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Weekly Review: Vladimir Putin and Jiang Zemin swing by for photo ops and dealmaking. Also: Popular German movies you've probably never heard of.

Since September 11, meetings among world leaders have been dominated by a set of related topics, all discussed in an atmosphere of crisis: international terrorism, war in Afghanistan, an impending attack on Iraq, and of course, the deadly clashes between Israelis and Palestinians. German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder and Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer have floated a plan for peace in Middle East and 25,000 Palestinians and German sympathizers marched this weekend in German cities, but almost as if to formally recognize their helplessness (see Impotent Bystanders, when the leaders of Russia and China visited last week, it was pretty much back to business as usual.

While China may figure more prominently in Germany's economic future, Vladimir Putin and Gerhard Schröder were a lot cozier. Putin, once a KGB operative in Dresden, speaks German and knows the country well. The two leaders have met 11 times in the last two years and, five months away from national elections, Schröder staged a media coup when the two informally chatted it up together on a popular talk show. A Berliner Zeitung cartoon set the stage for the two-ring circus well: In the background, Schröder and Putin greet each other with hugs and kisses; in the foreground, a jilted-looking Jiang Zemin grumbles, "He didn't kiss me."

But Jiang's entourage made it hard to warm up to the guy. He sealed a deal with Volkswagen, extending the company's contract by another 20 years, but all that had been prearranged. He gave a speech announcing that, with 1.2 billion people, China is "the world's largest developing country," but that was hardly news. German captains of industry have been drooling over that burgeoning market for years. Otherwise, it was mostly visits to museums in Dresden, photo ops at Sanssouci in Potsdam and a strict avoidance of any demonstrations. German President Johannes Rau says he brought up the issue of human rights but didn't dwell on it.

Schröder didn't dwell on the topic of Chechnya with his pal Putin, either. Instead, they had business to take care of, specifically, a complex and prickly outstanding debt. Briefly, back before the Wall fell, the USSR dealt with its satellites in "transfer rubles," the value of which was always hard to determine once it floated away from the gold standard in 1971. Germany's always insisted that Russia owes it billions of them, perhaps 1.4 billion euros worth. But Putin argued that, you know, technically, that figure is based on deals between two nations that no longer exist, the Soviet Union and the German Democratic Republic.

So the Germans have settled on Russian payments totaling 500 million euros, a fraction of its original claim, a gesture between friends. Let bygones be bygones.

Naturally, the wars raging around the world, declared and undeclared, ongoing or threatened, warranted at least lip service. Let it be known far and wide that the Russians, Chinese and Germans all agree that international terrorism is a bad thing and must be stopped. Putin and Schröder did at least get a tad more specific when it came to the issue of Iraq. Weapons inspectors must be allowed in, but the international coalition insisting on them must also be held together. Decoded message to the US: We know you're going to do whatever the hell you want, but please, at least do us the courtesy of pretending to have consulted us first.

In Telepolis

Hans-Arthur Marsiske files a fun story on robots playing soccer. Why? "Because, as with humans, playing soccer teaches robots the lessons of life. In the sportsman-like battle for the ball, they train their cooperative abilities as a team, test their sensors, their motors and software and make themselves fit for everyday challenges." Check the Robocup site for more info and the final results from the German Open that wrapped up this weekend.

Following Torsten Kleinz's report that the European Parliament is slowly coming out against blocking Web sites as a means of keeping its citizens from information and opinions it disapproves of, Florian Rötzer covers a skirmish between opposing cultures with similar sites. The Chaostage, or "Days of Chaos," are by now practically an ancient custom in Germany, an annual ritual. Born eons ago in the era of punk, people with odd hair and tight pants converge on a city and raise heck.

This year, the chosen setting is Munich. The Initiative for Free Media decided to build an informative site with Chaostage news in more or less the shape and form of the site for the Christian Social Union, headed by arch-conservative Edmund Stoiber, currently in pursuit of Chancellor Schröder's job. But the CSU didn't like that one bit, threatened to take legal action and hand the Initiative its lawyer bills. So the satirical site was dropped. "The little Davids have a tough time up against the Goliaths of this world," writes Rötzer. "Even in the land where laptops are somehow supposedly associated with lederhosen."

In English

Ashley Benigno is amused but unimpressed by the new trends in business: love and ethics.

Germany has proposed that the EU adopt its computerized profiling methods to nab terrorists, reports Jelle van Buuren.

Elsewhere

Think of German cinema and you're likely to think of the two periods in which it soared: the Weimar era, the days of Lubitsch, Lang, Murnau and the like, and the New German Cinema of Fassbinder, Herzog and such. But a three-week-long series at the Film Society of Lincoln Center in NYC called "After the War, Before the Wall: German Cinema, 1945-60" highlights the in-between years, a period in which homegrown cinema was actually at its most popular among Germans. Scan the program notes and two titillating overviews from The Village Voice and The New York Times.

Sadly (but not surprisingly) missing from the program is the 1959 horror flick Der Nackte und der Satan, directed by Victor Trivas (who wrote the screenplay for Welles's The Stranger), with sets by Hermann Warm (set designer for Das Kabinett des Doktor Caligari). In Kinoeye, David Del Valle revisits this classic of head transplants "inflected by the central myth of German culture: the Faustian pact."

Speaking of Caligari, the often brilliant Robert Wilson has staged something in Berlin under the name, though it turns out, as Andreas Kilb writes in the FAZ, imagery from a broad selection of early German films has gone into the soup.

Business 2.0's Eric Hellweg has some advice for Bertelsmann: "Throwing more money at Napster just doesn't seem like a winning proposition."

All electrical appliances in the EU will have to be recycled if the European Parliament gets its way. Story from Reuters.

Finally, hardly a single British paper hasn't had a good snicker over the crucial question, Does Gerhard Schröder dye his hair? But the BBC goes all out with a story, a video report and a discussion forum.