”Arbeitzpapiere bitte schon” = DLD = No Free Speech Allowed – No free ideas – No free Press – Police rules – Is it 2009 or 1939 today in Germany’s DLD? (DLD delivers a huge black eye to freedom of speech, journalism and blogging)
Arbeitzpapiere, bitte schon,
….. Eihre papieren bitte,
Ausweis ! ( Your papers – Your ID )
These were the words that violently assaulted my ears as I was pensively watching the second session of DLD in the Munich Hypo Bank atrium, yesterday. Next I felt the arm of the Law corraling me and grabbing my arm and jerking me upright from my chair. Suddenly aware, I asked the person pulling me, who he was. He told me that he was ‘Polizei’ security for DLD and that I should follow him quietly. I was advised to not make any fuss but to just walk. There were ten people, all security personnel, all in black shirts and omenous beefy Bavarian policeman shaved bullet heads in civilian clothes. They were looking sadistically at the dangerous wolf man they found in the midst of the ‘lambs’, attending the DLD.
Too stunned and jet lagged to offer any resistance, I quietly succumbed to their proper police ‘force majeur’ and allowed myself to be pushed away from the public areas where many friends and fellow bloggers were looking in horror…
I was pushed into shadowy hallways and back staircases all the while the Police men asking me rapid fire questions…
I was too stunned, too hurt, too humiliated to think anything but wanting to escape…
I was trying to figure out what have I done to deserve this? All the while thinking that it’s somehow my fault. I followed the path of self examination till they started interrogating me…properly in the dark emergency exit at the end of a metal staircase. Heavy handed police DLD security stuff…asking me all manners of personal questions.
Torture, I maintain in the last book I wrote about Freedom, is mostly psychological. You can find the book & download it here and read it in e-form, free with CC licence to reproduce: http://www.lulu.com/content/5199265 . I maintain that Rendering someone away from civil society and carrying the person away from friends and colleagues and interrogating him in the metal stairway as a criminal surounded by ten ‘Volpos’ is a heavy form of psychological torture. Especially when this is the last thing one expects in a supposedly enlightening and intellectual conference.
Asking me questions in the quiet way that only the German Polizei knows how to ask, due to long and rigorous practice especially developed in the glory days of the Reich can be rather unsettling. You know the look of them; shaved heads, sadist eyes, typical policemen beef cake blackshirts and all the while asking questions… in German sprinkled English
Being in effect arrested and then whisked away as a criminal infront of everybody, is a huge Humiliation. Painful to the core of one’s self esteem. Obviously I must have done something wrong… and was paying the price by being rendered from my civility, and kept in the dark hallway and interrogated. As you can imagine, all kinds of negative thoughts were coursing through my head.
Who knows what I confessed in that brief interrogation, to my tormentors? Maybe I had really tried to confess just in order to be liked and accepted by the interrogators as we all do. Especially those of us who have experienced the Chinese Police and their obscession with ”voluntary” self confessions. Something the German Police seems to want too.
Except I didn’t know what my crime was, so I couldn’t confess anything. Really.
Maybe sticking my chewing gum under the chair? Dropping the chewed gum in the spotless conference room? sneaking a drink in the atrium? Who the hell knows what was wrong. Since didn’t know what I did and the overwhelming show of force of the ten scowling Polizei men didn’t make any sense to me, I decided to just shut up. Then the young marketing co-organizer of DLD showed up and asked me some more questions. I answered politely.
He being human; I was able to ask him why was I arrested?
He said that it was the orders of the Chairman. The Middle Eastern old man chairman.
{I was stunned. I thought he was a friend. A benevolent old bear of a man with an excitement for technology and robotics… Obviously I was misteken. Maybe he is an angry friend. The best sort of possible explanations.}
I asked the organizer if the DLD just follows the orders of the Chairman without due course and examination?
He said : ”the Chairman’s orders are followed and that the Chairman was angry with me about something I had written”.
I asked him again. Does the DLD follow the Chairman’s orders like he was the Fuhrer?
He said that: ”the Chairman knows best and they simply obey his orders and execute”.
I asked him if the DLD shuts down free press, journos, free bloggers and the like and he said:
”The Chairman knows all that and what to do”.
Behaviour eerily reminiscent of last century’s ”follow the angry man” exit strategy of the German efficient business model of dealing with subhumans…
I put my head down like all other dissidents, the different ones, the Jews or others resigned to their fate…. and allowed to be led away…
But, it dawned on me then that my Blog writing caused me the troubles and that DLD wanted to remove the Dissident Blogger who wouldn’t conveniently write fawning adoring fluff and BS just to have a seat at the DLD table to receive some crumbs of….Crumbs of what? Business Opportunities? Entertainment? Silence in the face of a new Genocide? What is the price of admission? What is the cost of being an embedded blogger? Obviously too dear for me….
Maybe this blog piece is what got me into trouble: http://panokroko.wordpress.com/2009/01/17/inauguration-gift-to-president-obama-from-a-philopsopher-dear-obama-please-study-the-cyrus-the-great-middle-eastern-peace-plan-for-history-condemns-those-who-do-not-study-it-to-repeat-it-a-good/
Or it could be this one: http://panokroko.wordpress.com/2009/01/20/a-radically-peaceful-vision-of-islam/
Apparently the DLD doesn’t need an incovenient truth teller. No Free Press allowed here. No Blogger is allowed here who is not bought sealed and stamped as a favourite positive writer. No real journalists allowed here. No substance, no depth, no analysis of European Society’s functions and the impact of the Middle Eastern deals on the principles of the Carta and the Council of Europe decisions… None whatsoever. Only it’s business functions and it’s war , triumphalism, extreme right wing politics and fascist ideology.
”Arbeitzpapiere bitte schon” Sorry no dissident thought is allowed here.
So have decreed the Chairman and the DLD.
Indulge their Hybris in XXXL format, for the end is near. My advise to the independent journos and blogers : Eat dessert first, Life is uncertain. You never know when you will hear the words…”Arbeitzpapiere bitte schon”
The DLD prefer Quid Pro Quo, bloggers, that are willingly exchange a whole lot of kind airy fairy words for a seat and participation in the table of the rich and business powerful for crumbs. Nice fluffy words. GO see the adoring comments in the blogosphere…nobody except yours truly speaks of the Shadow side of DLD. And You know that all celestial objects do have a shadow side eh? Laws of physics. Nature being what it is, I happened to see and experience the darkest shadow side of the DLD. Lucky me.
DLD does offer this Munich junket to many bloggers so they have an army of official bloggers. People who will write convenient fawning fluff and post photographs and say how nice it was that we all were here and learned something stimulating in Munich and saw some technology dreams and even had Bavarian food and saw the fleshpots. Ah don’t forget, we ate pork snitchel, eaten by all Jews and non Jews alike as conference food is always Kosher.
And others will say that we made some business deals too… with some rather large German companies like Siemens etc.
Cool gig if you can get it or rather if your stomach doesn’t retch. I am a vegetarian you see…
That’s DLD. A business bazaar of the Middle Eastern variety. A bit of humus and falafel and a prom night for scores of Israeli engineers and software folks to dance with the German bears.
”Arbeitzpapiere, bitte schon, ….. Eihre papieren bitte, Ausweis”, The words that rendered me from my humanity, were the most sinister words many Jews and other dissidents heard before their papers were taken away and their humanity was rendered; almost seven decades before this flare up of fascism. You know another shadowy dark and infamous ‘Conference hall’ is the Dachau which is also in the city of Munich…The Gestapo police used those same words and immediately rendered the dissidents from civil Society and assigned them to the level of subhumans. These words are engraved in a chilling recess of the brain of anyone who has lost people in the Holocaust. Even if you don’t speak German their meaning is crystall clear. You are no human any more, You now belong to us.
In a short order, I was arrested, interrogated, and rendered from my humanity and my friends. The German Police then rendered from my person my DLD Press credentials and journalistic pass and removed from my body anything having to do with DLD, (wristbands, bag, neck tape etc). Then I was pushed into the street after being sternly advised that if I come close to DLD again I would be arrested and charged with criminal Tresspass. After the interrogation, they led me through the exit and I was then ‘thrown’ out on to the street in plain view of anyone participating in the conference, or my friendly bloggers, intellectual participants and international friends, coming and going… And to think the leaders of this conference had invited me and then issued me the Press Pass just so they can have me at their mercy… and interrogate me and my colleagues.
Really strange how militant the DLD is. But let’s backtrack a bit…
I had been invited to DLD by the nice German lady Stefi Gzerny (organizer) almost a year ago in a chance meeting in the lake of Kinneret. Sunday, I came to Munich and the DLD and went through a proper registration and was accreditation as a Journalist Blogger with a proper blue PRESS badge and assorted wristbands and elaborate tags. And only after elaborate checking of blogging Credentials, Passport and the like, through the efficient hyper-security conscious Polizei folks, I was let inside. This is worse than Davos. Only after all Ts were crossed and all Is were dotted did they allow me to be admitted into the hallowed halls of Hypo bank (recently saved from bankruptcy and acquired by the Italians), where the DLD holds their meetings.
I saw the opening ceremony and the ebulient Steffi talking about the DLD sense of family and the strong community they support among the people. I saw the self congratulatory Chairmen on stage kissing, and the adoration of the ‘Magi’ and then we witnessed the coolest ping pong paddle collective music making or rather tuning…by Itay to set us all in one vibe and to synchronize the great DLD family. That cool event was followed by the round table discussion about the economy. What else? You have to wait for that news and get it from the ”official bloggers” as I was immediately thereafter rendered from the great DLD family and community and was thrown away like another piece of trash. I was thrown like the rubbish outside of the clean German Consciousness.
So dear reader, I cannot tell You what other programmes DLD provided for the entertainment and education of the participants, but I can tell you a little about the secret deals that transpire between the German Business potentates and the Israeli security and war experts and the companies specializing in building war and apartheid or ‘anti-terror’ applications through well meaning technology engineers. Also those encrypted and ubiquitous communication systems and Telecommunications… All those start ups that the Chairman likes to invest into so much…
Advise to an old friend….You know the old adage still applies: If you build plowshares You shall have a harvest… but if you build swords you shall have war and harvest your young…. More than 400 children were killed in the last three weeks in Gaza and that is your young… being harvested. That is, if you consider yourself part of the human race, for they certainly were just human.
And the much obliging Germans find ways to monetize their Middle Eastern policy of strategic non-intervention with a well ”oiled” deal making machinery through their robust armament manufacture and their ‘security’ businesses. For DLD is all about that. It’s all about making deals. According to their advertisements, ”DLD is an inspiring community for the 21st century which features digital innovation, science and culture and brings together thought leaders, creators, entrepreneurs and investors from Europe, the Middle-East, the Americas and Asia”. Certainly a good mix of people to inspire business of the old now bancrupt set of values.
But what about Ethics?
Making dubious business deals with the potentate client state of the Middle East the Germans squander moral capital built over a half century and they help the Israelis do the same in their uneven quest for security. For the German technology tobe in service of the people of Israel and Palestine would be a different matter altogether. Different applications means to the different end users. Now, how the uber clean Siemens (local Munich engineering behemoth) and the Israeli financial and defense establishment solve Middle East’s problems together is anybody’s guess of the succesful partnership’s outcome. But the spent munitions in the battlefield are good news for the finance and the bursary or so the old arteriosclerotic gray heads reason. For the goodness that Siemens spreads around the Middle East and the globe see this: It’s not dissident’s blog, it’s Frontline of PBS: http://www.pbs.org/frontlineworld/blog/2008/12/siemens_bribery.html
We know for a fact that these Military Industrial complex partnerships don’t solve anybody’s problems but at least all these armaments sold to Israel keep the Siemens and other German company executive’s children clothed and shoed in comfort against the cold Bavarian winter. But these alliances made in D-ead-L-an-D, also maintain an incredible level of corruption in both Germany and Israel-Palestine. A corruption whose flare ups bring a humanitarian crisis and a hecatombe of death and destruction to the people. As Gaza freshly ruined and maimed, attests to. Israeli angry old men exersise their military might with German logistical support in arms and armaments and are ruining Palestine and taking away the lives of 1300 hundred people in this month alone. In a ”dark operation” from which journalists and bloggers also were denied any access same as the UN was denied access while the UN facilities and schools were bombed wholesale. That’s the kind of Business that happens in the dark. Now they’ve taken that business dark model and they bring it to EU and Germany. Maybe the DLD folk are too happy to oblige the Chairman and thus revert to their own dark nature, but I hope that the young people of Europe who work there are just hopeful freeedom and peace lovers and in no way these Police state actions represent them…
After all I would like to remind the Chairman and the DLD leadership, that this is not Gaza. This is Europe and it’s not 1939 but the 2009. Maybe they need to clean their clocks.
And while I am quietly sitting alone in the chair pensively watching the Global Challenges discussion from representatives of the usual companies (Lufthansa, Henkel, Ernst and Young, GE, Deutsche Post, Merck and the CNBC; that is where the very real physical analog nightmare begins for me, courtesy of digital conference DLD.
Because apparently the Middle Eastern Chairman found out, ( horror of horrors) that I was in the hallowed halls of DLD, in the midst of the innocents and I might corrupt them with fresh air ideas…
And when the Chairman found out I was there, he got angry… Steaming angry, blood pumping, stroke inducing angry, angry against me ?against my writings? Who knows? Angry at the world for losing his extreme wealth in the common cause crash we all experience? Who knows?But angry he was at the world for losing the little battle of seeing a Free Spirit in the midst of docile faces, morally frozen engineers and business people and disinterested technology dream gurus and tech dream bazaar sellers.
But angry as he was, he didn’t take counsel or take a walk nor did he count to ‘ten time ten’ and of course he doesn’t believe in anger management. So he did what all angry old men of the Middle East do and he sicked the dogs onto me. He sent the Gestapo like Polizei to arrest me, interrogate me and remove me. Talk about self restraint and wisdom in action…
Who knows what threat he said that I represent?
Was he afraid that I would scream ”Free Palestine” in the halls? He knows me for far too long to know this is not my way. I am a Philosopher writer. I use Dialectics for my statements… not anger.
I even invited him to exchange ideas. But no, He is the Chairman. He chooses anger and sends off the ‘Volpo’ DLD minions to indulge in violence and over reacting. Guess when you only have a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
He decided to save his business flock from the polluting mind of a dangerous and inconvenient man…. Anger swelled his chest and he sprang into action. Or rather as he is a Middle Eastern old man, he sent the Police into action and the obedient obtuse DLD youngsters obeyed blindly just like in 1938. The Chairman couldn’t engage me in dialogue and reconciliation as friends, but instead he hammered me.
Ouch….
Anger and overreacting is what the Israeli state leaders only do too well. Angry Middle Eastern men throw their military weight around and send the air force and the army when the Palestinians throw ‘firecrackers’ over the giant wall…
The Red Indians of the Middle East are so inconvenient. They elected democratically that inconvenient government that nobody outside of Palestine likes… and it was just worth it for the angry old men to go on ‘shooting them like fish in the barrel’ and slaughtering 1300 hundred mostly women and children. When you just have hammers, all problems look like nails.
My simple advise: If you want Peace, Stop investing in hammers, and dont see problems or challenges like nails and Peace will somehow materialize through dialogue and honest discourse. Justice needs to be applied too.
If the British army and RAF were going to bomb the shite out of the Irish militant factions; or even the Arsenal hooligan fans every time they threw ‘firecracker’ rockets at the opposing fans, then they would be doing the same violence against their own people, that the state of Israel is engaged into. Maybe they should hire the Chairman as an advisor on how to deal with their inconvenient family and friends, community and citizens. Arrest and Expel the lot of the inconvenient dissidents.
Better yet; Why not built a huge security wall around Liverpool? That will teach them to respect the security needs of London, the visiting tourists, the settlers and the prosperous South. Hell why stop there. Just enclose in a fence all of East End and patrol it with drone aircraft with pinpoint surgical strike capabilities. At least this would save us from the awful East Enders endless telly rubbish shows.
Similarly if the British air force and army were bombing the Irish civilians everytime the IRA exploded a bomb in London, then the Peace accords of Good Friday would never have happened and the war would have gone on for another hundred years of bloodletting. But they didn’t follow Israel’s and Germany’s financed weapons technology techniques and they found a just and fair solution to co-exist. It was all done on a random Good Friday and it shows the upside when you take angry old men out of the Equation of peace. The ”Belfast Peace Agreement” was ratified by the overwhelming majority of the Irish people. Both IRA Republicans and Unionists and the two governments of GB and IRE participated and found a way to Peace. This can be a roadmap for the Middle East too. {Mr Chairman- Only if you can manage to leave your anger at the door}.
The only real security Israel and all of us have as the only way to protect ourselves from the violence which may and probably will be visited upon us, is to deal, morally, courageously and justly, with the tragedy that is Palestine and Gaza…
And this simple thing, we refuse to do.
What would it take to engage in ”Good Friday Peace Talks” in Israel? What is the cost? Open talks transparent and fully representative of the elected parties and governments. That is the only real cost that the angry old men of Middle East do not want. It was a new young generation of leaders that saved Northern Ireland from further destruction. And sharing the wealth and the investments equitably. How many investments any DLD participant has made in Peace and in Palestine specifically inside the ’wrong’ side of the wall? How many Palestinians have ever been invited to DLD? Arabs? From the occupied territories? From Gaza?
If we don’t invest in Gaza how do we expect prosperity to spread? How do we expect people to invest in their land so peace will earn the hearts of the people and allow them to believe in the future. If we keep removing the hope from the Palestinians then we only have ourselves to blame for what happens. I suspect that is the reason the Chairman doesn’t want me to be at DLD…
The Chairman likes the Status Quo too well. It’s good for business and fabulous for technology investments. Even now that the valuations of early stage companies are like a ‘falling knife’, it’s good to delude oneself…
Sadly the other angry old men of the Middle East want this hateful status Quo to continue, in a grotesque comedy of errors best described by Art. Art like the installation piece of a London artist that has set a ‘cloud swarm’ of geriatric Middle Eastern leaders cruising the basement of the Saatchi gallery in their wheelchairs in continuous motion. Proximity sensors and swarm software allow them to endlessly bump into each other, like some alzheimer’s ‘bumber cars.’ They are bumping into each other at will before they continue on again on a strange continuous collision course . It is on an autopilot program like the Middle East is on for the last fifty years: http://blogs.abcnews.com/.shared/image.html?/photos/uncategorized/2008/10/10/ap_saatchi_3_081009_main_2.jpg
But I wonder what the Chairman told the easily hood-winkled obedient German executives of DLD to motivate such action in the chain of command? Those savy Media types must have smelt the rat. I would like to find out if any of the bloggers staying on at DLD has the guts and the love of free speech to share with us all…
I know several friends and bloggers who were ”interviewed” by the DLD police after having been seen with me, and that the bloggers hanging with me prior of my arrest, detention, interrogation, and expulsion all were asked sinister questions about me. Why?
Is it to intimidate them from writing anything about this, or to instill the DLD fear and the powerful Chairman’s fear into them? I don’t believe bloggers are that esasily intimidated… but then again they might prove me wrong.
Strange behaviour for a conference devoted to inquiry of what is possible…. ? Yes the answer is in. A police state at the DLD conference is possible. So prepare yourselves for the inevitable words: ”Arbeitzpapiere bitte schon”. Either in Munich or elsewhere in the synthetic terror and Loss of Freedom world.
Because today is me who is arrested and expelled. Thrown out as a representative of Free Press. And it is a dutiful job we do when we wear our Blogger hat on. We work in company with all the great public service journalists and social bloggers.
So today is me but tomorrow is gonna be You. And that includes all the ‘friendly bloggers’ who kept a 30 foot ”Radiation belt” distance from me while I was being ”interviewed” by the DLD Police. Notable exceptions are the gutsy and refreshingly irreverent Pulver and Julio. They didn’t succumb to the fear that the Chairman cast like a scruffy Darth Vader and they don’t care about being invited again to DLD. Bravo to their Courage. We need more of You.
I debated about telling my shameful story of DLD fascist tactics and of one Yossi Vardi the Chairman and his misguided anger. Much like all the old men of the Middle East, he is ruled by fear and anger. All DLD old men were exceedingly angry over the economic colapse and their new status as poor businessmen. But I believe there are grander plays at work. Notably Palestine and Israel’s dashed Peace hopes and the fact that there are no Random events but all are interconnected as we all are too.
I delayed blogging or saying anything about the DLD nasties, untill a friend blogger pushed and pushed reminding me, this is Europe and not Gaza. But I still resisted because I value my Peace and prefer to leave old angry men to deal with their anger in their calcified state without additional attention.
But one needs to speak for the hope that the future will change. Anger needs to be replaced with Hope. We should mirror all that is good in the world ans as we see Obama giving hope to the US and the world, many in the Middle East and in arteriosclerotic circles of power will demand change knowing what is possible. And am a good mirror for the other ones too. So it’s an obligation to all bloggers that I had to discharge my duty to truth… But still knowing how vengeful angry and powerful Middle Eastern old men fully connected with the other old men of Europe; can be, I held my tongue.
But finally took counsel of a great poet: “He that holds his peace is wise, but he that speaks, speaks not for his own time.” R. M. Rilke
Yours,
Pano
PS: It was the last DLD big party at the Kunst hall and as I happen to pass by, I, the ”Persona Non Grata”, saw the organizers walking towards the DLD party Entrance carrying wooden flaming torches in pairs, forming a snaking progressing line… And as they walked in the dark, my visual imagination and the fresh nasty experiences at their hands, made them look sinister, like the Kristallnacht Storm troops converging in for an orgy of what???
Same as we see in the period movies. Where will all this lead?
Ying and Yang in the year of the Ox…
PS2: For I also happen to know, that there is a ”white Rose movement” tradition in Munich to say the Truth. Tell the truth, even if the costs are too heavy to bear. In 1943 some 16 young German university students were guillotined in Munich for telling their truth. ”I lay no claim to age and experience but above and beyond the flickering blaze of my youthful soul, I sometimes detect the eternal breath of Something Infinitely Great and Serene. God. Fate. …” Last testament of Hans & Sophia Scholl before they had theirheads chopped off in 1943
And then there is the local dissident Rupert Mayer, who spoke his truth, even when ordered to do otherwise. But its Rupert Mayer’s metal breast plate that all upright Munich citizens touch and they get positive energy to carry on doing the right thing. So did I, to find the inspiration to talk about this not in anger but in the hope that the DLD will improve in the future. And to hope that many positive consequences shall come out of it… especially for the Chairman and his people. For he is a product of the Middle East. And it is this Middle East that is a landscape of violence ruled by monsters, that we in the West have long supported. Although criticism of any kind is at best a dodgy undertaking… I shall pray for himand his people.
But can’t there be a small sermon of Reprobation? Not criticism, but positive reprobation, for those leaders going on to Davos… :
Please consider these words above business deals. Focus not on business deals but ‘Feed the People deals’ That should be the big Davos question this year. For I am afraid I will not be joining You to Davos this year for the Chairman’s anger is red hot and his reach is long and the WEF folks are even more obedient to security concerns against Free Speech…
Anyways, Iwant no more conflict…
I am a lover not a fighter.
Arbeitzpapiere, bitte schon… Eihre papieren bitte, Ausweis ! Your Papers please. Vos papiers, Monsieur…
So take my words with You:
Feed the People deals are far more important for all your tomorrows.
For this is a sermon… after all.
