Tag: BlairsvilleWalmart

For they do not know what they are talking about

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From my Writing Room
Copyright © 2022 by Uwe Bahr

Too many Americans obviously don’t know much about the history of their own country. Many have no knowledge, for example, that the social measures proposed by a certain Bernie Sanders are very similar to the measures implemented by one of the most famous U.S. presidents, FDR; measures that have brought millions of Americans out of the misery of the Great Depression. Nobody in America therefore seriously thought of calling Roosevelt a socialist. And it’s worth noting that to this day, schoolchildren in the U.S. every morning recite a pledge written in 1892 by an avowed socialist, Francis Bellamy.

As a contemporary witness who had to live in a socialist form of society, my assessment of the USA is that the term “socialism” in this country is continuously misused by the political right for ideological purposes as well as propaganda of the most primitive kind. In truth, the opposite of socialism has been taking place in the U.S. for a long time, at least since the days of Ronald Reagan: It is the greedy seed of neoliberalism that is dividing and destroying the country.

The recurring warning of an alleged, American socialism serves the political right as a bogeyman to protect their real clientele, the super-rich corporations and their billions in donations to the very same politicians. Among the profiteers, by the way, are also large parts of the Democratic Party, which 40 years ago would have been identified as moderate Republicans.

It is a sad fact that the party of Franklin Delano Roosevelt has turned its back on the working class and is shamefully abandoning it even in the time of Joe Biden.

The Next Church Stink Comes to Light

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From my Writing Room
Copyright © 2022 by Uwe Bahr

The next church stink comes to light in Germany: After the former Pope Benedict XVI has been caught in a lie, today more than a hundred employees of the Catholic Church have come out publicly as homosexuals – knowing full well that they could lose their jobs. They demand an end to discrimination by the church.

They now receive support from the Bishop of Aachen, Helmut Dieser. In a news program on the public television station ARD, Dieser said today that the church’s view on the subject of homosexuality no longer reflects the times.

In response to a reporter’s inquiry as to whether this means that against today’s background the interpretation of the Bible is wrong, the bishop replied: “If one interprets it in such a way that fundamental statements are made there about the phenomenon homosexuality, which are on the level of today’s natural science, then yes.”

He is right, the bishop. And if one would get the idea to subject the Bible in its entire content to a scientific examination, then it would turn out that the complete work of art consists of fraudulent nonsense and superstition, because nothing of what is written there stands the test of science.

Trump’s Stalinist Show Trial

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From my Writing Room
Copyright © 2022 by Uwe Bahr

At his rally in Arizona, a mastermind named Donald Trump spoke of Stalinist show trials in connection with the investigative committee on the storming of the Capitol on January 6, 2021.

I was born into a Soviet satellite state where there were such show trials, as a result of which Stalinists and Communists tortured and murdered people. The victims were neither mentally deranged nor anti-social rioters, but freedom fighters who stood up for the fundamental right of the people.

To compare victims of dictatorship and tyranny with the demented American mob of January 6, would be tantamount to disparaging Stalinist victims – if it didn’t come from the mouth of someone like Trump, who, as a con man, is bent on taking others for fools. Figures like Marjorie Taylor-Greene and Ted Cruz strike the same chord.

The fundamental question is: What brainchild are those who elected and support experts like Trump, Cruz, and Taylor-Greene to positions of ultimate responsibility for their country – political charlatans who don’t shy away from fomenting conspiracy theories no matter what societal damage they inflict?

But such a question cannot actually arise. After all, what can be expected in a country where half of the population (!) completely rejects evolution and instead believes that the world and all life was created by a supernatural ghost?

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.

Russia in a Pincer Grip – Germany should stay out of it

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From my Writing Room
Copyright © 2021 by Uwe Bahr

Incoming German Chancellor Olaf Scholz sees “Russian troop movements on Ukraine border with concern.” Oh, my goodness. The clever strategist – what does he want to do?

“It is very, very important that no one rummages through the history books to redraw borders,” Scholz said today at a press conference in Berlin, already doing his first pull-ups on the edge of the table.

He’s not even in office yet, and already he’s talking nonsense. It’s a pity that he can no longer seek advice from his great role model, Helmut Schmidt (“Schmidt the Lip,” quote: Jimmy Carter). Yet, very likely he had to say these words – for diplomatic reasons, but above all for alliance reasons, in short: Pro forma.

But the choice of words could have been a little more prudent. The history of the people is not important? Their ethnic origin, their traditions, their language, and everything that makes up their identity – all that can be swept under the carpet so easily? Scholz, as a German, should be aware that the memory of the Great Patriotic War is still very much alive in eastern Ukraine. And also, about what we Germans did there in the Second World War. Does Germany’s new chancellor know anything about this? Even if he does, he should keep his mouth shut. If that’s the way they want it, let the Americans get themselves into hot water once again.

We Germans have no say in the matter.

Has anyone ever considered the fact that Ukraine is not a unified state, because the eastern part with the Donbas is deeply Russian, while the western part was Austrian for a very long time, between the World Wars even polish? Is it ever asked what the people in eastern Ukraine want?

The Americans including NATO want to push their sphere of influence right under Putin’s nose, and that’s what it’s all about. I can understand very well that he doesn’t like that. In the end, Biden, too, will be cautious – because he cannot risk the next American military disaster.

After the end of the Cold War more than 30 years ago, there was absolutely no reason for the West to reject Russia’s outstretched hand. And yet it did. Even more, it broke its promises to Russia and extended NATO across the Oder-Neisse line. It is understandable that Russia feels threatened by this. But the West always puts the blame on the other side.

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.

Center-Left Government in Germany takes Shape

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From my Writing Room
Copyright © 2021 by Uwe Bahr

The coalition agreement in Germany is ready, and the country gets a center-left government within the next weeks, consisting of three parties. It is reassuring to know that there are still countries in the civilized world where political currents can come together to share responsibility without blocking each other, even if they are far apart on some issues. And it is astonishing how little this seems the case on the other side of the Atlantic, in a country that calls itself the oldest existing democracy on earth, along with all those people who proclaim a Christian faith. If only they would live accordingly instead of constantly denigrating political dissidents in support of perverts like Donald Trump and his minions.

In authoritarian countries – and the U.S. may be one of them, because a very large part of its electorate cannot be reached with rational arguments and instead adheres to delusions that may reflect in radical election results again at any time – the term “left” may sound strange and be equated with socialism. First, not only is it wrong, but the label “center left” is also not particularly informative. Secondly, content is more important than labels, not only because the pandemic has created even more complex problems worldwide that require overarching answers. Thirdly, it follows that the questions of our time will not be solved by partisan ideological stubbornness, but by rational approaches of pluralism.

Those who want to divide a people into left and right, liberals and conservatives, Republicans and Democrats, and point the finger at anything progressive, are damaging the unity of their own country. The U.S. has been and continues to be a prime example of deep social division. In Germany, too, a burgeoning polarization must be persistently countered so that those who refuse to face reality by promoting conspiracy theories cannot divide society with ideological nonsense.

So, it remains to be seen what the new German government is capable of achieving. The challenges are huge, and for that reason alone things will more than likely not run completely smoothly.

Hunter Biden, the Realistic American

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From my Writing Room
Copyright © 2021 by Uwe Bahr

The excitement is sometimes hard to understand. Hunter Biden, son of the president, followed a common U.S.-American pattern, practiced and recurring in countless countries around the world. American, as well as companies and corporations from other parts of the world, stick their greedy hands into mostly underdeveloped countries under the hypocritical pretense of wanting to help them, mostly taking advantage of unstable political and economic situations. With flimsy promises they buy exclusive rights for lucrative sources of profit, in order to sell them later on to friend and foe.

There is nothing new about it.

Hunter Biden used the same principle according to which the U.S. has always interfered economically in the affairs of other countries – if the political direction was not in conformity with it, then also by means of intelligence and military aid, in order to help overthrow unpleasant governments that wanted to go their own way for their country. This was also the case in Russia, by the way, on the part of large American corporations, especially immediately after the collapse of the Soviet Union and when the Wolfowitz Doctrine was already well advanced in its search for a new enemy image.

One need only look beneath the surface of history to see that such patterns have often led to attempted overthrows and bloody civil wars – always under the pretext of establishing democracy and justice. True causes and triggers are rarely mentioned in the news, much less in American media, either conservatives or liberals.

The chemical element cobalt, which is mostly hand-extracted from simple, man-high shafts in the former Belgian Congo, is important for our car batteries and cell phones, among other things. Child labor is often used for mining in Congo.

Thanks to Hunter Biden’s “investment firm”, the Chinese were able to claim one of the most profitable cobalt mines, after all 80 percent of the output in what is presumed to be the richest cobalt region in the world. Biden brokered the transfer of this mine from an American corporation to a Chinese company. In the truest sense of the word, the business deal in Central Africa was “Made in and from the US.”

Of course, this constitutes a state crime, especially since it involves the son of the sitting president as well as a country with which the USA is anything but allied.

However, since when is anything considered a crime in the U.S. as long as it serves the interests of the donor class of the political caste? Gun industry, corporations, insurance companies, fossil fuel companies – you name it. They are all under inactive political protection and can do whatever they want. According to American understanding, human rights only count when a president of their own – no matter who it is – points the finger at other countries.

That’s right, China. Mr. Biden should ask his son.

On to Carnival, Jawohl!

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From my Writing Room
Copyright © 2021 by Uwe Bahr

In Cologne, Germany, the famous Rhineland Carnival opened today despite galloping corona numbers across the country – the highest since the outbreak of the pandemic. Onlookers have reportedly traveled from as far away as America not to miss the spectacle, to which officially only vaccinated or recovered people have access.

And there are always justifications for such silliness, even if reality is turned upside down in the process: On German TV, Cologne’s Mayor Henriette Reker (independent) expressed herself in the most enthusiastically joy about people finally have fun again, while the whole event, of course, is subject to the strictest security rules, such as social distance.

German order, someone like me would think. It doesn’t get better than that. But wait, stop – carnival with social distance?

While she was saying this, the observer thought he couldn’t believe his eyes. In the background there were colorful throngs of people, crowded together, without masks, dancing and jumping. For me, in a figurative sense, the woman tried to explain that the grass was red, although I could see with my own eyes how green it was.

The moral of the story: Everywhere in the world everything is subject to the insanity of arbitrary interpretation – even when the facts visibly speak a different language.

Indeed: the fools are loose.

Germany has voted, waits for the new Chancellor

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From my Writing Room
Copyright © 2021 by Uwe Bahr

Federal elections in my home country Germany: The center-right party CDU, to which I once belonged and for which I sat as an elected representative in the city council of my hometown from 1990 to 1994, was clearly voted out of office yesterday. It should therefore not attempt to form the first federal government of the post-Merkel era via a coalition with the Liberals and the Greens. Instead, the Social Democrats (SPD) have been given the mandate to govern, and that must be acknowledged.

Similarly, there could be difficult coalition negotiations, especially since a three-party coalition at the federal level is a novelty in Germany’s postwar history. But nothing else is mathematically possible if a new edition of the grand coalition is to be avoided, which no one is talking about anyway. None of the parties want to form a coalition with the “Alternative for Germany” (AfD), which is largely comparable to radical Republicans in the United States.

Although the Greens made significant gains, they missed their target of 20 percent. Top candidate Analena Baerbock could possibly serve as vice chancellor in a future three-party coalition and make another run at the chancellorship in four years.

The old party system in Germany has not unexpectedly collapsed in the midst of a dramatically changing world with a man-made global climate crisis and enormous demographic, technological and social challenges. The country is reacting to this – for the present, it is a political shift to the left. However, the majority of climate activists, especially young people, do not trust any of the parties to stand up to the impending climate collapse with the necessary determination. I am afraid they are right.

But at least for now, though, I am relieved. With the exception of the states of Saxony and Thuringia in East-Germany, the radical right-wing AfD has not made significant gains anywhere; on the contrary, it has lost ground. This is the most important conclusion for me from this election, because I don’t want to see political-social conditions in my home country like in the U.S., Poland or Hungary, where populists were either at the helm, still are – or could regain their grip.

After all, Trumpism is very much alive in the USA and will not disappear in the foreseeable future. Millions of misguided “legacy Americans” stand by this pathologic ideology, unwilling or unable to recognize urgently needed adjustments to dramatically changing global circumstances, and thus harm their country with such vehemence that every rationally thinking American should be in fear and terror.