Tag: PinellasCountyGOP

Lindsey Graham wants a Stauffenberg in Moscow

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From my Writing Room
Copyright © 2022 by Uwe Bahr

US Senator Lindsey Olin Graham from South Carolina asks for a Stauffenberg in the ranks of the Russian leadership to “eliminate Putin”, referring seriously to the failed assassination attempt on Adolf Hitler on July 20th, 1944, at Wolfsschanze (Wolf’s Lair) in Rastenburg/East Prussia. Only someone who either has not the foggiest clue of the historical background himself or believes he can delude an uneducated part of his own people unable to distinguish an X from a W, can publicly express such a pathological train of thought.

At the same time, an American politician would be well advised these days to avoid any historical proximity to the time of World War II if he wants to attack Putin at least verbally.

For at the time when Stauffenberg and consorts were trying to prove the Aryan superiority of Hitler’s ideology, Mr. Graham’s country was allied with a dictator who was not only a Communist and a Bolshevik but, according to American historians, was every bit the tyrant Hitler: Joseph Stalin, the leader of the Soviet Union, predecessor of today’s Russia.

Is Mr. Graham even aware that just a few years before the Americans allied with the Bolsheviks, Stalin deliberately starved millions to death – in Ukraine, of all places? Or is the man really that ignorant? Who does he think he can sell his story to?

It is unknown to me to date that there was even one single American politician at the time, at least until the Berlin Blockade, who would have publicly called for the assassination of the mass murderer Joseph Stalin, the ally of the USA. On the contrary – in their books, historians such as Thomas Flemming and David McCullough unanimously describe that U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt asked Soviet leader Joseph Stalin if he could call him “Uncle Joe.”

Apart from that, the comparison with Hitler’s assassin, Colonel Graf Schenk von Stauffenberg, is completely nonsensical from a historical point of view, because the assassination coup in the Wolfsschanze in East Prussia was amateurishly carried out by a military clique that could not get close enough to Hitler beforehand and courted him wherever possible. Without the same officers, Hitler could not have started his wars of aggression in the first place. It was only after Stalingrad, the collapse of Army Group Center, and the Allied landings in Normandy six weeks earlier that most Germans realized the war was no longer winnable, and only then did Stauffenberg decide to kill Hitler.

Not a single one of this military clique had the courage to stand in front of Hitler with the pistol drawn and shoot the Fuehrer at close range. It would have been easy to eliminate Hitler in this way – long before July 20. For Hitler did not give much thought to security measures for himself until shortly before the end of the war – because he believed that he had been chosen by fate to redeem the German people.

Incidentally, the Germans also have their difficulties with the interpretation of their own history. Every year the conspirators of July 20th are commemorated in Berlin’s Bendlerblock, while those who were murdered for their genuine resistance immediately after Hitler’s seizure of power or before are given secondary attention everywhere in today’s Germany. This concerns the tens of thousands who were imprisoned and died in the first concentration camps as early as 1933: unnamed communists, socialists, Christians, trade unionists, social democrats, centrist politicians.

Of the noble officers, with few exceptions, most made common cause with Hitler or were in tacit acceptance until they saw that all was lost. In his book “Mein Kampf” (My Struggle) and his speeches Hitler never made a secret about his true intentions. With Putin, however, things are somewhat different. The war he conducts is as much a crime like the war was in Vietnam – but it does not make him a Hitler or Stalin.

Of all things, to associate a Nazi officer, albeit one who turned in the end, with an assassination of Putin shows a lack of knowledge that extends to naivety. Graham’s remark is an insult not to Putin but to the Russian soul, whereas the American probably knows the name Stauffenberg only from a movie with Tom Cruise, in which not even Stauffenberg’s uniform is properly depicted, not to mention the historical sequence of events. So how would a Mr. Graham know that the memory of the Great Patriotic War is still very much alive in today’s Russia, since the country suffered by far the most casualties in World War II?

The Americans who buy Graham’s gossip should educate themselves before they fall for such disastrous nonsense. The senseless American Rambo talk does not help especially the people in Ukraine.

We threw Chestnuts at Soviet Military Vehicles

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Germany intends to deliver GDR Strela anti-aircraft missiles to Ukraine

Germany intends these days … to deliver 2,700 shoulder-fired anti-aircraft missiles from former NVA stocks to Ukraine. For the record, the NVA (Nationale Volksarmee) was the National People’s Army of the German Democratic Republic (GDR), commonly known in the U.S. – and not entirely historically accurate – as the former communist East Germany. Like the same state, this army has ceased to exist since 1990.

Germany delivers 2,700 surface-to-air missiles from GDR stock to Ukraine

The military utensil (the official term is 9K32-Strela-2, but there is absolutely no military expert talking in me) is ironically of Soviet design and now to be used in Ukraine against Russian invading forces. It has been in service since 1968, and there has hardly been a conflict hotspot during and since the Cold War in which this weapon has not been deployed. Among others, the Viet Cong also used it against the Americans in the Vietnam War.

Around the same time – we were eight or nine years old – a school friend and I, crouched behind a cemetery wall, threw chestnuts at passing Soviet military vehicles. When one of these vehicles stopped and we heard a loud Russian voice, we almost wet our pants and ran away.

We had actually been told in school to always wave to the Soviet convoys whenever we saw them on the road – because according to official propaganda, they were considered “our liberators from fascism.” But that didn’t really catch on. At the same time, my father was a great admirer of the American Apollo space flights. There I was confronted with the other extreme early in life: For it was Hitler’s former scientists who decisively helped the Americans win the race to the moon during the Cold War. My father’s influence was unconsciously reflected in my thinking, which could not follow the communist propaganda. I feel with almost similar mixed feelings about the portrayals in most news broadcasts today. All this together is probably the material for a whole book.

According to the official GDR account of that time, the Soviets were our friends, but in large parts of the population it was not seen that way. The GDR, a state about two-thirds the size of Florida, was frontline Warsaw Pact territory and therefore fully occupied by Soviet troops. They were omnipresent in the daily street scene, although strangely we hardly came into contact with them.

The chestnuts of 1969 against Soviet military have of course achieved nothing, and yet they were – in a figurative sense – probably trendsetting. For in the fall of 1989, peaceful protests in the Eastern Bloc, not chestnuts and certainly not tanks, led to the end of the Cold War. Mikhail Gorbachev’s policy of “glasnost and perestroika”, which means “openness, transparency and reformation”, led to the peaceful withdrawal of the Soviets from Middle and Eastern Europe. When two weapons-staring systems faced each other, things could have gone very differently, despite the supposed weakness of one of the opponents (we see it today with Russia). But in the decades to come, the West has struck at the outstretched hand of the Russians several times and without careful consideration. Without necessity, one did not understand how to turn a previous enemy into a partner.

And now there is a war in Europe, of which no one can say how the conflict would be resolved even after a ceasefire – from the point of view of both sides, the West as well as Russia, by the way. But the beginning of the 1990s proved how peace and security can be achieved: through dialogue, by approaching each other – in no case with more and more weapons.

One would think that the so-called Christianity of the Occident should understand and support Gorbachev’s option better than anyone else, but unfortunately, in the history of the world, the opposite has usually been the case.

Therefore, a Christian who advocates weapons remains for me a very strange Christian, because he permanently disregards his own principles instead of leaving everything to his dear God.

Kiev before the Fall?

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Game is over in Ukraine for the Giuliani’s, the Trump’s, and the Biden Juniors

From my Writing Room
Copyright © 2022 by Uwe Bahr

Once again: Cui Bono, for whose benefit? Putin, too, can talk all he wants. The real reason for the invasion of Ukraine was the not unjustified fear that sooner or later NATO would also present itself there. After all, Ukraine’s goal, declared in its own constitution, was to join the NATO alliance. From the Russian point of view, it is understandable that Putin would not allow that – conversely, the Americans would not have done it differently if they had felt threatened in front of their own door (see the Cuban missile crisis in 1962). Perhaps with the difference that their army would have bogged down in such a situation as usual, with helicopters evacuating their own people from roofs.

After all the grandiose assurances, after all the support for Ukraine against Russia, it now looks like Americans and Europeans are dropping the country like a hot potato, while, as in any war, the civilian population suffers the most.

Already there are first reports that Kiev could soon fall. The city is considered the mother of the Russian state system, which originated a thousand years ago. Scandinavian traders formed the Kievan Rus there together with Slavic tribes as early as the eighth century.

One only needs to follow the development since 1990. Germany could have cultivated the friendly atmosphere that prevailed toward the then Soviet Union, even in the course of the many changes. We got our reunification only because the Soviets allowed it and did not send tanks in the GDR in 1989 as they did in 1953 – a previously unimaginable situation.

Already Bismarck, anything but a socialist, had warned 140 years ago not to mess with Russia. But the Atlantic alliance compulsion of our days has degenerated the initially good German relationship with Russia into a willing allegiance to the Atlantic alliance. In another scenario of history, we would not see the things that we have to see today with regard to Ukraine.

It looks like the game is over in Ukraine for the Giuliani’s, the Trump’s, and the Biden juniors (remember?). Wherever there is quick money to be made, they have their fingers in the dirt. They and their ilk have made a run for it and will try elsewhere.

With Thugs at the Desk

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In a Florida County Government I worked with questionable characters

From my Writing Room
Copyright © 2021 by Uwe Bahr

During the ten years I worked for Pinellas County in Florida, I was gradually subordinated to a number of people who seemed richly suspicious. While most of my coworkers were normal people, others gave me the impression of rather scraggly birds who actually belonged in the innermost part of the institution where I worked: the Pinellas County Jail.

One of them was a temporary worker who regularly disappeared from the office with his briefcase around 10 a.m., sometimes earlier, and told me the recurring sentence as soon as he passed my desk to the exit door: “Uwe, I am heading for the fire station.” Meant was a County project in Tierra Verde south of St. Petersburg, and that was also the direction to his dwelling. The saying “Heading for the Fire Station” became a common phrase among us colleagues whenever we wanted to jokingly imply that we would rather go home now than work.

The other was a ruthless character, unscrupulous to the point of going far beyond what was legal, as I was soon to learn for myself on one occasion when he called me into his office and threatened me in a very illegal manner.

As if my assumptions at that time were still looking for confirmation, I recently came across a television report from News Channel 8 and suddenly saw two very familiar faces. I encountered many shady characters in the GDR dictatorship abusing their authority by intimidating others to achieve personal advantages – but these two crooks in Florida surpass in my memory everything that happened in my life before and after. I would not trust any of them with even five dollars.

Why did I have a constant gut feeling at the time that something was wrong? I could only suspect and knew nothing, because I was in the lowest position and in a sense no more than a pawn in the game of intriguers, who at the expense of the taxpayer carried out their frictions among themselves almost on a daily basis. And most of the time, I admit honestly, I didn’t want to know anything. I had my personal load to carry and was glad to have a semi-secure income with the County Government.

It is interesting to see how criminal energies in the U.S. can develop not only at the top national level, with the executors always getting away with it. Watch this and make sure to turn on the sound. By the way, Andrew Pupke, who was also overpaid, should have been fired simply for the intentionally stupid answers he gave the reporter as a public servant in a senior position.

https://www.wfla.com/…/you-paid-for-it-pinellas-county…/ The report is certainly informative, even though it is several years old.

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.

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.

Twisted Talent: DeSantis for President

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The Man who invented Germany in the Middle Ages

From my Writing Room
Copyright © 2021 by Uwe Bahr

Ron DeSantis is an especially known interpretative twister of facts – obvious at least for those who scrutinize his claims -; and he is somebody who has been talking after Trump’s mouth. He is not bothered by any nonsense he utters because he knows that his willing audience will accept anything.

But maybe someone should give him some private lessons in history, because when he tells a certain story with a religious tinge of the three masons “in Germany in medieval times”, all his ignorance comes through.

True, it’s a brilliant story he’s spinning – but unfortunately with a little flaw: For in the times of the Middle Ages, not only did Germany not exist, neither as a country nor as a unified nation – hardly anyone would have known what to do with the term “Germany” up to the 15th century. DeSantis, however, seems to like Germany, because he mentions the country quite often – unfortunately never in a logical context.

With this in mind: What kind of political leaders are these – in this case an acting governor in Florida – who open their mouths and don’t know what they are talking about? Before one speaks, one should know.

Probably this figure also wants to become the next president of the United States of America.

Remark: The first German nation-state was proclaimed on 18 January, 1871, in Versailles; its founder was the Prussian Prime Minister and subsequent Reich Chancellor Otto von Bismarck. The “Germany” to which DeSantis wishes to refer was, from the 9th century onward, called the “Holy Roman Empire”, later of German Nation – a loose, often obscure association of kingdoms, counties, duchies, numbering 330 in the 18th century and often in enmity with each other. For a long time, Austria-Habsburg was the leading power. – This political entity came to an end only late – in 1806 with the Prussian defeat by Napoleon.

The Shameful Failure of the Churches

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From my Writing Room
Copyright © 2021 by Uwe Bahr

Hardly any media in this country describes it in depth, because the subject is probably too hot a topic to bring forward to American society: The United States has a huge problem not only with guns, racism and polarization, but also with religious obstinacy, emanating in large parts from white evangelist institutions whose leaders have no interest in a God, but ostensibly in self-sufficiency on the local level and in political influence on the big national stage.

Such a phenomenon is by far nothing new in the history of the Church over the past centuries, considering that oppression, exploitation, extermination, and conquest for self-interest have always been the true motives of Christianity behind a facade of pious faith. In the more modern perception of our time, especially the evangelical orientation seem to take on the most perverse forms, namely to an extent which one would not necessarily expect from a religion practiced in the Western world.

For those who never suspected that the Churches would ever decisively support a perverted wacko like Donald Trump and continue to do so, have long since been proven wrong. Facts speak for themselves: Without the active participation of evangelical Christians, without the influence of evangelical organizations, churches and pastors, an intellectually and morally degenerated figure like Donald Trump would have never made it to the presidency of the United States of America. The incontrovertible fact that the vast majority of evangelical Christians in this country – or those who fancy themselves as such – have been at the forefront of the Trump-mania, will cling to the Christian claim of this country in the history books for the next hundred years.

The heinous lackeys largely responsible for the disastrous development in their communities is the majority of profiting local pastors, ministers, and preachers, who not only perfectly know how to make money with the gullibility of the masses, but are also talented to push impudence and absurdity to the limit – Sunday after Sunday and also in between all possible occasions. The so-called pastor can blurt out whatever he likes, even what his preferences are in his spare time; be it shooting including the killing of animals or whatever else pleases him: he need not expect a reaction of disgust. As always with such constellations, the mass of alleged Christians trot docilely like a flock of sheep in the desired direction of the mindless propaganda, all taking place in the name of their Lord.

Seen in this light, it is not surprising at all that even many elderly, otherwise impeccable church persons casted their vote for someone who, long before his election, said that one could grab any woman between her legs if he only is famous enough and has money – an infamous statement dismissed by his own wife as “locker room talk.”

Against all common sense and with open eyes and ears, evangelical Christians continue to follow Trump’s lies, even though the coronavirus he downplayed has cost so many American lives. They still believe his rants about a rigged election, his laughable claims about the assault on the Capitol. They buy his presumed Christian attitude because he staged himself standing like a jerk in front of a church with a Bible in his hand. He could talk about injecting disinfectants into human bodies and blather about airports that George Washington’s army supposedly conquered in the 18th century. He could call himself the “most stable genius” on camera and stir up racially motivated sentiments against people of different origins and different skin color. He could pay hush money to prostitutes and deny scientific proof about the nature of the coronavirus and man induced climate change. What kind of Christians are those who voted for him anyway in 2020? What else does someone have to say and to do before he is met with refusal?

What alleged Christians think about putting such a person on the shield to the detriment of their own country would remain not only a question of the human brain, but primarily a matter of conscience and character. On the other hand, not a whole lot can obviously be expected from people who do not seem to notice how undignified and in principle unchristian their demeanor is – a support for a figure representing nothing more than what any halfway decent person would commonly consider offensive.

If churches have nothing better to offer in terms of moral leadership, then one can only say: it is disgusting.

An American Catastrophe

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From my Writing Room

Copyright © 2021 by Uwe Bahr

Up until this hour I am puzzled as to why there were and are people assuming that Donald Trump of all people would be the cleaning service against corruption and patronage. A socialite and gambler who lied, played the corona virus down initially, made ludicrous statements almost on a daily basis, and contradicted his own words the very next day. A president of the United States of America who incited an antisocial mob to invade a symbol of American democracy.

A self-check for Trump-voters should be a cakewalk, provided there are still some honest people: How had they reacted if Barack Obama had done all of this? What would they have said?

How is it possible that people are so mendacious, without any self-respect? Trump’s base, interspersed with believers – shameless hypocrites who not even shy away from praying to a God. How pathetic.

Trump himself not only stems from a dubious past, which was known long before he even became president, but he also recruited people with corrupt, corporatist background for his administration, including his own family. For sure, there are plenty of people in Washington receiving their money from the same sources as Trump, be it Chuck Schumer or Nancy Pelosi. But a charlatan like Trump, who acted like an autocratic despot, fuming abnormal, ludicrous conspiration theories, is certainly the last person sound people would entrust their country. And yet, they have voted for him twice, giving him even more votes in the past election than in 2016.

Now, America can count the cost. Elected screwballs like Marjory Taylor Green with QAnon fantasies are sitting in Congress, and the Republican Party cannot get rid of the spirits they themselves have cited by allowing Trump to become their frontrunner. The Grand Old Party is facing a potential weakening of her political importance through a conceivable split-up of her radical member section. The consequent pinnacling polarization could pose an uncontrollable peril for the future with immeasurable consequences for the United States.

What have those people turned into who were capable of voting for Donald Trump? Did they ever read a history book in their life? Do they even have a clue what is really going on in this world?

Not for the first time in history: Sordid, partisan fanaticism coupled with fallacious patriotism, all blended with unsubstantiated and often parroted opinions, have led to a widespread, clueless and ideologically infiltrated thinking – especially on the political right of the electorate.

It is an American catastrophe.