<html><head><meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8"></head><body dir="auto"><p style="margin-top:0.0pt;margin-bottom:0.0pt;" dir="ltr"><span style="font-family: "Google Sans"; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variant-emoji: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">I was born in West Germany when the country was deeply divided in East and West. British, French and American forces had occupied the Western part, Russian/Soviet forces the Eastern part. My home town was part of the British zone. I remember British barracks, British forces on the streets, and British radio stations (British Forces Broadcasting Service, BFBS). At that time Putin was a small, insignificant KGB officer in Dresden in the Eastern part - the city where Victor Klemperer lived and suffered earlier.</span></p><br dir="auto"><p style="margin-top:0.0pt;margin-bottom:0.0pt;" dir="ltr"><span style="font-family: "Google Sans"; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variant-emoji: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">Americans were seen in the Western part as heroes. They were the ones who had defended England and freed France from the Nazis, rescued West-Berlin by the Berlin Airlift, and stopped the communists. In the cinemas Americans were the heroes too: first in American Western movies, like "The Tin Star" (Henry Fonda), "High Noon" (Gary Cooper), etc., later in action movies like Tom Cruise's Top Gun or Harrison Ford's Indiana Jones.</span></p><br dir="auto"><p style="margin-top:0.0pt;margin-bottom:0.0pt;" dir="ltr"><span style="font-family: "Google Sans"; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variant-emoji: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">After the Soviet Union collapsed everybody thought America and liberal democracy had won. Francis Fukuyama wrote "The End of History". As we see now maybe it is not that simple. Communism has drawbacks - mainly that nobody has an incentive to work because no one owns anything - but capitalism has a dark side too: it unleashes evil corporations and tends to destroy nature. </span></p><br dir="auto"><p style="margin-top:0.0pt;margin-bottom:0.0pt;" dir="ltr"><span style="font-family: "Google Sans"; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variant-emoji: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">There is evil on multiple scales and in multiple dimensions. Corporations and their CEOs can be evil, politicians and presidents too, churches can be evil (think of "Roman Inquisition") and political parties in totalitarian systems can be supremely evil. Even if we look at nature where animals eat each other alive we must wonder if Vasily Grossman was right in his book "Life and Fate", where he asks whether life itself is evil.</span></p><br dir="auto"><p style="margin-top:0.0pt;margin-bottom:0.0pt;" dir="ltr"><span style="font-family: "Google Sans"; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variant-emoji: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;">Yes, we live in interesting times. We have more knowledge at our fingertips than all generations before us, and yet it does not seem to make us wiser or act better.</span></p><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto">-J.</div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div><br></div><div align="left" dir="auto" style="font-size:100%;color:#000000"><div>-------- Original message --------</div><div>From: steve smith <sasmyth@swcp.com> </div><div>Date: 6/28/25 11:51 PM (GMT+01:00) </div><div>To: friam@redfish.com </div><div>Subject: [FRIAM] Navalny - Berlin Diary - Klemperer - Daily News </div><div><br></div></div>
<p>TD;DR (Too Downer Don't Read)</p>
<p>I am reading Shirer's <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berlin_Diary">Berlin Diary</a>
as Mary reads <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patriot_(book)">Navalny's
autobiography</a> (aloud to me) while our daily news rolls by
this season (year? decade?) is pretty disturbing, but also
comforting in a disturbing way. We read (Mary out loud to me) <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victor_Klemperer">Victor
Klemperer's Journals</a> (nod to Jochen's recent reference) a
few years ago.</p>
<p><PriviedWhiteMaleSplaining> </p>
<blockquote>
<p>The *dis*comfiting part is really obvious I would say...
watching, through first person accounts of how an otherwise
functioning, and in some cases vibrant culture can slip into a
self-destructive spiral, usually with a strong opening game of
abusing some *other* group of scapegoats (non-White,
non-Christian, non-MAGA) on the way down. Maybe invading your
neighbors (Canada, Greenland, Panama?)<br>
</p>
<p>Navalny's reports are most salient to some of the conversations
here, notably glen's references to holding stocks as a strategy
to keep tabs on our <i>evil corporate overlords</i> and even
(potentally) attend stockholder meetings or demand extra
documentation, etc. It appears Navalny made this into a fine
art in his early days of rising to attention and influence.
*I* reduced all of my "blood stocks" to 1 share about the time
of the election, some significantly before. My dirtiest
financial secret was riding Elno's coat-tails some ways up, but
did begin to distance myself well before he went full-MAGA
before the election. </p>
<p>And best I can tell, as Chomsky indicated about "socially
responsible investing", they are *all* blood stocks. Some more
than others. Palantir, Anduril, United Health, Purdue anyone?<br>
</p>
<p>In Berlin Diary, I am just at the point where Paris has been
occupied and the extreme contrasts THAT yielded. The French
government (as many may know) withdrew and declared Paris an
"Open City" meaning they would not attempt to defend it as they
had other cities and villages in the path of the Nazi
Wermacht. I was raised (anecdotes and history books) to
believe that this represented some kind of moral failure of the
entire French People (live to fight another day!). </p>
<p>Shirer, an American, having lived/worked in Paris was very
attached, and was "sent" into Paris (from Berlin) because all
other foreign media had *fled* in the face of possible invasion
(in spite of the Open City) status. His reports of the police
and fire remaining (mostly) intact (albeit disarmed) directing
traffic (mostly Wermacht vehicles) while hundreds of thousands
of evacuees were suffering (unto dying) on the roads leading
away was stunning. But the destruction of Paris itself (and the
millions who did not flee) would not have served anything
either?<br>
</p>
<p>I also just spent 90 mins on a video chat with my Ukrainian
colleagues (from Kiev) who have been unavailable since the
invasion began. We avoided direct discussion of their
"troubles" in lieu of strictly technical discussions of their
developments. They did "let slip" that the bulk of their
progress halted 4 years ago and they were just now trying to
marshall those results into something marketable (e.g.
triangular LED panels designed for constructing dome-sections at
a scale from 9m to 90m (diameter)... knowing that they are
doing this under the constant threat of kinetic attacks from
Russia and some of their (previous) descriptions of how hard
they fought as young professionals (in their 30s) against the
systemic corruption of (post) Soviet Ukraine gives me a little
more perspective.</p>
<p>As for the daily news: I recommend the apocryphal Twain quote:
“I never read the newspapers until at least two weeks after
they're published — that way I can be sure the lies have been
corrected.” and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/News_of_the_World_%28film%29">Tom
Hanks' movie News of the World</a> for some perspective?<br>
</p>
<p>Bottom line is "how good we have it" juxtaposed starkly with
"this is how it all slides into oblivion", juxtaposed with "this
too shall pass". Jochen (born in Cold-War E. Germany?) and
Pieter (came of age through Apartheid), et al can probably
speak more personally to these contrasts?</p>
</blockquote>
<p></PriviedWhiteMaleSplaining></p>
<p>Interesting times?</p>
<p><br>
</p>
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