HISTORY AND THE CURRENT CONTEXT (November 14th, 2019)

research from the Committee for the Study of
HISTORY AND THE CURRENT CONTEXT
[HistoryAndCurrentContext.blogspot.com]


* "The Current War: Director's Cut' " (2019-11-05, by Professor Jay Apt, Carnegie Mellon University Pittsburgh, PA, via energy-daily.com/reports/The_Current_War_Directors_Cut_999.html) [archive.is/Pzmx2] [begin excerpt]: Many experts view the electric power grid as the greatest engineering achievement of the 20th century. But if Thomas Edison, inventor of the first commercial power plant, had had his way, the modern grid would not have been built. Instead the U.S. would have been powered by numerous coal-burning power plants, spaced a mile or so apart, with no electricity at all in rural areas.
Another electricity pioneer, engineer and inventor George Westinghouse, was convinced that Edison's system wouldn't scale, to use a modern term. When Westinghouse heard of a technology that would allow electricity to be sent over long distances with only small losses, he jumped into the electric power business. [end excerpt]
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* "How Islamic Jihadism Was Conceived as Antidote to Communism?" (2019-11-05, globalresearch.ca/islamic-jihadism-conceived-antidote-communism/5694033) [archive.is/93bav]
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* "Remembering the Greensboro Massacre of 1979, When KKK & Nazis Killed 5 People in Broad Daylight" (2019-11-04, democracynow.org/2019/11/4/greensboro_massacre_40th_anniversary) [archive.is/ju5Yg]
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* "Akwasi Afrifa: An Appraisal of Ghana’s One Time Military Ruler" (2019-11-05, globalresearch.ca/afrifa-appraisal-ghana-one-time-military-ruler/5693998) [archive.is/CCtR7]
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* (2019-11-04, Dmytriy Kovalevich):
November 4th, 1921 – the last raid of Ukrainian nationalists on Soviet Ukraine from Poland. The campaign which led to total physical elimination of nationalists’ troops in the battle of Bazar. Previously, Ukrainian nationalists of Petyura lost most of Ukraine under the blow of the Red Army and retreated to western Ukraine, where they met much stronger Polish forces. Leaders of Ukrainian nationalists signed there pact on joining western part of Ukraine to Poland so that to prevent its ‘sovietisation’. However, the troops of Ukrainian nationalists where undesired in Poland as well – they were armed, supplied and sent back to fight against soviet Ukraine in November 1921. The army of Ukrainian nationalists, commanded by former officer of tsarist army G.Tyutyunnyk, intervened from Poland to Soviet Ukraine. In two weeks they met the Red Army cavalry, commanded by a Bessarabian anarcho-communist of Polish origin G.Kotovsky. In the battle of Bazar the cavalry of Kotovsky completely eliminated all infantry army of Ukrainian nationalists. The captured thousands nationalists were executed right on spot. Their leader G.Tyutyunnyk later surrendered to the Red Army, agreed to cooperate, was used to train Red commanders, and was executed only in 1930.
Ukrainian nationalists tried to commemorate the battle of Bazar in 1941 under Nazi occupation,, erecting a monument there (was blown up by Ukrainian antifascist partisans in 1943). Since 1970s Ukrainian nationalists in Canada again began to promote this case. In 1991 Ukrainian nationalists from Great Britain collected money to erect a big cross there – but thanks to our opposition the cross wasn’t erected and was thrown into a ravine. In 2000 Ukrainian nationalists from US funded their volunteers who came and erected that cross. In 2003 the cross was downed by our comrades. After the Orange revolution Canadian Ukrainian nationalists came and erected it again (downed again in 2005). After Maidan they erected it again (downed again). We are to down that cross with the same persistency as that of nationalists erecting it.
Glory to G.Kotovsky, commander of the Red cavalry, who eliminated the nationalist army in the battle of Bazar.

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* "Ulysses S. Grant Launched an Illegal War Against the Plains Indians, Then Lied About It; The president promised peace with Indians — and covertly hatched the plot that provoked one of the bloodiest conflicts in the West; Grant called “wars of extermination” “demoralizing and wicked” in 1873" (2016-11, smithsonianmag.com/history/ulysses-grant-launched-illegal-war-plains-indians-180960787/) [archive.is/gyZ0K]
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* "Early Book Praising Hitler May Have Been Written by Hitler" (2016-10-06, nytimes.com/2016/10/07/world/europe/early-book-praising-hitler-may-have-been-written-by-hitler.html) [archive.is/75rn9] [begin excerpt]: In the early fall of 1923, when Adolf Hitler was still mostly known for his frenzied speeches at Munich beer halls, a slim biography was published that lauded him as the savior of the German nation and even compared him to Jesus.
The book, “Adolf Hitler: His Life and His Speeches,” was credited to Baron Adolf Victor von Koerber, a German aristocrat and war hero. Scholars have said that Hitler sought Mr. von Koerber out for the biography because he needed a conservative figure without links to the Nazi Party to help legitimize him as a leader.
However, new research says Hitler penned the work himself. This suggests that Hitler had designs on taking power earlier than many historians have previously thought and manipulated public opinion to get there.
“Adolf Hitler: His Life and His Speeches” was published two years before “Mein Kampf,” the autobiography and manifesto that historians consider the moment Hitler went from political propagandist to leader in waiting.
The von Koerber biography was published shortly before Hitler helped lead a bungled coup in Munich known as the Beer Hall Putsch. [...]
Mr. von Koerber’s life took a variety of twists after the book was published. Like a number of his fellow conservative elites who initially supported Hitler, he became disillusioned and worked against Hitler’s rise. Mr. von Koerber was arrested on July 21, 1944, the day after an unsuccessful plot to assassinate Hitler. He spent the rest of the war in a Gestapo prison and then a concentration camp. He was also known to have passed on intelligence to the British.
Mr. von Koerber had been virulently anti-Semitic in the 1920s, but his opinions and politics eventually shifted. He went from writing for conservative newspapers to liberal ones, including some owned by Hermann Ullstein, a Jewish newspaper tycoon and publisher. Papers reviewed by Professor Weber show that Mr. von Koerber even hid Mr. Ullstein in his home and helped him get to England.
Mr. Ullstein eventually emigrated to New York, where he died in 1943. Mr. von Koerber died in Johannesburg in 1969. [end excerpt]
- image caption: “Adolf Hitler: His Life and His Speeches,” published in 1923, was credited to Baron Adolf Victor von Koerber, a German aristocrat and war hero.

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* "Joachim Ronneberg, Leader of Raid That Thwarted a Nazi Atomic Bomb, Dies at 99" (2018-10-22, nytimes.com/2018/10/22/obituaries/joachim-ronneberg-dead.html) [archive.is/06odk]
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* "Historian: New evidence shows FDR’s bigotry derailed many Holocaust rescue plans; In his book about Franklin Roosevelt and the Holocaust, Rafael Medoff finds links between the US president’s anti-Japanese stances and his policies against Jews fleeing Hitler" (2019-11-04, timesofisrael.com/historian-new-evidence-shows-fdrs-bigotry-derailed-many-holocaust-rescue-plans/) [archive.is/6oxt3]
- image caption: President Franklin D. Roosevelt delivers a 'fireside chat' from the White House.

Not only was US president Franklin Roosevelt perfunctory about rescuing Jews from the Nazis, but he obstructed rescue opportunities that would have cost him little or nothing, according to Holocaust historian Rafael Medoff.
FDR’s role in preventing the rescue of European Jewry is detailed in a new book called, “The Jews Should Keep Quiet: Franklin D. Roosevelt, Rabbi Stephen S. Wise, and the Holocaust.”
Published in September through The Jewish Publication Society (https://jps.org/books/the-jews-should-keep-quiet/), Medoff’s book includes new archival materials about the relationship between Roosevelt and Rabbi Stephen Wise, who the author sees as a sycophantic Jewish leader used by Roosevelt to “keep the Jews quiet.”
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Wrote Medoff, “Franklin Roosevelt took advantage of Wise’s adoration of his policies and leadership to manipulate Wise through flattery and intermittent access to the White House.” In return for visits to the White House and Roosevelt calling him by his first name, Wise undermined Jewish activists who demanded the administration let more Jewish refugees into the US.
According to Medoff, Roosevelt’s policies toward European Jews were motivated by sentiments similar to those that spurred him to intern 120,000 Japanese Americans in detention camps as potential spies.
“Roosevelt used almost identical language in recommending that the Jews and the Japanese be forcibly ‘spread thin’ around the country,” Medoff told The Times of Israel. “I was struck by the similarity between the language FDR used regarding the Japanese, and that which he used in private concerning Jews — that they can’t be trusted, they won’t ever become fully loyal Americans, they’ll try to dominate wherever they go.”
During the 1920s, when Roosevelt was already a seasoned politician and a vice presidential candidate, he expressed racist views in editorials and interviews. Regarding new immigrants — and Asians in particular — he bemoaned the creation of ethnic “colonies” in major cities.
“Our main trouble in the past has been that we have permitted the foreign elements to segregate in colonies,” Roosevelt told the Brooklyn Eagle daily newspaper in a 1920 interview. “They have crowded into one district and they have brought congestion and racial prejudices to our large cities.”
During these key years before Roosevelt entered the White House, he also wrote and spoke about “the mingling of white with Oriental blood” and preserving other forms of “racial purity.” According to Medoff, all of this was part of a long-held worldview that later guided Roosevelt during his three terms in office.
“Roosevelt’s unflattering statements about Jews consistently reflected one of several interrelated notions: that is was undesirable to have too many Jews in any single profession, institution, or geographic locale; that America was by nature, and should remain, an overwhelmingly white, Protestant country; and that Jews on the whole possessed certain innate and distasteful characteristics,” wrote Medoff.
- image caption: During the 1920s, members of the KKK march in Washington, DC (Public domain)

Even as late in the war as 1944, when a Gallup poll found that the American public overwhelmingly approved of letting in an unlimited number of Jewish refugees, Roosevelt worked to make sure nothing of the sort took place.
“It wasn’t the public mood that set Roosevelt’s immigration policy; he could have quietly allowed the quotas to be filled without anybody knowing it,” said Medoff. “His harsh policy was a choice that he made, which emanated from his vision of what he thought America should look like.”

‘They’ll try to dominate wherever they go’ -
Last year, the US Holocaust Memorial Museum opened an exhibition called “Americans and the Holocaust.” In many ways, Medoff’s book challenges the premises of that installation, although the exhibition is not mentioned by the author.
According to Medoff, the USHMM exhibition “distorts and minimizes Roosevelt’s abandonment of Jewish refugees during the Holocaust.” The president is depicted as having been virtually powerless to enact rescue efforts, despite overwhelming evidence the administration worked to torpedo rescue plans at nearly every opportunity, explained the author.

USHMM exhibition distorts and minimizes Roosevelt’s abandonment of Jewish refugees during the Holocaust -
“[Roosevelt] would not have had to incur substantial political risks had he permitted immigration up to the limits set by US law, admitted refugees temporarily to a US territory, utilized empty Liberty ships to carry refugees, or authorized dropping bombs on Auschwitz or the railways from planes that were already flying over the camp and its environs,” wrote Medoff.
The Holocaust museum’s portrait of Roosevelt is particularly problematic, believes Medoff, because the president’s torpedoing of Jewish rescue efforts has been well-documented for several decades. Specifically, Medoff pointed to David Wyman’s seminal 1984 book, “The Abandonment of the Jews,” as well as research conducted by historians Henry Feingold and Monty Penkower.
“I’m told that the museum’s bookstore ordered only three copies [of Medoff’s new book, ‘The Jews Should Keep Quiet’],” said the author, who directs the David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies. “It would be interesting to compare that to the number of copies they have ordered of books that defend Roosevelt’s response to the Holocaust.”
Asked for a response to Medoff’s take on “Americans and the Holocaust,” USHMM communications director Andrew Hollinger said the exhibition “clearly” shows instance in which Roosevelt declined to save Jews from Hitler.
- image caption: An image from the exhibition, ‘Americans and the Holocaust,’ running at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum through 2021 (courtesy)

“[Rescuing Jews] was not a priority for President Roosevelt or virtually anyone else in the government, which the exhibition lays out,” Hollinger told The Times of Israel. “The exhibition clearly shows President Roosevelt led the effort to prepare America to enter the war, but never made rescuing the victims of Nazism a priority.”
The installation, said Hollinger, asks a key question: “If Americans knew so much about Nazi Germany’s persecution of Jews, why didn’t rescue become a priority?” The installation poses that question not only with regard to Roosevelt but to various sectors of the American public, said Hollinger.
“[FDR] condemned Kristallnacht but did not loosen immigration quotas despite pleas to do so,” said Hollinger. “His State Department took steps to prevent Jews and other refugees from entering the country… All of this is examined in the exhibition. I would encourage people to visit the exhibition in person or online to see it for themselves” (http://ushmm.org/americans).
‘Not to repeat the failure of their parents’
During the 1930s, Roosevelt maintained trade with Nazi Germany, and his administration even helped the Germans evade the boycott against German goods that many Americans were practicing.
As detailed by Medoff in “The Jews Should Keep Quiet,” products from Germany were permitted to enter the US with misleading labels that disguised the country of origin. This helped FDR undercut the boycott movement supported by Jewish leaders and millions of other Americans.
Even after the Kristallnacht pogrom in November of 1938, Roosevelt refused to criticize the leaders of Nazi Germany. His statement about the slaughter merely called the night’s events “unbelievable,” and he declined to name the victims or perpetrators. Indeed, FDR did not issue a single statement critical of the Nazis during the first five years of Hitler’s rule.
- image caption: Synagogue in Hanover, Germany, set ablaze during the Kristallnacht pogrom of November 9-10, 1938 (public domain)

In 1939, as the world went to war, Hitler broadcast his intentions to annihilate European Jewry. Simultaneously, FDR refused to support a bill that would have let 20,000 Jewish German adolescents into the US. Anne Frank and her sister Margot could have qualified to be included, since they were German citizens and under age 16, said Medoff.
Roosevelt’s determination to keep Jews away from America knew few limits, as probed in several chapters of Medoff’s book. Although it is well-known that Roosevelt turned away the St. Louis ship packed with German Jewish refugees, the president took other steps that have been omitted by most of his biographers.
For example, when the Dominican Republic made a public offer to take in 100,000 Jews on visas, the administration undermined the plan. From Roosevelt’s point of view, explained Medoff, that country was too close to home, and Jews deposited there would inevitably come to America. Officials in the US Virgin Islands, too, were willing to rescue Jews by letting them into the country, but Roosevelt halted the plan, wrote Medoff.
- image caption: US president Franklin D. Roosevelt meets with the National Jewish Welfare Board — (left to right) Walter Rothschild, Chaplain Aryeh Lev, Barnett Brickner and Louis Kraft — at the White House on November 8, 1943 (public domain)

When asked what Jewish leaders in the US learned from those dark years, Medoff pointed to the community’s later activism for the Jewish state and Jews endangered behind the Iron Curtain.
“Where we can really see the impact of remorse over the Holocaust is in the rise of the Soviet Jewry protest movement and pro-Israel activism by American Jews,” said Medoff. “Many of the key figures in those efforts have said they were driven by a determination not to repeat the failure of their parents’ generation to speak out during the Shoah.”

- image caption: Historian Rafael Medoff / ‘The Jews Should Keep Quiet,’ by Rafael Medoff

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* "When the Heart of Tel Aviv Was Home to Nazi Sympathizers and British Oppressors" (2016-06-15, haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium.MAGAZINE-saronas-dark-past-1.5396478) [archive.is/vdaAp#selection-539.1-539.80] [begin excerpt]: The red-roofed, two-story stone houses that lend Sarona its quaintness were built in 1871 by the German Templers, a breakaway group of messianic Protestants who set up colonies in Jerusalem, Haifa and other parts of the Holy Land. In what later became Tel Aviv, they established the agricultural colony of Sarona that was to become the first to market oranges under the Jaffa label. (The colony’s name was inspired by the biblical reference to the Rose of Sharone but in the Lutheran source the Templers relied on, it was written Sarone, which became Sarona.)
With the rise of Hitler, some Sarona residents became Nazi sympathizers. In a particularly ironic turn of events, the swastika flag was hoisted in the heart of Tel Aviv. It fluttered atop the Templers’ first community hall, Beit Hava’ad — now a hamburger joint — for seven years. (In 1943, members of Etzel, a pre-state Jewish underground, planted a bomb next to the building in a foiled effort to assassinate Templers.)
With the outbreak of World War II, the British Mandatory authorities declared the Templers enemy nationals. The British eventually deported Sarona’s residents to Germany and Australia, bringing an end to their seven decades of life in the Holy Land. [end excerpt]

* "Ski Trips and Swastikas: How Did a Nazi Family’s Photo Album Get to a Bench in Tel Aviv? After discovering the album was full of swastikas and Nazi uniforms 'I felt like going out onto the street with a bell, like Santa Claus, ringing and yelling: Whose is this album?' Ofer Kotler said" (2016-10-15, haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium.MAGAZINE-major-nazi-treasure-found-on-a-bench-in-tel-aviv-1.5449954) [archive.is/OAwVB]
- image caption: A picture from the family album found in Tel Aviv.


* "Sarona The Kingdom of God - to Nazism - The Kingdom of God" (by Jerry Klinger, jewishmag.com/129mag/sarona/sarona.htm) [archive.is/GfeP3] [begin excerpt]: Robert Gessner, a Jewish American Zionist from the American Mid-West with strong socialist leanings, visited Palestine in 1935. He was already well known as a movie writer, social critic and social activist on behalf of American Indians. Returning to America he wrote his famous travelogue of his journey to Britain, France, Germany, Poland and Palestine, "Some of my Best Friends are Jews." What shocked him, as he traveled east, were the rising degrees of anti-Semitism he found and the unbelievable poverty of the Polish Jews.
"The poverty of the Polish Jew can be visualized by the taxes he pays. One out of every two Jews can't pay the minimum demanded – less than a dollar a year. One-half of all taxpaying Jews can't pay more than two dollars a year. Those who do pay are decreasing in number. For every Jew who sought relief under the czars there now two, and in total they average four out of every ten Jews. As the wealth of Poland concentrates into Polish hands, there is a corresponding spread of poverty among Jews. One-half the Polish Jews are underfed; one-third have no means of support." 14
English anti-Semitism was polite, French anti-Semitism was apparent; German anti-Semitism was institutionalized and reinforced by governmental policy. Polish anti-Semitism, to him, was almost genetic.
He met and interviewed many German Jews that refused to leave Germany. They refused to believe that Hitler was anything but a passing nightmare. Germany would soon return to her senses they felt. He even met German Jews who were pro-Nazi, anti Jew. They actively denied that Hitler meant what he said.
"In Germany I had seen Jews completely assimilated, from 'honorary Aryans' to 100% Nazis, who had allegedly stamped out their all-Jewish meetings, hands raised in the Hitler salute, shouting, 'Down with us!' They had buried their heads, ostrich-wise, in the social sands of Germany, but the anti-Semites shot them nevertheless, because they were not economically assimilated. Although they spoke the same language as other Germans, loved the same philosophers and authors, drank the same beer and liked the same sausages, they remained competitors with in acquisitive society." 15
Gessner knew nothing of the plans to exterminate European Jewry because the Germans had still not formally decided on the policy until the Wannsee Conference of January 1942. Extermination of Jews had not been industrialized as of yet. The German's did realize that they could do what they wished with the Jews because the world was not going to stop them.
Gessner did know and wrote about the hundreds of thousands of murdered Jews in Eastern Europe and Russia following World War I. He recognized that the world did not care about them then. He knew and wrote about the infamous transfer agreements between the Zionists and the Nazis to exchange Jews for German products and money.16 He, and world Jewry, did not believe that the Germans would or could envision and implement a "Final Solution".
His last night in Poland he thought of his upcoming “escape” to Palestine.
“I lay in darkness and despair. Never before had I felt so deeply involved in the resurrection of a dying people. I had been indignant over American Indians, but in the depths of medieval Poland I felt a deep personal compassion. The death of the wretched Jews had become my death…I lay in darkness and despair, and gradually as the night deepened an emotional understanding grew in me. Now I could understand why these tortured Jews yearned for Palestine…”17 He finally understood, as did millions of Jews around the world, that Palestine represented the promise of freedom, of hope, of life itself.
Having left Poland he stopped in Vienna on his way to his ship in Italy. In Vienna, he observed the German form of anti-Semitism and paid his respects at the gravesite of Theodor Herzl. Herzl had sacrificed his self, his personal fortune, his family, his life for the Jewish people. [...]
Embarking from Italy for Palestine, Gessner was enveloped by the spirit of the Halutzim going to Palestine; even the ship's captain is Jewish. "This is a remarkable thing; I tell myself, that a Jew should be a captain of a ship loaded with fellow Jews heading for Palestine to establish a homeland. Yes, the captain is really a Jew. I am relieved and I am proud."19
In Palestine, Gessner met and interviewed much of the Zionist present and future leadership; Meir Dizengoff, Chaim Weizmann, Ben Gurion, Golda Meyerson, Henrietta Szold, Moshe Shertok, Vladimir Jabotinsky, Dr. Judah Magnes as well as members of the Arab community such as Fakhri Bey Nahashibi. He toured, studied, observed and bitingly commented on Palestine, a country of intense contrasts.
Gessner's emotions rolled from side to side, like a sea sick sailor, as he witnessed Jews exploiting Jews for profit.
"And it is even natural, in this uncontrolled and landless Klondike, to see orange groves hardly planted and barely matured, plowed under to make way for the foundations of apartment buildings. The resigned policemen are replaced by British offices who drink in bars with their caps on, like colonial overseers. And the English bank clerks, unemployed at home, act here like the representatives of civilization. And wealthy Jews from around the word come in the spring to attend the Maccabiad, which is the All-Jewish Olympics. And wealthy travelers also come to celebrate Passover at public Seders. And the poor Jewish peddler standing with envelopes and postcards outside the post office. And the old woman vendor before the Anglo-Palestine Bank selling matches and pencils – two months from Riga where she sold eggs and chickens, and made a better living at it – complaining of her rent and food costs and wishing me 120 years of life and health….
And out of the incongruities a new culture is painfully but definitely emerging. For the immigrants there are classes in Hebrew language and literature and history. There is a slow amalgamation of old-world inheritances into a twentieth century Hebrew culture." 20
In Tel Aviv he deliberately went to see a place of extreme contrast - Sarona.
In the mushrooming of Tel-Aviv the city expanded into a barbed-wire fence, edged warily around it and has gone galloping triumphantly on. Paved avenues with crowded apartments on both sides have been abruptly halted by wire entanglements, as though a barricade had been thrown up at the end of the street. The barricade was erected by Hitler's subjects- right in Tel-Aviv, the capital of the Jewish Kingdom. Even more ironic is the fact that the Nazis were there before Tel Aviv. Sarona was established as a colony for German Knight Templars in 1871.
'Why in the world do you want to see Sarona?' a Tel Avivian asked. "I've been here ten years and I've never gone there.'
'That's just why,' I answered. Although enclosed by a fence, Sarona is no ghetto. Sarona herself raised the fence. Sarona is not exploited by Tel-Aviv; she has something which Tel-Aviv is itching to get. She has land, over 7,000 dunams – precious sand on which apartments can be constructed.
The Saronians are the one group in Palestine to whom the bloodshed, contradictions, and confusions are a big joke. The repeated preparations of the British for widespread uprisings, the importation of troops by airplane from Egypt, the parades of tanks, the erection of barbed-wire entanglements – seem to them quite funny, because they aim to profit either way. The Jews want their land, the Arabs their sympathy, the British their tax money. Going to Palestine as they did in the 1870's they preceded by over half a century the arrival of the Zionists. They went to Palestine from Germany as religious Zionists; they were returning to the land of their spiritual birth. They desired to live and die in Zion in the service of their Lord, Jesus Christ. They established for themselves a spiritual homeland. With them it was not a question of physical persecution, as it later has been the case with most Jewish Zionists. And so it came to pass that the Nazis got the German Jews going and coming….
They had come to Palestine as religious, petty-bourgeois farmers. They struggled with the stubborn sand and lived smugly among themselves. Suddenly they awoke to discover their sand worth almost its weight in gold. They sold their marginal lands for over $3,000,000. A dunam, for which they gave an Arab $10, brings them $10,000 and up from a Jew. They have become big businessmen, have abandoned mixed farming to play the role of plantation gentlemen and oversee Arabs cultivate their newly planted orange groves. They ride along their shaded streets on small donkeys which hurry like mice under the enormous loads of beer and sausage, the legs of the overstuffed sausages barely clearing the ground. They return each summer to their home towns in Germany, where Palestine pounds establish them as prodigal princes.
Back in Palestine they sell off a quarter-acre and the trip has been well paid for. Some of the community's sixty families became frightened and the Town Council, to quiet those who had little land and were religious (and to bull the market) ruled that no more land should be sold to Jews. Whereupon the next German Aryan, who was approached by an untouchable Semite, patted his prospective customer's arm and told him to wait until he returned. He ran to the council chamber to announce that he was being offered so many thousands of pounds by Ginsberg and he was going to sell. The council in hurried session offered 10per cent less than the Jew's price and played on their countryman's patriotic instincts as being worth the 10 percent difference. The shrewd German sold – and came out 10 per cent ahead of Ginsberg's offer…. Now the councilmen have agreed that it is patriotic to sell land along the highways for stores, or erect the stores themselves and rent them at exorbitant but patriotic rates.
The main street of Sarona has been converted from a sleepy road in an Iowa agricultural settlement to a business thoroughfare in a Florida metropolitan resort. The baker has turned his bakery into a sidewalk café with tables on a terrace under lights and lanterns. A farmer's wife has opened a ladies' shop. Parlors and sitting rooms have been converted into stores and ice-cream stands. 'What do your fellow Germans say about having a business her for Jews?' I asked.
"Business is Business,' was their reply. "I sell all my bread in Tel Aviv. I sell my ice cream in Tel Aviv. I sell….21
And on Saturday Sabbath some German Jews in Tel Aviv emigrate back to their Fatherland. They are the few Aryanized Jews. You can see them strolling under the willows and eucalypti, cane in hand, conversing freely in German, stopping here for an ice and there for a cigar, feeling at home in the Kurrfurstendamm. The Nazis have no objection; it is not their Sabbath and no religious or civil law prevents them from making money when Tel Aviv's stores are closed.
The drugstore in Sarona has been run by a Jew since long before the recent exodus from German and he consequently feels himself a native Nazi, is repulsed by East European Jews, and hopes Tel-Aviv does not buy Sarona, because it is a model for the crude and vulgar people of that frontier mushroom. Also he has good friends among the Nazis and feels no discrimination personally. He is, of course, a Zionist. I asked him concerning the rumor I had heard that Arab politicians were receiving money from Sarona for the purpose of spreading anti-Jewish propaganda. I had been seeing an unusual number of German pictures in the Arab press, glorifying the Third Reich and Hitler.
The Jewish druggist was taciturn. 'The Nazis are quiet with their propaganda,' he said.
'No! They are not!' interrupted his assistant, a girl one year from Latvia. 'They teach their children to Heil Hitler!' and every night they sing the Horst Wessel song. But if they dare touch us – we shall sweep them away!"
She stood defiant, face red. Her employer glanced at her suspiciously and shrugged his shoulders.
In the street a member of the Ladies Auxiliary was taking the air. 'Yes, the air is good under the trees, but malaria comes from the Jewish pesthole over there.' She pointed to the Montefiore suburb of Tel-Aviv, the land of which the Jews had purchased from Arabs, not from Germans. 'Certainly, the Jews want Sarona," she added, 'because they want all Palestine. Balfour did a foolish thing…'
The Burgermeister may have agreed with her at the town hall, but in his downstairs office, he thanked Balfour for bringing prosperity to the Germans of Sarona. They were the only World War enemies of England who benefitted from the diplomatic declarations and treaties of British statesmen – an ironic joke on Hitler. In his office the Burgermeister talked of building more homes in Sarona (to lease to Jews) and of buying more land from Arabs (to resell to Jews). The Nazis in Palestine likewise are speculating on anti-Semitism. They have forgotten that they had come to the Holy land as young knights dedicated to the service to their Lord; in their Temple they have become money-changers. And the tree beside the blacksmith shop, where I saw a German Jew from Tel-Aviv pause to light his cigar, has a Haken-kreuz carved into its bark, done unmistakably by a long sharp knife."22
Sarona was the first community, outside of Germany, to have a Nazi party chapter. In Tel Aviv the German Counsels' office flew the Nazi flag at full staff. Cars from Sarona proudly carried the Haken-kreuz medallion on their grills. The Templers in other Palestinian communities behaved similarly.23
Helmut Glenk 23Awas born in a British internee camp in Tartura, Australia in 1943. His parents were members of the Sarona community who had been deported there. In his history of the German Templer settlement of Sarona, “From Desert Sands to Golden Oranges”, Glenk wrote of the 1930’s explaining the German settler point of view.
“In 1933, when the National Socialists came to power in Germany, many of the Templer settlers, who were ardent patriots, were drawn by the nationalistic fervor of the period – just like millions of their own fellow citizens in Germany and elsewhere. They hoped that a German resurgence would possibly strengthen their own position as a German minority in a foreign land.
The NSDAP (National Socialist German Labour Party) gradually increased its influence within the German communities in Palestine. From a small beginning in 1933, the number of persons joining the party increased steadily over the next five years. The NSDAP was able to develop a structure with local district groups (Ortsgruppen). One such group covered the Jaffa/Walhalla/Sarona area. That group had a membership of 113 in 1938. Within this group further units were formed with a particular focus on the younger generation. These units included Bund deutscher Maedel (League of German Girls) and Hitler Jungend (Hitler Youth) etc. and they organized a range of activities for their members.
The increasing influence of the new political ideology and its developments amongst the German settlers created internal problems for the Temple Society. It had to grapple with both challenges to its ideology and its community way of life as well as realizing that the NS activities would heighten tensions between Germans and Jews in Palestine. The settlers remained strictly neutral in the Arab/Jewish conflict in the 1930’s. The economic wellbeing of the settlers was very dependent on the local non-German population. The settlers had co-existed with both Arabs and Jews for decades. Close ties had been developed with both groups.
Another economic consequence of the political situation in Germany was that the sale of produce for German Reichsmarks (RM) became valueless due to the non recognition of the RM in Palestine. The settlers therefore opted, in many instances, to exchange their produce for imported goods. For example, a Mercedes car could be acquired in exchange for 50 cases of oranges.
In the 1930s the Sarona settlement itself was nearly encircled by the city of Tel Aviv which was growing and expanding rapidly. Hundreds of new homes were being built in Tel Aviv. This created further deep tensions within the Sarona community as many residents owned land outside the confines of Sarona proper. Jews were particularly interested in buying this land for a good price, and although some landowners were willing to sell, the policy of the Sarona community council was that no land was to be sold.
The German settlers were concerned for their safety. Arab snipers were shooting at Europeans, not knowing whether they were German or Jewish. Leaving Sarona and travelling became a dangerous venture. In order to show that they were German, the settlers put small German pennants on their cars, motor cycles and other modes of transport whenever they left Sarona, particularly when they had to go through Arab towns or settlements. These pennants with the swastika were resented by the Jews, who assumed that all the Germans settlers were Nazis. The British authorities issued everyone with identity cards. With the continual unrest between the Jews and the Arabs escalating, there were shooting skirmishes around Sarona and in the orange groves. Venturing outside Sarona after dark was risky and the British imposed curfews in a attempt to reduce the violence and shooting that was occurring. 23B
During the 1930s Palestine-Germans of military service age were required to go to Germany to do compulsory military training, as they were German citizens, and benefited from services and protection provided to them by a German consulate in Palestine, even though they were not born in Germany. In August 1939 all Palestine-German men who had done training in Germany or who were of military service age received orders to go to Germany and report to the armed forces. Young men from the Templer community responded to the call up. About 60 German settlers, who were visiting Germany when the war broke out, were not allowed to return to their settlements in Palestine.
After the war broke out, the British Mandate government turned the German farming settlements of Sarona, Wilhelma, Bethlehem and Waldheim into large internment camps. All of the Germans left in Palestine were moved into these camps except for the remaining men of military age. Those men were placed in a Prisoner Of War camp at Acre. Within these internment camps, surrounded by barbed wire, the Palestine-Germans were allowed to move freely and carry out farming activities to produce food.
When General Rommel won a series of important battles in the North African desert, the British authorities in Palestine sent the younger Templer families to Australia, where most of them were interned in the Tatura camp in Victoria".24
"In July 1941, 198 people from Sarona, together with almost 400 from the other internment camps were suddenly transported to Australia in the then troop carrier liner Queen Elizabeth. They remained interned in Tatura in Central Victoria Australia until 1947. By November 1944 most of the other people still in Sarona had been moved to the Wilhelma camp and the few remaining followed in September 1945".25
"During the war there were three prisoner exchanges between Germany and Britain. People in Palestine of German nationality (mainly women and children) were exchanged for Jews in Germany, most of whom were in concentration camps. Some Palestine-Germans were keen to be part of this exchange, in order to be able to see their men folk when they were back in Germany on leave from the armed forces." 26
The Nazis used the exchange to advance the Final Solution.
"On the following day, March 21, the actual day of the Purim festival, there was another 'Purim Massacre' in nearby Piotrkow. That day, Jews living legally in the ghetto were told that there was to be an exchange with German citizens living in the settlement of Sarona, in Palestine. Ten people were needed for this exchange, the Germans declared. All must possess university degrees: that was the only condition for emigration.
The Jews chosen for Palestine were driven out of Piotrkow in Gestapo cars, and then driven round the city a few times, before being taken, as darkness fell, to the Jewish cemetery. A deep pit had been dug. The Gestapo lined up the 'chosen', made derisive speeches amid much drinking and laughter, and ordered the Jews to undress.
Among the Jews shot that night at the Piotrkow cemetery was Dr. Maurycy Brams, a pediatrician and popular figure among the poor Jews of pre-war Piotrkow, shot that day with his wife and sixteen-year-old daughter, Hannah –'Ania'. The teenage girl had managed to run away from the cemetery at the last moment, but the Gestapo chased her among the tombstones until they caught her. Also shot that night was a young lawyer, Simon Stein, killed with his mother and the psychiatrist Dr. Leon Glattter.
Part of the Nazi 'Purim game' was to 'revenge' the ten sons of the Jew-hater Haman. These ten had hanged in the biblical story. But only eight Jews had been brought from Piotrkow that night, so the Jewish watchman of the cemetery and his wife were included, at the last moment, in the execution. "27
It is unknown if any Jews survived the "exchanges" for Sarona Templers.
At the trial of Adolph Eichmann in Jerusalem, for his major role in the extermination of European Jewry, it became known that Eichmann had cultivated a legend that he had been born in Sarona, Palestine. He had not.28
"In July 1941, 198 people from Sarona, together with almost 400 from the other internment camps were suddenly transported to Australia in the then troop carrier liner Queen Elizabeth. They remained interned in Tatura in Central Victoria Australia until 1947. By November 1944 most of the other people still in Sarona had been moved to the Wilhelma camp and the few remaining followed in September 1945. On 22 March 1946, Gotthilf Wagner, aged 59, the last Mayor of Sarona, was assassinated in Tel Aviv".29
"After the war, Sarona became a British military and police base. The base was the site of the first ever unconcealed Haganah attack on a British installation. [end excerpt]
Footnotes:
14 Some of My Best Friends are Jews, Robert Gessner, Farrar & Rinehart, N.Y. 1936. Pg. 110-111, chapter titled Hitler is more Humane.

15 Ibid pg. 144

16 http://www.transferagreement.com/

17 Gessner, pg. 147.

18 Gesssner, pgs. 159-160

Herzl's, last descendent, his grandson, Stephen Theodore Norman was abandoned and forgotten by the Zionists for 61 years. Norman was the only Herzl to have visited Palestine other than his grandfather. He was a committed Zionist. He died in Washington, D.C. in 1946. He was buried by the Jewish Agency and forgotten. Dec. 5, 2007, after a bitter struggle lasting almost six years, Norman was brought home. He was buried with his family on Mt. Herzl in the plot for Zionist leaders.

The Last Herzl: http://www.jewish-american-society-for-historic-preservation.org/thelastherzl.html

19 Gessner,pg. 166

20 Ibid pg. 181

21 No good German is still buying from a Jew," Adolph Hitler's to Nazi Party, March 1933

22 Ibid. pg. 187-191

23 http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull&cid=1208870500760

"Templar youth from Palestine had been sent to attend "educational" youth activities and family visits in Germany, where they met with top Nazi officials. Photographs on display at the Beit Lehem HaGlilit home of the Fleischman family depict Templar sect members wearing swastika armbands and congregating in one of the large courtyards between the two-story buildings and outhouses. The Templars of Beit Lehem HaGlilit (Galilean Bethlehem) and neighboring Waldheim (meaning "Forest Home" in German) were eventually rounded up by the British and sent to detention camps until their deportation, after which British Mandate soldiers and police were billeted in the Templars' former homes. When Jewish refugee families later moved into the Templar houses in Beit Lehem HaGlilit and Alonei Abba, they discovered hidden Templar belongings that attested the sect's support of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi regime. Items discovered in the community's homes included Nazi party pennants, badges, banners, pamphlets and flags, in addition to photographs".

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/946133.html

23A http://www.trafford.com/04-1334 23B ibid, From Desert Sands to Golden Oranges, pg. 198-200 24 http://www.teachers.ash.org.au/dnutting/germanaustralia/e/palestine3.htm

25 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarona,_Palestine

26 http://www.teachers.ash.org.au/dnutting/germanaustralia/e/palestine3.htm

27 The Holocaust, A History of the Jews of Europe During the Second World War, Martin Gilbert, Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1985 Pgs. 552-553

28 http://www.nizkor.org/hweb/people/e/eichmann-adolf/transcripts/Judgment/Judgment-011.html

29 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarona,_Palestine
---

* "Overlooked No More: Else Ury’s Stories Survived World War II. She Did Not. Ury’s books about a young German girl were so beloved, readers clung to them through the upheaval of World War II and passed them on to their children. But few knew Ury died in Auschwitz" (2019-07-10, nytimes.com/2019/07/10/obituaries/else-ury-overlooked.html) [archive.is/1Ztbz] [begin excerpt]: Ury wrote more than 30 books for children, in addition to short stories and travelogues for a Berlin newspaper. Her books sold millions of copies between 1918 and 1933. Then, with the Nazis in power, Ury was barred from publishing her works, even though her last book featured Adolf Hitler as a hero. She died at Auschwitz on Jan. 13, 1943. She was 65. [...]
Ury’s most popular series recounted the life and adventures of Annemarie Braun, known by her nickname “Nesthäkchen,” or the baby of the family. Amid a comfortable life, the heroine challenged the conservative rules and order of Wilhelminian Germany and pursued an education in the Weimar Republic — over the objections of her father. [...]
Beginning in the 1950s, the “Nesthäkchen” books were republished in West Germany, and edited to remove any strains of patriotism, including banning Volume 4, “Nesthäkchen and the World War,” which told of efforts on the home front during World War I.
That volume, and her last work, “Youth to the Front,” written in 1933 and featuring Hitler, opened Ury to criticism among her peers.
The German literary critic Alfred Kerr disparaged her as a “pig” for trying to appease the Nazis, Kerr’s daughter, the children’s book author Judith Kerr, said in an interview with Der Spiegel in 2007.
It “didn’t do her any good,” said Kerr, adding that she, too, had loved the “Nesthäkchen” books as a child before her own family fled Berlin for Britain in the 1930s. Ms. Kerr died in May.
In 1935 the Nazis, who unlike many of her readers were keenly aware that Ury and her family were Jewish, barred her from the country’s literary association and banned publication of her books. Over the course of the next eight years, they would force her to leave her family’s home and give up her summer residence. Her German citizenship was revoked, and she was deported to Auschwitz. [end excerpt]
- image caption: “Nesthäkchen und der Weltkrieg,” (“Nesthäkchen and the World War”), the fourth book in Ury’s most popular series, about a young German girl.

---

* "West hijacked Cold War victory but never cared how Russians feel about it – Gorbachev" (2019-11-06, rt.com/news/472727-gorbachev-west-cold-war/) [archive.is/qwSo9]
- image caption: The USSR President Mikhail Gorbachev (L) and the West Gernman chancellor Helmut Kohl sign a treaty in November 1990

---

* "When conservatives went to war over SF post office murals" (2019-05-31, sfchronicle.com/chronicle_vault/article/When-conservatives-went-to-war-over-SF-post-13912445.php) [is.gd/PJc39X] [begin excerpt]:
Like Victor Arnautoff, who included the slave and dead Indian in the high school murals to present an unvarnished portrait of Washington, the left-leaning Refregier had no interest in creating a standard-issue glorification of the city’s past. His historically critical, pro-workingman approach was not controversial at the time he received the commission, but the political climate shifted to the right after the war. Refregier found his work being attacked by right-wing groups and censored by his paymaster, the federal Public Buildings Administration, which had taken over management of the murals project as FDR’s public arts programs were phased out.
Starting in 1947, the objections began piling up thick and fast. Catholics said a friar depicted in one panel was too fat. Refregier slimmed the figure down. When he proposed including a panel showing a group of waterfront workers holding a banner reading, “Ship Caulkers’ Union, Eight Hour Day 1865,” commemorating the first official recognition of the eight-hour workday in California, the Public Buildings Administration refused to allow it, saying, “The eight-hour work day is controversial.”
The climactic mural in the series, “The Four Freedoms,” also proved problematic. It depicted the end of World War II and the creation of the United Nations, whose charter was signed in San Francisco. The proposed mural was divided into three panels, one of which showed Roosevelt surrounded by blocks representing the “Four Freedoms” — freedom from fear and from want, freedom of speech and of religion — which the late president had invoked in a famous speech.
The feds informed Refregier that the panel was objectionable and that the portrait of Roosevelt would have to be removed. Gilbert Stanley Underwood, an official with the Public Buildings Administration, gave various explanations: Prominent people should not be depicted; a portrait of a president would be inappropriate in a mural about “early California history”; the portrait was unflattering; the building was too unimportant to display a portrait of a president; and the idea simply “wouldn’t compose.”
Refregier dug in his heels, telling The Chronicle that deleting Roosevelt was “a concession I cannot make.” He went on, “I cannot help but believe that this order reflects, even if those who issued it may not realize it, the six-month campaign to discredit Roosevelt. I cannot allow myself to be a victim of propaganda against a very great man.”
Refregier appears to have been referring to the successful GOP-led effort in 1947 to pass a constitutional amendment limiting presidents to two terms, which was part of a broader Republican campaign to discredit Roosevelt and reject his legacy as an attempt to foist socialism on America. In such a climate, any official signing off on canonizing FDR in a publicly funded mural would have been a bold bureaucrat indeed.
In 1948, a number of conservative groups took aim at the murals. They were particularly incensed by Refregier’s depiction of the 1934 waterfront strike, a traumatic event that 14 years later still aroused strong passions in San Francisco. In his drawing of the memorial service for one of two strikers killed on Bloody Thursday, Refregier drew a man wearing a Veterans of Foreign Wars cap.
“We object very strenuously to use of our organization insignia” in a “Communist-inspired” mural, VFW official M.C. Herman said. “We object to the type of all the murals, if you must know,” he added. “They’re supposed to show the history of California, not labor troubles and men dragging Chinamen around by the hair.”
When Refregier refused the Public Buildings Administration’s order to cloak the murals pending a final decision on their fate, the government did it for him. This led to a large protest outside Rincon Annex on May 14, 1948, in which Refregier and local artists were joined by the longshoremen’s union.
As Gray Brechin notes in “Trial of the Rincon Annex Murals,” an essay that appeared on the website FoundSF, Refregier later wrote, “The stories in the Hearst press brought out gangs of hoodlums who were constantly under my scaffolding and I no longer worked after the sun set.”
When the federal government ordered just two small changes in the murals, a group dedicated to defending a sanitized view of California history, the Native Sons of the Golden West, called for the murals’ destruction and vowed to investigate Refregier’s past. In 1949, California Rep. Richard Nixon urged that a committee look into removing “Communist art” like the Rincon murals.
But these were just skirmishes. The real war over Refregier’s murals would not take place until 1953, when a debate over whether to destroy them all took place on the floor of Congress.  [end excerpt]
* "Trial of the Rincon Annex Murals" (foundsf.org/index.php?title=Trial_of_the_Rincon_Annex_Murals) [archive.is/EjXeE]
* "When a red-hunting Congress took on SF murals — and lost" (2019-06-14, sfchronicle.com/chronicle_vault/article/When-a-red-hunting-Congress-took-on-SF-murals-13998399.php) [is.gd/sZ3KLZ] [begin excerpt]: Preliminary skirmishing began several months before the May 1953 hearings. M.C. Herman of the Veterans of Foreign Wars said the murals depicted “episodes regarded as a blight to an auspicious past.” Waldo Postel, head of the Americanism Committee of the Grand Parlor of the Native Sons of the Golden West, charged that a red book that appeared in one of the murals was evidence of subversion and communism. The Hearst press, in the form of the San Francisco Examiner, claimed that Refregier had added mule ears to his painted depiction of Gilbert Stanley Underwood, the architect who designed Rincon Annex and ordered FDR excised from one of the murals. Refregier insisted they were garlands.
San Francisco’s cultural intelligentsia fired back. The Chronicle’s art critic, Alfred Frankenstein, said it was clear that many of the “patriotic” organizations criticizing the murals had not actually seen them. He rhetorically asked if construction of the Bay Bridge or the recovery after the 1906 earthquake and fire, both depicted in the murals, were blights on the city’s past. And he mocked Postel’s suggestion that the red book was a secret communist message, writing, “If red book designs are evidence of subversion, then 9/10th of all books would have to be destroyed, including the ones in Postel’s library.”
Refregier defended himself vigorously. In a letter to Frankenstein, he wrote, “We rejected long ago, while on the federal arts projects, the meaningless type of mural painting where the pioneer dressed in the Hollywood fashion, shaved and manicured, would be briskly walking along guided by a ‘spirit’ of one kind or another, its Grecian garments floating in the wind. This concept pays disrespect to the vitality, power, and labor of those who came before us.”
On May 1, Republican Congressman Hubert B. Scudder, from Sebastopol, opened the hearings, calling for the prompt removal of the “subversive,” “slanderous,” and “offensive” paintings. The people Refregier included in the murals, Scudder said, were “cadaverous characters” and “pot-bellied monks,” with “hideous faces,” “dwarfed heads” and “sadistic expressions.”
Quoting a little-grown group called the Society of Western Artists, which called the murals “artistically bad, historically absurd and politically corrupt,” Scudder asserted that Refregier’s work was “communist propaganda ... intended to promote racial hatred and class warfare.” The panels showing the 1906 earthquake and anti-Chinese riots were “too terrible,” Scudder said, and the Indians depicted in the panel about Mission Dolores were “too muscular.”
Another California Republican, Rep. Donald Jackson, a member of the House Un-American Activities Committee, then read a long list of Refregier’s left-wing affiliations as well as those of fellow muralist Victor Arnautoff, who was one of the three artists on the panel of judges that originally voted to award the Rincon commission to Refregier.
Opposing Scudder’s resolution was a formidable lineup that included both of San Francisco’s congressmen, William Maillard and future Mayor John Shelley, as well as representatives of many city cultural organizations, including the three major art museums, the San Francisco Art Association, the Society of Women Artists and the Metal Arts Guild.
Shelley said the murals were historically authentic and that opponents were seeking to censor unpleasant truths. “If we get into that, Mr. Chairman, then we are definitely contributing to thought control and trying to build a nation of conformists,” he said.
A long procession of distinguished witnesses testified or wrote letters in support of the murals, including antiquarian book dealer Warren Howell, historian George Stewart and San Francisco Museum of Art head Grace McCann Morley. A committee of experts called by the California Historical Society testified that the murals were historically accurate.
The mural’s defenders proved persuasive — Scudder’s motion never made it out of committee. The murals stayed. [end excerpt]
---

* "Iconic SF building was home to Bohemians for decades. Then it was destroyed" (2018-10-26, sfchronicle.com/chronicle_vault/article/Iconic-SF-building-was-home-to-Bohemians-for-13340080.php) [is.gd/RfRzQ5]
---

* "Listen to Grace Slick’s Hair-Raising Vocals in the Isolated Track for “White Rabbit” (1967)" (2017-03-16, openculture.com/2017/03/listen-to-grace-slicks-hair-raising-vocals-in-the-isolated-track-for-white-rabbit-1967.html) [archive.is/lkPTP] [begin excerpt]:
“One pill makes you larger and one pill makes you small…”
Sometime in the summer of 2016, this isolated track of Grace Slick’s vocals for “White Rabbit”--probably the most famous Jefferson Airplane song and definitely one of the top ten psychedelic songs of the late ‘60s--popped up YouTube. As these things go, nobody took credit, but everybody on the Internet was thankful.
Drenched in echo, Slick sings with martial precision, completely in command of her vibrato and dipping and rising all through the Phrygian scale (also known as the Spanish or Gypsy scale.) And no wonder, the song was written in 1965 after an LSD trip at her Marin county home where Slick had listened to Miles Davis’ Sketches of Spain over and over again for 24 hours. Compare the original version to Davis’ track “Solea” to hear what I mean. [...]
When the Great Society fell apart, Jefferson Airplane chose Slick as their singer in 1966 and she brought with her “White Rabbit.” [end excerpt]
* "Grace Slick Vocals Isolated - White Rabbit" (youtube.com/watch?v=dyMtIwobqbI) [archive.is/7Lmbf]
- (Comment): I became an Airplane "groupie" in 1967.I was 17..So much so, that my friends were calling me "Jeff Airplane". Would always see them when they played at the Shrine, or Kaleidoscope in Hollywood. Got a photo backstage with Grace..She offered me a sip of her Pepsi, I said no thanks,,only to find out later, it was laced with LSD....
* "On Stage: White Rabbit - Grace Slick and The Great Society, 1966 - The Matrix" (youtube.com/watch?v=mWlI5uf5H-o) [archive.is/sSE6Q]:
Seeds from a garage band jam that became infectious - in the best of ways. ;)
Oh yeah - that's Grace Slick with the Melodica as well. ;)
Dig.....


One pill makes you larger
And one pill makes you small
And the ones that mother gives you
Don't do anything at all

Go ask Alice
When she's ten feet tall

And if you go chasing rabbits
And you know you're going to fall
Tell 'em a hookah smoking caterpillar
Has given you the call

Call Alice
When she was just small

When the men on the chessboard
Get up and tell you where to go
And you've just had some kind of mushroom
And your mind is moving low

Go ask Alice
I think she'll know

When logic and proportion have fallen sloppy dead
And the white knight is talking backwards
And the red queen's off with her head
Remember what the dormouse said:
Feed your head.
Feed your head


* "I'd Love to Change the World" (1971-11-11, by Ten Years After, via youtube.com/watch?v=eOCtHjQKySw) [archive.is/SvZwc]
"Everywhere is freaks and hairies
Dykes and fairies, tell me where is sanity
Tax the rich, feed the poor
'Til there are no rich no more?

I'd love to change the world
But I don't know what to do
So I'll leave it up to you

Population keeps on breeding
Nation bleeding, still more feeding economy
Life is funny, skies are sunny
Bees make honey, who needs money, Monopoly

I'd love to change the world
But I don't know what to do
So I'll leave it up to you

World pollution, there's no solution
Institution, electrocution
Just black and white, rich or poor
Them and us, stop the war

I'd love to change the world
But I don't know what to do
So I'll leave it up to you "


---

* "SF filmmaker Rob Nilsson reflects on 1970s heyday of Cine Manifest; The San Francisco film collective will be honored during a retrospective at BAMPFA" (2019-06-16, datebook.sfchronicle.com/movies-tv/sf-filmmaker-rob-nilsson-reflects-on-1970s-heyday-of-cine-manifest) [is.gd/jAnpXy]
---

* "How a lost film reveals past, present of San Francisco’s Tenderloin" (2019-07-14, datebook.sfchronicle.com/movies-tv/how-a-lost-film-reveals-past-present-of-san-franciscos-tenderloin) [is.gd/aHJcx2]
- image caption: Mark Forrester, a community organizer, was a central figure in Robert Zagone’s 1967 documentary, “Drugs in the Tenderloin.”

---

* "Ukiah and Redwood Valley, California – 1965-1974" (jonestown.sdsu.edu/?page_id=14108) [archive.is/VYrJL], including:
- Peoples Temple Publicity, Redwood Valley (jonestown.sdsu.edu/?page_id=14102) [archive.is/rHuWy]
- Peoples Temple Newsletters (jonestown.sdsu.edu/?page_id=14094) [archive.is/14axc]
- Articles of Incorporation and Tax Exemption letters (jonestown.sdsu.edu/?page_id=14107) [archive.is/eSPJS]

* "Lester Kinsolving Series on Peoples Temple" (jonestown.sdsu.edu/?page_id=14081) [archive.is/bD8ng]:
In September 1972, Lester Kinsolving, an ordained Episcopal priest and religion editor for the San Francisco Examiner, wrote an eight-part series of articles that documented allegations of physical abuse, financial misdeeds, and suspect theology within Peoples Temple. It was the most extensive – and most critical – coverage of the Temple to that date, raising issues that would not be explored again for five years, with the publication of the New West article in August 1977.
The first four articles ridiculed Jim Jones’ claims of divinity and his ability to raise the dead, criticized questionable financial dealings, and exposed involvement of Mendocino county employees and public officials in the Temple.
Temple members mobilized to write letters to the editor of the Examiner and picketed the newspaper’s offices in protest. The Examiner dropped the final four articles slated for the series, but whether the editors had succumbed to the Temple’s pressure is still open to question.
The four unpublished articles in the series charged that the Temple was responsible for the death of Temple member Maxine Harpe, that Jones had defamed an African American pastor by alleging he had propositioned two young girls, and that the Temple had armed guards in Redwood Valley. Kinsolving also reported that members were punished in group meetings for crimes against the church, noting the example of a young boy being forced to eat his own vomit.
- "The Prophet Who Raises the Dead", September 17, 1972 (jonestown.sdsu.edu:443/?page_id=14082) [archive.is/UXyca]
- " 'Healing' Prophet Hailed as God at S.F. Revival", September 18, 1972 (jonestown.sdsu.edu/?page_id=14083) [archive.is/Jbx0b]
- "D.A. Aide Officiates for Minor Bride", September 19, 1972 (jonestown.sdsu.edu:443/?page_id=14084) [archive.is/xpxOc]
- "Probe Asked of People’s Temple", September 20, 1972 (jonestown.sdsu.edu:443/?page_id=14085) [archive.is/W2Sdy]
Unpublished
- "The People’s Temple and Maxine Harpe" (jonestown.sdsu.edu/?page_id=14086) [archive.is/9Khi9]
- "The Reincarnation of Jesus Christ – in Ukiah" (jonestown.sdsu.edu/?page_id=14087) [archive.is/xGvps]
- "Jim Jones Defames a Black Pastor" (jonestown.sdsu.edu/?page_id=14088) [archive.is/WhaN7]
- "Sex, Socialism, and Child Torture with Rev. Jim Jones" (jonestown.sdsu.edu/?page_id=14089) [archive.is/UbQMJ]
The text for these articles also appears at the Jonestown Apologists Alert, a blog site run by Lester Kinsolving’s son, Tom Kinsolving.

* "Dark Days Forty years ago, 10 days of death and dread shocked — and changed — San Francisco" (2018-11-15, projects.sfchronicle.com/2018/jonestown-moscone-milk/) [is.gd/wqz76e]
- image caption: Members of Jim Jones’ church perform while Jones (left) hosts Grenada Prime Minister Eric Gairy (second from left) and Lt. Gov. Mervyn Dymally (third from left) at Peoples Temple in San Francisco in June 1977.

- image caption: Jim Jones gives a tour of Peoples Temple to the prime minister of Grenada, Eric Gairy (third from right), and Lt. Gov. Mervyn Dymally (second from right) in June 1977.

- image caption: Peoples Temple founder Jim Jones and his wife, Marceline Jones, sit in front of their adopted children and next to his sister-in-law (right) with her three children in California in 1976. In 1977, Jones relocated Peoples Temple from San Francisco to Jonestown, Guyana, where he led the mass killing of more than 900 church members on Nov. 18, 1978, before dying of a gunshot wound later that day.


* "Timeline: And Then They Were Gone" (jonestown.sdsu.edu/?page_id=30368) [archive.is/SCYyY]


* "Teachers recall students they lost in Jonestown in ‘And Then They Were Gone’ " (2018-11-06, datebook.sfchronicle.com/books/teachers-recall-students-they-lost-in-jonestown-in-and-then-they-were-gone) [is.gd/ixBPD7]
---

* "Who will step up to lift the fear of deportations?" (2019-06-28, sfchronicle.com/opinion/article/Who-will-step-up-to-lift-the-fear-of-deportations-14057082.php) [is.gd/Q4Auhw] [begin excerpt]: In April 1979, as a toddler, I fled with my family from Iran to America to seek safety from religious and political dangers that would have meant death or imprisonment to us, had we stayed. [...]
My grandmother and mom were worried because then-President Carter issued an executive order to cancel visas for all Iranian nationals in retaliation for Iranian revolutionaries taking hostages at the U.S. Embassy in Tehran. There was also talk of deporting Iranian students studying in the U.S., and potentially seeking the deportation of Iranian nationals in general. Being sent back to Iran would have been a death sentence for my family and the thousands of religious minorities and dissidents who had sought refuge in the U.S.
Mysteriously, however, my family and our entire community were spared this doom. Thus, I grew, thrived, and am now an immigration attorney in the U.S., helping families reunite and businesses prosper.
Fast-forward 40 years — almost to the day from when we arrived in America — to an April afternoon in 2019. At a UCLA event, I met for the first time the White House policy adviser instrumental in finding a solution to that executive order — one that saved our community.
This story recently became unclassified, and I learned that in response to that 1979 executive order a delegation of 10 Iranian community leaders — nine men and one woman — found a sympathetic ear in the White House: Stuart Eizenstat.
Eizenstat was deeply disappointed by the U.S.’ tarnished history when it refused refugees fleeing the holocaust during World War II and instead sent them back to their impending deaths in concentration camps. He was determined not to let the U.S. make the same mistake again.
Eizenstat, Carter’s chief domestic policy adviser, met with the Iranian American delegation, along with representatives of the Immigration and Naturalization Service, State Department, and Justice Department, to find a solution. It was not easy. Nevertheless, Eizenstat and the delegation persisted, and this meeting set the stage for a policy to facilitate asylum applications for Iranians whose lives were in danger.
Consequently, thousands of Iranians in the U.S. were protected from potential deportation. Eizenstat’s determination to find a humanitarian solution and the courage of the delegation kept my community safely in the U.S. It meant our neighbors never had to come to an abandoned home and gather our belongings.
In addition to Eizenstat’s brilliant work, I discovered that the woman in that delegation was Shamsi Hekmat — my grandmother. [end excerpt]
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* "Abusive S. Korean facility exported children" (2019-11-09, apnews.com/736590a2b96340c4aac66616d94eea33) [archive.is/ePaMy]
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* "Weyman Ivan Lundquist 1930 - 2019" (text only, 2019-06-25, via legacy.com/obituaries/telegram/obituary.aspx?n=weyman-lundquist&pid=193241430) [archive.is/jMV90] [begin excerpt]: Wey first travelled to the USSR in 1974. After driving north on the ALCAN and then flying to Asia, he crossed the USSR with his family on the Trans-Siberian Railway, starting in Nakhodka and continuing to Moscow. On this trip, he visited the Limnological Institute at Lake Baikal as part of a Lake Tahoe/Lake Baikal reciprocal study. He served on the board of Tahoe/Baikal Institute when it was formed in 1990.
Mr.Lundquist was a co-founding member of the American Bar Association, Section of Litigation. After a sole practitioner from Texas approached a partner in a large Ohio firm with the idea, partners in several large law firms around the country moved the idea forward and established the new Litigation Section which grew to over 70,000 members. Mr. Lundquist served as Chair, ABA Litigation Section,1978-79.
From 1980-86, he chaired ABA Soviet Lawyer Dialogue Committee. In 1981 he organized the Lawyers Alliance for Nuclear Arms Control meeting. Throughout the 1980s, in order to foster better relationships, Lundquist organized, hosted, and attended numerous meetings with Russian and American academicians, judges, and political leaders, including Mikhail Gorbachev. This work took him to Ukraine and Georgia, as well as to Russia. He was advisor to the 1990 Meeting on Northern Justice conducted by Alaska, Canada, and Soviet Bars. [end excerpt]

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* "50 years after Stonewall, how has LGBTQ life changed?" (2019-06-30, datebook.sfchronicle.com/entertainment/50-years-after-stonewall-how-has-lgbtq-life-changed) [is.gd/9EAFnY]

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* "380,000 Soviet troops in East Germany were told not to interfere with bringing down the Berlin Wall – Gorbachev" (2019-11-09, rt.com/news/473033-gorbachev-berlin-wall-anniversary/) [archive.is/P8NW6]
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* "Fernando Corbató, a Father of Your Computer (and Your Password), Dies at 93" (2019-07-12, nytimes.com/2019/07/12/science/fernando-corbato-dead.html) [archive.is/71Shp] [begin excerpt]:
Dr. Corbató, who spent his entire career at M.I.T., oversaw a project in the early 1960s called the Compatible Time-Sharing System, or C.T.S.S., which allowed multiple users in different locations to access a single computer simultaneously through telephone lines.
At the time, computing was done in large batches, and users typically had to wait until the next day to get the results of a computation.
In a 1963 public television interview, Dr. Corbató described batch processing as “infuriating” for its inefficiency. The advent of time-sharing, however, reinforced the notion, still in its infancy, that computers could be used interactively. It was an idea that would animate the computing field for decades.
“Long before personal computers made it possible for each person to have a computer, time-sharing transformed the way people used computers,” said Stephen Crocker, a computer scientist and internet pioneer who worked on time-sharing systems.
Dr. Corbató explained his time-sharing methods in the 1963 interview, with the reporter John Fitch, broadcast as part of the WGBH series “M.I.T. Science Reporter.” In place of an actual bulky computer of the day, he used a modified electric typewriter mounted on a box of electronics.
Computers, he said on the program, were so expensive to use that any idle time was a huge waste. But with time-sharing, computer time was carefully metered and wasted time all but eliminated.
The computer could carry out only one operation at a time, by means of a so-called supervisor program. Yet it worked so quickly that it could skip from one job to another, with users never noticing any lag.
Each user “would be able to create and modify and execute programs interactively, as if he or she had sole control of the computer,” the science writer M. Mitchell Waldrop wrote in “The Dream Machine,” his 2001 book on the personal computing visionary J. C. R. Licklider.
In the WGBH interview, Dr. Corbató likened the supervisor program to a chess master playing against many opponents at once, letting them ponder their next moves while the master raced from board to board.
When Dr. Corbató was overseeing the C.T.S.S. project, computers were considered little more than giant calculators. But when his team demonstrated the new system in late 1962, that view was beginning to change.
“To this day I can still remember people only realizing when they saw a real demo: ‘Hey, it talks back. Wow! You just type that and you got an answer,’ ” he said in a 1989 interview with the Charles Babbage Institute at the University of Minnesota, an archive and research center specializing in information technology.
C.T.S.S. gave rise to a successor project called Multics, which Dr. Corbató also led. He told the Babbage Institute, “Multics started out as kind of a wish list of what we would like to see in a big computer system that might be made as a commercial model.”
Multics was a collaboration among M.I.T., AT&T’s Bell Laboratories and General Electric. It failed as a commercial endeavor, but it inspired a team of computer scientists at Bell Labs to create Unix, a computer operating system that took root in the 1970s and was adopted widely in the ′80s and ′90s.
The early work done in computing at M.I.T., in which Dr. Corbató played a central role, helped confer legitimacy on computer science as a field of inquiry. “It was really the beginning of the computer science community,” he said.
In the WGBH interview, Dr. Corbató showed that he could type commands on the modified typewriter and that the computer would respond instantaneously. The typewriter’s ball head began spinning, and words appeared on the paper as if the machine were possessed.
“The really frightening part is that we’ve made the computer extremely easy to use,” he presciently told Mr. Fitch. “So it will be used more and more.” [end excerpt]
- image caption: Fernando Corbató at M.I.T.’s computer lab in an undated photo. His computer time-sharing system developed there paved the way for the personal computer.

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* "How Joe Biden Became the Democrats’ Anti-Busing Crusader; With a school desegregation lawsuit roiling Delaware in the 1970s, Mr. Biden led an effort in the Senate to end court-ordered busing" (2019-07-15, nytimes.com/2019/07/15/us/politics/biden-busing.html) [archive.is/AJJj8]
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* "A party to end all parties: SF went wild when WWI ended" (2018-11-11, sfchronicle.com/chronicle_vault/article/A-party-to-end-all-parties-SF-went-wild-when-WWI-13378401.php) [is.gd/MkiR8Y]
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* "Ex-Soldier Gets 5,160 Years in Prison for Guatemala Massacre" (2018-11-22, nytimes.com/2018/11/22/world/americas/guatemala-soldier-massacre-santos-lopez-alonzo.html) [archive.is/h51XM] [begin excerpt]: A Guatemalan court has sentenced a former soldier to more than 5,000 years in prison for the massacre of 171 people in what is considered one of the worst atrocities in that country’s 36-year civil war.
Prosecutors said the soldier, Santos López Alonzo, 66, who is accused of belonging to an elite squad known as the Kaibiles, had participated in the killings of nearly all of the men, women and children in the farming village of Dos Erres on Dec. 7, 1982, according to Reuters. [...]
Mr. López was accused of being part of the elite Special Patrol of Kaibiles that was sent to Dos Erres to find members of a guerrilla group that had ambushed a military convoy.
When the patrol failed to find the guerrillas or guns, they pulled villagers from their homes and raped many girls, according to prosecutors. To cover up the rapes, they killed nearly everyone living there.
The massacre was carried out during the regime of Efraín Ríos Montt, the dictator who ruled Guatemala during one of the bloodiest periods of its long civil war and was later convicted of genocide and crimes against humanity.
According to a United Nations truth commission, about 200,000 people were killed and an additional 45,000 disappeared during the conflict, which lasted from 1960 to 1996. Most were killed by the army, though some were killed by leftist guerrillas. [end excerpt]
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* "How Stalin and the Soviet Union Created a Champagne for the Working Class; In 1936, the Party suddenly switched from denouncing bubbly to mass producing it" (2019-11-05, atlasobscura.com/articles/champagne-in-soviet-union.amp) [is.gd/Ho62rp]

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* "Most Russians regret USSR collapse, dream of its return, poll shows" (2016-04-19, rt.com) [archive.is/qQzl8]

* "The Berlin Wall: Exposing the lies of imperialism" (2019-11-09, by Nikos Mottas, idcommunism.com/2019/11/the-berlin-wall-and-imperialist-propaganda.html) [archive.is/a2epo] [begin excerpt]: For more than 29 years, within the framework of the anti-communist propaganda, the bourgeois historiography and media have been engaged in a war of distortions regarding the history of the Berlin Wall. They deliberately vilify the German Democratic Republic (DDR) and the achievements of the socialist construction while they attempt to manipulate public opinion and especially younger generations.
However, the reality is different from the version that the imperialists and their stooges serve to the people.
They claim that the Berlin Wall was erected in order to stop the- supposedly- increasing fleeing of East Germans to the capitalist Federal Republic of Germany. This is a classic false argument of the bourgeois propaganda. The creation of the Wall was actually imposed by the imperialist interventionism and the continuous attempts- by West Germany and their imperialist allies- to undermine and sabotage the socialist construction in the GDR.
If we want to answer the question “why the Berlin Wall was built”, we must go far before 1961 (the year of the wall's construction), during the period which following the end of WWII. The post-war future of Germany was determined by the decisions of the so-called Potsdam Conference (July-August 1945) between the Soviet Union, the United States and Great Britain. The conference's purpose was to create the conditions for a single, demilitarized, denazified, democratically organised German state. Until the implementation of the agreement, the country was under the adminstration of the armed forces of the three countries in two major parts- the western part under the adminstration of the alliance between U.S- Britain-France and the eastern one under the Soviet administration.
The imperialist aspirations of the western allies against the USSR consisted an obstacle to the implementation of the Potsdam Conference's agreement. Here are some major points:
a) In the sector in which the western allies had the administration (West Germany), a number of the measures agreed in Potsdam were not implemented (e.g. complete dissolution of the Nazi forces, total demolition of the Third Reich's remains in the state, arrest and imprisonment of all Nazi criminals, prevention of any Nazi-affiliated activity). It is clear that a part of Hitler's state apparatus was useful for the imperialists in their attempt to provoke the Soviet Union and the socialist camp.
b) The division of Berlin into “western” and “eastern” was a result of the disruptive political initiatives taken by the Social Democrats and Christian Democrats of West Germany. These political powers- having the support of the “allies”- created a separate state in 1948, introduced a new currency and abandonded the Berlin town hall, thus choosing to settle their “Municipality of West Berlin” in Schöneberg district. In fact, the forces of imperialism created their own state (West Berlin) in the heart of the- controlled by the USSR- East Germany (Geographically, Berlin belonged entirely to the eastern part of the country).
c) After the foundation of the capitalist Federal Republic of Germany (1949) there was an intensive and methodical effort to undermine the eastern part. West Berlin was for years the advanced outpost of the imperialist aggression against the Soviet Union. This agression was expressed in many ways, including psychological warfare against the East Germans, as well as multiple sabotages against East Berlin's public infrastructure.
During the same period, when the socialist construction in the German Democratic Republic was underway, the NATO forces, having the West German state as their base, were investing in provocations and threats against GDR. We must remind that West Germany became a NATO member in the middle of 1950s, the United States began the installation of modern weapons systems while the government of West Berlin was armed to the teeth demonstrating its military force (notice: all these were taking place against the 1945 agreements). It seems that the above consist negligible “details” for the “champions” of the anti-communist propaganda.
On the eve of the 13th August 1961, following a decision by the Parliament of the German Democratic Republic the borders closed. This act was in fact a measure of defense against the offensive policy of West Germany and an effort to ensure the security of the socialist German Democratic Republic.
The construction of the Berlin Wall came as a result of the escalating imperialist aggression. The major target of this aggression was Socialism; the socialist construction in the Soviet Union and in Eastern Europe, including of course the German Democratic Republic. It is characteristic that the imperialist propaganda gave West Berlin the name “showcase of the free world”, as opposed to the supposedly “oppressive and repressive regime” of the German Democratic Republic.
The “showcase of the free world”- West Berlin- was the source of multiple organised illegal activities against the German Democratic Republic; from ideological war to sabotages, the counter-revolution never stopped to undermine the socialist construction in East Germany.
The bourgeois historiography also hides what followed the Berlin Wall's destruction in 1989. Behind the hypocritical celebrations of the imperialists about the supposed “victory of Democracy, victory of the free world, etc”, the fall of the Berlin Wall was the beginning of an unprecedented “loot” of GDR's public property: numerous privatizations, armies of millions of unemployed Germans, privatization of public hospitals, extended corruption between west German political parties and German multinational corporations etc. [end excerpt]

* "Germany marks fall of Berlin Wall but forgets DDR lessons – US ‘socialist defector’ Victor Grossman" (2019-11-09, rt.com/news/473018-germany-berlin-wall-ddr-lessons/) [archive.is/Qrw1s] [begin excerpt]: Being leftist was a crime in 1950s US -
I decided to flee a few years after I left college, after I left Harvard, because I was a leftist and was very involved politically on the left. I saw many people, who grew up in 1930s and 1940s in New York and in the US but by 1951, when I got drafted into the army, the scene had changed completely; the Cold War had begun.
"The so-called McCarthy Era meant that people with left-wing views were actually pariahs."
Then I got drafted when the Korean War began. When you were drafted you had to say whether you had ever been in a leftist organization.  I panicked because that already made me a criminal. So, even though I had been, I signed that I had never been.
I was lucky to be sent not to Korea but to West Germany but they did check up on me. A penalty for having lied, which I did, was up to five years in prison. I did not want to spend a year and six months in a military prison, so I decided to desert and I did desert dramatically, swimming across the Danube River from the American to the Soviet zone, and the Soviet Army sent me to East Germany, the DDR. That is how I landed here many years ago. [...]
Millions lost their jobs
One of the good things about the DDR I felt was that the big huge companies and concerns and corporations that supported Hitler and caused the war have been thrown out completely after 1945 from East Germany but had remained strong in West Germany. The US Senator Kilgore (Harley M. Kilgore) told the US senate very officially and described how they’d supported Hitler. It was not just one man, it was these big corporations. After the wall came down, they came back.
"Not only did they come back but they came back by closing down entire industry in East Germany, throwing millions of people out of work, throwing almost all the professors out of jobs, throwing all my journalist friends – because I studied journalism in Leipzig in East Germany – out of their jobs and really cutting into the whole society in every way possible."
Every event has its good and bad sides. I could be happy with the people that rejoiced but I was worried about what was to come. And I was not completely mistaken. I am afraid my fears were justified.
Unemployment got less severe than in the first terrible and disastrous years. People more or less found jobs. Conditions were not as good, especially because they are very insecure. In the DDR you were never afraid of losing a job unless you beat your foreman with a crowbar or come three weeks in a row dead-drugged to be thrown out – and, even then, the trade union had to approve it.
There was a saying among working people that did the rounds three years after the wall went down. It went: in the DDR days if you were smart, you would not say anything against the party leadership but you could say everything you wanted about your foreman or management. Now, it is the other way ‘round: you can say anything against a president or a chancellor but you'd better not to say anything about your foreman. This shows this different way of living between two societies.
No more confidence in future -
Now, we have an industry and a society where millions are uncertain of what tomorrow is going to bring. They do not know whether they will have a job tomorrow, they do not know whether they could afford the homes they rent tomorrow. People are thrown out of their homes if they cannot afford to pay or cannot keep up with mortgage payments. That was illegal in the DDR days. It was illegal to throw people out of their apartment. At worst, you could get them out but you had to give them another apartment, albeit a cheaper one.
In DDR days, I told people who dreamed of the golden western future where they would have everything and live like kings, I told them that you will be able to buy as many soft drinks as you want and travel to see the leaning tower of Pisa or the Golden Gate bridge but you may not have a job and you may not be able to pay for your home. Unfortunately, my fears have justified themselves.
It means that, today, although the unemployment is not as terrible as it was in the first four or five years, it is still not good and many jobs that people have are insecure jobs. They do not know for how long it will last and they are afraid of not coming in at weekends out of fear of losing their jobs.
"There was a sense of security in the old days which is completely lacking today."
Many products were missing, which you’d like to have had in those days. You can have more today if you can afford them. This is also a different issue. In the old days, most people seemed to have more money than they could spend because there were not enough luxury goods in our shops. They had money to go on vacation. Not everybody, but a large number.
Today, many people –and especially children– are suffering from a severe lack of money. This is another problem which has arisen. That makes me think, after 30 years, that, as it is with many events in world history, there is a good side and a bad side to any event. And there were bad sides, too. [end excerpt]
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* "Former Soviet Leader Mikhail Gorbachev Reveals Who Was Responsible for Country's Collapse; Gorbachev became General Secretary of the Soviet Union in 1985, and served as the first and only president of the USSR between 1990 and 1991, after which the country ceased to exist" (2019-11-10, sputniknews.com/russia/201911101077273657-former-soviet-leader-mikhail-gorbachev-reveals-who-was-responsible-for-countrys-collapse/) [archive.is/u9wGV] [begin excerpt]:
Mikhail Gorbachev became leader of the Soviet Union in March 1985, kicking off a broad-ranging campaign to kick conservative communists out of positions of leadership, and, starting in 1987-1988, introducing limited market reforms which led to the formation of cooperatives and to increased freedom for industrial enterprises. Between 1989 and 1990, he oversaw broad political reforms which led to direct elections and an end to the Communist Party’s monopoly on political power, and, inadvertently, the rise of nationalist and separatist sentiment in the USSR’s republics, including in the Russian republic led by Boris Yeltsin.
In August 1991, members of Gorbachev’s inner circle initiated a coup attempt against him in a bid to halt his continued reforms. These reforms included a New Union Treaty looking to grant over two dozen additional autonomous regions of the USSR near-republic level powers which, if implemented, could have seen the Soviet Union breaking up into dozens of new countries, rather than the 15 it broke up into historically. The coup attempt failed, the Communist Party was banned, and Gorbachev returned to Moscow, his powers significantly weakened.
On December 8, 1991, the leaders of the Russian, Ukrainian and Belarusian republics met in a state dacha in a Belarusian nature preserve and signed an agreement declaring that the USSR had ceased to exist. On December 25, Gorbachev appeared on television and resigned, marking the formal collapse of the Soviet Union.
Although widely praised as a visionary global leader for his efforts to end the Cold War and increase global cooperation on issues like climate change, Gorbachev has also been heavily criticised in his home country for the failure of his economic and political reforms, which led to the dismantling of the Warsaw Pact security alliance, the end of the USSR’s superpower status, and the collapse of the country itself. In the 1990s, Russia and other former Soviet republics were plunged into a period of unprecedented poverty and national humiliation. In 2003, a report in the medical journal BMJ calculated that between 2.5-3 million Russian adults died prematurely between 1992-2001 as a result of the Soviet collapse ("Russian mortality trends for 1991-2001: analysis by cause and region", 2003-10-25, ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC259165/) [archive.is/7m8dN]. Hundreds of thousands more from other republics perished in civil wars, as a result of gang violence, and due to other calamities during the same period. [end excerpt]