Since 1949, East Germany under Soviet rule to (see below) present day East Germany and links to the Russian oil pipeline which instigated the building of refineries e.g. Schwedt on border with Polandwelt-atlas.de
Since the fall of the Berlin Wall, East Germans have never achieved parity with West German wealth generation. Disgruntled East Germans have raised the profile of right wing AfD political beliefs.
Initially, the AfD distanced itself from far-right parties in neighbouring countries. However, successive leadership changes between 2015 and 2017 saw the party adopt a more hardline position, particularly on immigration, Islam and national identity. By 2016, its platform had largely aligned with those of populist radical right parties elsewhere…….Additionally, the party upholds the white, nuclear family as an ideal and has pledged to dismiss university professors accused of promoting “leftist, woke gender ideology”. The party also calls for the immediate lifting of sanctions against Russia and opposes weapons deliveries to Ukraine.
The war in Ukraine led to blocking flow of Russian oil through the Druzhba pipeline to the refineries in East Germany, and they, consequently, were forced to shut down, leading to high unemployment. This led to anger and disagreement with the leading German political party led by Olaf Scholz.
Feeling fed up and ignored by mainstream parties, many in what was East Germany have flocked to the far right – with the AfD picking up more than 38% of the vote in one state.
Moscow, Berlin, and Washington are discussing the resumption of raw material supplies to Germany at Rosneft’s refineries. This could be an argument for a ceasefire with UkraineДоступно на русском
Visit of German government commissioner for Eastern affairs Carsten Schneider to the Schwedt refinery in summer 2024 / Patrick Pleul / dpa
The authorities of Germany, Russia, and the USA are discussing the resumption of oil supplies through the Druzhba pipeline to Germany, investigators from the Correctiv publication, with the participation of IStories, have found out.
For this purpose, American firms will buy out Rosneft Deutschland’s, a German subsidiary of Rosneft, share (54.17%) in the oil refinery PCK in the city of Schwedt near the German-Polish border, say sources familiar with the negotiations.
The PCK refinery was launched back in the GDR in 1961 and, before the full-scale war in Ukraine, was supplied with raw materials from Russia via Druzhba. Its capacity is 11.5 million tons of oil per year; the company reports that 9 out of 10 cars in Berlin and Brandenburg today are filled with gasoline made by the Schwedt refinery.
In September 2022, the government of Chancellor Olaf Scholz took the refinery under temporary management and planned to nationalize it. Since then, the plant has been supplied via a backup pipeline and the same Druzhba with raw materials from the ports of Rostock and Gdansk, as well as in transit through Russia from Kazakhstan. However, alternative routes have been less profitable from the very beginning.
In addition, since the sabotage of Nord 2, there is a suggestion it may get repaired and if so, restore gas supplies.
The billionaire brothers, Arkady Rotenberg and Boris Rotenberg,who owned the largest construction company for gas pipelines in Russia, are looking to repair the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline.
Laying the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline on the bottom of the Baltic Sea, November 2018. Photo: Bernd Wüstnek / dpa / AFP / Scanpix / LETA
IStories has noticed several indirect signs that Russia is preparing to restore the Nord Stream pipelines. And although experts are still skeptical about such a possibility, this is indicated, in particular, by the activity of a company that previously processed pipes for these pipelines — it may be linked to Arkady Rotenberg and former top managers of Gazprom, who are now suspected of siphoning off its assets to the tune of 150 billion rubles.
Moscow, Berlin, and Washington are discussing the resumption of raw material supplies to Germany at Rosneft’s refineries. This could be an argument for a ceasefire with Ukraine
as well as the EU, imposed sanctions against Arkady Rotenberg. U.S. authorities blocked the assets of SMP Bank for at least $65 million. Besides, his assets and the luxurious property was arrested in Italy. In 2017, Russian journalists found out that Arkady Rotenberg systematically evades sanctions. According to the investigation, Rotenberg re-registers his assets and property in Europe to proxies from among the former top managers of his companies. Rotenberg is one of the Russian oligarchs named in the Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act, CAATSA, signed into law by President Donald Trump in 2017.
Russia depends on funding his war machine with sales of oil and gas and has been hit by sanctions by the US to reduce the sales to countries like Germany, who themselves had to close their supplies in protest to the invasion of Ukraine.
Another great book I’m reading, which helps me stay sane amongst the lies and false statements flying around social media, is Bob Woodward ‘s book, ‘War’.
At the stirrings of the Ukrainian invasion, Woodward reported in his book:
“Chekhov’s gun” was National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan’s immediate thought as he reviewed overhead satellite photos that showed an unprecedented 110,000 Russian troops massing on the border of Ukraine. If a pistol appears conspicuously in the first act of a play it is there for a reason and will be fired at some point, the 19th-century playwright Anton Chekhov had famously written. It was April 2021, only the third month of Biden’s presidency. Sullivan had barely settled into his new office in the White House West Wing. At 44, Sullivan, thin and fair-haired, was the youngest national security adviser since Henry Kissinger. With the discipline of a former marathon runner, Sullivan was the operational coordinator of Biden’s foreign policy. When Biden appointed him, Biden called Sullivan, a former Rhodes Scholar and Yale Law School honors graduate, “a once in a lifetime intellect” and had entrusted him with extraordinary decision-making authority. The intelligence also showed Russian naval forces were actively deploying to the Black Sea, a vast inland body of water bordered by Ukraine and Russia. Flatbed trucks could be seen hauling huge rocket launchers and old Soviet armored personnel carriers. More satellite photos showed Russian tanks, artillery, missiles and naval landing craft being moved into Crimea, on the northern coast of the Black Sea, and along the 1,200-mile land border between Russia and Ukraine. According to the latest CIA psychological profile, Vladimir Putin, the autocratic Russian leader, was defined by his extreme insecurity and imperial ambition. Putin was convinced that he was the only person that could restore Russia to the old Russian empire. He was fixated on Ukraine. What was Putin doing? Sullivan wondered. Was this just an exercise, a war game? Was it purely coercive to gain leverage on Ukraine or to force the United States and Europe to back off any talk that Ukraine might eventually join NATO, the world’s most powerful military and diplomatic alliance? It was also possible, Sullivan thought, that Putin was planning to use the troops to seize more territory in the Donbas. Russia and Ukraine had been fighting in the Donbas, a region in the east with sizable coal reserves, since 2014 when Russia seized neighboring Crimea and control of about a third of the Donbas. Nearly 14,000 people had been killed on both sides. There had been 29 cease-fires, all of which had failed, a sign of festering instability. Sullivan worked in a state of near constant intellectual anxiety. And yet he couldn’t look past the obvious: You don’t move that amount of men or matériel to another country’s border if you are not at least thinking about using them. Was Putin hanging his pistol on the wall? President Biden and Sullivan had debated what the administration’s Russia policy should look like. Biden was clear. “I’m not looking for a reset,” Biden said during his first weeks as president. “I’m not looking for some kind of good relationship, but I want to find a stable and predictable way forward with Putin.” But so far the relationship with Russia was neither good, stable, nor predictable. From their first days in office, Biden and Sullivan had been responding to various acts of Russian aggression. The near fatal poisoning of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, Russian interference in the 2020 U.S. elections, suggestions that Russians may have paid the Taliban to kill Americans in Afghanistan, and the massive SolarWinds cyberattack on more than 16,000 computer systems worldwide, including U.S. government departments and key private industries. It was one of the worst data breaches in U.S. history. Biden had also upped the tension in an ABC television interview on March 16, when he was asked if he thought Putin was a “killer”? “I do,” Biden said. The Kremlin had called the insult “unprecedented.” Putin withdrew the Russian ambassador from Washington in a show of displeasure……….
……….
American presidents had also been a target of Putin’s theatrics. In 2018, a week before then-President Trump’s summit with Putin in Helsinki, 12 Russian military intelligence agents were indicted in the U.S. for hacking the presidential campaign of Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton in her race against Trump. In a joint press conference following the summit, Putin played to Trump’s ego, flattering him. When Trump was asked about Russian interference in the 2016 election, Putin was rewarded with one of the most extraordinary statements by an American president. “He just said it’s not Russia,” Trump said. “I don’t see any reason why it would be.” Standing side by side, Trump appeared to strongly defend the Russian president and wave off the conclusions of U.S. intelligence agencies, which had unanimously determined that Russia had interfered. Condemnation was swift. Some senior Trump advisers still recoil at the memory of the president siding with Putin over the American intelligence agencies. Putin had again won the moment. Trump’s carelessness was on full display. After returning to the U.S., Trump tweeted, trying to fix the blunder: “I have GREAT confidence in MY intelligence people.”
So the scene was already set for what is happening today.
Because of the seeming alignment of the new administration (regime?) of the United States with Russia, I am reading books which help me try to understand how this dramatic situation has evolved.
1949 to 1989
After the war, the US employed German scientists who had led the world in rocket and other technologies.
In fact, the U.S. armed forces and civilian agencies sought long-term advantages for the United States through the seizure of Third Reich technologies that they saw as superior to, or competitive with, Allied ones—notably aircraft, rockets, and missiles. The people who had invented or designed these weapons were needed to help transfer the technology. So what began as a short-term advisory project quickly evolved into a program of permanent immigration.
This incorporation of German expertise helped build the US post war military knowledge which became the envy of the world, and triggered the Russian desire to steal its secrets.
To find more about those scientists relocated to US soil, follow the link below to learn how their sinister past was of no interest compared to the value of their research knowledge. They taught eager US weapons scientists and substantially contributed to the growing military industrial complex.
Extract below from ‘Putin’s People’, by Elizabeth Belton:
Dresden, East Germany. Putin working as a KGB agent organising recruitment of German students to assist the Soviet Union developing technology in rocket and aircraft design through espionage of western industry.
The Stasi owned a tourist hotel on the river Elbe where visiting scientists would stay and get honey trapped, then blackmailed into revealing trade secrets.
The hotel was owned by the Stasi’s department of tourism, and its palatial restaurants, cosy bars and elegant bedrooms were fitted out with hidden cameras and bugs. Visiting businessmen were honey-trapped with prostitutes, filmed in their rooms and then blackmailed into working for the East.[25] ‘Of course, it was clear to me we used female agents for these purposes. Every security service does this. Sometimes women can achieve far more than men,’ said Jehmlich with a laugh.[26]……….
…..Putin’s chief tasks was gathering information on NATO, the ‘main opponent’,[27] and Dresden was an important outpost for recruiting in Munich and in Baden-Württemberg five hundred kilometres away, both home to US military personnel and NATO troops.[28]
……….
‘Most of the East German high-tech smuggling came through Dresden,’ said Franz Sedelmayer, a West German security consultant who later worked with Putin in St Petersburg and started out in the eighties in the family business in Munich selling defence products to NATO and the Middle East.[9] ‘Dresden was a centre for this black trade.’ It was also a centre for the Kommerzielle Koordinierung, a department within the East German foreign trade ministry that specialised in smuggling operations for high-tech goods under embargo from the West. ‘They were exporting antiques and importing high-tech. They were exporting arms and importing high-tech,’ said Sedelmayer. ‘Dresden was always important for the microelectronics industry,’ said Horst Jehmlich.[10] The espionage unit headed by East Germany’s legendary spymaster Markus Wolf ‘did a lot’ for this, added Jehmlich. He remained tight-lipped, however, on what exactly they did. The Dresden Stasi foreign-intelligence chief, Herbert Kohler, served at the same time as head of its information and technology intelligence unit,[11] a sign of how important smuggling embargoed goods was for the city. Ever since Germany was carved up between East and West in the aftermath of World War II, much of the eastern bloc had relied on the black market and smuggling to survive. The Soviet Union’s coffers were empty after the ravages of the war, and in East Berlin, Zürich and Vienna organised-crime groups worked hand in hand with the Soviet security services to smuggle cigarettes, alcohol, diamonds and rare metals through the black market to replenish the cash stores of the security services of the eastern bloc. Initially the black-market trade had been seen as a temporary necessity, the Communist leaders justifying it to themselves as a blow against the foundations of capitalism. But when, in 1950, the West united against the Soviet-controlled bloc to place an embargo on all high-tech goods that could be used for military means, smuggling became a way of life. The free choices of capitalism and the drive for profit in the West were fuelling a boom in technological development there. By comparison, the planned socialist economy of the eastern bloc was frozen far behind. Its enterprises were bound only to meet annual production plans, its workers and scientists left to procure even the most basic goods through informal connections on the grey market. Isolated by the Iron Curtain, smuggling became the only way for the eastern bloc to keep up with the rapidly developing achievements of the capitalist West.[12]
As I mentioned in my recent 12th March piece, ‘The Long Game’ I quote extracts from Chris Unger’s book ‘American Kompromat’. He writes of the targeting of a young Donald Trump as an American asset by the now expanded Russian Mafia into America. This was in 1987.
Chris Unger also tells us how easy it was to get the Jewish emigres, forced to work covertly for the KGB in return for a life in America, to infiltrate the United Nations:
According to Shvets, the awkward legend was often a tell that revealed how the KGB disguised and falsified the personal histories of its operatives. As a result, he looked for how Jews and other beleaguered ethnic minorities were given perks by the KGB if they played along; how some jobs at the United Nations and in the USSR were reserved for those in the KGB; which institutions were really KGB fronts; and how disinformation was disseminated to hide the truth. When tradecraft was poorly done, he said, it was a dead giveaway…………………………….In the end, of course, their various lucrative enterprises would create the need to launder untold billions of dollars, a need that could best be filled by a wealthy real estate developer who had loads of luxury condos to sell and was willing to look the other way when it came to the source of the money. To a large extent, Trump’s involvement with the Russian Mafia and his subsequent financial dealings with the Russians is a matter of public record—even though it was strikingly absent from the Mueller Report. For more than three decades, at least thirteen people with known or alleged links to the Russian Mafia held the deeds to, lived in, or ran criminal operations out of Trump Tower in New York or other Trump properties. Many of them used Trump-branded real estate to launder vast amounts of money by buying multimillion-dollar condos through anonymous shell companies. And the Bayrock Group, the real estate development company that was based in Trump Tower and had ties to the Kremlin, came up with a new business model to franchise Trump condos after he’d lost billions of dollars in his Atlantic City casino developments—all of which made the perpetually bankrupt Donald Trump rich again and would lead to a new post-Soviet age of kleptocracy, in which America was injected with the virus of oligarchy and ended up with Donald Trump in the White House.
The US website, link shown below, describes the spread and influence of the Russian Mafia in the US and 50 other countries. Organised Crime has gone hand in hand with politics for decades:
The Red Mafiya is the most brilliant and savage Russian mob organization in the world; the Russian mob virtually controls Russia. In addition, both the Bush and the Clinton Administrations have unwittingly facilitated the Russian mob and the untrammeled corruption of Russia since the fall of the Soviet Union. The Russian Mafiya’s invasion of politics in the United States is still in its early stages, but it already poses a huge threat to United States national security interests abroad….
It is also worth considering the impact of Russian Jews on the Palestinian population, though not because of crime, but sheer numbers needing homes and jobs:
I watched today Robi express her anxiety now Gaza has been bombed once more with hundreds, especially children, slaughtered. She had hoped the ceasefire would continue, hostages released and the ‘day after’ leading to a sovereign Palestinian State side by side in Peace with Israel.
I came to Israel from South Africa in 1967; I came as a volunteer after the Six Day War, thinking I’d be here for about six months. I really wanted to leave South Africa because I’d been active in the anti–apartheid movement and it was getting very pressured and ugly. I actually wanted to live in the States, then I came here and I’ve had this sort of love–hate relationship with this country ever since. I went to a Hebrew language program, got married and had two kids, worked for the Jerusalem Post, and then with immigrants to help them find employment. After I got divorced I came to live in Tel Aviv.
I brought up my children in a very tolerant and loving liberal way; David and Eran, it was kind of like a triangle – the three of us. David went to the Thelma Yellin School of the Arts because he was a very gifted musician. Out of his whole class he was probably the only one who went to the army. I was really surprised when he chose that, but I think you can’t take responsibility for somebody else’s life, even if it is your child. Even in his regular army service David was torn because he didn’t want to serve in the Occupied Territories. He became an officer and was called to go to Hebron. He was in a terrible quandary and came to me and said, “What the hell am I going to do? I don’t want to be there.” I said, “If you want to go to jail I’ll support you, but are you going to make a difference if you go to jail”. Because basically, if he were sent to jail, when he got out they’d put him somewhere else [in the Occupied Territories]. It’s a never–ending story. If it would have created a huge noise then maybe that would have been the right choice; but you can also go [to your military post] and lead by example, by treating people around you with respect.
I saw the scars in both of my children after serving the military, from having to be in the first intifada. They grew up in a home that never made any fuss over one’s creed or color; we just liked people. All through this army service that was what happened all the time [debating whether to serve in the Territories], and then this group was formed of officers that did not want to serve in the Occupied Territories and David joined and went to all the demonstrations; he was also part of the peace movement.
After the army David went to Tel Aviv University and studied philosophy and psychology and then started to do his Masters in Philosophy of Education. He was teaching philosophy at a pre–military program for potential social leaders and he was also teaching at Tel Aviv University. Then he got called up for reserve duty [milu’im] and the whole issue came up again: he doesn’t want to go, if he goes he doesn’t want to serve in the Occupied Territories. If he doesn’t go he’s letting his soldiers down, what kind of example is it for these kids who are going to be inducted into the army in two months, if he goes he would treat anybody, any Palestinian, with respect, and so would his soldiers by his example. I said, “Maybe you are setting a good example [by refusing to go]” and he said, “I can’t let my soldiers down and if I don’t go someone else will and will do terrible things.” I keep telling everybody that there isn’t really black and white.
David went to his reserve service and I was filled with a terrible premonition, of fear I suppose. He called me on that Saturday and said, “I have done everything to protect us. You know I love my life, but this is a terrible place, I feel like a sitting duck.” He never shared that kind of stuff with me, ever. My kids never told me what they were doing in the army. They always told me ridiculous stories thinking that I was going believe them. The next morning I got up very early and ran to work hours before I had to be there. I didn’t want to be at home, I had a very restless feeling.
David was killed by a sniper, along with nine other people. They were at a checkpoint, a political checkpoint, near Ofra. Two days after he was killed it was pulled down; they removed the checkpoint. I suppose all of my life I spoke about coexistence and tolerance. That must be ingrained in me because one of the first things I said is, “You may not kill anybody in the name of my child.” I suppose that’s quite unusual, an unexpected reaction to that kind of news. It is impossible to describe what it is to lose a child. Your whole life is totally changed forever. It’s not that I’m not the same person I was. I’m the same person with a lot of pain. Wherever I go, I carry this with me. You try to run away at the beginning, but you can’t. I went overseas. I went to India, I came back again, but it just goes with you wherever you go. I had a PR office and I was working with National Geographic and the History Channel and had clients I did food and wine for and all the good things in life, as well as with coexistence projects with Palestinian–Israeli citizens. I wasn’t particularly politically involved, it was much more on a social level: animal welfare, children, coexistence projects. I always did a lot of volunteer work; I put a lot into those kinds of things, it’s always been a part of who I am. But my work began to lose all joy for me. My priorities changed completely. To sit in a meeting and decide whether a wine should be marketed in one way or another became totally irrelevant to me; I couldn’t bear it. I was just very lucky, I had wonderful girls working with me in the office and they really ran the office for me for a year until I decided I couldn’t bear it anymore, and I closed the office.
Yitzhak Frankenthal had come to speak to me; he was the founder of the Bereaved Families Forum. I wasn’t sure that was the path I wanted to take, but I went to a seminar. There were a lot of Israelis and Palestinians from the group there and I didn’t really feel convinced yet. But the more time went by the more I wanted to work somewhere to make a difference. It was the beginning of understanding how not to be patronizing; that’s a really easy trap to fall into in this kind of work: “I know what’s best for the Palestinians, let me tell them what to do.” It took me time to understand, to look at the differences in temperament, in culture, in all these things, to be much less judgmental than I’d always been. I think David was a much more tolerant person than I am, or a less judgmental person. I learned a lot of lessons from him, and the pain created a space in me that was less egocentric, that I know what’s best for everybody.
David was killed on March 3rd 2002. On October 2004 the sniper who killed David was caught, which for me was a huge step. That was really the test. Do I actually mean what I’m saying or am I just saying it because… That is the test of whether I really have integrity in the work I’m doing. Do I really mean what I’m saying when I talk about reconciliation. I wrote a letter to the family. It took me about four months to make the decision, many sleepless nights and a lot of searching inside myself about whether this is what I really mean. I wrote them a letter, which two of the Palestinians from our group delivered to the family. They promised to write me a letter. It will take time; these things take time, I’m waiting. It could take five years for them to do that. They will deliver the letter that I wrote to their son who is in jail. So in my own personal development, this was the big milestone for me. When he was caught I didn’t feel anything; not satisfaction, except maybe satisfaction that he can’t do it to anybody else. There is no sense of revenge and I have never looked for that.
These past years have been an incredible experience for me. I’ve learned such a lot for my own personal growth, apart from the work I’m doing, which is almost the reason I get up in the morning, actually. It’s something I feel almost duty–bound to be doing; it’s not a favor that I’m doing for anyone else but a personal mission almost. I know this works. I believe removing the stigma from each side and getting to know the person on the other side allows for a removal of fear, and a way to understand that a long–term reconciliation process is possible. That’s also based on my background as a South African person, seeing the miracle of South Africa and how that all happened and that it was actually possible.
On David’s grave there is a quotation by Khalil Gibran that says, “The whole earth is my birthplace and all humans are my brothers.”
The letter: This for me is one of the most difficult letters I will ever have to write. My name is Robi Damelin, I am the mother of David who was killed by your son. I know he did not kill David because he was David, if he had known him he could never have done such a thing. David was 28 years old, he was a student at Tel–Aviv University doing his masters in the Philosophy of Education, David was part of the peace movement and did not want to serve in the occupied territories. He had a compassion for all people and understood the suffering of the Palestinians, he treated all around him with dignity. David was part of the movement of the Officers who did not want to serve in the occupied territories but nevertheless for many reasons he went to serve when he was called to the reserves. What makes our children do what they do? They do not understand the pain they are causing your son by now having to be in jail for many years and mine who I will never be able to hold and see again or see him married , or have a grandchild from him. I cannot describe to you the pain I feel since his death and the pain of his brother and girl–friend, and all who knew and loved him.
All my life I have spent working for causes of co–existence, both in South Africa and here. After David was killed I started to look for a way to prevent other families both Israeli and Palestinian from suffering this dreadful loss. I was looking for a way to stop the cycle of violence, nothing for me is more sacred than human life, no revenge or hatred can ever bring my child back. After a year, I closed my office and joined the Parents Circle – Families Forum. We are a group of Israeli and Palestinian families who have all lost an immediate family member in the conflict. We are
looking for ways to create a dialogue with a long–term vision of reconciliation. After your son was captured, I spent many sleepless nights thinking about what to do, should I ignore the whole thing, or will I be true to my integrity and to the work that I am doing and try to find a way for closure and reconciliation. This is not easy for anyone and I am just an ordinary person, not a saint, I have now come to the conclusion that I would like to try to find a way to reconcile. Maybe this is difficult for you to understand or believe, but I know that in my heart it is the only path that I can choose, for if what I say is what I mean it is the only way. I understand that your son is considered a hero by many of the Palestinian people, he is considered to be a freedom fighter, fighting for justice and for an independent viable Palestinian state, but I also feel that if he understood that taking the life of another may not be the way and that if he understood the consequences of his act, he could see that a non–violent solution is the only way for both nations to live together in peace. Our lives as two nations are so intertwined, each of us will have to give up on our dreams for the future of the children who are our responsibility.
I give this letter to people I love and trust to deliver, they will tell you of the work we are doing, and perhaps create in your hearts some hope for the future. I do not know what your reaction will be, it is a risk for me, but I believe that you will understand, as it comes from the most honest part of me. I hope that you will show the letter to your son, and that maybe in the future we can meet.
Let us put an end to the killing and look for a way through mutual understanding and empathy to live a normal life, free of violence.
If you have lost a family member due to the conflict, and you are also tired of the never ending cycle of loss of life, we would like to see you with us
I am reproducing this piece by Robert Reich. I fear what happened in Nazi Germany and more recently in the Arab Spring may be about to happen in the United States. Who would ever have thought this could become a reality, (although the warning signs have been gaining credibility for decades)?
The Trump regime is actively suppressing speech at major American universities.
Trump’s recent executive orders bar diversity, equity, and inclusion programs at all educational institutions that receive federal funds.
Last week, Trump threatened in a social media post to punish any university that permits “illegal” protests but did not define what he meant by illegal protests.
On Saturday, Trump’s immigration officials arrested a Columbia graduate student — who is a permanent resident of the United States with a green card and an American wife — and sent him to a prison in Louisiana. Why? He did not engage in criminal activity. The graduate student peacefully expressed political views that the regime dislikes.
Then on Monday, the Trump regime warned 60 universities that they could face penalties for allowing peaceful demonstrations and speech that the administration dislikes.
And on Tuesday, Karoline Leavitt, the White House spokeswoman, told reporters that Columbia had refused to help the regime identify people engaged in speech the regime found objectionable, and warned, “We expect all America’s colleges and universities to comply with this administration’s policy.”
The particular objectionable speech that the regime is using as a pretext for its crackdown on free speech on university campuses is the student-led protests against Benjamin Netanyahu’s Israeli government for its bombardment of Gaza.
Trump has turned those protests into accusations of antisemitism. Trump’s border czar, Thomas Homan, described the graduate student who was arrested and whose green card was voided as a “national security threat.”
But let’s be clear: Peaceful protests against Benjamin Netanyahu’s policies in Gaza are not the same as antisemitism. (As I’ve said repeatedly in this letter, I’m Jewish, I am not antisemitic, and I am disgusted and appalled by what Netanyahu has done to Palestinians in Gaza.) Nor does a peaceful protest turn someone into a national security threat.
And let’s be clear about another thing: The Trump regime is using antisemitism as an excuse for cracking down on free speech on university campuses.
Trump used the same accusation against Democrats during his presidential campaign — blaming the alleged rise in antisemitism on “the leadership of this country,” but conveniently ignoring the fact that the rise in reported antisemitic acts began during Trump’s first term.
Trump also conveniently disregarded prominent Republicans who have engaged in antisemitic behavior — such as North Carolina’s then nominee for governor, Mark Robinson, who called himself a “black NAZI” on a pornographic website, and Trump ally Georgia Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, who has made a string of antisemitic remarks, including blaming Jews for killing Jesus to explain her vote against a bill meant to address antisemitism.
The real reason Trump and the Republican Party are cracking down on universities is their belief that universities are dominated by the left.
As I’ve noted, JD Vance (Yale Law ‘13) has called university professors “the enemy” and suggested using Victor Orban’s method for ending “left-wing domination of universities” — giving universities “a choice between survival or [being] … much more open to conservative ideas.”
Yet whether you like or dislike what’s said at universities, free speech is at the core of our democracy, and protecting it should be one of the core missions of universities.
Which is why America needs a new Free Speech Movement, similar to the one that broke out on college campuses 61 years ago.
Do you remember?
In the fall of 1964, soon after Richard Nixon resigned the presidency, Berkeley’s university police arrested a student who was staffing a table in the middle of Sproul Plaza and put him in a police car. The student had violated Berkeley’s ban on political activity on campus.
When someone in the surrounding crowd of students yelled, “We can see better if we sit down,” hundreds of students sat — trapping the police car for the next 33 hours. Berkeley administrators negotiated an end to the siege but refused to end the ban on political activity.
The student protests grew. At an even larger rally, a graduate student named Mario Savio addressed the crowd, criticizing not only Berkeley but America itself.
There is a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can’t take part, you can’t even tacitly take part, and you’ve got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you’ve got to make it stop. And you’ve got to indicate to the people who run it, to the people who own it, that unless you’re free, the machine will be prevented from working at all.
Hundreds of Berkeley students occupied its administration building, leading police to make the largest mass arrest of students in American history and shocking a public accustomed to campus conformity.
As Savio later told The Washington Post, the Free Speech Movement was an outgrowth of the Civil Rights Movement. “Are we on the side of the civil rights movement? Or have we gotten back to the comfort and security of Berkeley, California, and can we forget the [Black] sharecroppers whom we worked with [to register to vote] just a few weeks back? Well, we couldn’t forget.”
A few days after Savio’s speech, FBI director J. Edgar Hoover told aides that he feared Savio and other protesters would inspire student rebellion at other colleges across the land. Hoover turned his secret surveillance machine on Savio, including covert action to “disrupt” and “neutralize” him, for more than a decade.
In 1976, a U.S. Senate subcommittee exposed these activities and forced the FBI to restrict those it investigated and what measures it could take. (The guidelines remained in effect until September 11, 2001, after which time George W. Bush’s attorney general, John Ashcroft, loosened them to “fight terrorism,” and the Patriot Act gave the FBI more power to pry.)
Now, Trump is president and the FBI is under Kash Patel.
If I were young university student again (wouldn’t that be nice?), I’d do whatever I could to reignite the flame of the Free Speech Movement. It’s needed today as much if not more than it was 61 years ago. (If you’re a university student, I urge you to take this suggestion to heart. If you know any university students, you might suggest this to them.)
If I were in charge of any of the 60 American universities that Trump has just threatened for allowing “illegal” protests, I’d join together with the heads of the others and sue the Trump regime for violating the First Amendment rights of those universities and their students.
Craig Unger begins his book, ‘American Kompromat’ with the initial targeting of Donald Trump as a Russian asset. I am copying in some extracts from the first pages of the book. Many readers will have read the book a few years ago, maybe read the reviews of this best seller, but I have only now come across it:
At the store, Kislin and Sapir had brilliantly positioned themselves to win over Soviet bigwigs as clients, running into, as Sapir did, a boyhood friend from the old country who surfaced as bodyguard to Soviet foreign minister Eduard Shevardnadze, once the longtime KGB chief in the Soviet Republic of Georgia. Others who came by included Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko; future KGB counterintelligence chief and, subsequently, prime minister, Yevgeny Primakov; and Georgy Arbatov, the Kremlin’s American-based media spokesman.4 But one such client didn’t quite fit in with the rest—Donald J. Trump. Many details about Trump’s transaction with Kislin are not known. In fact, Kislin himself seems to be the only source of it, having told Bloomberg Businessweek in 2017 that he “had sold Trump about 200 televisions on credit.” According to Bloomberg Businessweek, Trump, who later developed a reputation for stiffing his vendors, made sure he paid Kislin on time. “I gave [Trump] 30 days, and in exactly 30 days he paid me back,” Kislin said. “He never gave me any trouble.”5 But there was more to it than that.
Kislin sold Tv’s which were not NTSC but PAL, so would only work in the Soviet Union. He was from Odessa, Ukraine, and was Jewish.
Soviets had introduced subterfuge into the way they sometimes allowed oppressed Soviet Jews to immigrate to Israel and the United States. The strategy was brilliantly designed to exploit legislation sponsored by Senator Henry M. “Scoop” Jackson (D-WA) and Representative Charles A. Vanik (D-OH), who were concerned about the plight of Soviet Jews who weren’t being allowed to leave the country. In a nutshell, the Jackson–Vanik Amendment to the Trade Act of 1974 allowed the Soviet Union to enjoy normal trade relations with the United States, but only if Jewish refugees were allowed to emigrate. Which turned out to be exactly what the Soviets wanted……..
……..” All well and good, but Kalugin also included a Trojan-horse-like component to what appeared to be the newly benevolent Soviet emigration policy. “We told [the émigrés], you can go, but you will provide us with information. And they pledged their services to us,” Kalugin said.11………..And what was their task after that? “To penetrate all Western institutions. Government, primarily, and business, particularly high technology,” said Kalugin. “That’s something Russia was always behind. But also the government organizations. And some did succeed in that sense.” So in the aftermath of Jackson–Vanik, the Soviet Union magnanimously allowed hundreds of thousands of Soviet Jews to immigrate to the United States. By any measure, it was an extraordinary achievement in human rights. Jewish dissident Alexander Lerner declared that fulfillment of these promises meant “a profound improvement of the emigration policy and that it should be responded to positively by the world.” But the amendment also had the effect of creating a hole in America’s defenses so massive that huge numbers of Russian criminals and KGB spies could and did inundate the United States. In the last half of the seventies, Kalugin himself sometimes went to Soviet night spots like Rasputin in Brooklyn’s Brighton Beach in hope of recruiting new talent—that is, Russian mobsters who would work in tandem with the KGB. “I’d look around, pick up some people, and check their backgrounds with Moscow to see if they were good enough to promote a relationship with.” In the United States, of course, the Italian Mafia would have been at war with the feds, but the Soviets and the Russians were different. They coopted the Russian Mafia. They weaponized organized crime. As Kalugin told me, “The Mafia is one of the branches of the Russian government today.” So, under cover of this new, more humanitarian emigration policy, the Soviets opened the floodgates. Hence, legislation with the goal of allowing Jewish refugees to immigrate to America had the unintended consequence of fueling the growth of the Russian Mafia and a new generation of KGB assets in America—one of whom was Donald Trump.
Q. What triggered Putin to react with intense anger against the West?
A.
How Reagan’s ‘Tear Down This Wall’ Speech Marked a Cold War Turning Point
Reagan’s words reflected a shift that was underway as Soviet reforms and protests were pressuring the East German government to open barriers to the West.
Under apartheid, Zulus were confined to KwaZulu-Natal and denied South African citizenship from 1981 to 1994. Today, about 10-12 million Zulus live in KwaZulu, preserving their language, customs, and identity amid South Africa’s multicultural landscape.
…..legal framework of apartheid. Human Rights Watch found that the Israeli government has demonstrated an intent to maintain the domination of Jewish Israelis over Palestinians across Israel and the OPT. Yesh Din reached this conclusion in the West Bank, specifically. B’Tselem found that Israel is maintaining a system of apartheid over Palestinians in the OPT as well as Palestinians living within its own borders.
USAID was frozen recently. The result for Zulus was:
Majola is one of millions of patients in South Africa affected by U.S. President Donald Trump’s global foreign aid freeze, raising worries about HIV patients defaulting on treatment, infection rates going up and eventually a rise in deaths.
The relief fund is currently active in seven districts in KwaZulu-Natal, five in the Eastern Cape, four in Gauteng, and several districts in other provinces across the country…….
…….HIV/Aids programmes would be most affected, as these programmes were the focal point of funding through the U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for Aids Relief (Pepfa)
Today, geographical patterns of poverty on the map of South Africa still correspond to the apartheid “homelands”, barren rural regions far from cities, packed with people but with little infrastructure, no development and few jobs. Municipalities with high percentages of people living in poverty are today often found in regions that were once homelands.
Meanwhile Trump wants to own the Palestinian homeland and has been angry that South Africa has supported the Palestinians. He is freezing aid because he wants South Africans to stop seizing land of white farmers who stole it during colonial occupation.
We watched the report of your conversation with the President of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky, with fear and distaste. We find it insulting that you expect Ukraine to show respect and gratitude for the material assistance provided by the United States in its fight against Russia.
Gratitude is owed to the heroic Ukrainian soldiers who shed their blood in defense of the values of the free world. They have been dying on the front lines for more than 11 years in the name of these values and the independence of their homeland, which was attacked by Putin’s Russia.
We do not understand how the leader of a country that symbolizes the free world cannot recognize this.
Our alarm was also heightened by the atmosphere in the Oval Office during this conversation, which reminded us of the interrogations we endured at the hands of the Security Services and the debates in Communist courts. Prosecutors and judges, acting on behalf of the all-powerful communist political police, would explain to us that they held all the power while we held none. They demanded that we cease our activities, arguing that thousands of innocent people suffered because of us. They stripped us of our freedoms and civil rights because we refused to cooperate with the government or express gratitude for our oppression. We are shocked that President Volodymyr Zelensky was treated in the same manner.
The history of the 20th century shows that whenever the United States sought to distance itself from democratic values and its European allies, it ultimately became a threat to itself. President Woodrow Wilson understood this when he decided in 1917 that the United States must join World War I. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt understood this when, after the attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941, he resolved that the war to defend America must be fought not only in the Pacific but also in Europe, in alliance with the nations under attack by the Third Reich.
We remember that without President Ronald Reagan and America’s financial commitment, the collapse of the Soviet empire would not have been possible. President Reagan recognized that millions of enslaved people suffered in Soviet Russia and the countries it had subjugated, including thousands of political prisoners who paid for their defense of democratic values with their freedom. His greatness lay, among other things, in his unwavering decision to call the USSR an “Empire of Evil” and to fight it decisively. We won, and today, the statue of President Ronald Reagan stands in Warsaw, facing the U.S. Embassy.
Mr. President, material aid—military and financial—can never be equated with the blood shed in the name of Ukraine’s independence and the freedom of Europe and the entire free world. Human life is priceless; its value cannot be measured in money. Gratitude is due to those who sacrifice their blood and their freedom. This is self-evident to us, the people of Solidarity, former political prisoners of the communist regime under Soviet Russia.
We call on the United States to uphold the guarantees made alongside Great Britain in the 1994 Budapest Memorandum, which established a direct obligation to defend Ukraine’s territorial integrity in exchange for its relinquishment of nuclear weapons. These guarantees are unconditional—there is no mention of treating such assistance as an economic transaction.
Signed,
Lech Wałęsa, former political prisoner, President of Poland
And, in reading the piece below, I have learned those extremist Catholic beliefs have never been extinguished. The Opus Dei cult has evolved out of that Spanish history.
It is not one supported or practiced by most Rank and File Catholics. It is a kind of Catholicism which has done irreparable harm. It is a kind of Catholicism unfit for existence in the modern world.
Inquisitor Bernard Gui said, the layman must not argue with the unbeliever, but “thrust his sword into the man’s belly as far as it will go.” In a time of burgeoning ideas about spirituality, the Church insisted that it was the only avenue through which one was permitted to learn of God. Pope Innocent III declared “that anyone who attempted to construe a personal view of God which conflicted with Church dogma must be burned without pity.”
Then I open Craig Unger’s 2017 book where he surprised me with this:
In effect, as attorney general, Barr, a leading figure in the newly emergent Catholic right—with its ties to Opus Dei, a mysterious fringe sect with roots in fascist Spain—was bringing in a new strain of religious authoritarianism and theocratic nationalism to join forces with Trumpism on their way to collision after collision with the US Constitution. All this in a world of decadence and depravity tied to figures like Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell, whose pedophile operation trafficked in underage girls as young as eleven, and also had links to Russian intelligence. This was a war for the soul of America. And at the heart of it all were seemingly simple questions that had never been answered. Indeed, almost absent from the presidential campaign was any discussion of what put Trump in the White House in the first place: Russia.
My mind is being exposed to an intriguing avenue of thought which seems to have historical facts behind it. I must find out more.
I am trying to understand how daily news now reveals the US and Russian foreign policies are aligning.
The US vote against a UN General Assembly resolution condemning Russia for starting the war against Ukraine placed it in previously unthinkable company – on the side of Russia, Belarus and North Korea. Even China abstained from the vote
I have a range of relevant books I am reading just now which are opening my mind to historical events which have led us to this tumultuous point in time.
None of us can afford to remain bystanders. Educating ourselves is more important than ever, but retaining an open mind is important.
So the latest guru to influence the techies is Curtis Yarvin:
Curtis Yarvin’s Ideas Were Fringe. Now They’re Coursing Through Trump’s Washington.
For over a decade, Yarvin, an ex-computer programmer-turned-blogger, has argued that American democracy is irrevocably broken and ought to be replaced with a monarchy styled after a Silicon Valley tech start-up. According to Yarvin, the time has come to jettison existing democratic institutions and concentrate political power in a single “chief executive” or “dictator.” These ideas — which Yarvin calls “neo-reaction” or “the Dark Enlightenment” — were once confined to the fringes of the internet, but now, with Trump’s reelection, they are finding a newly powerful audience in Washington.
Craziness is as craziness does. It is hard to believe that these cults are breaking American ambitions to be the shining house on the hill.
Weapons of war have been designed and manufactured by the US since Eisenhower, after WW2. But he warned, in his final address, of a potential over intense concentration on an arms race. The consequence would be funds directed at a massive military-industrial complex, rather than meeting the greater needs of the people of America.
borderslynn 
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