Like Another World
By Mitch Berg
It’s interesting, sometimes, to look into foreign media to see what the rest of the world is thinking. I read German pretty fluently (and get around in Dutch modestly well), so that’s where I gravitate.
And it can be kinda scary at times.
Via Davids Medienkritik, this piece from Handelsblatt, a sort of left-leaning German Wall Street Journal, is kind of enlightening:
The USA is putting firms under massive pressure worldwide to stop doing business with Iran. With that economic isolation they want to force the country to stop its controversial atomic program. Especially German firms are hard hit by that, indeed they traditionally do good business in the region. The latest case comes from the banking world.
BERLIN. After massive pressure from the USA, Commerzbank has now announced that it will end its processing of dollar-business for Iran at the end of January. Commerzbank boss Klaus-Peter Mueller has already publicly complained about the pressure from the Americans in his position as President of the Federal Union of German Banks.”
David – as solid a critic of the German media as there is – notes:
The article almost makes it sound as if the United States is to blame for Iran’s pursuit of nuclear weapons. There is absolutely no hint that it might be wrong or unethical to trade with (and financially prop-up) Iran or other violent dictatorships/state-sponsors of terrorism. This despite the fact that Iranian President Ahmadinejad has repeatedly stated that Israel should be wiped off the map and that the Holocaust is a myth. There is also no mention of Iran’s support of Hezbollah nor does Handelsblatt mention the country’s bleak human rights record. Instead, America is made out to be the bad guy while Ahmadinejad gets a free pass. One honestly has to ask, where are the German concepts of fair trade and economic and social justice in all of this? Where are the traditional objections to profiteering and capitalist excess?
Read the whole thing.
