Tag: BlairsvilleBaptistChurch

Mr. Paris would have liked it

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From my Writing Room
Copyright © 2022 by Uwe Bahr

It was reported that in Georgia, Union County’s sole commissioner Lamar Paris contracted the coronavirus. That’s unfortunate. As probably the sole German citizen in Union County to whom the thought of acquiring property here, of all places, has occurred, I take this opportunity to wish him a speedy recovery.

However, the senior civil servant may not care much about recovery wishes from such a side. Already in the past, he saw no need to respond to a request sent to him by e-mail from the alien German. This question was simply in reference to the use of tax dollars for a proposed shooting range that apparently has not been completed to date and wastes tax dollars from just about every resident.

Can Mr. Paris do pretty much whatever he wants? It is not for me to question his performance, and certainly he did not invent the system of his own one-man show. But in fact, in that regard, he is someone who is quick to have the boardroom cleared as soon as there is too much opposition to him. When I hear something like that, dark memories come back to me.

As an old political observer on both sides of the Atlantic, it is a complete mystery to me how somebody like Mr. Paris can function in a democratic sense of pluralism. As a contemporary witness, I saw a lot of the “socialist” dictatorship in the German Democratic Republic (GDR; back then elsewhere commonly called “East Germany”) during the Cold War – a state that was anything but democratic and consequently not a Republic. There, too, – in a dictatorship it must be remembered – a district commission existed, consisting of several members though, unlike today in Union County. They “voted” on everything possible, but usually these votes ended unanimously, for only one party controlled everything. Such an institution could certainly not be called democratic.

In the United States of America, still a Republic and allegedly the freest country in the world, it seems outlandish when a single person in public service can de facto say: The party, that’s me. Moreover, according to malicious tongues, Mr. Paris has claimed to be the only one who is up to the task. Somebody like a modern Jesus, in other words.

Self-praise stinks from heaven, says an old German proverb. For Paris pats himself on the back and thus feeds the suspicion of seeing himself as an irreplaceable autocrat, an impression that may or may not be justified.

How things resemble each other – one should not even think it possible. In the GDR, the dictatorship in which I was born and grew up, the comrades cheered each other on. Their party held all the power. They thought themselves infallible. I have the unpleasant and hopefully false feeling that Mr. Paris would have liked that.

Pathological Madness

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From my Writing Room
Copyright © 2022 by Uwe Bahr

Just another mass shooting, only days after Uvalde, and they wonder again and pray. Constantly repeating phrases can be heard: “Tragic has befallen our community”, and “Our prayers are with the families.”

For those who impartially stick to facts, the main reason for gun violence in this Christian country is a morbid mania for guns rather than a tragedy. The U.S. is a violent country where residents are already afraid to make a doctor’s appointment, go shopping, or attend school. Almost as narrow-minded as the Christian pro-life gun nuts are those opponents of abortion who call for stricter gun laws out of sheer hypocrisy or helplessness. Hypocrisy – because they either cannot move from their traditional, right-wing Republican viewpoint or – at a higher level – fear for their re-election if they question the Second Amendment, which gave people no legal right to bear arms in 1791. The latter is a historical fact, but the unteachable do not concern themselves with the history of their own country.

400 million guns are privately owned in the U.S., more than the country’s population. How many more do they need? If more guns make for more security, then the Land of the Free and the Brave should be the safest country in the world, right? Compared to any other advanced country, the exact opposite is the case. This is also proven.

How sick must man be not to be able to recognize this? Praying does not help and has never helped, except in the imagination of people. For the dear God to whom they pray cannot hear them. It’s going to happen again.

European Energy Trap

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The original failure is not the energy dependence of Europeans from Russia

From my Writing Room
Copyright © 2022 by Uwe Bahr

One can imagine how the situation would be now with an American president Donald Trump. Someone in Moscow would rub their hands, and the unity in the appearance of the Europeans would hardly be as determined as it is at present. Hopefully, politicians from Brussels to Berlin and London to Paris remember in this hour that already the next president of the United States might not be a transatlantic friend like Joe Biden.

While his approval rating is dropping dangerously at home, Biden can score points abroad and improve the U.S.’s international standing. But that doesn’t sit well with many of his compatriots, who think along the lines of “America first” and thus in reality support autocratic aspirations – a dangerous path that Trump had already led the U.S. down. Biden’s increasing unpopularity is unlikely to change due to the fact that the Europeans now actually want to buy environmentally harmful fracking gas from overseas.

It is hard to understand why ludicrous sanctions exist against Russian private citizens while the real lever that helps finance Putin’s war on Ukraine is left untouched. Germany, for example – according to Robert Habeck (Alliance 90/The Greens), Federal Minister of Economics and Climate Protection, – is still dependent on Russian natural gas until mid-2024 and is using this argument as justification to continue trading with Russia. A unified and convincing policy against Putin looks different, who now wants the natural gas to be paid for in rubles. Perhaps Germany will experience its decisive showdown next week, when one of the two sides will have to relent. So far, it is hard to imagine that Putin will give in.

A loss of Russian gas supplies would have a devastating impact not only on the German economy and most private households, but also on the entire European market. For the announced gas supplies from America can only cover ten percent of Europe’s demand in the short term.

There has long been criticism that Germany and Europe have become too dependent on Russia, and now we are seeing the consequences. But Germany’s energy agreements – given the country’s long and guilt-laden history with Russia – were seen not least as a guarantee of mutual trust by building reciprocal dependencies. It was assumed that the Russians would have no interest in completely throwing themselves over with us if they themselves have advantages through economic cooperation.

The project has failed. But how to solve the world’s problems without a giant country like Russia? Russia cannot be downgraded or dissolved. Isolated, it would be a constant threat to world peace.

The long-term mistakes were not made in the energy sector, but in geostrategic matters. The West, under U.S. leadership, has not made consistent efforts since the 1990s to integrate Russia into security structures while providing security guarantees to bordering countries without integrating them into NATO and thus not cornering Russia.

From the very beginning there have been no serious efforts to transform the former Soviet Union into a partner after its disintegration. If this had happened, even in America today hardly anyone would be talking about Europeans’ energy dependence on Russia.

German State Secretary: Refugees across the Atlantic as well

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From my Writing Room
Copyright © 2022 by Uwe Bahr

Visiting a shelter for Ukrainian refugees today in Hannover, Lower Saxony, German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock (Greens) said every country in Europe must take in refugees. She added: “We must also bring people across the Atlantic.” Given the dramatic situation in Germany and the economic capability of the countries on the American continent, she could only have meant Canada and the USA.

The German Foreign Minister’s demand is more than justified. The refugees from Ukraine are clearly an overall responsibility of the West due to its misguided policies towards Russia in the 1990’s. In concrete terms, this means that all NATO countries should be required to accept refugees from Ukraine, as the Alliance as a whole has been moving its external border closer and closer to Russia since 1999, thereby unnecessarily provoking the country. Of course, this does not entitle Russia to the war in which it is now bogged down. But the disintegrating Soviet Union should have been treated more carefully by the West, instead of pushing it into the corner of a possibly Asian peripheral power via the American Wolfowitz Doctrine.

Germany’s Secretary of State Annalena Baerbock (Alliance 90/The Greens).

In the meantime, it has almost been forgotten that in 1990 there were even brief considerations of admitting the Soviet Union to NATO.

At that time, there were many opportunities to integrate Russia into European security structures based on reciprocity. These opportunities have been punitively squandered. A prudent policy by the West would have made this bonding possible under the acceptance not to impose Western-style democracy on Russia. Anyone who was able to observe the political upheavals in Eastern Europe at the end of the 1980’s from close quarters knows that this is true.

Now the European Union expects ten million refugees from Ukraine – that would be a quarter of the country’s entire population. This represents an enormous social burden and at the same time an opportunity for the entire West, including the U.S., to show its true Christian commitment.

Only China can make Putin see Reason

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From my Writing Room
Copyright © 2022 by Uwe Bahr

Putin will never succeed in bringing all of Ukraine under his control. I am sure that is not his intention either. Contrary to Western assumptions, the man is not a lunatic, far from it – he knows how to play his cards. He is a Machiavellian. Therefore, he also knows what could exceed the forces of his country.

If anyone at all can mediate in this conflict, it is not the Americans, and certainly not the Europeans. Europeans no longer play any role at all in the big decisions. China – to the detriment of the USA – has the decisive key role to play. If Putin listens to anyone at all, it is Chinese leader Xi Jinping. For the same reason, all channels of communication with Putin must be kept open if the war in Ukraine is to be ended as quickly as possible. As things stand, there will be no other way.

Even then, Putin is unlikely to back down from his demands: Recognition of Crimea as Russian territory, the same for the Donbass, but above all: a guarantee by the West of Ukraine’s neutrality. If peace is wanted – and this peace must come – then this is the price that the West will have to pay for its reckless policy of hubris toward Russia.

The only other possibility would be to bring Russia to its knees militarily or, in the end, even economically. Neither seems very realistic, as Biden’s “no” vote on fighter jets from Poland for Ukraine underscores. It would provoke Russia even more with devastating consequences for the whole of Europe. Here, the West is already showing signs of giving in. And the more the West fights Russia with sanctions, the more it brings the majority of patriotic Russians to Putin’s side.

Even the pictures of protests in Moscow do not change that. For more than a generation, the majority of Russians have wondered what the country actually fought for and won in World War II – only to lose so much again afterwards under its own concession. One has to put oneself in this position of Russian patriots – of a country which was, after all, allied with the USA in the last Great War. All this is directly related to the war in Ukraine.

The other victorious nation, the United States, after the destruction of Hitler’s Germany and with far fewer casualties than the Soviet Union, did not shrink a square inch, did not lose power, although it too has since instigated unjust wars in other parts of the world.

Cui Bono – to whom is it a benefit?

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How the West provoked the Russian Bear

From my Writing Room
Copyright © 2022 by Uwe Bahr

An old Latin phrase goes: “Cui bono?”, which translates roughly as “to whom is it a benefit?” This, it seems, is a conclusion according to which everyone twists his own version of history (or simply omits facts), and as a result only comes to light how much the blusterers like to measure things with double standards: When two do the same thing, it is far from being the same.

The omission of facts has served the West as a justification to blame the other not only since these days. What made U.S. President Barack Obama, of all people, not only insult Russia but throw stones in his own glass house during the 2014 Nuclear Security Summit in The Hague? The quote is worthwhile because it shows how arrogantly, negligently and immoderately the USA and Europe – the occasion was the Russian invasion of Crimea – railed against Russia. Obama said at the time, “Russia is a regional power that threatens some of its immediate neighbors … We [he meant his own country] do not need to invade our neighbors in order to have a strong, cooperative relationship with them.”

Pardon me?

Who else should the U.S. have attacked as neighbors after the way had been “paved” for westward expansion by wiping out indigenous peoples in violation of treaty after treaty to the point that they no longer mattered? And yet, that was not enough. Mexico, a neighbor, had been attacked in violation of the treaty for – among other things – not allowing slavery in Texas, a part of Mexico – and 40 percent of Mexican territory fell into U.S. hands “just like that” at the end of the war. Now there was no neighbor in the west anymore, for the Pacific was difficult to attack.

This is called, according to free American translation, a “strong cooperative relationship with our neighbors”?

Those who then have hardly any neighbors left but want to advance in their expansionist drive for world domination, eventually look elsewhere in the world. Where have the Americans, as the unmatched military power, not invaded to secure their influence by deposing existing governments, unjust or not, and replacing them according to their own good thinking to protect their own interests? Where have they not used their intelligence services to launch or support plots to organize coups and overthrows – all, of course, under the official guise of “democracy and freedom?” The list of affected countries is not short.

Anyone who is not very interested in history, who is not familiar with it, need only look at recent events – the criminal war in Vietnam is not even necessary in the considerations. In Afghanistan, for example – after George W. Bush’s grandiose announcements about fighting terrorism, although it was clear very soon after the attacks of September 11, 2001, that the majority of the terrorists not only came from the allied Saudi Arabia but had also been financed from there. A little later, weapons of mass destruction were the alleged reason for attacking Iraq – a lie for a pretense. What has become of it?

What capitalist interests, what dilettante ruthlessness was behind pelting the Russian bear with stones in the decades that followed the end of the Cold War? Doesn’t the West realize how much it is fomenting a nationalist revival in Russia?

To this day, no one seems to notice what a divided country Ukraine is – with one of the highest mortality rates in the world, by the way. Apparently, Russian tanks are already in eastern Ukraine, whose people were denied the use of their native Russian language after Ukrainian independence in 1991. There, in the Donbass, the powerful industrial center of the tsarist empire and the Soviet Union, the Americans with their omnipresent McDonald stores and Coca-Cola will probably have to give up the sails for the time being. One can only hope that the conflict does not spread even further.

But the profit vultures in Stars and Stripes, who already control most of the corporate world, have long been circling elsewhere – in Germany, of all places, whose chancellor according to desire only today decreed the “interim” halt to the Russian gas pipeline Nord Stream 2. A victory for the dealmakers, hagglers and speculators: against the will of a majority of the more environmentally conscious German population, the Americans can now probably sell their dirty, overpriced fracking gas in Europe.

So, it looks as if Germany, the largest donor to the largest European country – Ukraine – will be asked to pay twice in the future, including extreme prices for liquid gas, which probably have to be subsidized. For years, German money has been seeping into dubious channels in Ukraine, for the oligarchs there are selling out their country like the Americans are selling out theirs. This means that the boomerang especially for Germany is already in the air. In the end, the sanctions against Russia might harm the Europeans more than the Russians.

As another truism says: democracy is the rule of money.

The Historical Falsification of the West

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US-Secretary of State James Baker: “Not one inch eastward.”

From my Writing Room
Copyright © 2022 by Uwe Bahr

Many people do not remember what happened in the recent past, but politicians in high positions of responsibility would actually be obliged to do so. This should be self-evident for a very banal reason: For yesterday’s events become the guide of action for today.

Thirty-two years may be a long time in a person’s life – in the history of the world they are only the blink of an eye. As someone who followed the events at that time very closely and was affected by them – after all, those were the basic conditions for the reunification of my country – I can understand Vladimir Putin today. The entire West – mainly Germany under the benevolent protection of the USA – have deceived and lied to the Russians and rejected Putin’s outstretched hand several times during his first term as Russian president.

Contrary to all international promises and assurances, NATO’s external border has steadily moved closer to Russia, starting in 1999 with the inclusion of Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic. There was absolutely no need nine years before to exploit the goodwill of the disintegrating Soviet Union in such obscurity. This is not an opinion, but an indisputable, historical fact.

For a short time in 1990, there was even discussion of admitting the Soviet Union itself into NATO. And one should also remember: At the end of a speech in the German Bundestag on September 25, 2001, there was a standing ovation for the German-speaking Vladimir Putin. All forgotten already.

Only a few days ago, the re-elected German Federal President, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, had nothing better to do than to warn Putin of “harsh consequences” in connection with Ukraine. Of course, there should be no more war in Europe, but Russia feels humiliated and threatened. What would be the reaction of the USA if Putin stationed soldiers and missiles in Venezuela? It should be allowed to ask this question.

The link below shows the two foreign ministers of the United States and Germany at the time, James Baker and Hans-Dietrich Genscher, with English subtitles.

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Is What Bernie Sanders is Saying not True?

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From my Writing Room
Copyright © 2022 by Uwe Bahr

Is someone a radical left if he calls a truth by its name – a truth that affects the majority of people in the U.S. at that?

The truth should prevail above personal political and, by the way, religious convictions. Why? For, first, humanity has been misled and abused by both sides – by politics and even more so by religions – more often than seldom. And secondly, because those who in principle give their convictions a higher value than facts and truth degrade themselves to intellectually wretched creatures whose train of thought discharge into baseless assertions. From such a corner emerge the conspiracy theorists, who, by the way, have always existed throughout history.

Without my own experience, I probably wouldn’t believe Bernie Sanders so easily either. In eight years of working for a company called Walmart, I’ve encountered more than enough not to know what he’s talking about. I can justifiably say that I have not experienced such a lack of rights on the part of the workers even under communist rule in the GDR. There – in a command state in which we were all walled in – at least the physical well-being of the workers was still taken care of. In the workplace, physical integrity was a high priority, and no one has ever been burdened with additional financial demands other than the monthly health insurance contribution. Medical care at that time was excellent, even if it was subsidized.

It is an arbitrariness like in a third world country, to which the employees at Walmart and more than likely elsewhere in the country are exposed – without a real possibility to defend themselves. Working time was cut if the profit figures for the store did not match greedy corporate expectations. Consequently, those who were spared from even lesser income now had to run faster to get all the work done. In a hopelessly understaffed department, I contracted a double hernia. All references from my side to a health impairment contracted at Walmart were of no use – the superiors had their instructions according to which they had to proceed.

A case like mine was everyday business, and Walmart had long since taken precautions to shirk its financial responsibility. Workers’ compensation insurance was only on paper, because according to Walmart’s philosophy, I had not sustained the injury while loading hundreds of bags of mulch, garden soil and compost for the customers, not seldom without help, but probably at home growing tomatoes or studying American history books.

Despite health insurance, a not inconsiderable part of the costs for the surgery fell on me. I settled the bill with means not generated in the USA, but in my home country Germany. How many Americans are fortunate enough to be able to similarly compensate for the miserable care their own wealthy country provides them?

After the passing of a young colleague, the lady from Human Resources went from table to table in the Walmart break room asking for donations for his immense hospital bill that the bereaved family was facing. No one sitting there could answer in the negative. People barely able to make ends meet themselves pulled a dollar out of their pockets, some as much as five, while American health insurance companies shoveled billions in profits into their own pockets without lawmakers lifting a finger to stop the criminal profiteering at the public’s expense.

A few weeks later, this HR woman who had helped me get a full-time job in 2014, was also hospitalized and died.

During my tenure at Walmart, I’ve seen colleagues 80 and older dragging themselves to work, forced by medical bills, incurred years ago. People undergoing cancer treatment had visible difficulty to make it through the workday. I saw all this for the first time in my life, and I couldn’t believe I was in the United States of America.

Of course, Bernie Sanders is right. Anyone who denies this has lost all touch with reality and lives in another galaxy. Facts cannot be blurred by closed eyes during prayer, either, but faith and belief can be misleading. Religion can very easily lead astray – especially when those who derive lucrative benefits from it know how to skillfully spread it among people as an ideology. As a consequence, this has a lot to do with how few of my colleagues recognized the injustices that happened to them every day. Most took it in silence. To put it bluntly: they were used to it, they didn’t know any different.

The old man Bernie is also right about the Democratic Party. Because just like the Republicans, Democrats with very view exceptions are also grateful recipients of large donations from the country’s moneyed elite. Their corrupt nature deprives millions of needy Americans of much-needed help in connection with the build back better act once so hopefully announced by Biden. Instead of supporting their president, his own party is embroiled in an internal battle of alignment while more and more Americans are dissatisfied.

Is he really surprised? Joe Biden is an American, he should have known better. After all, not long ago he publicly described himself as a capitalist. It seemed to me as if he wanted to make clear with this very insipid formulation how little he has to do with socialist ambitions. The man knows only too well what a sour taste such a disposition would evoke in most of his compatriots. Therefore, he did not even bother to explain to them what socialism actually is, nor what kind of capitalist he himself impersonates as president of the country.

I don’t think a turn for the better is imminent for most Americans.

The Neoliberal Blow to the USA

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From my Writing Room
Copyright © 2021 by Uwe Bahr

Children sent to school with guns, a silly never-ending abortion debate, a congressman posing with his family in front of a Christmas tree, all with guns in hand: profit-hungry gun manufacturers with a criminal National Rifle Association (NRA) as their umbrella of protection take precedence over the welfare of the American people, while at the same time the protection of unborn life is prioritized as the noblest of Christian values. The insanity of all American contradictions is supported and directed by the donors of a targeted policy that in the end ensures the greatest possible financial gain for both sides. At the same time, most Americans are apparently unwilling to recognize that their society is vegetating under subversive neoliberalism.

How should they know? If they already associate the term “socialism” with the most ludicrous notions, then how should they grasp the facts about neoliberalism in their very own country? An essential factor is: There is no realistic approach to tangible socialism in the United States; instead, neoliberalism is pervasive. The specter of socialism is meant to ensure that a perception of real existing neoliberalism cannot arise in the first place.

I know both forms of society all too well; I have personally lived among them and experienced them first hand. The second experience occurred in a place of freedom where I least expected it: the United States of America. For in the past, living far away in a completely different world, we looked longingly to America in the firm belief that this was the freest country on earth.

In my “first life”, I was involuntarily exposed to socialism in the German Democratic Republic (GDR) for 28 years. I didn’t see anyone there who was really enthusiastic about it; we were walled in, separated from relatives in the free part of Germany, and there was no escape without a high possibility of endangering life and limb. In 1989, the barrel overflowed, and the long-pent-up popular anger was discharged in an astonishingly peaceful manner. The realization had already grown in us long before: Socialism is indeed a dictatorship, therefore it has no human face and it does not work also because there is no freedom for individual creativity due to the nationalized means of production. Moreover, people in the masses do not function according to predetermined moral norms. For similar reasons, Christianity as a whole has continuously failed in its own demands, with very few people able to live according to Christian ambitions (read the first paragraph again).

I experienced the excesses of neoliberalism for more than eight years in a company called “Walmart”; a lawless space without any legal protection for the working people, some features strongly reminiscent of the GDR with intimidation methods the order of the day, here and there. Of course, in the end you could “merely” lose your job at Walmart, while in the GDR personal freedom was at stake – a disproportionately higher price. In terms of labor, however, the working people in the GDR did have rights, which I could not see in any way at Walmart.

The deception about socialism is spread in the United States as deliberately and purposefully as is the concealment of inhuman neoliberalism: in the media, in the schools, in the churches, by politics anyway, because the political caste is the essential part of the whole, similar to a referee in sports who has been bribed by one of the participating teams. As shocking as the realization is, but it has been possible in the land of the free and the brave to create a broad stratum of ordinary people whose thinking is directed to the restrictions of microcosm and who willingly allow themselves to be trimmed in almost any direction – except that of reality.

The real disaster of the present is the Republican Party’s nearly unconditional agreement to neoliberalism, thereby dealing a deep blow to the old idea of conservatism on American soil. Large sections of the Democrats are not lagging behind. This is how a country is divided from the top down. Those who speak out against it risk being assigned to socialism, a form of society that is not applicable to practical life anyway.

Thus, a conducive discourse about the country’s problems cannot even take place, especially since every opinion in the U.S. is subject to the principle of deeply divided two-party rule. Even wearing a mouth-nose guard because of Corona some interpret as political orientation.

How conditions are supposed to change for the better under such circumstances is a mystery to me.

A War Crime, nothing else

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From my Writing Room
Copyright © 2021 by Uwe Bahr

First, they made the world believe to have successfully killed ISIS-K terrorists in the late August drone strike in Kabul. When even they realized that something had gone wrong again, they tried to cover it up as long as possible. This time, German public television was on the scene shortly after the attack and interviewed people from the immediate neighborhood where the drone struck. These people told a different story from the start than American officials, who quickly stated that no other military in the world uses drones more safely than the United States. In reality, they murdered children, purely by “accident.” This is what Christian retaliation looks like in response to an attack by terrorists.

After the mess the Americans made in Afghanistan, they are already planning the next invasions. AUKUS – the “security agreement” for the Indo-Pacific Region – with the British and Australia, came out of blue sky. Biden, this time, could have been Trump. The treaty is reminiscent of Victorian imperialistic alliances before the First World War and Roosevelt-policies in the Second World War, when spheres of interest in the Southeast Asian region were to be “secured”, deliberately provoking potential confrontations with Japan.

In order not to create any false impressions: this new agreement is ostensibly not directed against China, because in a confrontation with this country the Americans would more than likely go down. Moreover, why would they even fight a country to which large American corporations like Walmart have outsourced much of the American manufacturing base to make the most profit possible instead of creating good paying jobs for their own people at home? Rather, the US once again wants to poke around in regions of the world and explore lucrative expansion opportunities where it is anything but wanted. This just screams for new proxy wars against small countries, this time not with ground troops, but with new war technology that is labeled “infallible”, especially when in the hands of the American military.

After all, the arms business is the main concern in the land of the free, because it secures billions in profits, no matter if the war is lost or won. If children die in the process, as in Afghanistan – that is collateral damage, which is accepted with hypocritical excuses. The poor French are now angry because their submarine deal with Australia was screwed up by the Biden administration. But that’s too bad.

When the time comes, when the next bang occurs, the Americans at home will be told the next lie. People who have fallen for the insane “Make America Great Again” philosophy believe everything they are led to believe anyway – as soon as it is about feigned “American patriotism” and “American freedom” that has to be defended, next time somewhere in South-East Asia.

Vietnam is long forgotten.