[FRIAM] Navalny - Berlin Diary - Klemperer - Daily News

[steve smith]

TD;DR (Too Downer Don't Read)

I am reading Shirer's Berlin Diary 
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berlin_Diary> as Mary reads Navalny's 
autobiography <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patriot_(book)> (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) Victor Klemperer's Journals 
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victor_Klemperer> (nod to Jochen's recent 
reference) a few years ago.

<PriviedWhiteMaleSplaining>

    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?)

    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 /evil corporate overlords/ 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.

    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?

    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!).

    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?

    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.

    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 Tom Hanks' movie News of the World
    <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/News_of_the_World_%28film%29> for
    some perspective?

    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?

</PriviedWhiteMaleSplaining>

Interesting times?


-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://redfish.com/pipermail/friam_redfish.com/attachments/20250628/76d9c21e/attachment.html>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: OpenPGP_0xD5BAF94F88AFFA63.asc
Type: application/pgp-keys
Size: 3118 bytes
Desc: OpenPGP public key
URL: <http://redfish.com/pipermail/friam_redfish.com/attachments/20250628/76d9c21e/attachment.bin>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: OpenPGP_signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 840 bytes
Desc: OpenPGP digital signature
URL: <http://redfish.com/pipermail/friam_redfish.com/attachments/20250628/76d9c21e/attachment.sig>