Davids Medienkritik

Stern: "America is Destroying the West"

(By Ray Drake - originally published December 19, 2005)

Stern magazine has finally discovered why life is so rotten in Germany these days. The Western world is breaking apart and its all America's fault. This time it's a commentary in Stern magazine with a dramatic title: "America is destroying the West." Like so many Stern pieces, this article has all the tell-tale elements of the perverted view of America that has come to dominate and cloud the minds of many in the German media establishment. The article's introductory lines read:

"Commentary: America is Destroying the West

By Florian Guessgen

First the execution of Stanley Tookie Williams, then the debate over the abduction of Khaled al-Masri. This week shrilly brought to our attention how deep the rift is between the USA and Europe. The West is threatening to break apart. 

Two times in the last week we experienced up close what rights the America of George W. Bush lays claim to for itself when it is trying to achieve its objectives.

Because this state wants to deter potential murderers, murderers are executed in many of its states. Merciless(ly). Eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth. In its selection of methods the state has made itself like the criminal."

As we mentioned earlier on this blog, the furor over the Tookie Williams execution allowed many in the German media an opportunity to gush moral outrage over one of their favorite pet issues: The death penalty. Mr. Guessgen makes no attempt to hide his intent, citing Tookie's execution as evidence of the supposedly "merciless" nature of the "America of George W. Bush."

But perhaps Mr. Guessgen doesn't realize that Williams' first trial on four counts of first degree murder and two counts of robbery began in 1980. The President at the time was Jimmy Carter. Williams' case, like so many death penalty cases in America since 1976, went through a rigorous and extremely expensive appeals process that lasted nearly two and a half decades. The vast majority of Williams' appeals at the state and federal level were heard and rejected long before George W. Bush was ever elected President. (See "LA County District Attorney's Response to Stanley William's Petition for Executive Clemency"  For a moral evaluation of Tookie Williams, check here.)

Due to the particularly violent nature of his crimes (killing his victims at point blank range with shotgun blasts), his role in founding one of America's most violent street gangs and his assaults on others while in prison, Williams' became one of a tiny fraction of murder convicts actually put to death in the United States. Since the reinstatement of the death penalty in 1976, around one-thousand convicted criminals have been executed. That is less than one execution per state per year. Furthermore, the state in which Tookie Williams was executed, California, is a "blue" state that voted overwhelmingly against George W. Bush in both 2000 and 2004.

But of course when someone gets executed in California, it is suddenly George W. Bush's "merciless" America that's to blame for many in the German media. No need to think, no need to understand the context, no need to differentiate. It's all very simple, just the way Stern's indoctrinated, spoon-fed readers like it: America is destroying the West and it is all Bush's fault.

Put another way, Mr. Guessgen isn't interested in a thoughtful debate on the death penalty or the Bush administration, he's interested in lashing-out at a nation and a leader that deeply threaten his political worldview. If he were genuinely concerned with human rights abuses and international law, he would be better served writing about his own government's business dealings with Sudan. He would be better served chronicling the Chinese government's mass executions or investigating Gerhard Schroeder's questionable service to Gazprom. He might even take a moment to question the German media's relative indifference to the thousands of killings and kidnappings perpetrated by Russian troops in Chechnya over the past several years while Germany and Russia were doing multi-billion dollar business deals for everything from trains to planes to automobiles to gas pipelines. But instead, Guessgen continues his commentary by comparing the United States to the "dark rogues" of the Russian mafia and writes:

"Methods like the Russian Mafia
Eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth. The same principle is also used by the USA in the worldwide hunt for criminals. Because George W. Bush and the CIA are hunting terrorists - mass murderers, they allow themselves the right to kidnap and torture - without consideration for principles of justice or international rights. The ends justify the means. There that German al-Masri is just kidnapped for a short time from the Balkans, dragged to Afghanistan, shut-in, interrogated, probably also tortured. The USA, the home of the "West" works with the same methods of the dark rogues of the Russian mafia."

Davids Medienkritik has no interest in debating the obvious: There clearly have been cases of torture, abuse and mistaken identity in the war on terror. We would openly concede that, at times, the Bush administration has dealt poorly and indecisively with these issues. But Mr. Guessgen's assertion that the United States and its leadership have no "consideration for principles of justice and international rights" is simply absurd and symptomatic of an ideological disconnect from reality.

To claim what he claims, Mr. Guessgen must have completely missed the intense and ongoing debate in the United States on civil rights, torture and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq that has permeated all levels of American media and politics since 2001. He must have completely missed the Senate's overwhelming 90-9 passage of John McCain's anti-torture bill and President Bush's recent decision to finally support the measure. He must have also completely missed recent statements by Condoleezza Rice on torture during her recent Europe visit. Mr. Guessgen's overwhelmingly one-sided statements further serve to confirm his disinterest in an honest, balanced and unbiased analysis of what is really happening in the United States today.

Guessgen: American Democratic Principles in a "Deep Freeze"

A second major theme of Guessgen's commentary is that the "George W. Bush's America" is a nation systematically violating democratic principles. Not surprisingly, Guessgen makes absolutely no mention of the emergence of democracy in Iraq and Afghanistan when he writes:

"Liberal Principles in a Deep Freeze
The America of George W. Bush (falsely) imagines itself to be in a state of war, both domestically and abroad. The feeling of threat therefore justifies all means - the liberal (democratic) principles, so it seems, have been put in a deep freeze for an indefinite period of time. The West, equally a mythical place and normative credo, threatens to break apart in this war waged in a total manner. Only now is it becoming clear that the German-American quarrel over the Iraq War was, independent of Chancellor Schroeder, a symptom of a fundamental conflict that could shape the transatlantic relationship for decades: The American state is acting in a systematically anti-liberal manner."

By "liberal" Mr. Guessgen means democratic in a manner consistent with individual rights. One has to wonder how he could claim the American state is acting systematically against democratic principles when it has secured democratic rights for over 50 million people formerly governed by horrific dictatorships? Few people would deny that the United States has made numerous mistakes in its efforts to defeat oppressive regimes and terrorist organizations in Afghanistan and Iraq, but where would the peoples of those nations be today had the world followed the "moral" leadership of the German left and simply stood by and done nothing? Where would the people of those nations have been in ten years or twenty or thirty? Where would their children be?

Obviously, Mr. Guessgen never considers such questions. Instead he simply characterizes recent American actions as "baseball bat democracy." He writes:

"Democracy not as a torch but instead as a Baseball bat
Presently the USA assumes a world, like Thomas Hobbes, that is dog eat dog. At the least the President views the state as a protective community that has been permanently empowered by its citizens to protect them with all means. The state a la Bush is a Hobbesian “Leviathan,” an all-powerful being whose mission cannot be infringed upon by secondary discussions of values. That Bush resembles the dark Lord Voldemort more than the white magician Dumbledore in this, that is calculated. The global mission of the Bush warriors, that consists of bringing the world democracy and the USA security is unavoidably taking on irrational fundamentalist characteristics in all of this. In the hands of George W. Bush democracy is not a torch, but instead a baseball bat.”

Baseball bat democracy? It would seem that Mr. Guessgen is unaware of the Bush administration's recent commitment of $15 billion to combat AIDS in Africa. It would seem that he missed America's extensive rescue and humanitarian efforts and enormous financial contributions on behalf of tsunami victims in East Asia earlier this year. It would seem he overlooked massive US airlifts of aid and monetary donations to victims of the recent earthquake in Pakistan and Afghanistan. It would seem he slept through recent democratic transformations in Ukraine, Lebanon, Kosovo and Bosnia that were vigorously supported by the US government both financially and logistically. It would seem he never heard of ongoing, multilateral US diplomatic efforts to peacefully resolve conflicts with both North Korea and Iran over their nuclear programs.

But here we must ask the question: How could someone not blinded by ideology have possibly missed all of these things?   

Americans According to Guessgen: Traumatized and Burning for Revenge

Guessgen concludes his article by suggesting that Germans take the moral high road and continue to "confidently extend a hand" to the American friends. He actually suggests Germans visit the US more through exchange programs to gain a better understanding of how "traumatized" Americans supposedly are. His final paragraph reads:

"Perhaps direct contact with the USA will help Europeans to also understand, how much the attacks of September 11, 2001 have changed the psyche of this land. America seems caught in a traumatic state, such as perhaps only relatives of murder victims experience. Pain and sadness are mixed with feelings of vulnerability. And to that is added a burning desire for vengeance, an anger against those who destroyed ones own life as it was earlier. Eye for an eye. Tooth for a tooth. America is currently making itself into the violent executor of this feeling. The Europeans must understand it, but they can not accept it."

It is striking how Mr. Guessgen paints all Americans and all Europeans with such a broad brush throughout his article. In blaming America for the supposedly widening transatlantic rift, Mr. Guessgen himself exemplifies many of the simplistic, black-and-white views of America that pollute the German media landscape. Like so many other elites in French and German media and politics, he seems to feel it his good right to speak on behalf of all Europeans without considering for even a moment that anyone within a thousand kilometers might possibly disagree with him. This overbearing arrogance so common in German and French high society is one major reason that several eastern European members of the EU remain so wary of the Franco-German partnership. It is this condescending arrogance of the left-wing German moral elite that must be understood...but not accepted.

"Stern" cover 51/05:
New Stern series:
The history of the CIA
How America's Power of
Darkness Manipulates the
World

(You can leave a message for Guessgen here. "Betreff" means "Re"; "Nachricht" means "Message"; "Senden" means "Send". You may want to send us a copy of your input...)

UPDATE: Mr. Guessgen noticed our article and published a response featuring translations of our work. We subsequently published a second piece of our own in reply.

Post Execution Media Reaction: The Death Penalty - Really a Wedge Issue?

(By Ray D.)

Majorities in USA and Europe Favor Saddam Execution

The recent results of a poll conducted by Novatris/Harris for the French daily Le Monde on the death penalty shocked the editors and writers at Germany's left-leaning SPIEGEL ONLINE. When asked whether they favored the death penalty for Saddam Hussein, a majority of respondents in Germany, France and Spain responded in the affirmative. Here the results by country:

Percentage of respondents in favor of executing Saddam Hussein:

USA: 82%
Great Britain: 69%
France: 58%
Germany: 53%
Spain: 51%
Italy: 46%

Clearly, there is a gap between the United States and the European nations polled. On the other hand, the western Europeans polled demonstrated that there is majority support for the death penalty in particular cases. In other words, the gap that exists across the Atlantic is not at all the clear-cut, "black-white" divide that some in media make it out to be.

Die Zeit: "The Europeans condemn the use of the death penalty" / Do they? The poll numbers above contradict that assumption.

Frankfurter Allgemeine: "President Bush praised the execution, from Europe came sharp criticism." / A tempting -and in the media oft used- opportunity to again pit "Europe" against Bush. A more intellectually honest headline would have pointed out that the majority of the criticism coming from "Europe" has emanated from a tiny media-political elite. The rest of society is evenly divided.

ZDF Heute Online: "Bush Welcomes Saddam's Execution - Criticism from Europe: Divided Reactions to Death Penalty: US President George W. Bush greeted the execution of Saddam Hussein as a milestone on the way to a democratic Iraq. In contrast, criticism came from European countries and human rights organizations - they reject the death penalty as a matter of principle." / ZDF is clearly attempting to create an "us versus them" - "Europe versus Bush and America" wedge issue out of the death penalty. This piece also totally ignores the opinions of the average German.

Deutsche Welle: "Europe condemns death penalty" / But what about the more than half the population in Germany and other European nations that does not condemn it in Saddam's case? Do they simply not matter? Do they somehow not exist for certain media-political elites? Why are their views systematically ignored?

Sueddeutsche published a piece entitled: "Worldwide Sharp Criticism of the Execution." The piece goes nation by nation and lists criticisms as if they represented the view of the entire country. It does not mention poll results that indicate majorities in many of the same countries actually favored Saddam's execution.

Other media outlets, including Financial Times Deutschland and even SPIEGEL ONLINE have actually treated the death penalty question as a debate instead of falsely claiming that an imaginary, monolithic "Europe" has "sharply criticized" Saddam's execution. Another major theme in most of the Western media is that Saddam's execution does not help Iraq - in other words, more of the usual pessimism.

Additionally, there has long been a heated debate on the death penalty in the United States. Several U.S. states do not legally permit executions or do not make (wide) use of them. From the mid 1960s to the mid 1980s, executions came to a near standstill in the United States, in part because of legal challenges which culminated in the Supreme Court's 1972 Furman vs. Georgia decision. Recently, a botched execution in Florida led Republican Governor Jeb Bush to suspend the death penalty as a federal judge in California imposed a moratorium halting executions in that state. 

Put another way: There is a lively debate on the death penalty on both sides of the Atlantic, with significant numbers and powerful factions on either side. Unfortunately, many in the German media have made death penalty out to be a divisive, "good versus evil" wedge issue. This stems in part from the transatlantic legal contrast: Most European nations have banned the death penalty while it remains legal in much of the United States.

The desire in influential segments of German media and society to reduce the death penalty to the level of a transatlantic wedge issue is also deeply rooted in another key factor: Ideology. The far-left in Germany is a political force to be reckoned with. Its representatives dominate wide swaths of the media, academia and certain political parties including the SPD, Greens and the PDS. Not only do representatives of the far-left reject the death penalty in all cases (putting them at odds with many ordinary Germans), they also oppose American-style free-market capitalism, smaller, less restrictive government, and the projection of American power in the world. This movement consists largely of an assortment of 68-radicals (including ex-Maoists, Leninists, RAF sympathizers, and your run-of-the mill Socialist demonstrators); ex-eastern-bloc-Communists; young people radicalized through academia, media and far-left political parties and movements; and out-and-out America-haters. Quite honestly, these folks would have rejected the execution of Hitler and Eichmann just as they reject the execution of Saddam. Ironically, they see the issue as a "black-and-white" - "with us or against us" issue. (Sound familiar?)

Nonetheless the death penalty remains contentious. Conservatives, libertarians and European Liberale, who traditionally favor a less powerful, less intrusive government, must ask themselves if they trust the state to determine who should live and who should die. Furthermore, they must consider whether the death penalty in the United States has become so legally contentious (filled with endless appeals, challenges and expenses) that it is practically (if not also ethically) questionable?

These are the debates that citizens on both sides of the Atlantic should be having with one another and not against one another, as many on the far-left would have it. The real "wedge", in this and many other cases, is not a transatlantic one. The real "wedge" is and has long been firmly lodged between the Angry left and the rest of society.

As the poll numbers above demonstrate, the peoples of the United States and Europe are not nearly as far apart on the death penalty as some would have us believe. Sadly, in a media culture that thrives on creating new controversies and divisions and exacerbating old ones (whether real or imagined) you might never know it.

UPDATE: Watch the full Saddam execution here:

A quick and painless death for a tyrant responsible for the murder and torture of so many.

UPDATE #2: Another poll conducted for the far-left publication stern confirms that significantly more Germans support the death penalty for Saddam than oppose it. The results of that poll:

In favor of executing Saddam: 50%
Against executing Saddam: 39%
Don't know: 11%

Stern graphic: "No Mercy for Saddam: Should the death penalty be enforced against Saddam Hussein?"

Stern may be a populist, trashy, anti-American media outlet, but they sure can put together a good graphic!

Roger Willemsen: Cold Pizza for an Innocent Man

Roger Keith Coleman went to the electric chair in 1992 for the brutal murder of Wanda McCoy, his wife's sister. McCoy in 1981 was raped, stabbed and nearly beheaded. Though Coleman never confessed to the crime, he was sentenced to death in 1982 based on the (strong) evidence available then. Through the years, Coleman - who steadfastly proclaimed his innocence - became the poster boy for the death penalty opposition. (story)

Now genetic testing on semen found in McCoy proved Coleman committed the crime:

DNA testing of a man executed in 1992 ordered by Virginia Gov. Mark R. Warner has confirmed that Roger Coleman was not only guilty of the murder and rape of his sister-in-law Wanda Fay McCoy, he was a liar until his last breath. ... According to the DNA lab report, "The probability that a randomly selected individual unrelated to Roger Coleman would coincidentally share the observed DNA profile is estimated to be 1 in 19 million." (source)

There were many who believed Coleman's lies, because they wanted to believe it. One shining example is Roger Willemsen, a prominent media person frequently present on German public tv channels. Here's his take at Coleman, in an interview published in amnesty international's German journal in January 2004:

Question: The battle against the death penalty is one of AI’s (Amnesty International) core concerns. Among other things, you held an interview with Roger Keith Coleman, who was confined to the death cell and executed.

Roger Willemsen: I’ll never forget that TV interview. I interviewed Coleman in the death cell via satellite link. It was important to our editorial staff that Coleman be allowed to speak so that people could understand his life circumstances. What he sees when he looks out the window, what photo stands on the table next to him, does he have access to his trial records and so on.

Coleman was subjected to every perversion of justice during the trial the likes of which we’d expect from Iran. Susan Sontag once said she was basically labeled a representative of the American alternative media because she opposed the death penalty. That’s all it took. We hoped for Coleman’s pardon to the last. On the evening of his execution, two of our editors were on location. They reported the gigantic media turnout and that they had to defend themselves from their colleagues’ attacks when it became known they were against the verdict.

Coleman wanted a pizza as his last meal. He gave one of the journalists a piece of this pizza. That’s how we found out the jailor had served the pizza extra cold. That’s one of the deeply barbaric little traits of the average man who sits at home with his family and decides to personally punish someone who’s been locked up in a death cell for 18 years - and who’s demonstrably innocent: he makes sure to let the guy’s pizza get cold.

Coleman’s fate occupies me very much to this day. I’ve written about it several times. For me literature is an ongoing appeal to the ability to empathize.

Can you imagine - such a nice chap being served cold (!!!) pizza on execution day?

Well, Mr. Willemsen, but how about a little empathy for the relatives of Mrs. McCoy, now that you know that Roger Coleman is guilty of murder? I mean, Roger Coleman already got all the empathy he deserved - a cold pizza for a cold blooded murder plus a free serving of electrocution.

(Translation of Willemsen quote by Richard Bartholomew)

Resources

German TV Priest: Saudi Arabia Morally Ahead of the U.S.

There is almost unanimous consent among German media that the death penalty for Tookie Williams reflects badly on the U.S., on California and on Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Occasionally things get a little out of hand...

On Saturday, Dec. 17, I watched in disgust the commentary of a Catholic priest on German public TV who favorably compared Saudi Arabia's (!) practice of the death penalty with that of the United States.

Clemency, so his conclusion, is a typical aspect of the Saudi's - and Islam's - handling of the death penalty, while the U.S. follows a merciless "eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth" approach.

And then, of course, our moral apostle made a reference to the country of absolute ethical superiority:

"We don't have to worry here (in Germany) about the death penalty, thank heavens."

The good priest should be reminded why "we" don't have to worry about the death penalty in Germany:

Contrasting their nation's policy with that of the Americans, Germans point proudly to Article 102 of their Basic Law, adopted in 1949. It reads, simply: "The death penalty is abolished." They often say that this 56-year-old provision shows how thoroughly the postwar Federal Republic has learned -- and applied -- the lessons of Nazi state-sponsored killing. (Communist East Germany kept the death penalty until 1987.)

But the actual history of the German death penalty ban casts this claim in a different light. Article 102 was in fact the brainchild of a right-wing politician who sympathized with convicted Nazi war criminals -- and sought to prevent their execution by British and American occupation authorities. Far from intending to repudiate the barbarism of Hitler, the author of Article 102 wanted to make a statement about the supposed excesses of Allied victors' justice.

The International War Crimes Tribunal at Nuremberg sentenced 11 top Nazis to death, all of whom were hanged in November 1946 except for Hermann Goering, who committed suicide. The Western Allies hanged or shot dozens of lesser-known war criminals -- including 284 at a U.S. Army prison in Landsberg between November 1945 and June 1951. Though SS men who had supervised death camps and massacred Jews were among the condemned, many Germans bristled at victors' justice. "The longer the executions went on," reports a town history on the Landsberg Civic Association's Web site, "the louder became the voices demanding an end to them. There was a broad political alliance in favor of clemency efforts." (Source / via Kosmoblog) (emphasis added)

Thank heavens?

I would like to add, as a personal opinion, that the German state was responsible - among other evils - for the gassing and slaughtering of millions of Jews, and it is therefore unconceivable in all eternity to again grant this state a right to put humans - even convicted killers - to death.

In terms of being in a moral position to judge other countries' practice of the death penalty, Germany ranks even below Saudi Arabia.

And that is quite an accomplishment...

Endnote: It seems that British leaders also failed to consider the advantages of clemency when it came to applying the death penalty to a certain ex-German leader...

SPIEGEL ONLINE: "Williams' Excruciatingly Long Death"

(By Ray D.)

SPIEGEL ONLINE today published another anti-death penalty propaganda piece on the Tookie Williams execution in California entitled "Execution in California: Williams' Excruciatingly Long Death." In SPIEGEL-LAND there is only one side of the story: Tookie Williams is a victim of America. And not surprisingly, SPIEGEL ONLINE makes absolutely no mention of Williams' brutal crimes in the piece.

One of our commenters hit the nail on the head when he wrote the following:

"Speaking of blunders, check out SPON's coverage of the Williams execution. I happen to oppose the death penalty myself, but somehow my opposition doesn't motivate me to peddle hate against other countries in the form of political tracts gussied up as "news." It boggles the mind that so many Germans can read such crude and thinly veiled propaganda day after day, and never smell the journalistic rats beneath the increasingly threadbare facade of "objectivity." If you read SPON's tear-jerking account of Williams' "long suffering before his death," and the final "Eklat," you'd think the man had been crucified. They couldn't instantly find a vein in his left arm! OMIGOD! Couldn't they have been merciful, and just burned the poor man at the stake? Contrast that with SPON's indifferent, unemotional, and brief reports about the Chinese villagers recently mowed down by the authorities in that country. If you can still look yourself in the mirror and claim you're being "objectively" informed, you must be brain dead. SPON finishes off its hit piece by implying that Williams was really innocent, and that is the only reference we see to the four innocent people he butchered in cold blood, people who posed absolutely no threat to him. Perhaps we should fill in some of the details for our "well-informed" SPON readers. Williams shot a young convenience store clerk twice in the back with a 12 gauge shotgun while he was lying face down on the floor. He then brutally executed an immigrant Chinese couple and their visiting daughter in the process of stealing less than $100. There is no credible doubt whatsoever that he was guilty of these murders. Guess you can't let a few mere murder victims get in the way of a good anti-American yarn."

Tookie Williams' "Excruciatingly Long Death"?

Perhaps SPIEGEL ONLINE forgot what an "excruciating" death is really like. It isn't having a couple needles placed in your arm and peacefully going to sleep forever. Let's get real. For an "excruciating" death, we need look no further than Tookie Williams' first victim, Albert Owens, who bled to death after being shot twice in the back at close range with a 12-gauge shotgun:

Why Won't SPIEGEL ONLINE Show This? Too "Excruciating"?

And if this picture isn't "excruciating" enough, here are a couple more of Williams' other victims. But hey, who are we to judge? The do-gooder media elite in Germany knows so much better than the rest of us what is right and what is wrong. So why should they mention the victims in this case? Blatant bias has become so common that no one even notices in Germany anymore. As long as the public gets its daily anti-Amerika fix, all is good.

And hey, it really doesn't matter that China and North Korea are executing innocent prisoners of conscience by the score every year. Or what about the fact that thousands of people have disappeared in Chechnya without ever having been accounted for? Isn't that a bit more troubling than the so-called CIA scandal? Guess not. After all, for the German media to really get upset about anything, it has to have an American angle.

Update 1: SPIEGEL ONLINE has published a second front-page piece on the Williams execution entitled, "Execution of "Tookie" Williams: "Self-Righteous State Organized Murder"". The article details how absolutely angry and furiously outraged Europe's moral elite is with the execution. In other news, German business ties with the Sudanese government are booming, thanks in part to direct support from the German government. Wonder how many black Africans the Sudanese government has executed of late? How "excruciating" was the death they suffered? Apparently not "excruciating" enough for the German media to care enough to report about its own government's dealings there...

Update 2: Pics of the demonstration outside the gates of San Quentin Prison on the evening of December 12, 2005. The loony Left is a world wide phenomena...