Tag: UnionCountyBoardOfEducation

This Must Also Be Said

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From my Writing Room
Copyright © 2022 by Uwe Bahr

It sounds like a staircase joke, but it’s not: Although the war between Russia and Ukraine has been raging for seven weeks, Ukraine continues to collect money from Russia for the transfer of natural gas through its country. Currently, this amounts to $1.2 billion annually.

At the same time, they accuse Germany and others of being dependent on Russian energy.

Yesterday, Germany decided to provide Ukraine with one billion Euros for military aid. Along the way, Germany is taking in hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian refugees who are immediately eligible for health insurance on a scale that not only most Ukrainians, but even U.S. citizens, can only dream of.

To be fair, it should not be forgotten that the Ukrainian leadership is not made up of innocent people – and never was. After the breakaway from the Soviet Union, they had great words about themselves, and now, after years of corruption, they are very demanding towards the West, as if acting like a bulwark against the aggressor Putin and thereby protecting Europe.

My country, Germany, should not send them weapons, because that will only prolong the war and possibly make the country a warring party, widening the conflict. But the international pressure is intense, as are the alliance obligations.

While a few in Europe and the USA are earning themselves silly from the production, use and stockpiling of weapons, it hits – as always – the suffering civilian population whose majority would like nothing more than to live in peace. But the dying in Ukraine continues – and who knows for how long.

Memo From Camp David

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When George H. W. Bush and the German Chancellor Conferred on the Future about Germany and beyond

From my Writing Room
Copyright © 2022 by Uwe Bahr

It should all happen very quickly: Three months after the fall of the Berlin Wall, Chancellor Helmut Kohl (CDU) traveled to the United States to reassure himself of American support for Germany’s future plans toward state unity.1 At a meeting at Camp David on February 24, 1990, he easily found the backing he had been hoping for from U.S. President George H. W. Bush. However, the Americans were primarily concerned not only with German reunification, but also with the expansion of NATO.

In the meantime, a public memorandum about the Camp David meeting exists and can be viewed online.2 It illustrates how, in the period immediately after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the West was keen to shift its sphere of influence together with EU and NATO to the East and closer to Russia, the legal successor of the then still existing Soviet Union.

Excerpt of the memorandum of the conversation between then U.S. President George H. W. Bush and then German Chancellor, Helmut Kohl, at Camp David on February 24, 1990, released by the National Security Archive. The marked comment of the American President is telling.

In contrast, there is little sign in this conversation of plans for compromise or even peaceful coexistence with the Soviet Union within the framework of a future security structure in Eastern Europe. One participant in the conversation is intent on a possible reunification of Germany under the protective shield of the Americans; the Americans themselves see their supremacy in the world after the end of the Cold War as their most important interest in the context of “a new world order”. Both sides unfold their strategy at the expense of the disintegrating Soviet Union. The fact that the Soviets possessed nuclear weapons and that up to half a million of their soldiers were stationed in the GDR is completely ignored, as is Moscow’s reaction to the surprise opening of the Wall on November 9, 1989, which could have turned out quite differently.

I had been born and raised in the GDR, the frontline state of the Cold War, and even on the morning after the opening of the Wall, my father did not trust the situation: “The Russians will not tolerate this, they will send their tanks again.” His “again” referred to June 17, 1953, when workers’ uprisings in East Berlin and other cities had brought the GDR to the brink of collapse and the Ulbricht regime could only hold on to power through Soviet military intervention.

But this time, in the fall of 1989, the Soviet tanks and soldiers stationed on GDR soil remained in the barracks during the crucial hours. The reform policies of Mikhail Gorbachev, brought about by huge economic problems in his own country and mass protests in several Warsaw Pact states, ushered in the end of the Cold War; a development that culminated in the fall of the Berlin Wall.

Whoever looks at Europe today and sees a despicable war, which hardly anyone thought possible especially after 1989, should remember the recent historical development of the past three decades. There is no justification for Russia’s war against Ukraine – but the historical causes of the current catastrophe go back further than pointing to Europe’s and Germany’s dependence on Russian energy supplies. The terrible suffering of the affected people in Ukraine could have been prevented by more than one side if the Western powers, including Germany, had had the honest intention of building trust with the successor state of the Soviet Union instead of cornering it.

Notes:

1 Kohl had the valid fear that the chance for reunification, which had been offered to the Germans as suddenly as it had been unexpected, might not last long, so that swift action was the order of the day. This was especially true of the Soviet Union’s position, whose concession the German chancellor saw as a singular opportunity in history.

2 The published memorandum of February 24, 1990, can be read here: Memorandum of Conversation between Helmut Kohl and George Bush at Camp David. | National Security Archive (gwu.edu)

As a side note: It’s quite amusing that no small number of people in the U.S. believe Ronald Reagan brought down the Berlin Wall. In truth, Reagan did not pressure the Soviets, but took successful steps of détente with them toward disarmament, undoubtedly paving the way for what was to follow a short time later. His words at the Berlin Wall on June 12, 1987, remain unforgotten: “Mister Gorbachev, tear down this wall.” In contrast, American foreign policy under his successor, George H. W. Bush, very quickly returned to Cold War practices.

Spied on by Communists

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The Secret State Police of the GDR had me in their sights

From my Writing Room
Copyright © 2022 by Uwe Bahr

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.

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.

The Note that James Baker no longer knows

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The West is not innocent of the War in Ukraine

From my Writing Room
Copyright © 2022 by Uwe Bahr

Former U.S. Secretary of State James A. Baker III responded to my question about NATO’s eastward expansion. Mr. Baker was present in a leading position when, in 1990, the negotiations with the Soviets on the reunification of my homeland primarily concerned the question of the future of the transatlantic alliance.

The answer of the statesman to a directly affected person like me is extremely polite, but also just as politically codified. I assume that the chief negotiator at the time can no longer openly refer to the actual result of 1990 in view of the current explosive nature of the unchecked eastward expansion of NATO.

He then does not address my core question in an unambiguous form but refers mainly to the issue of Germany’s future NATO membership, which was very relevant at the time. The possibility of excluding the area acceding to the Federal Republic of Germany – i.e., the GDR – from future NATO membership was also briefly discussed, but finally discarded. With reference to my main question, Mr. Baker writes to me that “nobody at that time was considering the possibility of expanding NATO to other countries.” But in another passage, it says: During the early stage of the negotiations he (Baker) had raised the possibility towards Gorbachev that the USA COULD agree to a non-extension of NATO to the East, if the Soviet Union agreed to a German reunification. However, this had only been a “what if” consideration, which was withdrawn a short time later.

His initial remark apparently refers to February 9, 1990, when he settled the NATO issue with Soviet leader Michael Gorbachev in Moscow, which resulted the following day in the Soviet “yes” to an economic and monetary union vis-à-vis East Germany – which, as is well known, led to German reunification that same year. But Mr. Baker did not mention to me a note he wrote specifically about the promise to the Soviets not to expand NATO beyond the German Oder-Neisse line.

Instead, the end of the letter from his office states that the information is for the recipient’s personal use only and is to be kept confidential. Therefore, I cannot publish them in their entirety, but only use parts of their content analogously.

As chance would have it, on the morning of February 26, 2022, I came across an interview with the former German Minister of State in the Foreign Office and former First Mayor of Hamburg, Klaus von Dohnanyi. The interview with him had been broadcast by Mitteldeutscher Rundfunk (Central German Broadcasting), a public broadcaster for the federal states of Thuringia, Saxony and Saxony-Anhalt (my home state). I followed von Dohnanyi’s statements live on the Internet.

Von Dohnanyi cited a written memo from the U.S. Secretary of State referring to NATO, without which German unification would not have been possible because the Soviets would otherwise have refused to give their consent. The German politician said in a statement: “Baker’s reference in that note implies Germany can join NATO as a whole, but beyond that there is no expansion.” And further: “The context is completely indisputable – anyone who denies this does not know the files.”

So, we have two statements here. One diplomat doesn’t really get to the topic, avoids it politely and very clever – the other diplomat quotes the file situation.

I personally have not seen this note, but it hardly makes sense why the Soviets de facto gave up everything they had gained in World War II without at least securing their own borders and demanding corresponding assurances from the West. This seems highly unlikely – regardless of the fact that in 1990 no one could have accurately foreseen the breakup of the Soviet Union and with it the emergence of independent former Soviet republics like Ukraine that would now pursue their own security interests.

In addition, there are statements in audio and visual documents from politicians active at the time who, by their own admission, did not intend NATO to expand eastward – see my article “The West’s Falsification of History.”

Let’s conclude with one of the most respected and brilliant diplomats the U.S. has ever had: George F. Kennan, the architect of US post-World War II strategy of containment of the Soviet Union. When secretary of state Madeleine Albright in 1999 formally welcomed Poland, Hungary and Czech Republic into the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) at the Harry S. Truman presidential library in Independence, Missouri, Kennan called the expansion of NATO into Central Europe “the most fateful error of American policy in the entire post-Cold war area”, causing damage “beyond repair” to efforts to transform Russia from an enemy into a partner.

My implication is the following: Putin is inexcusable, because every war is a crime, no matter who starts it. But how the West presents itself these days is not only frightening, but shameful.

The West bears a historically verifiable share of the guilt for the war in Ukraine.

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.

Get Vaccinated

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From My Writing Room
Copyright © 2021 by Uwe Bahr

Very rarely do people in Union County, Georgia, get to read anything sophisticated stemming from local sources. Everything is apparently strikingly fine-tuned within the unwritten norms of a buddy system stuck in old habits. But every now and then, the reader is amazed at the rationality of a published opinion, as happened recently in an otherwise rather dull weekly newspaper.

It is a letter to the editor from a health expert who, in very simple but all the more forceful terms, urges previously vaccine-averse people in a somewhat backward area to get vaccinated against Covid. Seldom before have I read anything more sensible on a local level in this area, where I have now lived for ten years.

The expert rightly points out in his brief op-ed the extremely tense situation in local hospitals, caused by the Delta variant, stating that “Covid is exploding in our area.” He urgently appeals to the population not to believe the circulating scare stories about the vaccine including conspiracy theories and instead to get vaccinated.

There is really not much to add – except something that no one obviously wants to hear: If there are indeed people who believe in all possible nonsense and only not in what is rational, then the insightful have a democratic*** right to be protected from them. After all, every drunk driver must rightly expect severe punishment for endangering the lives of others.

Those who not only refuse to contribute to the protection of society in a pandemic, but, on the contrary, deliberately endanger others, should face consequences that affect their daily lives in public locations. A constraint? Of course, for no one has the right to put the lives and health of others at risk. And if these visionary hillbillies can’t put one and one together, they should at least think about the unvaccinated children.

Unfortunately, far too many “officials” in Union County have also failed in their responsibilities by allowing themselves to be obviously exploited for political purposes rather than standing up to unreason. This is especially true for the local school authorities, for they could all foresee what would happen without mandatory masks in the schools.

Note:***For some, a little explanation may be necessary at this point. “Democratic” in the proper sense does not refer to the Democratic Party (of which the author of these lines is not a supporter, by the way), but to the basic principles of democracy.

Nothing Changes

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As long as Firearms circulate in the U.S., Mass Murder will continue

From my Writing Room
Copyright © 2021 by Uwe Bahr

What are stricter gun laws supposed to accomplish? Weapons are in circulation in the USA like toothbrushes. On that note, any restriction of certain types of weapons will not solve the deadly problem – unless the rate of fire leads to the macabre conclusion that the Boulder murderer merely would have had enough time to shoot “only” five people instead of ten.

Only a single, unambiguous and uninterpretable law could at least curtail these acts – an absolute ban on firearms to tackle the profusion of any kind of guns in private hands. But such a common sense step will never happen in a country with a culture of shooting and killing, framed as a fundamental right to self-defense – not even in the light of supposed Christianity and the unspeakable suffering of victims and their relatives.

There is no other modern western country where people shoot each other to such an extent as in the United States. This is not related to the reasonableness of the people in other civilized parts of the world, but rather to the existing legal order. If something is found to be wrong, then a government must implement laws that at least provide relief. That is what a democratically elected parliament and the executive authority are for. These mass killings in the USA are not only gruesome – they are also an expression of an all too liberal, flawed system of justice.

Yet, President Biden once again wants to regulate firearms ownership more strictly, including certain types of guns, but this sounds more like an act of stalling perplexity. Someone who intends to go to a shopping mall to shoot people has very likely finished with himself and the rest of the world; in any case, he will no longer be bothered by any restrictive laws. Much less will he have trouble getting a gun in the U.S., even if he has failed every background check.

Nearly unbridled support for the weapons insanity also arrives from the same side, which later officially laments the victims: There are public backyard areas in the U.S. where elected officials in neighborhoods with pure poverty not only spend vast sums of tax money on a shooting range, but seriously agree to demands that their county should be declared a “Second Amendment Sanctuary.” Any attempt to convince people with such a disrupted mindset of the opposite is likely to be in vain.

Some particularly highly intelligent people manage to argue as follows: It is not the gun that kills, but the person who handles it. This eminently remarkable view is as ingenious as it is undoubtedly correct. For the very same reason, firearms do not belong in private hands – particularly not in a country in which an obviously not insignificant ratio of the population exhibits mental deficits.

But, nothing will change to prevent the gruesome consequences of gun insanity in the future. The lobby of profit-seeking gun advocates, like the National Rifle Association (NRA), is too powerful. Human life, on the other hand, does not count. As long as that doesn’t change, it will be the same as always.

And thus, when the almost routine horror and grief have given way to everyday life, it will continue as before and straight on to the next massacre. And the blather of tougher gun laws will erupt again.

It almost looks like a calculated strategy.

When Hitler’s Experts Shot the USA to the Moon

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The Brain of American Space Travel was exclusively Nazi-German

From my Writing Room
Copyright © 2021 by Uwe Bahr

It is extremely remarkable that former SS-Obersturmbannfuehrer Wernher von Braun (1912-1977), the “Father of the American Space Travel”, received his professor title from Adolf Hitler personally. The corresponding document bore the Fuehrer’s signature – write unanimously American historians in their books.

No less than 1600 Nazi scientists had been transferred right after World War II to the U.S. by early 1946 as part of operation “Overcast”, later renamed “Paperclip.” Many had skeletons in the closet, some had even participated in experiments on humans in concentration camps, like Hubertus Strughold, who is considered the “Father of America’s Space Medicine.” The more than dubious background of the Germans didn’t bother the Americans much, because expedience superseded principle. The German scientists had been classified as “indispensable.”

Most of the staunch Nazis had been recruited by the U.S. Army. There was (and, frankly: is) hardly a more suitable institution than the U.S. Military for falsifying documents, in this case the biographies of former hardcore Nazis, with which they could effortlessly qualify for American citizenship from 1950 on.


NASA briefing room, 11 September 1962: Former SS-Officer Kurt Debus sitting conveniently between US-President John F. Kennedy and Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson (second from left). Photo by NASA/photographer unknown.

Another German expert was Kurt Debus*, an ardent SS-Officer who wore his uniform to work at the rocket center in Peenemuende and denigrated others that did not return his Hitler salute. There is a documented case in which a Peenemuende employee was arrested by the Gestapo and interned for two years at the instigation of Debus’.

The very same Kurt Debus in 1962 became the first director of NASA’s launch operations center at Cape Canaveral, later renamed to John F. Kennedy Space Center.

To this day, the Debus Award is still in use – created by the National Space Club Florida Committee (NSCFL) to recognize significant achievements and contributions made in Florida to American aerospace efforts.

Another one, Arthur Rudolph, served in the Third Reich as operations director at the V2-facility Dora-Mittelbau in Nordhausen in Thuringia, responsible for the replenishment of slave labor from concentration camps. Thousands of them died cruelly in the underground tunnels during the assembly of the V2 rockets. Horrifying photographic documents exist, taken by American soldiers immediately after the liberation of the survivors. – Rudolph would later become known as the “Father of the American Saturn V Rocket” – the very same rocket that carried the first men to the moon as part of the Apollo-program.

My dear Americans, history is interesting – isn’t it?

Notes:

*Kurt Debus (1908-1983) joined the SA (the Nazi Party’s paramilitary wing) in 1933, the SS in 1940. Adolf Hitler appointed him as the V-Weapons Flight Test Director. In 1958, Debus was in charge of the launch of the first US-Satellite, Explorer 1, in response to the Soviet Union’s Sputnik in 1957. He died in Rockledge, Florida.