Deregulation of financial markets serves the top one percent, not the common people. It lays the foundation and sets the course for future crises that put the safety and health of hundreds of millions of people at risk. This is the reality of the so-called “free market,” where there is little or no regulation, and where lobbyists in the service of big business corrupt the legislature to ensure that laws are passed according to their ideas and wishes. It no longer has anything to do with real democracy to the good of society.
What more proof and evidence do clear thinking people need to grasp the truth? It cannot be true that people voted for Trump, who in 2017 not only gave a trillion (i.e., $1,000,000,000,000) in tax breaks to corporations and the top one percent of the wealthiest people instead of “cleaning up the swamp” as he promised before the election – rather, he did the opposite: he appointed mostly billionaires to his cabinet.
Who do you think these billionaires would serve? The interests of the working class, which is the majority of the American people?
The mass of people simply do not learn, but are deceived. How is such a thing possible? Only 15 years after the last bank crash, there are still speculators in the financial institutions who gamble away people’s savings – and not only that: Contrary to all the protestations of politicians like Biden now, they not only go unpunished, but are also rescued as under Obama in 2008/09) with taxpayer funds. In plain terms, those who caused the problem in their criminal greed are being bailed out at the behest of the government.
But no one bails out the working-class families who are losing their jobs, are threatened with eviction, and don’t know how to put food on the table.
Against such a legalized Wall Street criminality no election helps anymore. Only mass movements that revolt against injustice can help.
Targeted misrepresentation about my home country in many U.S. media, not just CNN, and also in Germany itself: The truth of the tank issue is rather that the Biden administration, at least in its official presentation, has also changed course, primarily to help Polish demands for the delivery of German Leopard 2 tanks to Ukraine to gain acceptance.
It is downright absurd to speak of “growing German influence” in this context, and the authors of such articles know this very well. The deliberate intention is not to let the USA appear as a profit-hungry, all-determining power on the globe, at least not all the time. Anyone who disagrees should take a look at the US defense budget figures – a budget that does not deserve the name. They are more than double the military spending of China and Russia combined to ensure American military presence and superiority in all parts of the world. A so-called “defense” budget looks different.
A clear-thinking person must ask why a supposedly peace-loving country has to spend so much money on the military, moreover for the strategic orientation to dominate others – with military presence even in the remotest corners of the earth. Russia maintains 20 military bases outside its own country, the U.S. nearly a thousand worldwide. What for?
The whole world had seen and heard who set the pace when US-President Joe Biden gave the answer in the press conference nearly a year ago about how the USA would prevent Nord Stream 1 and 2. A grinning German Chancellor Olaf Scholz stood by and had nothing to say in response to the open threat against German infrastructure. Since then, no “transatlantic power dynamic” has changed, because the U.S. doesn’t let anyone tell it anything when it comes to their interests. NATO is essentially them, and the others are mere vassals and performing agents.
From the beginning, the Americans intended to cut off Russian energy supplies to Germany in order to sell their dirty fracked gas to Europe at higher prices while weakening Russian-German relations. There are corresponding documents, including public ones, which prove this, up to the written threat to “destroy the ferry port of Sassnitz” on the Baltic coast, where the last pipelines for the completion of Nord Stream 2 were stored.
The U.S. is the only country to benefit from the end of Russian energy supplies to Europe and especially Germany. In this context, the statement by political scientist George Friedman, after which it has been the goal of U.S. policy for a hundred years to prevent Russian raw materials from coming together with German technology, is highly interesting.
The big losers today are first and foremost the people of Germany, who are now suffering the greatest loss of prosperity since the end of World War II after their own government willingly subjugated itself to the repressive policies of the United States in the form of the imposed sanctions against Russia.
For those still capable of recognizing the facts of our times, it should be a ridiculous staircase joke to speak of a shift in the “transatlantic dynamic.” The reality is a cold power politics of the Biden administration against Europe and in particular against Germany. Most people there are not foolish enough not to notice this.
As a German and believing to be halfway familiar with the history of my country, I can’t trust my own eyes when I read something like the following. Discovered today on CNN:
In supposedly free countries like the USA or Germany, do media still exist that are not addicted to unconditional warmongering – media that do not have in mind to almost uncritically pass on the views of their respective governments to a bleary-eyed population?
Are there any historically literate scribblers or even politicians, called “Western officials”, who still use facts from history to assess today’s situation, even if they only refer to a quotation? How is Ukraine supposed to achieve lasting peace if old mistakes are repeated during the war, possibly also after the war, and the country – which is actually to be feared – continues to be used by the West as a protective shield against Russia?
Didn’t German tanks kill Ukrainians 80 years ago as well? Such an argument to justify German arms deliveries to Ukraine today is not only cynical, but in its naively simplified form it also bears no causal relation to history as it actually happened. Because in reality, by far more ordinary Ukrainians have suffered from a criminal collaboration of German Nazis and Ukrainian nationalists than from German tanks.
Bandera monument in Lviv, western Ukraine, a city which once was called Lemberg.
Of course, from the point of view of those who think they have to use weapons to resolve a conflict that cannot be judged in black and white, it is inevitable to resort to such naive platitudes.
The author of the nonsense at CNN obviously has no knowledge of the fact that when Hitler’s Wehrmacht invaded Ukraine, large parts of the Ukrainian population received the German soldiers as liberators from Stalinism – a mistake for which they were later to pay bitterly. I had former soldiers of the German Wehrmacht in my own relatives who reported about it. It is part of a narrative about a cruel war that brought us (by that I mean: we Germans) too late to the realization: “Whoever picks up a gun again, let his hand fall off.” Unfortunately, the quote does not stem from me, but from Franz-Josef Strauss, an arch-conservative Bavarian politician who himself fought as an officer on the Eastern Front during World War II.
The historical knowledge about the collaboration of Ukrainian extremists with Hitler is linked to an astonishing development, according to which there were and are political forces in Ukraine, which not only strived for a plausible independence of their country, but also wanted to ethnically cleanse it. Nazi collaborator Stepan Bandera, a Ukrainian ideologist and national movement leader of the 20th century, with his Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) played into the hands of the Holocaust with active assistance. Under their “cooperation” the German occupiers killed hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian Jews. Tens of thousands of Poles who escaped with their lives were expelled from their ancestral homeland.
All this suited the OUN because its goal was to transform Ukraine into an ethnically homogeneous country. It was clear to the organization that this could only be achieved by means of mass killings. The West, with all its peace-preaching politicians, no longer wants to know anything about all this.
What does that have to do with today?
Some. For to this day, Bandera is revered as a national hero in western-oriented parts of the Ukrainian population. Not only are there several monuments to Bandera in Ukraine, erected after the breakaway from the Soviet Union, but a main street in Kiev was renamed after him in 2016 – much to the dismay of the Russians living in eastern Ukraine, and also, by the way, of Israel.
It is not only the memory of Bandera that is glorified today in large parts of the non-Russian speaking population. The notorious Azov regiment, which today plays a large part in Ukraine’s military resistance to Russia, is infested with Nazi ideology; until recently it was seen with symbols closely associated with the German Waffen SS.
So, when Vladimir Putin blathers about wanting to purge Ukraine of “fascist elements,” the West does not have history on its side at all. The problem is that peace cannot be achieved with such attitudes on either side.
And by the way, even German tanks cannot solve problems that have their multi-layered origins in social spheres. Politicians and media should stop poisoning people’s minds with irresponsible war polemics.
One more remark: A country like the U.S., which for sole interest demonstrably carries out one military aggression and intervention after another or has them carried out by third parties, cannot hold the leadership of a pretended defense alliance like NATO. Europe should take care of itself instead of submitting to American market interests. The idea is realistic if the will to implement it were there – but it is not.
Defense, protection from Russia? France, unlike Germany, is a nuclear power, and together the two countries have a higher military budget than the largest country in the world – Russia.
But none of this seems to play a role in the deliberations of those responsible in my home country. Germany is in a politically neglected state and lets itself be led by the Biden administration on the nose ring through world history. It does not seem to occur to any of those playing with fire today how much the possibility of a nuclear confrontation with Russia endangers Europe in particular. The Americans always wage their wars far enough away from their own country and withdraw as soon as things get dicey, or they run away altogether with their glorious military – see Afghanistan – and are then no longer directly affected for the time being.
Ukraine, however, is barely a two-hour flight from Germany.
When it is claimed on current occasions – in my home country even more vehemently than elsewhere – that Germany has made itself too dependent on Russian natural gas for decades, then these claims do not stand up to historical evidence. All the more so when this is compared to other countries, and here again in particular to the USA.
Friendly handshake with a despot. European Union Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev on July 18, 2022, at the signing of the energy agreement in Baku. Azerbaijan has an authoritarian form of government, there are no free and secret elections, political opponents are arrested, and human rights violations are commonplace. – Azerbaijan is only one of several authoritative states with which Germany in particular has reached agreements as a substitute for Russian natural gas and oil.
For about 100 years, America has been obtaining most of its primary source of raw materials – crude oil – from other parts of the world, namely from countries that can be described as politically unstable at the very least and where human rights violations are a daily occurrence. Even wars against international law do not keep the USA and other NATO countries from maintaining friendly economic relations with despotic regimes, such as Saudi Arabia, which has been waging a criminal war in Yemen for years with the support of the Americans.
In contrast to Ukraine, there is no international outcry here, although according to estimates, far more than 100,000 people have died in Yemen so far as a result of the effects of the war. And just last summer, the European Union reached an agreement with Azerbaijani despot Ilham Aliyev, under which the country would double its natural gas supplies to Europe by 2027. The double standard is not only shocking, but shameful.
Doesn’t all this entail the risk of dependency on regimes that are anything but democratic and where it is at least uncertain how they will develop?
But there is an essential difference: Germany, as a country poor in raw materials, must solve its current energy problems diplomatically, while the Americans resort to their intelligence services when things do not go the way of U.S. interests. If it is not enough to establish puppet governments according to their wishes, they then march in with the most highly armed military in the world to ensure “democracy and freedom” appropriate to their own ideas and interests – see Afghanistan and Iraq. The list of American interventions around the world is long – no less than 251 times since 1991, the USA created its own facts using force.
It is a mistake, which can have disastrous effects, to always look at things only from one’s own point of view. The American invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq are on par with the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Not wanting to admit to this and supporting one, aggressive side while condemning the other is a classic example of double standards. Such an approach certainly does not contribute to an objective assessment of events. But this is the intention of those who set the tone and mislead their own people, for they naturally want to conceal the true motives.
Those who today in all seriousness allege that Germany over the cause of decades had become too dependent on Russia in the energy question are at the same time ignoring a policy of balance and détente that proved successful at the end of the 1960s and especially in the 1970s. It is therefore worthwhile, in the sense of forming a realistic opinion, not to spare the effort of following the chronology of events, at least in broad outline. Nazi Germany’s war in the Soviet Union had cost up to 27 million lives there. In view of the war trauma, it was especially important in the postwar years to conclude economic agreements as part of the reactivation of relations between the two countries in order to create an initial basis for mutual understanding. This purpose was served not least by the natural gas and oil contracts with the then Soviet Union. Both German states profited from this, whereby it is remarkable at what far more favorable conditions an ideological opponent sold its raw materials to Germany and Europe for over 60 years than the great ally USA does today.
It is hard to deny that contrary to all the prophecies of doom at the time – even from me, who was still very young at the time – this policy of dialogue led to a softening of hardened fronts in the middle of the Cold War. And this aspect was not the only important factor: for without this policy of détente, German reunification would hardly have been possible. This is historical evidence of how peaceful negotiations to establish a basis of trust while respecting mutual security interests in the former Soviet-subjugated Eastern Bloc countries ultimately led to freedom and democracy. It was not war and more and more weapons that eventually led to peaceful coexistence, but the will to talk to each other.
In other words, negotiations have been held with the opponent instead of refusing to negotiate.
If you look around today, you are bound to notice the frightening extent to which almost all Western politicians ignore these virtues. The nice Mr. Biden is the highest representative of a supposedly democratic leading power, but he does not want to negotiate with Russia, even for the hope of preventing further senseless victims in Ukraine, as well as a possible horror scenario with nuclear weapons. One has to imagine that. Instead of firmly objecting to its great friend in Washington, the whole of Europe has submitted to the sanctions imposed by the Americans on Russia, simply because the Americans think of nothing else but their own interests.
The damage is being borne by Europeans, while the U.S. and the internationalized corporations it controls are the only ones profiting from the war in Ukraine.
As long as I have been in this world, we Germans have been told time and again by our own governments – both in the dictatorial GDR and in the later, reunified Germany – war is not a means of politics and that, because of our history, we should stay out of everything that has to do with militarism.
German Tiger tanks in 1943 shortly before the order to attack near Kursk in the Soviet Union. The Kursk arc was the site of the largest tank battle in military history. – I myself lost several relatives during the war in the Soviet Union; their bones still lie buried somewhere in the vastness of Russian space, and no one knows where exactly.
Those who can think of nothing better than to respond to violence with counter-violence are setting in motion a spiral that ends in nothing other than the death of countless innocent people. How many more examples of this kind have to be added to history before mankind learns something from them? Especially Christian people or those who fancy themselves as such should know this better than someone like me.
Now, sooner or later, the German government will actually deliver “Leopard” tanks to Ukraine; tanks that will then shoot at Russian soldiers with the Iron Cross on their turrets for the first time since Adolf Hitler. Every normal person in Germany should know how wrong this is, especially since Ukraine is so torn apart that even after the war with Russia it is very unlikely to achieve a progressive democracy for the country as a whole.
Ukraine has never been an ethnically unified, nation-state entity. Corrupt politicians have squandered all opportunities to do so since the country’s secession from the Soviet Union in 1991, and instead have gradually bartered away sovereignty to Western economic interests and to NATO, which has had its fingers in the pie from the beginning. It is to be feared that corruption and abuse of authority will not end even after a cease-fire with Russia and instead the country will apply for all kinds of aid from the European Union – aid which in turn will only benefit the corrupt politicians on the scene, but not the simple, suffering people.
Europe, and Germany in general, will bear a responsibility in the coming decades which the Germans in particular, as the (still) strongest economic power in Europe, will not be able to escape. I believe this is deliberate – not only on the part of the USA for reasons of its own economic and military world domination, but also on the part of countries such as Poland, where leading politicians still want to take belated revenge because of the German Reich.
The Americans have committed unspeakable wartime atrocities in this Southeast Asian country, and now the German chancellor Olaf Scholz, of all people, expects Vietnam to take a clear stand against Russia in the Ukraine war. But during his visit today, the country’s communist leadership gave him the cold shoulder.
Every German politician should keep out of it. In Vietnam, the war against the American aggressor is deeply etched in the collective memory. And it was mainly the then Soviet Union that massively supported North Vietnam. How can anyone today seriously expect Vietnam to oppose Russia and side with the Americans, of all people? Put yourself in the shoes of a Vietnamese of my generation who lost siblings, parents, relatives to the American bombing, “body count” and Agent Orange war.
But the deep meaning of Germany’s intentions is discernible. Once again, Berlin proves its almost unconditional Nibelung loyalty to the Biden administration and now as its agent of fulfillment. For it is clear where the foreign policy pressure to have fewer trade relations with China comes from, so that Washington can push back its main economic competitor, China.
However, China is Germany’s most important trading partner. Olaf Scholz’s attempt to kill two birds with one stone in Vietnam is bound to fail. He will be lucky if the Vietnamese agree to new trade arrangements with Germany that could compensate, at least in small parts, for reduced trade with China. Once again, Germany is fatally complying with U.S. expectations, to its own detriment.
Really? What is CNN, a media funded by neoliberal corporations, alluding to (see image below)? To a part of the left-liberal, young voters who come from wealthy families and have enough time to cheer for a president who could be their spooky great-grandfather? Young people who support neoliberalism in ways not fundamentally different from the view of the Republican Party? Or perhaps more likely young Americans who are far more sympathetic to the progressive wing of the Democrats and don’t care if they are called “socialists” for it? The latter would be a real attempt at change in this country that could provide social justice and greater equality to overcome the abysmal rifts in American society.
Informing instead of agitating: good journalism is about objectively reflecting what is happening, not engaging in politics itself to pull public opinion in a particular direction. But the latter is exactly what networks like Fox News and CNN, bought by the ruling moneyed elite, are doing.
But Joe Biden is not the right President for that.
These elections will not change the aggressive nature of this country either. The leading country in the world stands for an ancient, Manchester-like capitalist economic system with a dazed president who calls himself a capitalist because he is afraid to go down in the history books as some kind of socialist pope otherwise. A president who, even more than his predecessor, pursues the policy of “America First” and takes no account of the allies on the other side of the Atlantic, because own interests, world supremacy and greed for profit have absolute priority for the USA. A president who drags America into everything that will sooner or later hurt the country just as it did under Trump.
For the USA, true friends and partnership have no value. After all, partnership means working together at eye level. The sanctions policy against Russia imposed by the U.S. on the Europeans benefits no one more than the Americans, who on top of that are trying to lure European and especially German companies to their country with economically unilateral measures. If anything, U.S. allies serve only as a means to an end for the moment. The German government, in particular, is too stupid to grasp this fact and continues to believe in the USA as its great friend.
As Henry Kissinger, a Republican, said: “America has no eternal friends and no eternal enemies, only interests.”
These words bear witness to the United States of America.
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.
The vernacular called the Ministry for State Security of the German Democratic Republic (GDR) summarily “Stasi” or “Peek and Listen.” It was not as harmless as it sounded on the surface. The Stasi, abbreviated for “Staatssicherheit”, was not a civilian secret service, but a military institution.
They called themselves the “shield and sword of the party,” the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED). Under this emblem they observed, denounced, blackmailed, harassed millions and destroyed the lives of thousands: The Stasi.
When this German Democratic Republic went down, I was 29 years old. Like most people, I didn’t dare in the communist dictatorship to be a real resistance fighter. I was rather one of those who often stood there with clenched fists in their pockets and often burned their mouths – sometimes close enough to expose themselves to the danger of the State Security Service. So, I was more of a dissenter, of which there were a few. Otherwise, the non-violent revolution that swept the country in the fall of 1989 and led to the fall of the Berlin Wall would not have been possible. There is no way to make a revolution with people who have adapted to a ruling system.
Anger pent up over the years about the government, which had not been freely elected, erupted into this revolution. It was about freedom rights and democracy, with freedom of travel at the top of the list. It was like a kettle that suddenly boiled over, setting off a chain of events that led to the fall of the Wall more by accident than design.
Of course, I knew at the time that the Stasi existed – but not how intensively they spied on people in their own country. I could not imagine having people in my immediate environment who cowardly and secretly passed on information about me to a communist power organ. Yet in the course of the last few years, I have read more and more books about the Stasi and its practices. Remembering my own experiences, especially in 1985, when I got into serious trouble because of political remarks, I became curious after so long about my own situation at that time – especially how close I came to being harmed. So, I would like to have certainty.
Now I have proof.
Invalid since 1990: Third page of my GDR identity card, issued December 27, 1988.
Unlike the secret documents in the other states of the former Warsaw Pact, the Stasi files were made accessible after German reunification. Anyone who wishes to do so can submit an application and try to find out whether he or she was classified by the GDR secret service as a “person potentially dangerous to the socialistic state”. I filed such an application a year ago and have now received the notification.
In the decisive passage of the letter from Berlin to me it says: “[Our] research has shown that you were recorded in the files of the State Security Service of the former German Democratic Republic. The registration indicates that documents on your person may exist.” Due to the high number of application processing, it can take up to two years before I can receive more detailed information. If this information exists, of course I would like to know what the communists wrote down about me and who was set on me. Because even for the aliases of the spies, their clear names can be requested.
In the months following the fall of the Berlin Wall until German reunification on October 3, 1990, the Stasi had attempted to destroy as much evidence of its espionage activities as possible. In most cases, the documents were shredded, but to this day the Stasi Archive in Berlin is still trying to piece together these mountains of paper scraps with the help of computer technology.
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.
The Wind of Change 