It was a strange day on the German-French border near Strasburg. I entered the city just a few hours after Barack had shaken hands with Angie and Nicolas on the nearby bridge joining the two countries.. Barack and his 20 some NATO partners walked across the bridge over the Rhine and were greeted by a friendly handshake by the smiling French prime minister, Nicolas Sarkozy. I marched with about 5000 peaceful protestors to the banks of the Rhine and was greeted by a wall of German police. Unlike my compatriot Barack I wasn’t even allowed to step foot on the bridge. No friendly handshakes either. All I got were stone-faced stares from big, green policemen with big, white helmets.
It was an eery welcome I received. The bus I was on entered the border town of Kehl around 11 in the morning. The city was like a ghost town. The streets were lined with barricades, police buses were everywhere, small groups of demonstrators began to appear. Even though it was Saturday morning, the stores were all closed, the parking lots empty, the streets occupied only by police cars, police buses and police trucks. It’s a small city with a population of about 30,000 but there wasn’t a soul to be seen. It actually reminded me of the border region (or no-man’s land) between East and West Germany before the fall of the Berlin Wall.
Our march of about 10,000 peaceniks made it to the Rhine bridge but not one centimeter further. The police blocked our entrance to the bridge and after seeing the dark smoke rising from the French side of the bridge I was certain they were not going to let us cross. As I’ve heard on the news there were violent riots in Strassburg, culminating in a hotel being set on fire. The German news only picked up on the violent protestors. I thinks this is again a lesson to the peace movement that we should not pay attention to how the news media reports on our events. We have to continue the struggle, unite and mobilize.
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I didn't get that impression from the German news. At least what I heard on Deutschlandfunk this morning and what I saw on TV last night, they mentioned and showed the violence, but gave more time and emphasis and voice to the main crowd and mentioned how a few had spoiled it for the majority.
My criticism is that there isn't much substantive reporting on the actual issues. They let a few protesters say a few words into some microphones and show a few clips from speeches and the photo ops and the honor guards (and the tabloid news about Michelle's wardrobe and who hugged the queen got into the mainstream coverage as well), but don't spend a lot of air time on what NATO does or doesn't do, why we need it or don't need it, etc.
I am ambivalent about NATO. I watched Noam Chomsky talk about it on Democracy Now and certainly some of his points are valid. And at least he is talking about the core issues. But I frankly see a need for collective security in some contexts. I have complete sympathy with the Baltic states, for example. Their fear of Russia is completely understandable and I support our support of them. Maybe NATO isn't the right tool for that purpose, but at least it does serve that purpose in lieu of anything else at the moment.
Mark H.
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