Russian lawmakers mull statement condemning East Germany's annexation by West Germany in 1989

[DetlefK]

Source: itar-tass

Members of the Russian parliament mull drafting a statement to condemn the annexation of the German Democratic Republic (GDR) by the Federative Republic of Germany (FRG) in 1989, a historic event commonly known as the reunification of East and West Germany.

A relevant order was issued by State Duma speaker Sergey Naryshkin to the parliament’s Committee on Foreign Affairs as it was proposed earlier in the day by Nikolay Ivanov, a lawmaker from the Russian Communist Party.

"Dear Sergey Yevgenyevich (Naryshkin), we were all sympathizing with you, when on January 26 at a news conference of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) you were refuting verbal assaults of PACE President Anne Brasseur, who accused Russia of ‘Crimea’s annexation'," Ivanov said, addressing Naryshkin on Wednesday morning.

"I propose that as a form of a retaliatory step you give order to the Committee on Foreign Affairs to prepare a statement condemning the annexation of the German Democratic Republic by the Federative Republic of Germany in 1989," Ivanov said. "Moreover, unlike in Crimea, there was no nationwide referendum in GDR."



Read more: http://itar-tass.com/en/russia/773830

---

There were tens of thousands of people protesting for reunification in the GDR in 1989. Nobody was protesting against reunification. And apart from the GDR police-units, there were no guns all around. And the whole affair stayed non-violent. The comparison with Crimea's referendum, which happened under siege by masked, foreign paramilitaries, is simply ridiculous.

Russian lawmakers are pathetic brown-nosers who will say anything to please their idol Putin.

[wolfie001]

1. Let me rush to RT.....

....and get Putin's take on this.

[mahatmakanejeeves]

3. You know, that was my first thought exactly.

How was RT America going to spin this story?

[reorg]

9. Here is RT's 'spin'

Gorbachev blasts lawmakers’ suggestion to denounce Germany unification as ‘rubbish’

Ex-Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev, whose effort made possible the reunification of East and West Germany in 1990, has criticized a parliamentary resolution denouncing this historic event as an act of aggression.

“You cannot evaluate the events that took place in a different epoch, in different times from today’s positions,” Gorbachev told Interfax new agency. “What referendum could they launch in the German Democratic Republic when in both states – in the East and in the West they held rallies with hundreds of thousands of participants under just one slogan, ‘We are one nation!’ What sort of annexation is this?”

“The suggestion is simply rubbish. I will say this again – we cannot simplify the situation to the convenience of today’s needs and our appraisal of the past should not be based on today’s views,” Gorbachev said.

His comments came after a Communist Party MP suggested that Russia’s lower house of parliament, the State Duma, pass a resolution denouncing the “annexation of the German Democratic Republic by the Federal Republic of Germany.” The author of the motion, Nikolai Ivanov, said that such move would be an appropriate answer to attacks on Russia by the president of PACE, Anne Brasseur, who had accused Russia of annexing Crimea in a speech. ...

http://rt.com/politics/227091-gorbachev-russia-germany-east-west/

[PatrynXX]

19. using Gorbi's

words basically Ukraine is one nation. and again nobody annexed anything. Ukraine is one nation. not west not east.

and it's rather clear the east needs the west

[happyslug]

31. But Gorbachev position would also support Russia's annexation of the Crimea

You did have a vote and no one really disputes that the election did NOT reflect what the people of the Crimea wanted. The Ukraine says the Vote is meaningless for the Ukraine gets to say if Crimea can join Russia or not, it is NOT a choice left up to Crimea itself.

Thus just like East Germany wanted to be taken over by West Germany, given the Crimea wanted to rejoin Russia, it was Crimea that could make such a decision NOT the Ukraine.

[LanternWaste]

2. Moscow's term 'annex' is inaccurate

In march of 89, the East German government was defeated in a free and fair election observed by multiple outside NGOs and the newly elected government of East Germany (Christian Democratic Union) themselves pushed for reunification-- an agenda they advertised during the campaign and an agenda which got them elected.

Hence, Moscow's term 'annex' is inaccurate (unless applied to their own annexation of Crimea and Georgia, and their current attempt to annex the Ukraine), as West Germany did not appropriate the country.






(Though I imagine our three resident defenders of Moscow's expansionism will most certainly (and most creatively) rationalize Berlin's rightful place within Novorossiya in another of their 'bless your half-witted little heart' moment.)

[DetlefK]

4. I'm currently trying to coax one of the Putin-defenders into telling me where he gets his info from.

The links I post to proofs that there are russian soldiers in Ukraine? "Bah, could be fake."

And he just won't tell me where I can find this proof that the US orchestrated the regime-change in Ukraine. "Reading lots of stuff with an open mind." I begged him to enlighten me, but all he does is delivering talking-points.

[newthinking]

10. To understand the events in Ukraine you must understand the "first" Maidan - Orange Revolution 2004

[font size="2"]To understand how we got to where we are now: You must understand that this effort has been ongoing since at least the beginning of the new century.

The first attempt at affecting "Regime Change" was the orchestration, mostly by neo-cons, of the "Orange Revolution".

The Wests choice in 2004? A man by the name of Victor Yuschenko.

His wife? An American Citizen and Far Right Republican who had worked for the Reagan Administration, had been director at a NeoCon think tank (New Atlantic Initiative) (Victor also worked with this group) and also worked for the far right think tank the Heritage Foundation. "Katherine Chumachenko Yushenko worked in the White House Public Liaison Office where she conducted outreach to various right-wing and anti-communist exile groups in the United States.

A very good summary from a post on an older version of DU Tinoire
There are links on the original page:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x2870381


Ukraine, Yushchenko, his wife (Bush employee), the US and Soros

"After hearing that the NED had pumped $65 million dollars into this election and that his wife was an American citizen, I thought I'd research this a little. I don't know this handsome US-backed Yushchenko but I'm suspecting that he is going to dismantle the Ukraine Boris-Yeltsin style and sell if off to US & European corporate interests. Germany, France and the US already have their deals in place with him over pipelines, utility companies and national resources.

Just thought I'd throw this information out there so that people can see how these things are done and how the media cooperates into presenting these changes as "spontaneous" changes that the US had nothing to do with.

So here we go. First some of the "meddling" that the media hasn't covered and then in my second post, Yushchenko's "dedicated conservative" US State Department wife.

$61 million for the Ukraine elections to back Yushchenko and $100,000 to the Tsunami victims. Just shameful.
==========================================================

Bush Adminstration Spent $65 Million to Help Opposition in Ukraine

December 10, 2004

By: Matt Kelley
Associated Press

Printer Friendly Version

WASHINGTON - The Bush administration has spent more than $65 million in the past two years to aid political organizations in Ukraine, paying to bring opposition leader Viktor Yushchenko to meet U.S. leaders and helping to underwrite exit polls indicating he won last month's disputed runoff election.

(snip)

But officials acknowledge some of the money helped train groups and individuals opposed to the Russian-backed government candidate — people who now call themselves part of the Orange revolution.

For example, one group that got grants through U.S.-funded foundations is the Center for Political and Legal Reforms, whose Web site has a link to Yushchenko's home page under the heading "partners." Another project funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development brought a Center for Political and Legal Reforms official to Washington last year for a three-week training session on political advocacy.

(snip)
The four foundations involved included three funded by the U.S. government: The National Endowment for Democracy, which gets its money directly from Congress; the Eurasia Foundation, which gets money from the State Department, and the Renaissance Foundation, part of a network of charities funded by billionaire George Soros that gets money from the State Department. Other countries involved included Great Britain, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Canada, Norway, Sweden and Denmark.

Grants from groups funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development also went to the International Center for Policy Studies, a think tank that includes Yushchenko on its supervisory board. The board also includes several current or former advisers to Kuchma, however.

IRI, Craner's Republican-backed group, used U.S. money to help Yushchenko arrange meetings with Vice President Dick Cheney , Assistant Secretary of State Richard Armitage and GOP leaders in Congress in February 2003.

(snip)

the U.S. government, through the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), granted millions of dollars to the Poland-America-Ukraine Cooperation Initiative (PAUCI), which is administered by the U.S.-based Freedom House. (note: Very hawkish / Dan Quayle is one of their trustees / other names just as disturbing: http://www.freedomhouse.org/aboutfh/bod.htm )

PAUCI then sent U.S. government funds to numerous Ukrainian non-governmental organizations (NGOs). This would be bad enough and would in itself constitute meddling in the internal affairs of a sovereign nation. But, what is worse is that many of these grantee organizations in Ukraine are blatantly in favor of presidential candidate Viktor Yushchenko.

Consider the Ukrainian NGO International Center for Policy Studies. It is an organization funded by the U.S. government through PAUCI. On its Web site, we discover that this NGO was founded by George Soros' Open Society Institute. And further on we can see that Viktor Yushchenko himself sits on the advisory board!

(reluctant snip)

This May, the Virginia-based private management consultancy Development Associates, Inc., was awarded $100 million by the U.S. government "for strengthening national legislatures and other deliberative bodies worldwide." According to the organization's Web site, several million dollars from this went to Ukraine in advance of the elections.

(snip)

Note from the USAID page on Ukraine: "Beyond the power sector, USAID plans to identify and assist in removing the obstacles of proper market functioning in other segments of the energy sector such as the privatization of the oil and gas transportation systems."
https://web.archive.org/web/20040826143304/http://www.usaid.gov/pubs/cbj2003/ee/ua/121-0150.html

==================


Yushenko administration lost the presidency 15 months later:

Notably, one of the things that lost him the Presidency only 15 months later was his turn toward the same brand of extreme nationalism. He elevated Stephen Bandera, (a very controversial figure who is revered by extreme factions that Europe and others warned were tied to Social Nationalist Fascist groups) to "Hero" status.

A Fascist Hero in Democratic Kiev
http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/nyrblog/2010/feb/24/a-fascist-hero-in-democratic-kiev/
[/font]

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10025459029

[newthinking]

11. Distorting Russia How the American media misrepresent Putin, Sochi and Ukraine.

Distorting Russia How the American media misrepresent Putin, Sochi and Ukraine.



(Reuters/Mikhail Klimentyev/RIA Novosti/Pool)

The degradation of mainstream American press coverage of Russia, a country still vital to US national security, has been under way for many years. If the recent tsunami of shamefully unprofessional and politically inflammatory articles in leading newspapers and magazines—particularly about the Sochi Olympics, Ukraine and, unfailingly, President Vladimir Putin—is an indication, this media malpractice is now pervasive and the new norm.

There are notable exceptions, but a general pattern has developed. Even in the venerable New York Times and Washington Post, news reports, editorials and commentaries no longer adhere rigorously to traditional journalistic standards, often failing to provide essential facts and context; to make a clear distinction between reporting and analysis; to require at least two different political or “expert” views on major developments; or to publish opposing opinions on their op-ed pages. As a result, American media on Russia today are less objective, less balanced, more conformist and scarcely less ideological than when they covered Soviet Russia during the Cold War.

http://www.thenation.com/article/178344/distorting-russia

The history of this degradation is also clear. It began in the early 1990s, following the end of the Soviet Union, when the US media adopted Washington’s narrative that almost everything President Boris Yeltsin did was a “transition from communism to democracy” and thus in America’s best interests. This included his economic “shock therapy” and oligarchic looting of essential state assets, which destroyed tens of millions of Russian lives; armed destruction of a popularly elected Parliament and imposition of a “presidential” Constitution, which dealt a crippling blow to democratization and now empowers Putin; brutal war in tiny Chechnya, which gave rise to terrorists in Russia’s North Caucasus; rigging of his own re-election in 1996; and leaving behind, in 1999, his approval ratings in single digits, a disintegrating country laden with weapons of mass destruction. Indeed, most American journalists still give the impression that Yeltsin was an ideal Russian leader.

Since the early 2000s, the media have followed a different leader-centric narrative, also consistent with US policy, that devalues multifaceted analysis for a relentless demonization of Putin, with little regard for facts. (Was any Soviet Communist leader after Stalin ever so personally villainized?) If Russia under Yeltsin was presented as having legitimate politics and national interests, we are now made to believe that Putin’s Russia has none at all, at home or abroad—even on its own borders, as in Ukraine.

http://www.thenation.com/article/178344/distorting-russia

[newthinking]

12. Yatsunek Investors

This does not show the International Republican Institute, who has had their hands all over Ukraine.

[newthinking]

14. The Washington Post's Putinology - Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting

[font size=3, face="Georgia,serif"]
The Washington Post's Putinology
By Peter Hart
Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting

http://fair.org/blog/2014/10/28/the-washington-posts-putinology/

We're supposed to know by now that Russian President Vladimir Putin is a really bad guy–so bad that anything that he says is further proof of his screeching hostility to the United States.

The Washington Post reported (10/24/14) on a recent Putin speech with this blistering lead sentence:

[blockquote style="width:620px";][font size="2"] “Making clear that the Kremlin has no intention of backing down from the worst Russia/Western crisis since the Cold War, Russian President Vladimir Putin accused the United States on Friday of trying to "reshape the whole world" for its benefit, in a fiery speech that was one of the most anti-American of his 15 years as Russia's paramount leader.”[/font]

Fiery anti-Americanism!

It's not hard to believe that Putin was highly critical of the US foreign policy, but what precisely did he say? The Post called it "a bitter distillation of Putin's anti-American rhetoric." The Post Karoun Demirjian and Michael Birnbaum reported that the address was an:

[blockquote style="width:620px";][font size="2"] “unsmiling, straightforward worldview that blasted the United States as taking advantage of its powerful post-Cold War position to dictate misguided terms to the rest of the world. Putin faulted the United States for a rise in global terrorism, a resumption of a global arms race and a general worsening of global security.

It never ceases to amaze me how our partners have been guilty of making the same mistakes time and again," Putin said, accusing the United States of breeding terrorists by upsetting the established order in Syria, Libya, Iraq and Afghanistan.”[/font]

OK, so fiery anti-Americanism is the belief that the United States desires a unipolar world where it calls the shots. Does anyone doubt US elites think otherwise?

And the US, he thinks, bears some responsibility for fueling the global arms race. The United States is, according to some less than fiery and not particularly anti-American news outlets, the leading supplier of arms in the world ("US Arms Sales Make Up Most of Global Market," New York Times, 8/26/12; "US Doubles Down on Foreign Military Sales," Defense News, 7/19/14).

On the subject of nuclear arms, a key issue in US/Russia relations, the New York Times (9/21/14) recently reported on the US plan to increase its nuclear arsenal–a "nationwide wave of atomic revitalization" that could cost well over a trillion dollars.

And it's hard to argue with Putin's critique of US foreign policy accomplishments in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya; those countries have suffered extreme violence and instability due to US military actions. Would there even be an ISIS without the US invasion of Iraq?

None of that should be mistaken as an endorsement of anything Putin or Russia has done. But if the Post means to show us that a foreign leader is a fiery, bitter anti-American, it might want to make a stronger case.

The news article, though, was nothing compared to the Post's editorial (10/27/14). Under the Web headline "Putinoia on Full Display," the paper blasted Putin for his

[blockquote style="width:620px";][font size=2] “poisonous mix of lies, conspiracy theories, thinly veiled threats of further aggression and, above all, seething resentment toward the United States.”[/font]

Again, that's a pretty serious charge. It's not hard to imagine a politician telling lies; which ones did Putin tell?

The Post doesn't seem to want to tell us. It does say Putin claimed that the United States has:

[blockquote style="width:620px";] “promoted a "unipolar world [that] is simply a means of justifying dictatorship over people and countries." According to Mr. Putin, Washington has created chaos across the world by conspiring to foment revolutions, including what he views as an armed "coup d'etat" in Ukraine.”

Again, the United States does see itself as the world's lone superpower, with a dominant military and an obvious record of attempting to use military force, directly or otherwise, to change the world to its liking (though these efforts are not always successful). In Ukraine, in particular, Washington certainly supported the violent overthrow of an elected government–whether you want to call that a "coup d'etat" or not.

The editorial began with this observation:

[blockquote style="width:620px";] “Anyone wondering what Western leaders have been up against when they try to reason with Vladi­mir Putin need only read the transcript of the Russian ruler's three-hour performance at the annual Valdai conference in Sochi on Friday.”

The thing is, if you're going to say someone is a poisonous liar who traffics in conspiracy theories, then you should show that. That the Post doesn't seem to feel the need to do so either means the evidence isn't there, or that the burden of proof is very low when it comes to official enemies.
[/font]

[/font]

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License

Per the license the only changes made are some mid paragraph link citations and images. Please see the original page at:
http://fair.org/blog/2014/10/28/the-washington-posts-putinology/
You can follow the additional references there.

[newthinking]

16. The Neocons — Masters of Chaos

The Neocons — Masters of Chaos
October 17, 2014
America’s neoconservatives, by stirring up trouble in the Middle East and Eastern Europe, are creating risks for the world’s economy that are surfacing now in the turbulent stock markets, threatening another global recession, writes Robert Parry.

By Robert Parry

http://consortiumnews.com/2014/10/17/the-neocons-masters-of-chaos/

If you’re nervously watching the stock market gyrations and worrying about your declining portfolio or pension fund, part of the blame should go to America’s neocons who continue to be masters of chaos, endangering the world’s economy by instigating geopolitical confrontations in the Middle East and Eastern Europe.

Of course, there are other factors pushing Europe’s economy to the brink of a triple-dip recession and threatening to stop America’s fragile recovery, too. But the neocons’ “regime change” strategies, which have unleashed violence and confrontations across Iraq, Syria, Libya, Iran and most recently Ukraine, have added to the economic uncertainty.

This neocon destabilization of the world economy began with the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 under President George W. Bush who squandered some $1 trillion on the bloody folly. But the neocons’ strategies have continued through their still-pervasive influence in Official Washington during President Barack Obama’s administration.

The neocons and their “liberal interventionist” junior partners have kept the “regime change” pot boiling with the Western-orchestrated overthrow and killing of Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi in 2011, the proxy civil war in Syria to oust Bashar al-Assad, the costly economic embargoes against Iran, and the U.S.-backed coup that ousted Ukraine’s elected President Viktor Yanukovych last February.


Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs Victoria Nuland during a press conference at the U.S. Embassy in Kiev, Ukraine, on Feb. 7, 2014. (U.S. State Department photo)


Continued:
http://consortiumnews.com/2014/10/17/the-neocons-masters-of-chaos/

[Bluenorthwest]

28. That was the Nation's last for me. The homophobia in that article was disturbing, I cancelled my

subscription after many years. All of that material about protests of Sochi and the only mention of LGBT rights issues, which were huge around Sochi was this bitter little pill of a comment:
"And what of Barack Obama’s decision to send only a low-level delegation, including retired gay athletes, to Sochi?"

That was the entire 'inclusion' of LGBT issues in their discussion of Sochi, an insult toward gay people presented as if their being gay was somehow offensive to the author. 'Low level gay retired'. Denigration and a casual bigotry that made my skin crawl.

[uhnope]

34. big overlap between homophobic bigots and Putin sympathizers

[freshwest]

30. They're busy translating it from Russian, just be patient a little while longer.

[groundloop]

5. "our three resident defenders of Moscow's expansionism" = Putin's trolls

This story is very very strange. And thanks for the reminder of how German reunification came about.

[muriel_volestrangler]

7. In March 1990, not March 1989 (and TASS should talk about 1990 too)

The Wall came down in late 1989; the elections, won, as you say, by a pro-reunification party, were in March 1990, and reunification happened in October 1990

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_German_general_election,_1990

Plus, of course, the reunification treaty was agreed by all parties - including the Soviet Union: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_on_the_Final_Settlement_with_Respect_to_Germany

[DFW]

26. I was wondering if someone was going to catch that

My wife and I were watching the press conference held in East Berlin on November 9, 1989, and stared open-mouthed at each other as Schabowski said that as far as he knew, the border was open "as of immediately." Sure enough, East Germans were streaming across the West Berlin checkpoints within hours, and even in Hamburg, where we had gone for the weekend, was inundated with East Germans the next morning. Since all this happened in November, 1989, there is no way meaningful elections were held before that.

[SheilaT]

15. Yep. For one thing, the Berlin Wall fell in 1989.

Actual Reunification didn't occur until nearly a year later, in 1990. And it was nothing like an annexation. Nothing like what the Soviet Union did in the first place to Eastern Europe.

[reorg]

20. Germans were the first to call it 'annexation'

Apart from major reservations in West-Germany's mainstream SPD about the speed and the way the unification came to pass, a new movement on the radical left formed in response:

The euphoria that accompanied the new nation-building process was soon followed by significant increases in xenophobic sentiments and violence, so terrifyingly captured in the pogroms of Rostock and Hoyerswerda, when neo-Nazis and locals joined forces in driving asylum seekers from their towns.

It was in this context that a distinct, and rather unique, anti-national movement began to take shape. (...)

The first, which at its highpoint in 1990 attracted more than 20,000 people to an anti-national demonstration in Frankfurt, was the radical Left’s response to what it perceived as the ‘annexation’ of the former GDR by the Federal Republic.

http://www.redpepper.org.uk/never-again-say-germanys-anti-national-movement/

Anti-Germans (political current)

[DetlefK]

23. German culture was different back then.

You were not supposed to say that you are proud of Germany or of being a German. You were not supposed to be overly patriotic. You were not supposed to fly the flag, except during political ceremonies of national level. Because being german was bad, by way of WWII.

Do you know how, long it took for the Germans until they were okay with themselves showing patriotism or national pride?
2006. When the soccer world-championships were hosted by Germany.

[reorg]

32. You sound like Helmut Kohl in the eighties

who systematically nurtured this kind of 'patriotism'. One way to promote it was to whine about how 'we are not supposed to' be proud. He also introduced the public pledge of allegiance of Bundeswehr soldiers and the main programs on national TV started to sign off daily by playing the national anthem and showing the flag during his reign.

As to Germans not being 'okay with themselves showing patriotism or national pride' during World Cups, that is a hilarious proposition indeed ... starting with the 'Miracle of Bern', where Germans saw their national pride restored, (West-)Germans have always seen themselves as a world power in football just as they thought of themselves as an economic powerhouse having created the 'Wirtschaftswunder'...



Thankfully, most Germans do have some reservations about hooray patriotism and vapid acts like hoisting the national flag in front of their house for no reason. But I could point you to several such flags flying right now in my immediate neighborhood, and these flags have been flying there for decades.

[WinkyDink]

6. This is from "The Onion," right? Because.....Ukraine!

[newthinking]

17. It's true. But to somehow make it sound like it is a Russian Policy is disingenious

Just like some of the crap that comes out of the mouth of some of our own and are proposed as legislation.

[Adrahil]

35. I'll give you that one.

Until passed, it's just some nationalist nut mouthing off.

[Diclotican]

8. DetlefK

DetlefK

Russia is now way out of their way - this is a rather desperate attemt on Russias part to turn back the clock - or at least to make sure some of the damage coming from the fact they occupied parts of Ukraina - not to say Crimea who then sudently was going back to Russia by defult referendum - even if it was reported to many to be at least doubfully everyone was given their full support, as most of the poling stations was guarded by armed soldiers... If the refendum had been that free, I doubt it was any need for armed soldiers on a poling station...

As I rembember 1989 - it was millions of people from GDR who supported the unification of the two german states - in fact it was the pepole of GDR who was tearing down the wall between the two countries - who split Berlin in two for more than 40 years... And outside of the police forces who was armed it was a peacefully demostration - by the east german pepole that they do not wanted to live in GDR anymore - they wanted to be free - and live in a democratic socisity - they wanted anything else than the current government in GDR....

Diclotican

[ripcord]

13. Boy this will sure teach the West a lesson

Or give them a good laugh.

[PatrynXX]

18. See it's shit like this , I think Russia is run by someone like Sarah Palin

did putin flunk history??

[yurbud]

22. This is a mistake. If they are trying to make a point about the post cold war era...

This is the wrong way to do it.

[lovuian]

24. Russia wants to add territories

and their looking at Germany, Finland, Artic, and other countries

Giving Europe and America the heads up

You want to play we can play and we're not Saddam Hussein ....we're Russia

The big question whose China going to side with US or Russia?

What we need is some peace negotiators but I think the time for that is getting less and less

[DetlefK]

25. Germany is actually a wee bit away from Russia...

[RiverNoord]

33. lol

[DFW]

27. Putin's KGB slip is showing

Putting out propaganda that is convenient but believed by nobody is going back to Soviet tactics. Someone as smart and well-traveled as Putin has to know that no one will swallow his yarn except those few who want to believe it plus those who are paid to "believe" it. But if that's his goal, its effectiveness stops at the Russian border.

All Germans, including the ones who miss the old DDR, know full well that there was no turning back the wishes of the East Germans after the border was open. The West had two choices: absorb about 10 million new residents or accept the East's application to join the Federal Republic, and pay through the nose to bring them up to West German living standards so that they'd stay where they were.

There was an old joke about what would happen to East Germany if it remained a separate country once the borders were open. The answer was that it would be the friendliest country on earth because there would be so few people left that they'd all know each other.

I don't know about TACC in its present day form, but back in the Soviet days, Igor Ignatieff, who ran their DC bureau, used to hang with my dad in the National Press Building. He tried to recruit my dad (!!!!) to spy for the Soviet Union. After my dad gave him a polite,"Igor, please fuck off," he shrugged his shoulders and said, "well, I was instructed to ask."

[jakeXT]

29. Would there be a GDR without the terrorism and sabotage ?

8. Germany 1950s

Everything from juvenile delinquency to terrorism

Within a period of 30 years and two world wars with Germany, the Soviet Union
suffered more than 40 million dead and wounded, enormous devastation to its land, and
its cities razed to the ground. At the close of the Second World War, the Russians were
not kindly disposed toward the German people. With their own country to rebuild, they
placed the reconstruction of Germany far down on their list of priorities.

The United States emerged from the war with relatively minor casualties and its
territory completely unscathed. It was ready, willing and able to devote itself to its main
priority in Europe: the building of an anti-Communist bulwark in the West, particularly
in the strategic location of Germany.

In 1945, former Secretary of State Dean Acheson has written, official American
policy was explicitly "to bring home to the Germans that they could not escape the
suffering they had brought upon themselves ... [and] to control [the] German economy
to ... prevent any higher standard of living than in neighboring nations." 1

"From the outset," Acheson added, US officials in Germany believed this plan
"to be unworkable". 2

Acheson did not explain what lay behind this prognosis, but its correctness soon
became apparent for three distinct reasons: (1) influential American business and
financial leaders, some of them occupying important government positions, had too
great a stake in a highly-industrialized Germany (usually dating back to before the war)
to allow the country to sink to the depths that some American policy-makers advocated
as punishment; (2) a revitalized West Germany was seen as an indispensable means of
combatting Soviet influence in the Eastern sector of the country, if not in all of Eastern
Europe. West Germany was to become "the showcase of Western democracy" —
dramatic, living proof of the superiority of capitalism over socialism; (3) in American
conservative circles, and some liberal ones as well, wherein a Soviet invasion of
Western Europe remained perpetually imminent, the idea of tying West Germany's
industrial hands was one which came perilously close to being "soft on communism", if
not worse. 3

Dwight Eisenhower echoed this last sentiment when he later wrote:

Had certain officials in the Roosevelt administration had their way, Germany
would have been far worse off, for there were those who advocated the flooding
of the Ruhr mines, the wrecking of German factories, and the reducing of
Germany from an industrial to an agricultural nation. Among others, Harry Dexter
White, later named by Attorney General Brownell as one who had been heavily



60



involved in a Soviet espionage ring operating within our government... proposed
exactly that. 4

Thus it was that the de-industrialization of West Germany met the same fate as
the demilitarization of the country would in the coming years, as the United States
poured in massive economic assistance: $4 billion of Marshall Plan aid and an army of
industrial and technical experts.

At the same time, the Soviet Union was pouring massive economic assistance
out of East Germany. The Soviets dismantled and moved back home entire factories
with large amounts of equipment and machinery, and thousands of miles of railroad
track. When added to war reparations, the toll reached into the billions of dollars.

By the early 1950s, though social services, employment, and cultural life in East
Germany were on a par or superior to that in West Germany, the Western sector had the
edge in those areas of prosperity with the most sex appeal: salaries were higher, the
eating was better, consumer goods more available, and the neon lights emblazoned the
nights along the Kurfurstendamm.

American cold warriors, however, as if discontent with the game score or with
leaving so much to chance, instituted a crude campaign of sabotage and subversion
against East Germany designed to throw the economic and administrative machinery
out of gear. The CIA and other US intelligence and military services in West Germany
(with occasional help from the likes of British, intelligence and the West German
police) recruited, equipped, trained and financed German activist groups and individuals
of West and East. Finding recruits for such a crusade was not difficult, for in post-war
Germany, anti-communism lived on as the only respectable vestige of Naziism.

The most active of these groups, which went by the name of Fighting Group
Against Inhumanity, admitted that it had received financial support from the Ford
Foundation and the West Berlin government. 5 Subsequently, an East Berlin news
magazine published a copy of a letter from the Ford Foundation confirming a grant of
$150,000 to the National Committee for a Free Europe "so that it, in turn, could support
the humanitarian activities of 'The Fighting Group Against Inhumanity'." The National!
Committee for a Free Europe, in turn, was a CIA front organization which also ran
Radio Free Europe. 7

The Association of Political Refugees from the East, and the Investigating
Committee of Freedom-minded Jurists of the Soviet Zone, were two of the other groups
involved in the campaign against East Germany. The actions carried out by these
operatives ran the spectrum from juvenile delinquency to terrorism; anything "to make

Q

the commies look bad". It added up to the following remarkable record:

• through explosives, arson, short circuiting, and other methods they damaged power stations,
shipyards, a dam, canals, docks, public buildings, gas stations, shops, a radio station, outdoor stands,
public transportation;

• derailed freight trains, seriously injuring workers; burned 12 cars of a freight train and
destroyed air pressure hoses of others;

• blew up road and railway bridges; placed explosives on a railway bridge of the Berlin-Moscow
line but these were discovered in time — hundreds would have been killed;

• used special acids to damage vital factory machinery; put sand in the turbine of a factory,
bringing it to a standstill; set fire to a tile-producing factory; promoted work slow-downs in factories;
stole blueprints and samples of new technical developments;

• killed 7,000 cows of a co-operative dairy by poisoning the wax coating of the wire used to bale
the cows' corn fodder;

• added soap to powdered milk destined for East German schools;

• raided and wrecked left-wing offices in East and West Berlin, stole membership lists; assaulted
and kidnapped leftists and, on occasion, murdered them;

• set off stink bombs to disrupt political meetings;



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• floated balloons which burst in the air, scattering thousands of propaganda pamphlets down
upon East Germans;

• were in possession, when arrested, of a large quantity of the poison cantharidin with which it
was planned to produce poisoned cigarettes to kill leading East Germans;

• attempted to disrupt the World Youth Festival in East Berlin by sending out forged invitations,
false promises of free bed and board, false notices of cancellations; carried out attacks on participants
with explosives, firebombs, and tire -puncturing equipment; set fire to a wooden bridge on a main
motorway leading to the festival;

• forged and distributed large quantities of food ration cards — for example, for 60,000 pounds of
meat — to cause confusion, shortages and resentment;

• sent out forged tax notices and other government directives and documents to foster
disorganization and inefficiency within industry and unions;

• "gave considerable aid and comfort" to East Germans who staged an uprising on 17 June 1953;
during and after the uprising, the US radio station in West Berlin, RIAS (Radio In the American Sector),
issued inflammatory broadcasts into East Germany appealing to the populace to resist the government;
RIAS also broadcast warnings to witnesses in at least one East German criminal case being monitored by
the Investigating Committee of Freedom-minded Jurists of the Soviet Zone that they would be added to
the committee's files of "accused persons" if they lied.

Although many hundreds of the American agents were caught and tried by East
Germany, the ease with which they could pass back and forth between the two sectors
and infiltrate different enterprises without any language barrier provided opportunities
for the CIA unmatched anywhere else in Eastern Europe.

Throughout the 1950s, the East Germans and the Soviet Union repeatedly
lodged complaints with the Soviets' erstwhile allies in the West and with the United
Nations about specific sabotage and espionage activities and called for the closure of the
offices in West Germany they claimed were responsible, and for which they provided
names and addresses. Inevitably the East Germans began to tighten up entry into the
country from the West.

The West also bedeviled the East with a vigorous campaign of recruiting East
German professionals and skilled workers. Eventually, this led to a severe labor and
production crisis in the East, and in August 1961, to the building of the infamous Berlin
Wall.

While staging their commando attacks upon East Germany, American
authorities and their German agents were apparently convinced that the Soviet Union
had belligerent designs upon West Germany; perhaps a textbook case of projection. On
8 October 1952, the Minister-President of the West German state of Hesse, Georg
August Zinn, disclosed that the United States had created a secret civilian army in his
state for the purpose of resisting a Russian invasion.

This force of between 1,000 and 2,000 men belonged to the so-called "Technical
Service" of the German Youth Federation, the latter characterized by the New York
Times as "a Right-wing youth group frequently charged with extremist activities" (a
reference to the terrorist tactics described above). The stalwarts of the Technical Service
were hardly youths, however, for almost all appeared to be between 35 and 50 and most,
said Zinn, were "former officers of the Luftwaffe, the Wehrmacht and the S.S. [Hitler's
Black-shirts]".

For more than a year they had received American training in infantry weapons
and explosives and "political instruction" in small groups at a secluded site in the
countryside and at a US military installation.

The intelligence wing of the Technical Service, the state president revealed, had
drawn up lists and card indexes of persons who were to be "put out of the way" when
the Soviet tanks began to roll. These records, which contained detailed descriptions and



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intimate biographical information, were of some 200 leading Social Democrats
(including Zinn himself!, 15 Communists, and various others, all of whom were deemed
"politically untrustworthy" and opponents of West German militarization. Apparently,
support for peaceful coexistence and detente with the Soviet bloc was sufficient to
qualify one for inclusion on the hit-list, for one man was killed at the training site,
charged with being an "East- West bridge builder". It was this murder that led to the
exposure of the entire operation.

The United States admitted its role in the creation and training of the guerrilla
army, but denied any involvement in the "illegal, internal, and political activities" of the
organization. But Zinn reported that the Americans had learned of the plotting in May
and had not actually dissolved the group until September, the same month that German
Security Police arrested a number of the group's leaders. At some point, the American
who directed the training courses. Sterling Garwood, had been "supplied with carbon
copies of the card-index entries". It appears that at no time did US authorities
communicate anything of this matter to the West German Government.

As the affair turned out, those who had been attested were quickly released and
the United States thwarted any further investigation in this the American Zone of
occupied Germany. Commented Herr Zinn: "The only legal explanation for these
releases can be that the people in Karlsruhe [the Federal Court] declared that they acted
upon American direction." 9

To add to the furor, the national leader of the Social Democrats accused the
United States of financing an opposition group to infiltrate and undermine his party.
Erich Ollenhauer, whose name had also appeared on the Technical Service's list,
implied that American "clandestine" agencies were behind the plot despite the
disapproval of high-ranking US officials. 10

The revelations about the secret army and its hit-list resulted in a storm of
ridicule and denunciation falling upon the United States from many quarters in West
Germany. In particular, the delicious irony of the Americans working hand-in-glove
with "ex"-Nazis did nor escape the much-castigated German people.

This operation in Germany, it was revealed many years later, was part of a much
wider network — called "Operation Gladio" — created by the CIA and other European
intelligence services, with similar secret armies all over Western Europe. (See Western
Europe chapter.)

https://archive.org/details/fp_Killing_Hope-US_Military_and_CIA_Interventions_Since_WWII-William_Blum