Saturday, May 20, 2017

Internationale Persönlichkeiten - Interviews mit Russia Today




Trump comes to Riyadh as Saudi Arabia bankrupts itself


US President Donald Trump’s choice of Saudi Arabia for his first foreign trip has provoked some criticism.It is not difficult to understand why.
Whilst the US claims to be the leader of the “free world” the embarrassing reality is that its most important Middle East ally is a repressive autocratic Wahhabist monarchy.  Whilst Donald Trump says the destruction of Jihadi terrorism is his priority, Saudi Arabia – as everyone knows – is the country that bankrolls most of this terrorism.
Beyond that there is the fact that many Americans have not forgotten or forgiven the fact that 15 of the 19 9/11 hijackers – as well as Osama bin Laden, the presumed organiser and inspirer of the 9/11 attacks – were Saudis.
The fact however remains that Saudi Arabia is the lynchpin of the whole of the US’s strategic position in the Middle East, whilst Saudi Arabia’s oil exports – and the fact that it sells them for US dollars – serve a key role in underpinning US dominance of the world economy.
Whilst this remains the case the US has no realistic option but to maintain good relations with the Saudis.  In that respect Trump’s courtship of the Saudis makes far more sense that Obama’s ill concealed disdain for them, and given the damage Obama did to this crucial relationship Trump’s priority on repairing it – and thus his visit to Saudi Arabia – makes complete sense.
What all the talk of Trump’s visit obscures however is that even as the US seeks to renew its relationship with Saudi Arabia, the Kingdom has embarked on an out-of-control spending spree which can only result in its eventually bankrupting itself.
To understand the scale of what is happening, just consider the outline of the projects that are supposed to be under discussion during Trump’s visit.  The Financial Times provides a good summary
Saudi Aramco, the state oil company, signed more than $50bn worth of deals on Saturday, around $22bn of which were new memorandums of understanding, including:
Investing $7bn with Rowan over 10 years to own and operate drilling rigs, creating 2,800 jobs in Saudi Arabia; extending a joint venture with Nabors for oil well services, seeing $9bn of investment over 10 years, creating up to 5,000 jobs in the kingdom; a new joint venture with National Oilwell Varco in Saudi Arabia to manufacture driving rigs and equipment, seeing $6bn of investment over 10 years.
Aramco also said it would boost operations at its US refinery unit Motiva, with a planned $12bn investment with a likely additional $18bn by 2023. The deal aims to create 12,000 jobs by 2023.
Six firms — including Honeywell, McDermott and Weatherford — signed MOUs to expand Aramco’s use of locally produced goods and services, bringing $19bn of investment to the kingdom.
Aramco also signed a deal with GE to deliver $4bn worth of savings via digitisation of the oil firm’s operations. This was part of a GE package of valued at $15bn.
When deputy crown prince Mohammed bin Salman visited Washington earlier this year, the White House estimated that Saudi investment pledges could rise to around $200bn.
In the defence sector, Lockheed Martin signed a $6bn deal to assemble 150 Blackhawk helicopters in the kingdom, supporting 450 jobs.
Raytheon and General Dynamics also signed agreements to support the localisation of defence contracts. The deals support Prince Mohammed’s plans for the world’s third-largest spender on arms to create a domestic industry led by the newly formed company Saudi Arabia Military Industries. The kingdom wants to source half of defence spending locally by 2030 from 2 per cent now.
Saudi Arabia’s $200bn Public Investment Fund, which plans to boost its assets under management to $2tn after the planned initial public offering of Aramco, will also announce its SoftBank vision fund deal, as well as launching another partnership, according to its managing director, Yasir Al Rumayyan. The SoftBank vision fund, the largest private equity fund ever created, is expected to close at more than $90bn, with half of the investment coming from PIF. Around 50 per cent of the fund is expected to be invested in the US, bankers say.
Saudi’s sovereign Public Investment Fund pledged $20bn for a $40bn Blackstone US infrastructure fund, with $20bn to be raised from other parties. Blackstone said it expects, with debt financing, to invest $100bn in infrastructure projects, mainly in the US. “This potential investment reflects our positive views around the ambitious infrastructure initiatives being undertaken in the US as announced by President Trump,” said Yasir Al Rumayyan, managing director of PIF.
Dow Chemical, whose chief executive Andrew Liveris co-chaired the Saudi-US CEO Forum on Saturday, agreed to invest more than $100m for a polymers manufacturing plant, while studying a proposed investment in silicones production.
This comes on top of a $300 billion (!) deal to buy arms from the US over a period of 10 years, of which $110 billion (!) is to be spent up front.
These gargantuan arms deals oil rich Arab states regularly make are not primarily intended to strengthen their defence capacity.  The quantities of weapons these oil rich Arab states buy is by many orders of magnitude greater than they can ever use.  Rather these deals are bribes, intended to buy the favour of the country from whom these oil rich Arab states buy these arms, whilst simultaneously buying the favour of useful politicians and businessmen by recycling some of the money to them through kickbacks and commissions.
The US – and Britain and France – have long since become accustomed to this practice, and have no illusions about it.
In the 1970s, when Muammar Gaddafi’s Libya did the same thing with the USSR – buying vast quantities of arms from the USSR for the same reason which it was never going to use – the Russians did not understand it, and were baffled by it, especially as they saw most of the sophisticated weapons they were supplying vanish into Libyan storehouses (many of them were still there, rusted and decaying, in 2011 when Gaddafi fell).  Today the Russians have also come to understand it.
Needless to say what Gaddafi and the Libyans did with the Soviets in the 1970s is completely dwarfed by what the Saudis regularly do, and even that is dwarfed by the Homerically vast arms deal they have struck with the US now.
All of this spending is being driven by the grandiose and out-of-control ambitions of Saudi Arabia’s actual ruler, the 31 year old Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who seems to believe that instead of working hard to develop its own industrial and technology base Saudi Arabia can simply buy itself one wholesale.
Moreover at the same time that Prince Mohammed bin Salman has launched Saudi Arabia onto this gigantic domestic spending spree, he is doubling down on Saudi Arabia’s hugely over-ambitious and massively costly foreign policy, waging (and losing) war in the Yemen, intervening in Syria, bankrolling Pakistan, Turkey and Egypt, and confronting Iran, a country far more powerful than Saudi Arabia, with resources Saudi Arabia cannot match.
This is exactly the opposite route to the one Saudi Arabia should be following.
If Prince Mohammed bin Salman were familiar with his history (he obviously isn’t) he would know that Saudi Arabia and the other oil rich Arab states have been trying to buy their way to industrialisation since at least the 1960s.  Since this is never done by developing the economy indigenously the result has always failed, as the plants and factories imported from Europe and North America need supplies and technicians from abroad to keep going, and are ill-adapted to local needs.
Repeating this approach, which in the past has always failed, but doing so on a gigantically greater scale, is simply going to make the failure far greater, littering Saudi Arabia with flashy new factories that consume more in resources than the value of the goods they produce.
By contrast, if Prince Mohammed bin Salman were ever to put aside his sectarian prejudices (something which is probably impossible for him) he could do worse than look at Iran, which since the fall of the Shah in 1979, and despite many setbacks and Western sanctions (or possibly because of them) has managed through careful industrial training and management, and by relying on its own resources, to do what Saudi Arabia and the other oil rich Arab states have consistently failed to do, which is build up a significant industrial and technology base of its own.
As for where the funding for this megalomaniac spending programme will come from, the Financial Times article makes it all too obvious: from privatising Aramco, Saudi Arabia’s state owned oil company, the historic cash cow of the Saudi economy, which as a result is going to be lost forever.
All this combined with a bizarre fancy that Saudi Arabia’s financial resources can be increased by using the sale of Aramco to leverage up the paper value of the assets managed by its Public Investment Fund (ie. its sovereign wealth fund) from $200 billion to $2 trillion.
Needless to say this is not going to be anywhere near enough, and it is only a matter of time before runaway spending at this rate causes Saudi Arabia to run out of money.
That all sense of reality is being lost is shown by the extraordinary extravagance of the reception Prince Mohammed bin Salman is laying on for President Trump.  A leaked report shows that the Saudis are planning to spend an astonishing $68 million on his visit.
In reality what Saudi Arabia needs to do is not engage in a gigantic programme of over-spending which can only make the country’s economic situation worse, but on the contrary cut back radically on its existing spending, so that it can start finally to live within its means.
That means thinking of how to end the vast system of subsidies and privileges that are distorting and stifling the economy, and which are robbing it of vitality because they are unearned since they are paid for from oil revenues and are not paid for by taxes.
It means working towards ending the peg between the Saudi riyal and the US dollar, which is exaggerating the problems of the country’s budget at a time of low oil prices, and which is increasing its non-oil trade deficit by stifling the competitiveness of the non-oil part of the country’s economy.
It also means reining back on the country’s ludicrously over-ambitious and inherently destabilising foreign policy, which has achieved nothing save to spread terrorism throughout the Middle East, including in Saudi Arabia itself, whilst locking Saudi Arabia into an arms race with Iran, which because of Iran’s vastly superior resources Saudi Arabia can never win.
As for the vast sums Saudi Arabia spends on arms – which it cannot use and often doesn’t intend to use – Saudi Arabia would be far better advised spending them instead on educating its people so as to prepare them for a genuine role in the country’s government.
As well as improving the national education system – which by all accounts is in an extremely poor condition, blighted by bigotry and prejudice – that means providing scholarships to young Saudis – men and women – from poorer families to study in universities abroad.
Objectively all this is possible, and it is not too late to do it.  If it were done then in 10 to 20 years time Saudi Arabia would be transformed vastly for the better.
In reality none of this is going to happen, and most likely it would not happen whoever was Saudi Arabia’s ruler.  Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s peculiar genius is to accelerate the now inevitable collapse, so that it will all happen far more quickly than it otherwise would have done, and at supersonic speed.
Patrick Cockburn, that most insightful of commentators on Middle East affairs, has compared the cost and extravagance of Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s reception of President Trump to the similarly empty and inflated pomp of the Shah of Iran’s Persepolis Party of 1971. 
That event together with the Shah’s runaway spending on a manic and unsustainable industrialisation programme eerily similar to the one now planned by Prince Mohammed bin Salman led eventually to the 1979 Iranian Revolution and the fall of the Iranian monarchy.  If the same thing happens in Saudi Arabia the results will be far more bloody.
In the meantime all sorts of people are making hay whilst the good times last.  In the words of the Financial Times
……dozens of chief executives from Saudi Arabia and the US were convening at a forum where they discussed Saudi financial flows into America, and how the US could help diversify the kingdom’s oil-reliant economy. “The government is taking a back seat and putting the private sector as the locomotive to drive the economy,” said Khalid al-Falih, the Saudi energy minister. “There will be risks, but we will work with you to mitigate it.”….
At the close of the Saturday morning forum, about 70 senior Saudi executives and US chief executives boarded buses outside the Four Seasons hotel, bound for lunch with King Salman and Mr Trump at the royal court.
The elite business delegation is set to hold postprandial talks with prince Mohammed, architect of the kingdom’s reform plans. Around 30 US executives were approved to attend the lunch, including names such as Larry Fink of BlackRock, Michael Corbat of Citigroup, Roy Harvey of Alcoa, Adena Friedman of Nasdaq and financial adviser Michael Klein.
Amid tight security, royal guards took the executives’ phones, before they boarded the coaches.
As the horizon darkens, all that is left is to wish these gentlemen bon appetit.

"Being In Time" Gilad Atzmon's latest Book Worth to Be Looked At


Being In Time: Gilad Atzmon’s journey through post-modern crises


Many of the same people lament the state of a broad, however amorphous western society that has succumbed to the trends of hyper-identity politics, political and economic sectarianism, brutal financial capitalism and the death of industry and censorship in societies that still preach the self-righteous yet vague cause of ‘freedom’.In Being In Time, author Gilad Atzmon offers a philosophical explanation for how these divergent trends are actually systematic outgrowths of societies simultaneously bewitched and confused by the abject failures of the three domineering ideologies of the 20th century: communism, fascism and liberalism.
Atzmon approaches how an uneasy calm in mid-20th century western states has given way to a world where the dams of free speech, prosperity and political predictability have been burst open leading to a flood of insecurity, third world style poverty and perhaps most importantly for Atzmon, the poverty of ideas.
Atzmon who has previously written about his personal struggles with and opposition to Jewish identity politics in The Wandering Who, takes his dialectical approach further, subjecting many contemporary and post-modern trends to the same scrutiny.
Such trends include, post-modernism, Cultural Marxism, post-Freudian social theory, the sexual identity agenda, post-modern attitudes to race and religion and the so-called populist political phenomena of Brexit and Donald Trump.
Atzmon calls his book a post-political manifesto, but it could equally be called a post-dogma manifesto. Atzmon laments a western world that has forsaken the Socratic method of embracing wisdom based on a combination of logic and ethics. Instead, Atzmon sees a western society obsessed with legal minutiae that he traces to strict Talmudic jurisprudence.
The book is very much in the tradition of the great secular conservative leaning sceptics and metaphysicists of the 19th and early 20th centuries. Those who have read Nietzsche or Spengler will recognise familiar diagnosis to modern problems combined with Atzmon’s unique world view shaped by the rejection of the Zionist creeds of his Israeli place of birth.
One might be so bold as to say that a great deal of geo-political philosophical commentary in the 21st century is largely shaped by people trying to either debunk or revise the manifestly ludicrous hypothesis of Francis Fukuyama.
At the dawn of the 1990s, Fukuyama in The End of History and the Last Man stated that history had ceased to move forward and was comfortably numbed to the neo-liberal realities that everyone had accepted.
The problem is that not everyone accepted them and even those who did, have largely been failed by them both materially and spiritually.
Atzmon doesn’t merely lacerate the post-Fukuyama developments in the metaphysical crisis currently gripping an increasingly hysterical liberal western establishment, but instead explains the root of these problems from the perspective of an historic prism illuminated through a combination of late-modern cultural analysis and Atzmon’s own unique trials and tribulations with the crises inherent in intra-Zionist Jewish identity.
http://theduran.com/being-in-time-gilad-atzmons-journey-through-post-modern-crises/

Trauer um Dr. Hans-Günter Szalkiewicz


Er war einer dieser UnersetzlichenVon Andreas Maluga, Angela Tietze, Roswitha Tietze, Brigitte Streicher und Eberhard Eick http://www.nrhz.de/flyer/beitrag.php?id=23802

"Es gibt Menschen, die kämpfen einen Tag, und sie sind gut. Es gibt andere, die kämpfen ein Jahr und sind besser. Es gibt Menschen, die kämpfen viele Jahre und sind sehr gut. Aber es gibt Menschen, die kämpfen ihr Leben lang: Das sind die Unersetzlichen." (Bert Brecht) Einer dieser Unersetzlichen war unser Freund, Genosse und Kampfgefährte Hans-Günter Szalkiewicz, der am 4. Mai 2017, seinen letzten Kampf gegen eine heimtückische Krankheit, im Alter von 85 Jahren verloren hat. Wir sind erschüttert und unglaublich traurig.


Hans-Günter Szalkiewicz beim UZ-Pressefest 2016 (Fotos: arbeiterfotografie.com)

Geboren am gleichen Tag wie der Präsident der DDR, Wilhelm Pieck, am 3. Januar 1932, erlebte er als Kind die grausamen Auswirkungen von Krieg und Faschismus. Nach der Befreiung vom Faschismus bot ihm die DDR die Möglichkeit nach seinen Fähigkeiten zu lernen und zu studieren. Die ökonomischen Fragen der noch jungen DDR waren sein Fachgebiet. Er promovierte an der Hochschule für Ökonomie und hatte dann vielzählige Aufgaben und Funktionen im Ministerium für Außenhandel und der staatlichen Plankommission. Nach der Konterrevolution folgten unwürdige Arbeitsbeschaffungsmaßnahmen und Arbeitslosigkeit, trotz hervorragender Qualifikation. 

Die Konterrevolution in der DDR und den anderen sozialistischen Ländern verstand er als das, was sie war – die Vernichtung dessen, was dort aufgebaut und gestaltet wurde. Dagegen nahm Hans-Günter als standhafter Kommunist den Kampf auf. Neben seiner politischen Tätigkeit im Solidaritätskomitee für die von der Klassenjustiz verfolgten Genossinnen und Genossen der Staats- und Parteiführung übernahm Hans-Günter mehrere Jahre die Verantwortung als Vorsitzender der Berliner Landesorganisation der DKP, deren Mitglied er schon 1995 wurde.

Der Umgang mit ihm war immer von Klarheit in Haltung und Sprache geprägt, aber auch von Verständnis für die Probleme des Einzelnen. Seit Anbeginn war Hans-Günter aktives Mitglied im DDR-Kabinett-Bochum e.V. und kreativer Ideengeber, insbesondere unserer Schriftenreihe "Theoriedebatte und ideologischer Kampf". Bewegt denken wir an viele Stunden intensiver Diskussion aber auch geselliger Runde voller Lebensfreude und Optimismus zurück. 


Hans-Günter Szalkiewicz beim UZ-Pressefest 2016

Hans-Günter wird fehlen, nicht nur seinen Genossinnen und Genossen in Berlin, sondern Allen, die ihn wirklich kannten. Aber in unseren Herzen, in unserer Erinnerung und in unseren Kämpfen wird er weiter leben!


Andreas Maluga, Angela Tietze, Roswitha Tietze, Brigitte Streicher und Eberhard Eick sind Mitglied im Vorstand des DDR-Kabinett Bochum e.V.
72 Jahre nach dem Tag des Sieges über den Faschismus Aufbau einer neuen Welt des Friedens und der FreiheitVon Andreas Maluga (Fotos und Text) http://www.nrhz.de/flyer/beitrag.php?id=23808

April 1945. In der Uniform eines sowjetischen Leutnants kommt der 19-jährige Deutsche Gregor Hecker in seine Heimat zurück. Er war acht, als seine Eltern mit ihm nach Moskau emigrieren mussten. Vom 16. April bis 2. Mai fährt er im sowjetischen Militärfahrzeug auf dem Weg der 48. Armee von der Oder nördlich an Berlin vorbei. Mit einem Lautsprecher fordert Gregor die noch vereinzelt kämpfenden Soldaten zur Kapitulation auf. Einige zeigen Einsicht in die aussichtslose Lage und ergeben sich, andere antworten mit Schüssen. Täglich begegnet Gregor Menschen unterschiedlicher Art, hoffnungsvollen, verwirrten, verzweifelten. Bei seinen russischen Freunden fühlt er sich zu Hause, viele der Deutschen geben ihm Rätsel auf. Langsam begreift er, dass es „die Deutschen“ nicht gibt. Er trifft einfache Leute, Mitläufer, Rückversicherer, Überläufer, Durchhaltefanatiker, eingefleischte Faschisten. Die erste Begegnung mit aus dem Konzentrationslager befreiten Antifaschisten wird für ihn zu einem bewegenden Erlebnis. Und als sein Freund Sascha bei einem letzten Kampfeinsatz fällt, steht für den erschütterten Gregor fest, dass er hier am Aufbau eines anderen, besseren Deutschlands wirken wird.


Am sowjetischen Ehrenmal Berlin-Treptow am 9. Mai 2017 – Kränze der offiziellen Delegationen aus den ehemals sowjetischen Teilrepubliken (alle Fotos: Andreas Maluga)


Tausende Menschen gedachten den ganzen Tag an den Sieg über den Faschismus im Treptower Park


Über 200 russische Biker schafften den Weg zum sowjetischen Ehrenmal in Treptow, um Kränze in der Gedenkhalle des Mahnmals nieder zu legen. Unterstützer des russischen Motorradclubs „Nachtwölfe“ waren u.a. aus Polen, Serbien, Slowenien, Bulgarien und Mazedonien angereist


Die Installation des großen Transparentes „Dank Euch, Ihr Sowjetsoldaten!“ durch das DDR-Kabinett-Bochum


Tausende Menschen gedachten den ganzen Tag an den Sieg über den Faschismus im Treptower Park


Andreas Maluga, Vorsitzender DDR-Kabinett-Bochum e.V. zeigt Solidarität mit dem antifaschistischen Widerstand in den Volksrepubliken im Donbass


Erinnerung an gefallene Rotarmisten im Kampf um die Befreiung Berlins


Das Banner des Sieges am Fuße des sowjetischen Ehrenmals


Über 200 russische Biker und Unterstützer des russischen Motorradclubs „Nachtwölfe“ u.a. aus Polen, Serbien, Slowenien, Bulgarien und Mazedonien


Am sowjetischen Ehrenmal Berlin-Treptow am 9. Mai 2017


Über 200 russische Biker und Unterstützer des russischen Motorradclubs „Nachtwölfe“ u.a. aus Polen, Serbien, Slowenien, Bulgarien und Mazedonien


Die Installation des großen Transparentes „Dank Euch, Ihr Sowjetsoldaten!“ durch das DDR-Kabinett-Bochum fand große Zustimmung…


Am sowjetischen Ehrenmal Berlin-Treptow am 9. Mai 2017


Am sowjetischen Ehrenmal Berlin-Treptow am 9. Mai 2017


„Sowjetfahnen sieht man besser“ – Aktion des DDR-Kabinett-Bochum


Sowjetisches Ehrenmal Berlin-Treptow am 9. Mai 2017


„Sowjetfahnen sieht man besser“ – Aktion des DDR-Kabinett-Bochum


Sowjetisches Ehrenmal Berlin-Treptow am 9. Mai 2017


Nicht Militarismus, sondern Hochachtung für die sowjetischen Soldaten um die Befreiung vom Faschismus


Gregor Hecker leistet eine Arbeit, die ungezählte deutsche Kommunisten an allen Fronten des Krieges leisteten: sie versuchten wie der junge „deutsche Rotarmist“ im Film „Ich war 19“ von Konrad Wolf die in aussichtsloser Lage befindlichen deutschen Soldaten zum Aufgeben zu bewegen. 

Auch Heinz Keßler war einer, der diese Aufgabe an der Seite der Roten Armee erfüllte. Heinz Keßler ist am 2. Mai 2017 im Alter von 97 verstorben. Mit Heinz verlieren wir einen schwer zu ersetzenden, treuen Kämpfer. Seine Lebensleistungen im Kampf gegen den Hitlerfaschismus, dem Aufbau eines besseren Deutschland, seine vielzähligen Funktionen in der Staats- und Parteiführung der Deutschen Demokratischen Republik - zuletzt als Armeegeneral und Minister für Nationale Verteidigung - verdienen hohe Anerkennung und Hochachtung. 

Seine bis ins hohe Alter scharfsinnige und sachkundige Analyse der politischen Lage in Deutschland und in der Welt wird uns auch in Zukunft in Erinnerung bleiben. In den vergangenen 28 Jahren nach der Konterrevolution in der DDR hat er sich konsequent mit dem herrschenden Zeitgeist auseinandergesetzt. Der gewollten Delegitimierung der DDR ist er mit seiner beeindruckenden Rede vor dem Gericht der Klassenjustiz offensiv entgegengetreten. Heinz war ein unbeugsamer Kämpfer für Frieden und Antifaschismus und standhafter Kommunist. 

Mit unserer Arbeit im DDR-Kabinett-Bochum war Heinz Keßler von Beginn an solidarisch verbunden und jede einzelne Begegnung mit ihm wird uns tief im Gedächtnis bleiben. Wir verneigen uns mit größter Hochachtung vor ihm und werden Heinz stets ein ehrendes Gedenken bewahren.

Ich habe das Glück, in einer Familie aufgewachsen zu sein, in der ich als Kind bereits von meinen christlich-humanistischen Eltern vermittelt bekommen habe, dass der 8. Mai 1945, dass die vollständige militärische Niederlage des Deutschen Reichs im 2. Weltkrieg nichts ist, was wir bedauern müssen.

Egal ob die Menschen dies damals bereits so verstanden, weil sie die Herrschaft des deutschen Faschismus ablehnten oder ob sie 1945 noch verblendet waren von 12 Jahren Propaganda und noch mehr Jahren Militarismus, Antikommunismus und Demokratiefeindlichkeit – nach 1945 hätten alle Menschen sehen können und verstehen können, was der Faschismus an der Macht in Deutschland und Europa bedeutete. Nach 1945 gab es keine Entschuldigung mehr, betrübt zu sein, über das Ende der Verbrechen, über das Ende des von Deutschen begonnen Angriffskriegs, über das Ende des Völkermords an den in Europa lebenden Juden, über das Ende der Verschleppung und Versklavung zigtausender Zwangsarbeiter – also über das Ende der faschistischen Herrschaft in Deutschland. Für jeden, der nicht selbst von solchen Verbrechen profitieren wollte – das haben mir meine Eltern vermittelt – wäre zumindest nach 1945 begreifbar gewesen, dass der 8. Mai ein Tag der Befreiung war.

Wir wissen, dass diese Tatsache und im grundsätzlichen Gegensatz zur DDR, es für Viele in der Bundesrepublik nicht so war. 

Während in der Bundesrepublik die Vertreter der großen Konzerne - Siemens, Krupp, Flick, Deutsche Bank, IG Farben - von ihrer Kriegsschuld freigesprochen wurden, alte und neue Faschisten in höchste Ämter des Staats einziehen konnten und das Kommando über die Bundeswehr führten, wurden in der DDR die preußischen Junker und die Monopole enteignet und die Arbeiterbewegung wiedervereinigt. Kommunisten, Sozialdemokraten, Antifaschisten und Widerstandskämpfer übernahmen das Land und begannen aufzuräumen in den Ämtern, Betrieben und in den deutschen Köpfen.

Während die westlichen Alliierten eine Zerstückelung Deutschlands planten, verteidigte die Führung der Sowjetunion die Einheit Deutschlands.

Während die Sowjetunion schon 1943 in Jalta eine Friedensordnung vorstellte, begann spätestens mit Gründung der Bundesrepublik, der Kalte Krieg gegen die Sowjetunion und die im Entstehen begriffenen Sozialistischen Staaten. 

So dauerte es vierzig Jahre, bis erstmals 1985 mit dem damaligen Bundespräsidenten Weizsäcker, ein offizieller Repräsentant dieses Staats sich öffentlich zum 8. Mai als einen Tag der Befreiung bekannte.

Für mich, aber auch für das DDR-Kabinett-Bochum e.V. , ist es eine Selbstverständlichkeit, den 8. Mai, als Tag der Befreiung vom Faschismus und den 9. Mai, als Tag des Sieges über den Faschismus zu würdigen und zu gedenken. 

Als Tag, der das Ende der faschistischen Barbarei in Deutschland und Europa markiert. 

Als Tag, an dem leider nicht die deutsche Bevölkerung selber sich vom Faschismus befreite – sondern es bedurfte- insbesondere die Anstrengungen der Sowjetunion und ihrer ruhmreichen Roten Armee. 

So werden wir auch in diesem Jahr am 9. Mai am sowjetischen Ehrenmal in Treptow sein. Die Fahne der Sowjetunion ist für uns ein Symbol der Befreiung vom Faschismus. Mit ihr wollen wir nicht nur unseren Dank dafür zum Ausdruck bringen. Ebenso gedenken wir der unermesslichen Opfer, die den Völkern der Sowjetunion dieser Kampf gekostet hat, um weite Teile Europas und auch Deutschland von der Unterdrückung und Ausplünderung durch den deutschen Imperialismus und seinem Mordregime zu befreien.

Wir tun es nicht aus rückwärtsgewandter Nostalgie, sondern weil wir als Kommunisten, Sozialisten und Demokraten einstehen für eine Welt ohne Ausbeutung des Menschen durch den Menschen, ohne profitgierige Ausplünderung der Natur und für eine Welt, in der jeder jeden unabhängig von seiner Hautfarbe und sozialen Herkunft achtet. Dafür braucht es den Frieden weltweit. Hier in Europa gibt es nur eine Chance, ihn zu erhalten: die Solidarität mit den Völkern der Russischen Föderation.

Doch der deutsche Imperialismus reißt sein bluttriefendes Maul wieder weit auf, weil es die nicht mehr gibt, die es ihm einst schlossen und ihn zumindest zeitweilig an die Kette legen konnten. Wieder rüstet er sich gegen Russland, im Verein mit den ehemaligen westlichen Siegermächten, die ihn erst geschützt und dann gestärkt haben. Nun stehen sie wieder aggressiv vor den Grenzen Russlands.

In der Ukraine erleben wir in unseren Tagen die Wiederauferstehung des Faschismus als staatliches System, in dem rassistische, nationalistische und faschistische Bewegungen geduldet und gefördert werden. Unterstützt durch die Regierungen des so genannten „demokratischen“ Europa. 

Lasst uns nicht schweigend zusehen. Lasst uns gemeinsam das scheinbar Unmögliche versuchen, dem Treiben des Imperialismus ein Ende zu setzen und damit den Krieg, den Hunger und die Not, als Wurzel des Faschismus, von dieser Erde zu verbannen.

Erinnern wir uns dabei was die Gefangenen des KZ Buchenwalds nach ihrer Selbstbefreiung im April 1945 geschworen haben:

Wir Buchenwalder,
Russen, Franzosen, Polen, Tschechen, Slovaken und Deutsche, Spanier, Italiener und Österreicher, Belgier und Holländer, Engländer, Luxemburger, Rumänen, Jugoslaven und Ungarn kämpften gemeinsam gegen die SS, gegen die nazistischen Verbrecher, für unsere eigene Befreiung.
Uns beseelte eine Idee: Unsere Sache ist gerecht – Der Sieg muß unser sein!
Wir führten in vielen Sprachen den gleichen, harten, erbarmungslosen, opferreichen Kampf und dieser Kampf ist noch nicht zu Ende.
Noch wehen Hitlerfahnen!
Noch leben die Mörder unserer Kameraden!
Noch laufen unsere sadistischen Peiniger frei herum!
Wir schwören deshalb vor aller Welt auf diesem Appellplatz, an dieser Stätte des faschistischen Grauens:
Wir stellen den Kampf erst ein, wenn auch der letzte Schuldige vor den Richtern der Völker steht!
Die Vernichtung des Nazismus mit seinen Wurzeln ist unsere Losung.
Der Aufbau einer neuen Welt des Friedens und der Freiheit ist unser Ziel.
Das sind wir unseren gemordeten Kameraden, ihren Angehörigen schuldig.


Der hier wiedergegebene Text entstammt einer Rede, die Andreas Maluga, Vorsitzender des DDR-Kabinett-Bochum e.V., bei einer Veranstaltung der BüSGM am 7. Mai 2017 in Berlin gehalten hat.


Siehe auch:

Ansprache zum Tag des Sieges, 9. Mai 2017
Frieden, Zusammenarbeit und Freundschaft mit Russland!
Von Klaus Hartmann
http://www.nrhz.de/flyer/beitrag.php?id=23810

Aus den "Kalendergeschichten des rheinischen Widerstandsforschers"
Die kluge Mutter
Von Erasmus Schöfer
http://www.nrhz.de/flyer/beitrag.php?id=23806

US rejects Putin’s offer of transcript of Trump-Lavrov meeting

US rejects and ridicules unprecedented Russian offer though it offers the one opportunity of ascertaining beyond all doubt what actually happened at the meeting between Trump and Lavrov. http://theduran.com/us-rejects-putin-offer-transcript-trump-lavrov-talks
The US political and media establishment has rejected and even ridiculed President Putin’s offer to Congress of the transcripts of the meeting in the Oval Office between Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and US President Donald Trump.The prevailing response to the offer is that it was not intended seriously.  The tone was set by BBC journalist who speaking on British television claimed that in making the offer Putin was having, and was just trolling the US, and that there is “no possibility” of the US accepting a transcript written on “Kremlin notepaper”.
This is to misrepresent what was a perfectly serious offer despite the humorous tone with which Putin spoke.
That the offer was intended entirely seriously can be judged by the words Putin used when he made the offer
As for the results of Foreign Minister Lavrov’s visit to the United States and his meeting with President Trump, we assess the results highly. This was the first visit, a return visit by our foreign minister, after we received US Secretary of State Tillerson here in Moscow.
This is normal and natural international practice. At the same time, however, we see the growing political schizophrenia in the United States. There is no other way I can explain the accusations against the current president that he handed whichever secrets over to Lavrov.
Incidentally, I spoke with him [Lavrov] today about this matter, and I will have to give him a ticking off for not sharing these secrets with me. Not with me, nor with our intelligence officials. This was really not good of him at all.
What’s more, if the US administration has no objection, we are ready to provide a transcript of Lavrov’s conversation with Trump to the US Senate and Congress. Of course, we would do this only if the American administration so desires.
Initially, when we watched the first developments in this internal political struggle, we were amused. But now, the spectacle is becoming quite simply sad, and it is causing us concern,because it is hard to imagine just how far people willing to think up this kind of nonsense and absurdity might go. All of this is ultimately about fanning anti-Russian sentiment.
This does not surprise me. They are using anti-Russian slogans to destabilize the internal political situation in the United States, but they do not realise that they are harming their own country. If this is the case, then they are quite simply stupid. If they do understand what they are doing, then they are dangerous and unscrupulous people. In any event, this is the United States’ own affair and we have no intention of getting involved.
As for assessments of President Trump’s actions so far in office, this too is not our affair. It is for the American people, American voters, to give their assessment. Of course, this will be possible only once he is fully allowed to work.
(bold italics added)
An important point about Putin – and one which I have made previously, and which was very obvious to me on the two occasions when I have seen him in person (at the two SPIEF conferences which I have attended in St. Petersburg in 2014 and 2016) – is that he is one of those people who use humour to hide their anger.
It does not follow from this that when Putin makes jokes it always and invariably means that he is angry.  However it sometimes does, so that when he laughs and makes jokes in a certain way it can be interpreted – and is interpreted by those around him – as a warning sign.  The words I have highlighted show that this was one such case.
What these words show is that far from “enjoying” the US political crisis – as the BBC journalist crassly imagines – Putin is furious that relations with Russia are being used as a weapon in an internal US political conflict which he characterises – correctly – as a power struggle.  He is also aghast at the ruthlessness and cynicism of the people who are doing it, whom he characterises as “dangerous and unscrupulous” (he obviously doesn’t think they are “stupid”).  He also judges them completely irresponsible, saying – also correctly – that they are destabilising the political situation in their own country.
As for the offer of the transcript, there is no doubt this was seriously intended.
To repeat my explanation from before, at any high level diplomatic meeting senior officials are accompanied by interpreters whose job is not just to translate what is said but also to make a verbatim written record of what is said.
Both the US and Russians would have had such people present at the meeting between Trump and Lavrov, and both sets of these people would have made a verbatim record of what was said during the meeting.
These records – scribbled by the interpreters in shorthand – are then written up into a proper transcript and are if necessary circulated to other senior officials and throughout the bureaucracy.  They then become an essential part of the diplomatic archive of whichever country the officials taking part in the meeting belong to.
It is through consulting such transcripts when archives are opened that diplomatic historians can reconstruct the course of negotiations when they write their diplomatic histories.  In the meantime it is a fundamental rule of international diplomacy that until that happens – usually many decades later – records like these are kept confidential, and are not released without the agreement of both sides taking part in the discussions.
What Putin was offering – as his words clearly show – was an agreement with the US whereby the Russians would provide the US Congress with their transcript.  The US would obviously be in a position to check its accuracy against its own, or in the alternative it could also provide the Congress with its own.
Far from being intended as a joke, this is a highly unusual and almost unprecedented offer, the making of which shows how seriously Putin and the Russians are taking the situation.
Of course the offer was refused even though it is the best and simplest way of finding out what actually happened at the meeting between Trump and Lavrov in the Oval Office.
This of course shows the real agenda of those who have been spreading stories about the meeting.  They are not really interested in finding out what actually happened at the meeting.
They have now had clearcut denials of the original Washington Post story from almost everyone who was present or was involved, not just from Putin and Lavrov, but also from Trump, McMaster, Tillerson, and Dina Powell.  McMaster has toured the television stories repeatedly calling out the Washington Post story as “false”.
Yet in spite of these denials from the most senior officials of the US and Russian governments, they continue to believe – or pretend to believe – the anonymous sources which were behind the Washington Post article, who almost certainly were not there.
They have also rejected – and misrepresented and ridiculed – a serious and unprecedented offer from the Russian government which would once and for all settle the truth of the matter.
Putin called these people “dangerous and unscrupulous”.  Their response to his offer shows he is right.