal investments in public infrastructure repairs have helped buoy the New Orleans economy, the recession has dampened the housing market, stalling efforts to replace or repair the tens of thousands of homes destroyed by the storm. Further, more work is needed to boost incomes and opportunity in the region, convert a massive inventory of blighted properties into marketable use, and strengthen the safety and sustainability of the region through comprehensive coastal restoration and protection.
At the core, Obama and his team must show that the $40 billion-plus in taxpayer dollars spent on long-term Gulf Coast recovery is not being wasted to simply return New Orleans back to its old normal.

Indeed, prior to Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans was beset with challenges facing many older cities. It had the second highest concentration of poverty among the 50 largest American cities. It possessed a weak economy, with shrinking high-paying industries and expanding low-wage, hospitality jobs. Also, the metro area was growing in unsustainable ways, with the city losing jobs and residents as development shifted outward into suburban parishes and onto precious wetlands.

The opportunity is that the federal recovery dollars already flowing to schools, housing, health care facilities, and roads and transit can be accompanied by an overhaul of policies and systems underlying them so that New Orleanians, and our nation, get better outcomes and performance. It is not enough to simply get the money out the door quickly. Our aim should be for a city and region that is more inclusive, economically robust, and environmentally sustainable than before the storm.

No doubt, some bold innovations are underway, such as the total revamping of the public school system and the installation of a first-ever inspector general to remove the cloud of corruption and distrust that hangs over locally-elected officials.

But, these efforts must be the norm, not the exception. To that end, in the next twelve months, the administration must go beyond “disaster recovery” and work with state, local, and private sector allies to facilitate some transformative initiatives to boldly put the city on the path to reinvention. The pressure is on for Obama (and New Orleanians) to demonstrate that, at the five-year crossroad, New Orleans is not trending toward the status quo.

Specifically, the administration should not treat New Orleans as that special disaster case, but as a priority city where it can test a number of its signature initiatives. From modernizing the nation’s infrastructure to boosting green industries to linking school reform with the transformation of distressed neighborhoods—and the launch of a new urban and metropolitan agenda—Obama can apply his desire for bottoms-up solutions to a city and region that is teeming with renewed assets, a committed citizenry, and strong philanthropic support.

But this is an upward battle if Obama does not have a good local partner.

Fortunately, Mayor Nagin’s term is coming to an end. Nagin has been a disaster (excuse the pun) and his recovery czar resigned earlier this summer with little fanfare and few accomplishments. With a primary coming up next February and a run-off election in March, New Orleans will have an opportunity to choose a leader with vision and experience who can hold up his or her end of the bargain in a federal-state-local partnership to deliver on the promise of recovery.

With all these stars aligning, let’s not squander this post-disaster moment to remake a great American city.

Autore: Amy Liu
Fonte: www.tnr.com

Rifiuto giustificato o censura?

Ieri, 27 agosto 2009 la RAI ha annunciato di rifiutare la messa in onda del trailer di Videocracy, film/documentario di Erik Gandini poiché "inequivocabile messaggio politico di critica al governo". Senza conoscere i contenuti di Videocracy e lontani dal voler promuovere qualcosa che non abbiamo visionato, ci piace farci comunque garanti del diritto di opinione e quindi "prestiamo" volentieri il nostro spazio a questo trailer.

Yesterday, August the 27th 2009, the Italian Public Television (RAI) announced their refusal to broadcast the trailer of Videocracy, a movie/documentary by Erik Gandini since "unequivocal political message which is critical towards the government". Without knowing the contents of Videocracy and not at all willing to promote something we did not see, we would anyway like to protect the opinion right and therefore we take pleasure in "lending" our web-space to this trailer.

Seven Myths About Alternative Energy

Wirepullers: quanto tempo resta da vivere all'uomo sulla terra? 50 anni? Forse 100? Fossero anche di più, è abbastanza probabile che la presenza della vita sul nostro pianeta sia comunque a tempo determinato. Stiamo consumando il nostro pianeta e non potremo andare avanti così molto a lungo. Dobbiamo fare tutto il possibile per promuovere le energie alternative, dobbiamo incrementare l'utilizzo di biocarburanti, unica soluzione alla nostra dipendenza dal petrolio, dobbiamo dare inizio a una rivoluzione tecnologica che salvi il mondo. In sostanza dobbiamo trasformare completamente i nostri comportamenti in termini di consumi. E se fosse tutto falso? I sette miti sull'energia alternativa secondo Foreign Policy.

1. "We Need to Do Everything Possible to Promote Alternative Energy."

Not exactly. It's certainly clear that fossil fuels are mangling the climate and that the status quo is unsustainable. There is now a broad scientific consensus that the world needs to reduce greenhouse gas emissions more than 25 percent by 2020 -- and more than 80 percent by 2050. Even if the planet didn't depend on it, breaking our addictions to oil and coal would also reduce global reliance on petrothugs and vulnerability to energy-price spikes.

But though the world should do everything sensible to promote alternative energy, there's no point trying to do everything possible. There are financial, political, and technical pressures as well as time constraints that will force tough choices; solutions will need to achieve the biggest emissions reductions for the least money in the shortest time. Hydrogen cars, cold fusion, and other speculative technologies might sound cool, but they could divert valuable resources from ideas that are already achievable and cost-effective. It's nice that someone managed to run his car on liposuction leftovers, but that doesn't mean he needs to be subsidized.

Reasonable people can disagree whether governments should try to pick energy winners and losers. But why not at least agree that governments shouldn't pick losers to be winners? Unfortunately, that's exactly what is happening. The world is rushing to promote alternative fuel sources that will actually accelerate global warming, not to mention an alternative power source that could cripple efforts to stop global warming.

We can still choose a truly alternative path. But we'd better hurry.

2. "Renewable Fuels Are the Cure for Our Addiction to Oil."
Unfortunately not. "Renewable fuels" sound great in theory, and agricultural lobbyists have persuaded European countries and the United States to enact remarkably ambitious biofuels mandates to promote farm-grown alternatives to gasoline. But so far in the real world, the cures -- mostly ethanol derived from corn in the United States or biodiesel derived from palm oil, soybeans, and rapeseed in Europe -- have been significantly worse than the disease.

Researchers used to agree that farm-grown fuels would cut emissions because they all made a shockingly basic error. They gave fuel crops credit for soaking up carbon while growing, but it never occurred to them that fuel crops might displace vegetation that soaked up even more carbon. It was as if they assumed that biofuels would only be grown in parking lots. Needless to say, that hasn't been the case; Indonesia, for example, destroyed so many of its lush forests and peat lands to grow palm oil for the European biodiesel market that it ranks third rather than 21st among the world's top carbon emitters.

In 2007, researchers finally began accounting for deforestation and other land-use changes created by biofuels. One study found that it would take more than 400 years of biodiesel use to "pay back" the carbon emitted by directly clearing peat for palm oil. Indirect damage can be equally devastating because on a hungry planet, food crops that get diverted to fuel usually end up getting replaced somewhere. For example, ethanol profits are prompting U.S. soybean farmers to switch to corn, so Brazilian soybean farmers are expanding into cattle pastures to pick up the slack and Brazilian ranchers are invading the Amazon rain forest, which is why another study pegged corn ethanol's payback period at 167 years. It's simple economics: The mandates increase demand for grain, which boosts prices, which makes it lucrative to ravage the wilderness.

Deforestation accounts for 20 percent of global emissions, so unless the world can eliminate emissions from all other sources -- cars, coal, factories, cows -- it needs to back off forests. That means limiting agriculture's footprint, a daunting task as the world's population grows -- and an impossible task if vast expanses of cropland are converted to grow middling amounts of fuel. Even if the United States switched its entire grain crop to ethanol, it would only replace one fifth of U.S. gasoline consumption.

This is not just a climate disaster. The grain it takes to fill an SUV tank with ethanol could feed a hungry person for a year; biofuel mandates are exerting constant upward pressure on global food prices and have contributed to food riots in dozens of poorer countries. Still, the United States has quintupled its ethanol production in a decade and plans to quintuple its biofuel production again in the next decade. This will mean more money for well-subsidized grain farmers, but also more malnutrition, more deforestation, and more emissions. European leaders have paid a bit more attention to the alarming critiques of biofuels -- including one by a British agency that was originally established to promote biofuels -- but they have shown no more inclination to throw cold water on this $100 billion global industry.

3. "If Today's Biofuels Aren't the Answer, Tomorrow's Biofuels Will Be."
Doubtful. The latest U.S. rules, while continuing lavish support for corn ethanol, include enormous new mandates to jump-start "second-generation" biofuels such as cellulosic ethanol derived from switchgrass. In theory, they would be less destructive than corn ethanol, which relies on tractors, petroleum-based fertilizers, and distilleries that emit way too much carbon. Even first-generation ethanol derived from sugar cane -- which already provides half of Brazil's transportation fuel -- is considerably greener than corn ethanol. But recent studies suggest that any biofuels requiring good agricultural land would still be worse than gasoline for global warming. Less of a disaster than corn ethanol is still a disaster.

Back in the theoretical world, biofuels derived from algae, trash, agricultural waste, or other sources could help because they require no land or at least unspecific "degraded lands," but they always seem to be "several" years away from large-scale commercial development. And some scientists remain hopeful that fast-growing perennial grasses such as miscanthus can convert sunlight into energy efficiently enough to overcome the land-use dilemmas -- someday. But for today, farmland happens to be very good at producing the food we need to feed us and storing the carbon we need to save us, and not so good at generating fuel. In fact, new studies suggest that if we really want to convert biomass into energy, we're better off turning it into electricity.

Then what should we use in our cars and trucks? In the short term … gasoline. We just need to use less of it.

Instead of counterproductive biofuel mandates and ethanol subsidies, governments need fuel-efficiency mandates to help the world's 1 billion drivers guzzle less gas, plus subsidies for mass transit, bike paths, rail lines, telecommuting, carpooling, and other activities to get those drivers out of their cars. Policymakers also need to eliminate subsidies for roads to nowhere, mandates that require excess parking and limit dense development in urban areas, and other sprawl-inducing policies. None of this is as enticing as inventing a magical new fuel, but it's doable, and it would cut emissions.

In the medium term, the world needs plug-in electric cars, the only plausible answer to humanity's oil addiction that isn't decades away. But electricity is already the source of even more emissions than oil. So we'll need an answer to humanity's coal addiction, too.

4. "Nuclear Power Is the Cure for Our Addiction to Coal."
Nope. Atomic energy is emissions free, so a slew of politicians and even some environmentalists have embraced it as a clean alternative to coal and natural gas that can generate power when there's no sun or wind. In the United States, which already gets nearly 20 percent of its electricity from nuclear plants, utilities are thinking about new reactors for the first time since the Three Mile Island meltdown three decades ago -- despite global concerns about nuclear proliferation, local concerns about accidents or terrorist attacks, and the lack of a disposal site for the radioactive waste. France gets nearly 80 percent of its electricity from nukes, and Russia, China, and India are now gearing up for nuclear renaissances of their own.

But nuclear power cannot fix the climate crisis. The first reason is timing: The West needs major cuts in emissions within a decade, and the first new U.S. reactor is only scheduled for 2017 -- unless it gets delayed, like every U.S. reactor before it. Elsewhere in the developed world, most of the talk about a nuclear revival has remained just talk; there is no Western country with more than one nuclear plant under construction, and scores of existing plants will be scheduled for decommissioning in the coming decades, so there's no way nuclear could make even a tiny dent in electricity emissions before 2020.

The bigger problem is cost. Nuke plants are supposed to be expensive to build but cheap to operate. Unfortunately, they're turning out to be really, really expensive to build; their cost estimates have quadrupled in less than a decade. Energy guru Amory Lovins has calculated that new nukes will cost nearly three times as much as wind -- and that was before their construction costs exploded for a variety of reasons, including the global credit crunch, the atrophying of the nuclear labor force, and a supplier squeeze symbolized by a Japanese company's worldwide monopoly on steel-forging for reactors. A new reactor in Finland that was supposed to showcase the global renaissance is already way behind schedule and way, way over budget. This is why plans for new plants were recently shelved in Canada and several U.S. states, why Moody's just warned utilities they'll risk ratings downgrades if they seek new reactors, and why renewables attracted $71 billion in worldwide private capital in 2007 -- while nukes attracted zero.

It's also why U.S. nuclear utilities are turning to politicians to supplement their existing loan guarantees, tax breaks, direct subsidies, and other cradle-to-grave government goodies with new public largesse. Reactors don't make much sense to build unless someone else is paying; that's why the strongest push for nukes is coming from countries where power is publicly funded. For all the talk of sanctions, if the world really wants to cripple the Iranian economy, maybe the mullahs should just be allowed to pursue nuclear energy.

Unlike biofuels, nukes don't worsen warming. But a nuclear expansion -- like the recent plan by U.S. Republicans who want 100 new plants by 2030 -- would cost trillions of dollars for relatively modest gains in the relatively distant future.

Nuclear lobbyists do have one powerful argument: If coal is too dirty and nukes are too costly, how are we going to produce our juice? Wind is terrific, and it's on the rise, adding nearly half of new U.S. power last year and expanding its global capacity by a third in 2007. But after increasing its worldwide wattage tenfold in a decade -- China is now the leading producer, and Europe is embracing wind as well -- it still produces less than 2 percent of the world's electricity. Solar and geothermal are similarly wonderful and inexhaustible technologies, but they're still global rounding errors. The average U.S. household now has 26 plug-in devices, and the rest of the world is racing to catch up; the U.S. Department of Energy expects global electricity consumption to rise 77 percent by 2030. How can we meet that demand without a massive nuclear revival?

We can't. So we're going to have to prove the Department of Energy wrong.

5. "There Is No Silver Bullet to the Energy Crisis."
Probably not. But some bullets are a lot better than others; we ought to give them our best shot before we commit to evidently inferior bullets. And one renewable energy resource is the cleanest, cheapest, and most abundant of them all. It doesn't induce deforestation or require elaborate security. It doesn't depend on the weather. And it won't take years to build or bring to market; it's already universally available.

It's called "efficiency." It means wasting less energy -- or more precisely, using less energy to get your beer just as cold, your shower just as hot, and your factory just as productive. It's not about some austerity scold harassing you to take cooler showers, turn off lights, turn down thermostats, drive less, fly less, buy less stuff, eat less meat, ditch your McMansion, and otherwise change your behavior to save energy. Doing less with less is called conservation. Efficiency is about doing more or the same with less; it doesn't require much effort or sacrifice. Yet more efficient appliances, lighting, factories, and buildings, as well as vehicles, could wipe out one fifth to one third of the world's energy consumption without any real deprivation.

Efficiency isn't sexy, and the idea that we could use less energy without much trouble hangs uneasily with today's more-is-better culture. But the best way to ensure new power plants don't bankrupt us, empower petrodictators, or imperil the planet is not to build them in the first place. "Negawatts" saved by efficiency initiatives generally cost 1 to 5 cents per kilowatt-hour versus projections ranging from 12 to 30 cents per kilowatt-hour from new nukes. That's because Americans in particular and human beings in general waste amazing amounts of energy. U.S. electricity plants fritter away enough to power Japan, and American water heaters, industrial motors, and buildings are as ridiculously inefficient as American cars. Only 4 percent of the energy used to power a typical incandescent bulb produces light; the rest is wasted. China is expected to build more square feet of real estate in the next 15 years than the United States has built in its entire history, and it has no green building codes or green building experience.

But we already know that efficiency mandates can work wonders because they've already reduced U.S. energy consumption levels from astronomical to merely high. For example, thanks to federal rules, modern American refrigerators use three times less energy than 1970s models, even though they're larger and more high-tech.

The biggest obstacles to efficiency are the perverse incentives that face most utilities; they make more money when they sell more power and have to build new generating plants. But in California and the Pacific Northwest, utility profits have been decoupled from electricity sales, so utilities can help customers save energy without harming shareholders. As a result, in that part of the country, per capita power use has been flat for three decades -- while skyrocketing 50 percent in the rest of the United States. If utilities around the world could make money by helping their customers use less power, the U.S. Department of Energy wouldn't be releasing such scary numbers.

6. "We Need a Technological Revolution to Save the World."
Maybe. In the long term, it's hard to imagine how (without major advances) we can reduce emissions 80 percent by 2050 while the global population increases and the developing world develops. So a clean-tech Apollo program modeled on the Manhattan Project makes sense. And we do need carbon pricing to send a message to market makers and innovators to promote low-carbon activities; Europe's cap-and-trade scheme seems to be working well after a rocky start. The private capital already pouring into renewables might someday produce a cheap solar panel or a synthetic fuel or a superpowerful battery or a truly clean coal plant. At some point, after we've milked efficiency for all the negawatts and negabarrels we can, we might need something new.

But we already have all the technology we need to start reducing emissions by reducing consumption. Even if we only hold electricity demand flat, we can subtract a coal-fired megawatt every time we add a wind-powered megawatt. And with a smarter grid, green building codes, and strict efficiency standards for everything from light bulbs to plasma TVs to server farms, we can do better than flat. Al Gore has a reasonably plausible plan for zero-emissions power by 2020; he envisions an ambitious 28 percent decrease in demand through efficiency, plus some ambitious increases in supply from wind, solar, and geothermal energy. But we don't even have to reduce our fossil fuel use to zero to reach our 2020 targets. We just have to use less.

If somebody comes up with a better idea by 2020, great! For now, we should focus on the solutions that get the best emissions bang for the buck.

7. "Ultimately, We'll Need to Change Our Behaviors to Save the World."
Probably. These days, it's politically incorrect to suggest that going green will require even the slightest adjustment to our way of life, but let's face it: Jimmy Carter was right. It wouldn't kill you to turn down the heat and put on a sweater. Efficiency is a miracle drug, but conservation is even better; a Prius saves gas, but a Prius sitting in the driveway while you ride your bike uses no gas. Even energy-efficient dryers use more power than clotheslines.

More with less will be a great start, but to get to 80 percent less emissions, the developed world might occasionally have to do less with less. We might have to unplug a few digital picture frames, substitute teleconferencing for some business travel, and take it easy on the air conditioner. If that's an inconvenient truth, well, it's less inconvenient than trillions of dollars' worth of new reactors, perpetual dependence on hostile petrostates, or a fricasseed planet.

After all, the developing world is entitled to develop. Its people are understandably eager to eat more meat, drive more cars, and live in nicer houses. It doesn't seem fair for the developed world to say: Do as we say, not as we did. But if the developing world follows the developed world's wasteful path to prosperity, the Earth we all share won't be able to accommodate us. So we're going to have to change our ways. Then we can at least say: Do as we're doing, not as we did.

Autore: Michael Grunwald

Fonte: www.foreignpolicy.com

Eine Last für die Nachgeborenen

Wirepullers: domenica 23 agosto di 70 anni fa, Hitler e Stalin, rappresentati dai relativi Ministri degli Esteri Joachim von Ribbentrop e Vjaceslav Molotov, firmavano un patto di non aggressione tra Germania nazista e Unione Sovietica. Il patto comprendeva un protocollo segreto per la spartizione della Polonia tra le due potenze e l'inserimento della Finlandia e delle repubbliche baltiche nelle rispettive zone di influenza. Scoppiava di fatto la seconda guerra mondiale. Di questa ricorrenza sembra essersene ricordata solo la stampa tedesca, nonostante quell'episodio abbia conseguenze evidenti ancora oggi. Ci riferiamo in particolare al freno posto per anni da Polonia e Lituania all'accordo commerciale tra UE e Russia per la fornitura di gas. Forse si tratta solo di una vendetta polacca per un episodio di protezionismo o forse la storia ha dato un colpo di coda. (3)

Vor zwei Jahrzehnten war im Baltikum zu sehen, wie Geschichte in die Gegenwart hineinwirkt: Am fünfzigsten Jahrestag des Hitler-Stalin-Paktes bildeten von Tallinn über Riga nach Vilnius mehr als eine Million Esten, Letten und Litauer eine 600 Kilometer lange Menschenkette. Sie forderten die Wiederherstellung der Unabhängigkeit ihrer Länder, die infolge des Paktes, mit dem Stalin Hitler freie Hand für den Überfall auf Polen gegeben hatte, von der Sowjetunion besetzt worden waren. Zwei Jahre nach dieser Kundgebung war die Sowjetunion Vergangenheit.
Jetzt bewegt der Pakt keine Menschenmassen mehr, aber er wirkt noch immer nach - nicht nur als abschreckendes Beispiel verbrecherischen Größenwahns, sondern auch als psychische Belastung der Nachgeborenen. Seine Folgen vergiften die Beziehungen der baltischen Staaten und Polens zu Russland - und mittelbar damit auch das Verhältnis der EU zu Moskau. Die Härte, mit der Polen und Litauen zwei Jahre lang den Beginn von Verhandlungen der Europäischen Union mit Russland über ein neues Partnerschaftsabkommen blockierten, ist vor dem Hintergrund der geschichtlichen Erfahrung zu verstehen.

Den historischen Faschismus rehabilitieren
Dabei wird die Politik sowohl durch die historischen Ereignisse belastet, die mit dem 23. August 1939 ihren Ausgang nahmen, als auch durch den heutigen Umgang damit. Während die westeuropäische Öffentlichkeit kaum darüber nachdenkt, welche Konsequenzen der Hitler-Stalin-Pakt für die Länder zwischen Nazi-Deutschland und der Sowjetunion hatte, ist Russland nach einer offenen Debatte in den neunziger Jahren zu den Dogmen der sowjetischen Geschichtsschreibung über den Zweiten Weltkrieg zurückgekehrt. Das Unrecht, das den Balten und Polen in der Stalin-Ära durch die Sowjetunion angetan wurde - zum Beispiel die Ermordung von mehr als 20.000 polnischen Offizieren und Intellektuellen durch den sowjetischen Geheimdienst NKWD in Katyn und anderen Orten im Frühjahr 1940 -, wird heute übergangen.

Moskau leugnet oder verharmlost die stalinistischen Verbrechen und fordert auch, dass seine Sicht als die allein gültige Geschichtsdeutung anerkannt wird. Den Esten, Letten und Litauern, die in der Besetzung ihrer Länder durch die Rote Armee 1944, der die Deportation Hunderttausender nach Sibirien folgte, keine Befreiung, sondern eine Ablösung der braunen durch die roten Unterdrücker sehen, halten Moskauer Stimmen vor, sie wollten „die Geschichte umschreiben“, um den historischen Faschismus zu rehabilitieren.

Schmerzhafte Auseinandersetzung

Da im Westen Europas das Wissen über die nationalsozialistischen Verbrechen weit größer ist als das über die kommunistischen, fürchten die Balten, die Moskauer Propaganda könne dort verfangen und sie selbst um ihre Glaubwürdigkeit bringen - zumal diese einen wunden Punkt ihrer Vergangenheit trifft. Nach der Besetzung der baltischen Staaten durch die Sowjetunion im Sommer 1940, die mit Terror gegen große Teile der Bevölkerung einhergegangen war, wurden dort ein Jahr später die deutschen Truppen begrüßt. 1944 kämpften baltische Einheiten an der Seite der Deutschen gegen die Rote Armee. Die Ursache dafür war nicht eine Sympathie für die Nationalsozialisten. Esten, Letten und Litauer waren vielmehr in einer Lage, die der litauische Dichter Tomas Venclova als „die Wahl zwischen Hitler, Stalin und dem Tod“ charakterisierte. Eine sinnvolle Wahl konnte es da nicht geben.

In allen drei baltischen Staaten wirkten allerdings Einheimische an den Kriegsverbrechen der Deutschen mit. Mit diesen dunklen Seiten der eigenen Geschichte findet eine heftige, mitunter widersprüchliche, für die Gesellschaft dieser Länder schmerzhafte Auseinandersetzung statt - vorangetrieben von Historikerkommissionen, die die Staatspräsidenten zu diesem Zweck eingerichtet haben.

Wiederholung stalinistischer Propagandalügen
Russlands Präsident Medwedjew hat hingegen eine Kommission beauftragt, über Maßnahmen gegen „Geschichtsfälschungen zu Lasten der russischen Interessen“ zu beraten. Zu derartigen „Geschichtsfälschungen“ zählt der Kreml auch das Bemühen osteuropäischer Abgeordneter im EU-Parlament und den parlamentarischen Versammlungen von Europarat und OSZE, den 23. August zu einem europäischen Gedenktag für die Opfer des Nationalsozialismus und des Stalinismus zu machen.

Viele Russen - nicht nur Anhänger des Kremls, sondern auch Demokraten - fühlen sich durch derartige Initiativen ernstlich in ihren Gefühlen verletzt. Sie sehen dadurch den Sieg im Zweiten Weltkrieg in den Schmutz gezogen, der in der russischen Gesellschaft einen geradezu sakralen Charakter hat. Die darin enthaltene Erinnerung an das unermessliche Leid, das durch Hitlers Vernichtungskrieg über die Russen gebracht wurde, verdient Achtung und Respekt. Dieselbe Achtung verdienen aber auch die Opfer Stalins. Doch gerade ihnen wird sie von der russischen Führung mit aggressiven Tönen und der Wiederholung stalinistischer Propagandalügen verweigert.

Autore: Reinhard Veser

Fonte: www.faz.de

Eine schmerzhafte Wunde

Wirepullers: domenica 23 agosto di 70 anni fa, Hitler e Stalin, rappresentati dai relativi Ministri degli Esteri Joachim von Ribbentrop e Vjaceslav Molotov, firmavano un patto di non aggressione tra Germania nazista e Unione Sovietica. Il patto comprendeva un protocollo segreto per la spartizione della Polonia tra le due potenze e l'inserimento della Finlandia e delle repubbliche baltiche nelle rispettive zone di influenza. Scoppiava di fatto la seconda guerra mondiale. Di questa ricorrenza sembra essersene ricordata solo la stampa tedesca, nonostante quell'episodio abbia conseguenze evidenti ancora oggi. Ci riferiamo in particolare al freno posto per anni da Polonia e Lituania all'accordo commerciale tra UE e Russia per la fornitura di gas. Forse si tratta solo di una vendetta polacca per un episodio di protezionismo o forse la storia ha dato un colpo di coda. (2)

Ignoriert und verdrängt: Der Historiker Stefan Troebst erklärt, was die Deutschen vergessen, wieso das Abkommen der Diktatoren bis heute politisch brisant und Erinnern in Europa so schwierig ist.

Stefan Troebst ist Historiker und Professor für Kulturstudien Ostmitteleuropas an der Universität Leipzig. Er beschäftigt sich seit Jahren mit Erinnerungskulturen in Europa.

sueddeutsche.de: Der Hitler-Stalin-Pakt jährt sich am Sonntag zum 70. Mal. In Deutschland kennt kaum jemand dieses Datum, doch in Polen und im Baltikum ist es bis heute sehr präsent. Warum?

Stefan Troebst: Für die baltischen Staaten bedeutete dieser Pakt den Verlust der erst kurz zuvor erlangten Eigenstaatlichkeit. Das war ein schweres Trauma, die Wunde schmerzt bis heute. In der Perestrojka-Zeit in den Achtzigerjahren war es die wichtigste Mobilisierungsparole im Kampf für Unabhängigkeit. Und für Polen bedeutet der Pakt den Auftakt zu fünfeinhalb Jahren Krieg, Besatzung, Terror, Sklavenarbeit, Zwangsumsiedlung und Völkermord.

sueddeutsche.de: Was war so brisant am Hitler-Stalin-Pakt?

Troebst: Zum einen ist die bündnispolitische Wirkung wichtig: Hitler bekam mit diesem Nichtangriffsvertrag von Stalin freie Hand für seine Kriege gegen Polen und gegen die Westmächte Frankreich und Großbritannien. Zum anderen gab es ein geheimes Zusatzprotokoll zum Vertrag: Darin wurde vereinbart, die Territorien zwischen der Ostgrenze von Hitler-Deutschland und der Westgrenze der Sowjetunion von der Arktis bis zum Schwarzen Meer einvernehmlich untereinander aufzuteilen.

sueddeutsche.de: Was bedeutete das?

Troebst: Beide Vertragspartner bekamen das Recht, in ihren Einflusszonen zu tun, was sie wollten. Sie konnten diese Länder militärisch besetzen, zerstückeln oder in den eigenen Staatsverband eingliedern. Im Fall Polen hat man sich geeinigt, das Land zunächst zu besetzen. Zwei Wochen nach dem deutschen Angriff auf Polen hielten deutsche und sowjetische Soldaten in Brest-Litowsk, an der Grenze zwischen dem deutsch und dem sowjetisch besetzten Teil Polens, eine gemeinsame Parade ab, um der Bevölkerung zu zeigen: Wir sind jetzt Verbündete und wir haben euch besiegt. Während es Finnland gelang, sich gegen die sowjetische Besatzung zu wehren, wurden Estland, Lettland, Litauen und Bessarabien, d. h. der Ostteil Rumäniens, der heute den Staat Moldova bildet, von der Sowjetunion annektiert.

sueddeutsche.de: Deswegen leugnete der Kreml selbst noch in der Perestrojka, dass ein

Geheimprotokoll existiere.

Troebst: Genau, selbst für Gorbatschow war die Lage unangenehm. Er durfte die Hardliner in der eigenen Partei nicht verärgern. Zunächst hieß es zu Glasnost-Zeiten, ein solches Papier existiere gar nicht. Als das Protokoll in einer estnischen Zeitung abgedruckt wurde, wurde es als Fälschung bezeichnet. Und als man selbst das nicht mehr behaupten konnte, wurde erklärt, dass die UdSSR seinerzeit durch die Umstände zur Unterschrift gezwungen gewesen sei. Erst am 24. Dezember 1989 bestätigte der Kongress der Volksdeputierten die Echtheit des Zusatzprotokolls, erklärte es für nichtig - und entschuldigte sich sogar formell. Doch dem Schritt der parlamentarischen Vertretung ist die politische Führung nicht gefolgt.

sueddeutsche.de: Wie wird der Hitler-Stalin-Pakt heute in Russland gesehen?

Troebst: Es hat sich seit 1989 einiges verändert. Im politischen Bereich ist es schlechter geworden: Für Wladimir Putin und seinen Nachfolger Dmitrij Medwedjew war es ein Fehler von Gorbatschow, die Existenz des Protokolls anzuerkennen. Die heutige Führung glaubt, dass es für das Staatsinteresse klüger gewesen wäre, stur zu bleiben und alles zu ignorieren. Das Thema ist zwar von russischen Zeithistorikern gründlich aufgearbeitet worden, aber es gab und gibt großen Druck, nichts zu publizieren, was der offiziellen Linie widerspricht.

sueddeutsche.de: Wie sieht diese offizielle Sicht aus?

Troebst: Man kriegt das Thema nicht aus der Welt und versucht deshalb, es weichzuspülen und umzudeuten. Es gibt zwei Linien: Die eine stellt den Pakt als wenig bedeutenden Teil einer Kette historischer Ereignisse, wie dem Münchner Abkommen 1938, in dem die Westmächte Hitler die Tschechoslowakei überlassen hatten, und dem deutschen Angriff auf die Sowjetunion am 22. Juni 1941. Die lasche Haltung des Westens gegen das aggressive Dritte Reich hat in dieser Sicht Stalin genötigt, sich vorübergehend mit Hitler zu verbünden.

sueddeutsche.de: Und wie lautete die zweite Version?

Troebst: Sie besagt, dass der Pakt und das Protokoll zwar zynisch und menschenverachtend gewesen seien, aber dass die Sowjetunion diese Schuld im Laufe des Krieges wieder "durch das in Strömen fließende Blut der Rotarmisten" reingewaschen habe. 1945 habe die UdSSR dann Europa vom Faschismus und von Hitler befreit. Es war also eine temporäre Allianz mit dem Teufel nötig, um ihn von hinten erwürgen zu können.

sueddeutsche.de: Und wer anders denkt, dem droht seit Mai eine Gefängnisstrafe.

Troebst: Ja, das ist die letzte und sehr bedenkliche Entwicklung. Es wurde ein Gesetz verabschiedet, wonach Russen sowie Ausländer mit bis zu drei Jahren Haft rechnen müssen, wenn sie die Geschichte Russlands oder der Sowjetunion verfälschen - was immer das bedeuten mag. Das ist natürlich eine Drohung. Eine Kommission entscheidet über solche Fälle, aber bisher ist niemand verurteilt worden.

sueddeutsche.de: Worüber wird da gestritten?

Troebst: In Russland spricht niemand vom Hitler-Stalin-Pakt, denn Hitler ist ja nicht nach Moskau geflogen. Stattdessen heißt es Molotow-Ribbentrop-Pakt - benannt nach den Außenministern, an die sich kaum jemand mehr erinnert. Das ist eine geschickte Strategie. Für

den staatstragenden Teil der russischen Historiker und Politiker ist der Pakt immer noch schwer zu verdauen. Stalins Wendung von der Einheitsfront gegen den Faschismus hin zum Bündnis mit dem Nationalsozialismus ist kaum vermittelbar. Vor diesem Kontext muss man das Gesetz sehen.

sueddeutsche.de: Auch in Polen, Estland oder Litauen wird der Hitler-Stalin-Pakt in der Tagespolitik als Vergleich bemüht. Die Nord-Stream-Pipeline, für die sich Altkanzler Schröder engagiert, wurde als Putin-Schröder-Pakt bezeichnet. Überrascht Sie das?

Troebst: Nein, im 20. Jahrhundert ist es das traumatischste Ereignis für die genannten Länder, denn sie verloren ihre Unabhängigkeit und wurden Opfer gigantischer Verbrechen. Jede Familie dort weiß, was mit dieser Anspielung gemeint ist. Insofern verwundert es nicht, dass auf diese kollektiven Erinnerungen zurückgegriffen wird.

sueddeutsche.de: Das polnische Magazin Wprost zeigte im Herbst 2005 ja sogar eine Collage von Putin und dem früheren Bundeskanzler Schröder, deren Hände aus Pipelines bestehen.

Troebst: In Polen ist man hypersensibel bezüglich jeglicher deutsch-russischer Annäherung und Kooperation und argwöhnt, diese ginge immer zu Lasten des eigenen Landes - wie bei den Teilungen Polens zwischen Preußen, dem Zarenreich und Habsburg im 18. Jahrhundert, dann im Hitler-Stalin-Pakt vom 23. August 1939 und bei der neuerlichen Teilung Polens durch Berlin und Moskau von September 1939 bis Juni 1941.

sueddeutsche.de: Wie stark belastet die unterschiedliche Interpretation der Geschichte bis heute die Beziehungen zwischen Russland und Nachbarn?

Troebst: Die Beziehungen zu den baltischen Staaten sind dadurch schwer beschädigt und werden sich kaum verbessern, solange sich Moskau nicht bewegt. Die Beziehungen zur Ukraine und Weißrussland sind ambivalent: Im sogenannten Goldenen September 1939 wurden die ukrainischen und weißrussischen Sowjetrepubliken um Gebiete im Westen erweitert - auf Kosten Polens. Daran wurde dann 1945 nichts mehr geändert, sondern alles blieb so bis heute. So ging etwa das Gebiet um Lemberg an die Ukraine. In der Ukraine tut man sich mit diesem Thema sehr schwer, auch weil das Thema Entschädigungen im Raum steht.

sueddeutsche.de: Darüber wissen wir in Westeuropa kaum etwas. Von einer gesamteuropäischen Erinnerung sind wir noch immer weit entfernt.

Troebst: Das Europäische Parlament ist gerade dabei, ein Haus der Europäischen Geschichte in Brüssel einzurichten. Es wurde eine Denkschrift verfasst, die aus einer Liste von Prozessen und Ereignissen besteht, die in diesem Museum zu thematisieren sind. Ich bin mir sicher, dass der Hitler-Stalin-Pakt dort fehlen würde, wenn nicht ein Pole in der Kommission gewesen wäre. Balten waren übrigens nicht beteiligt.

sueddeutsche.de: Ist es nicht problematisch, wenn Institutionen Geschichtsbilder kreieren?

Troebst: Da ist so und daran wird auch das geplante Brüsseler Museum wenig ändern. Interessant ist aber die Entwicklung: Bisher hatte sich die EU aus der Debatte um Geschichtsbilder und Identitäten herausgehalten oder sie dem Europarat überlassen. Nun hat die EU erkannt: Das ist ein Thema, dem wir uns widmen müssen. Daher auch die Initiative des Europäischen Parlaments von 2008, den 23. August zum "Europäischen Gedenktag an die Opfer der stalinistischen und nazistischen Verbrechen" zu machen. Dennoch wird künftig das Dilemma offenkundiger werden, dass es für die Europäer viele nationale Erinnerungsorte gibt und nur ganz wenige gesamteuropäische und noch weniger positiv besetzte - wobei diese Erinnerungsorte sowohl ganz reale Plätze sein können als auch metaphorische.

sueddeutsche.de: Eignet sich denn das Jahr 1945 für ein gemeinsames Erinnern?

Troebst: Für viele Nationalgesellschaften ist nicht 1945 entscheidend, sondern viel mehr 1944 - für Bulgarien, Rumänien und Weißrussland etwa. Und die Erinnerung an 1945 variiert stark: Frankreich und Großbritannien verbinden damit das siegreiche Ende des Weltkriegs, die Polen aber den „Verrat von Jalta“, als der Westen ihr Land ungefragt Stalin als Teil seines neuen Hegemonialbereiches überließ. In Deutschland ist die Erinnerung an 1945 ja ambivalent - einerseits Befreiung von einer verbrecherischen Diktatur, andererseits Niederlage, Besatzung, Teilung. Im Vergleich dazu ist die Erinnerung an den Pakt von 1939 verblasst.

sueddeutsche.de: Welcher Aspekt wird hierzulande ausgeblendet?

Troebst: In Deutschland sieht man den Pakt vor allem in enger Verbindung mit dem Angriff Hitlers auf Polen. Dass beide Diktatoren, Hitler und Stalin, den Teil Europas der zwischen ihnen lag, einvernehmlich aufgeteilt haben, ist nicht Bestandteil deutscher Geschichtskultur - aus nachvollziehbaren Gründen. Hier ist also eine Art Beißhemmung erkennbar. Aus polnischer und baltischer Sicht ist das aber nicht nachvollziehbar: Dort hält man Stalin für einen schlimmeren Verbrecher als Hitler - was in Deutschland als politisch inkorrekt gilt.

sueddeutsche.de: Auch das Jahr 1989 löst unterschiedliche Assoziationen aus.

Troebst: Ja, aber wenn wir einmal Russland beiseite lassen, sind die Assoziationen sehr positiv.

Der Unterschied ist nur, dass dieses Datum in der deutschen oder polnischen Gesellschaft einen ganz zentralen Wert hat, während es in Spanien oder Irland - salopp gesagt - niemandem vom Hocker reißt. Es hat dort mit der eigenen Erfahrung nichts zu tun. Aber es wird auch nicht abgelehnt, weil es eben positiv besetzt ist.

sueddeutsche.de: Es gibt keinen europäischen Erinnerungsort, auf den man sich einigen kann?

Troebst: Der erste Schritt, so etwas zu konstruieren, kam nicht aus unserem Kontinent, sondern war eine transatlantische Initiative. 2000 gab es in Schweden auf einen amerikanischen Vorschlag hin eine Holocaust-Konferenz, an der sehr viele Regierungen teilnahmen und auf welcher der Holocaust im Kern als Gründungsmythos der westlichen beziehungsweise europäischen Welt kanonisiert wurde. Daraus wurde dann die Vermutung abgeleitet, dass der Völkermord an den Juden als der zentrale europäische Erinnerungsort gelten kann.

sueddeutsche.de: In Osteuropa sehen das aber viele anders.

Troebst: So ist es. Aus Tschechien etwa war zu hören: Mit dem Holocaust haben wir nichts zu tun, das waren Besatzungsverbrechen der Deutschen, die tragischerweise auf unserem Territorium stattfanden. Auch in Ungarn oder Rumänien spielt dieses Thema kaum eine Rolle in staatlicher Geschichtspolitik oder zivilgesellschaftlicher Erinnerungskultur. Das ist allerdings auch in Portugal, Großbritannien oder Finnland ganz ähnlich.

sueddeutsche.de: Sollte eine gemeinsame Erinnerung nicht positiv sein?

Troebst: Das wäre wünschenswert, aber bisher ist kein Erinnerungsort erkennbar, der europaweit positiv besetzt ist. Der einzig mögliche ist die europäische Integration selbst, aber da beißt sich die Katze in den Schwanz. Zudem lebte bis 1989 die eine Hälfte der Europäer auf der anderen Seite des Eisernen Vorhangs, war also nicht Teil dieses Integrationsprozesses. Wieso soll ein Slowake oder Albaner den Jahrestag der Römischen Verträge zur Gründung der Europäischen Gemeinschaft 1957 feiern? Das nimmt sich übrigens aus norwegischer oder schweizerische Sicht ganz ähnlich aus.

sueddeutsche.de: Umgekehrt löst der 1. Mai 2004, als acht ostmitteleuropäische Länder der

EU beigetreten sind, im Westen auch keine Begeisterung aus.

Troebst: Exakt, das Datum ist ähnlich administrativ wie unser deutscher Nationalfeiertag. Keiner steht morgens auf und kriegt Gänsehaut, weil er denkt: "Oh, heute ist der 3. Oktober". Man kann so etwas nicht von oben dekretieren. Der Politologe Claus Leggewie hat jüngst acht konzentrische Kreise europäischer Erinnerung beschrieben, und die waren abgesehen von der EU-Integration allesamt negativ. Interessanterweise tauchte dort auch der Völkermord an den Armeniern durch das Osmanische Reich 1915 auf.

sueddeutsche.de: Das ist überraschend.

Troebst: Nur auf den ersten Blick. Zum einen gibt es europaweit einen Konsens über die Interpretation dieses tragischen Geschehens und zum anderen fand der Genozid jenseits der europäischen Grenzen statt. Das heißt, EU-Mitglieder müssen dafür nicht an den Pranger gestellt werden - auch wenn vier von ihnen, nämlich Deutschland, Österreich, Ungarn und Bulgarien, seinerzeit Verbündete des Sultans waren. EU-intern kann man sich also darauf einigen, dass dieses Verbrechen gegen die Menschheit europaweit erinnert werden soll. Hingegen kann man sich offenbar nicht drauf einigen, gemeinsam an eigene Gräueltaten etwa während der Kolonialzeit zu erinnern. Die dafür in Frage kommenden EU-Mitglieder, also Großbritannien, Frankreich, Deutschland, Italien, Spanien, Portugal, die Niederlande und Belgien haben bislang keine europaweite Initiative dazu ergriffen.

sueddeutsche.de: Wie wird da argumentiert?

Troebst: Man sagt einfach: Das ist Teil unsere Nationalgeschichte, wenngleich ein wenig rühmliche, und Schluss! Der Hinweis, dass der Kolonialismus und die damit verbundenen Verbrechen ein gesamteuropäisches Phänomen sind und wie der Holocaust auch gesamteuropäisch thematisiert werden sollten, überzeugt da nicht. Wenn, sagen wir, ein Lette mit einem Belgier über die Vorgänge in Belgisch-Kongo von hundert Jahren diskutieren wollte, hieße es sofort: Das geht dich gar nichts an, kümmere du dich besser um deinen Antisemitismus. Und ein Lette würde ganz ähnlich reagieren, würde ihm ein Belgier die kritische Aufarbeitung der Geschichte der lettischen Waffen-SS-Einheiten vorschlagen. Die Vorurteilsschranken in Europa fallen mitunter sehr schnell - bei den Großen noch schneller als bei den Kleinen …

Intervista di Matthias Kolb

Fonte: http://www.suddeutsche.de/