Note by the Saker: I asked for this article to be translated into English NOT because I like or, even less so, endorse Reitschuster or, even more much less so, Muratov (whom I totally despise). What is interesting here is that German VERY mainstream and doubleplusgoodthinking journos (hence his idiotic views about the “Putin regime”) now had to seek “journalistic asylum” in Russia. I find that both rather interesting and, frankly, rather funny. Please do not focus on his hallucinations about Russia or his political views, but rather appreciate the irony of it all. Thank you!
Andrei
How I now get journalistic asylum from Moscow
translated from German by Ana Maria Araya
Nobel Peace Prize winner makes me Berlin correspondent
In the face of all the attacks from colleagues, and especially from those I thought were friends, my faith in solidarity in my profession has suffered greatly. I am now, all the more touched by a moving act of solidarity among colleagues – from Russia.
For many years, I have had a professional friendship with Dmitry Muratov, the editor-in-chief of Novaya Gazeta in Moscow. The connection with his deputy, Andrei Lipsky, is even closer: “We have a kindred spirit”.
In the past, I often helped Muratov and Lipsky in difficult situations. We got through a lot together. Even very difficult moments, such as the murder of Muratov’s and Lipski’s colleagues. For example, in 2008 in Berlin. I wrote to a good friend in a letter at that time:
“I was expecting the editor-in-chief of Novaya Gazeta, Dmitry Muratov was just in Berlin, as a guest for a joint event, when the news of the brutal murder of his lawyer and one of his female journalists arrived. Muratov, whose newspaper Politkovskaya also worked for, wanted to cancel the trip immediately – but the editorial staff and Gorbachev, his friend, asked him to travel to Germany now and inform the people. I will never forget his face after arriving. ‘Boris, I have to close my newspaper, I can’t expose any more people to the risk of being killed,’ he said with tears in his eyes – blaming himself partly for the killings. Those were terrible, moving hours we spent together in Berlin. Hours that will never leave your mind. And which go to the substance.”
I will never forget how Dima, this bear of a man, lay in my arms with tears, literally seeking support. I sat with him in his room at the Steigenberger Hotel on Los-Angeles-Platz in Berlin until well after midnight. I encouraged him: “Dima, you mustn’t give up! People like you are important now! When Russia turns away from the paths it has taken, it will be people like you that the country needs! People like you are the conscience of the nation, to whom later generations will look back and find an answer to the question of why so many kept silent.” I used – without wanting to equate the situation in any way – Stauffenberg and his helpers as an example. Told how important they were to the wider story.
Times are changing. Muratov received the Nobel Peace Prize in the fall, is now world famous. One of the most important champions of freedom of the press in the world. And so it was natural for me to turn to Dima when the Federal Press Conference excluded me under – in my eyes – outrageous circumstances. I feel just as comfortable in Russian as I do in German, and I have also worked for “Novaya” in the past. So what could be more natural than to apply to Muratov as a Berlin correspondent? A discreet request for journalistic asylum and protection, so to speak.
Because it’s one thing to exclude a freelance journalist with his own blog from the Federal Press Conference. It is another to kick out a correspondent of the most important critical Russian newspaper, whose editor-in-chief has just been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his commitment to press freedom.
Muratov responded exactly as I expected: With a yes. Chickening out doesn’t apply to someone like him. As of today, I am officially a freelance Berlin correspondent for Novaya Gazeta. Which at home in Russia is suffering massive pressure from the government. Even though the Federal Press Conference is a private association, if it were to take such an affront to the highly respected “Novaya gazeta” by excluding its correspondents, its actions towards me would have reached a completely new dimension. At present, my objection to the exclusion is still pending, and the Executive Board will decide on it.
Contrary to what is suggested in the reports of the major media about my exclusion, various members of the Federal Press Conference work for media based abroad (see here); according to the statutes, this is also possible. But corresponding false information was spread just as unasked as the lie that my site is a company. It never was and is not a company, it is solely my site as a freelance journalist.
My new activity is piquant – don’t worry, of course my page remains the main focus of my work – also for the many haters who want to accuse me of all things, as a Putin critic, of being close to the Kremlin in order to defame me. This was already completely absurd – now, however, the nose should become very long with the spreaders of such lies …
At this point I would like to thank again all readers, who made it possible for me with their support to defend myself legally against the expulsion at the Federal Press Conference. Thanks to their help, I was able to hire a lawyer and, if necessary, take legal action.
Who is Boris Reitschuster?
Boris Reitschuster headed the Moscow office of the news magazine “Focus” from 1999 to 2015. At the end of 2011, he had to leave Russia after massive threats and continued to run the office from Berlin for almost four years. Born in Augsburg, he is the author of several bestsellers, a translator of Mikhail Gorbachev and has written for numerous media outlets, including the Washington Post, the Guardian, the Frankfurter Allgemeine, the Wiener Zeitung and the Münchner Merkur. He hosted a weekly political talk show on the Russian-language German channel OstWest-TV until July 2021; until the Corona crisis, he was also active as a lecturer at the Institute for International Politics and Economics Haus Rissen in Hamburg, where he was in constant exchange with the Bundeswehr.
Reitschuster was awarded the Theodor Heuss Medal in 2008 – “in view of his extraordinary commitment, with which he has critically examined Russia’s political system for many years and fought on the ground with great personal commitment for freedom of speech and freedom of assembly and thus for the preservation of civil and human rights.”
Reitschuster is considered “one of Germany’s leading experts on Russia,” according to Cicero. “Die Welt” wrote: “No one has ever described the Russian system of power better than him. Boris Reitschuster, one of the sharpest Putin critics in Germany, can be proud of himself. The Russian president himself has used the term ‘democracy,’ which Reitschuster helped to coin, at least once.”
Reitschuster succumbed to the fascination of Russia after a youth exchange with the Soviet Union in 1988 and studied the language of the country with which he had previously had no connection other than his first name. After graduating from high school in 1990, he moved to Moscow as a student to his childhood sweetheart, with two suitcases and all his savings. In a host family and in empty stores he got to know Russia away from the foreigner ghettos. After training as an interpreter, he worked as a German teacher and translator. At the same time, he reported from Russia for various German daily newspapers. After five years in Moscow, Reitschuster did a traineeship at the “Augsburger Allgemeine” in 1995 and then worked for the press agencies dpa and AFP in Munich. As head of the FOCUS Moscow bureau, Reitschuster returned to the country that has become his second home in 1999 and lived there until the end of 2011.
I would not describe Reitschuster as “mainstream journo”. Maybe he used to be one. We could call him “ex mainstream journo”.
But now he is an outcast. He is hated and despised by government and the remaining mainstream journos because he does not adhere to the “Covid” party line. He asks questions which is no longer allowed in Germany since 2020. And he is not easily stopped because he is independent and has a seemingly very successful webpage (which makes the other mainstream journos hate him even more).
Because he is “unvaccinated”, he no longer has physical access to the “Bundespressekonferenz” (BPK) which is a totally useless and ridiculous propaganda garbage shitshow in which government freaks pretend to “answer” questions. That shitshow is run by a private club of mainstream journos. It is now under the “2G” rules and thus “unvaccinated” persons are no longer allowed to enter the premises. Covid pass only. Papiere bitte!
And because Reitschuster did not stop asking questions (via web access), the mainstream journos who run the BPK kicked him out, with the phony argument that his webpage is registered in Montenegro. They were so sorry, but that is not admissible, they say.
In Germany independent journalists are now (since 2018) watched and censored by state agencies. Most likely Reitschuster registered his page in Montenegro to have an emergency exit and protection against such censorship.
Since 2020 mainstream journalism is so obviously steered and so uniformly lying that even ordinary Germans recognise this as propaganda. Some mainstream journalists (or rather now ex mainstream journalists) have therefore basically exited the system by writing things mainstream journos are not allowed to write. Reitschuster is one them.
You could add also, that his opposition to Putin does not mean a general opposition to Russia, about which he always writes in a rather positive and warm way. It’s not that black and white.
He is an outcast in mainstream media, because he writes about the flaws in the Corona narrative (also going himself on the streets, where is cheered at and attacked as well), about the forced mass immigration and occasionally smaller themes like gender craziness. Three attacks on the holy cows of the regime.
Oh, and that’s why he’s suddenly a “good guy” now?
“The enemy of my enemy is my friend”, or something?
“I love Russia, but Putin, “the system”, I don’t like.
Stupidly, by all accounts a considerable majority of Russians like him.
Such differentiation is liberalist claptrap and in the long run deadly.
Such people are responsible for the catastrophe from the mid-80s and 90s, and it is exactly this liberal ideology that is now destroying the West.
Well put. “Putin/the system” is the one giving him *anything* in Russia, even if its citizen did “give” him an “asylum”, it’s because the laws of that citizen’s state allow it. In other words, it’s *because* of the system that he has gotten whatever he considers to be an “asylum”.
This is pure doublespeak and makes me wonder what the real deal with the text is? Why and for whom is it written? Always bear in mind the intended audience, not only the hidden patrons of this hideous art-form.
A simple and most glaring and very early example: “I am now, all the more touched by a moving act of solidarity among colleagues – from Russia.”
As if Russia as an abstract and united entity – indeed, a monster – has no usual human sense of solidarity. Or is it only “Putin” – or the “system” – who has none? In which case why mention it at all here? And that’s just the first line. I could continue, but that would be giving him undue attention.
“Such people are responsible for the catastrophe from the mid-80s and 90s”
No, not by design; partly by default like other opponents..
That was a function of the coercive Bolshevik project from 1903 until 1991 modulated by an increasing sum of some from 1969 onwards who understood that “The Soviet Union” was not sustainable for many reasons, and began preparations in anticipation of the increasing lateral process of demise/transcendence, informed by the question “How to drown a drowning man with the minimum of blowback” to aid the ingoing transcendence of “The Soviet Union” via the present Russian Federation.
A zipless fuck, sometimes used to describe no blowback/implementation perfection, was never an option, nor were the possibilties of omniscience nor perfection, as is increasingly understood in the Russian Federation.
It was difficult lateral process, which some perceived as catastrophic due to the divergence of expectations of some when compared with their experience, which in turn was a function of multi-factors including agencies.
The role of “liberals” during that ongoing lateral process were/are mostly restricted to useful foolery, as were the roles of donators of constitutions, would-like-to-be-the-end-of-historians and various scribes outlining “Soviet fates and lost alternatives”, facilitated by their opponents understanding that you should not fight various wars simultaneously and the benefits of “dumbing down” do not solely accrue to the “initiators”.
All this is certainly a highly interesting subject, I would like to discuss it, but if, then only in German.
Regardless of this, I would like to pose the question: What would history have been, if it had looked in 1945 in the USA like in the USSR?
This question is certainly a purely academic one, because “wealth” legitimizes itself.
For reasons of historical justice, however, it should be considered from time to time.
And the USSR basically never really got out of that war….
Hi, PaulSch. What you said is 100% correct. Only, and I had to write Reitschuster already, it is subjective. He has the opposition gene since he met these people in the young years.
He has not understood what Putin has done for his country. He raves about the country and can’t even anticipate that he is dealing with the “sellers or traitors” of Russia.
At least, he currently speaks that the Germany is a greater dictatorship. But, that Russia is or shows a democracy – whereby this may not be a western definition – he does not grasp that. In my opinion, he knows nothing about the enemies of Russia. Only therefore he can speak so swollen positively with his fascist friends. He also has a shock because one of his best opposition friends died. Of course, it was Putin.
The man may still be able to put his experience to good use, but he knows nothing about geopolitics. If he had understood it, then this insight, this development as we experience it world-wide would have come already 2 decades ago with him. And then he would probably have learned to appreciate today and also 10 years ago.
Thanks, Willi. Yes, I read Reitschuster mostly to get an impression of the rotton german “official” politics and mainstream media. That is also what he is mainly writing about. Reitschuster still has connections and is an interesting bridge between the mainstream and the new independent journalism, as I would call it, not quite alternative media, but independent.
That Reitschuster has mainstream roots shows in his views on Russia. There is still a lot of “Western” imperial propaganda in his views. I, personally, am more or less a Putin fanboy, and I have come to think that the current Russian government is – given its tasks and constraints – probably one of the best governments in world history. I also think that nowadays in many respects Russia is more free than Germany.
That lack of freedom has become rather obvious and stark since Germany has fallen under Covid fascism and Untermenschen are no longer allowed to go shopping, everyone has to show papers everywhere, demonstrations and even walking gets prohibited, people die on protest marches and no-one cares about them because they are “Querdenker” (that term translates roughly as “someone who thinks out of the box” and is now in Germany a dirty word, an accusation), the press marches in absolute lockstep, alternative viewpoints get ostracised, judges and expert witnesses get their homes searched if they dare to rule against the Gates government, competent medical personnel gets harrassed or fired for their “vaccine status”, etc.
But I have never been to Russia and know it only from the media (Russian and alternative media (particularly Anti-Spiegel.ru), since I absolutely distrust western propaganda outlets, and also some mainstream TV programmes about travel, nature, cultural sites etc.).
Occasionally I find it interesting to read Reitschuster’s views on Russia, because he seems to be rather honest and open to discussions between fundamentally different opinions. But I agree that he most likely has no clue about geopolitics.
Hallo PaulSch, bin selbst Deutscher und schon eine Ewigkeit Putin-Freund. Das ist in der Tat ausschließlich ein Resultat seiner Politik. Dennoch war ich enttäuscht, dass er die Impfpolitik mitmacht. Ich beruhige mich damit, dass zu viele Ami-Lakaien in wichtigen Positionen vorhanden sind. Meine Frau ist Russin und arbeitet Homeoffice und verdient zu gerne hier in D. Ich wäre hier schon längst weg. Aber sollte die Impfpflicht kommen, dann werden wir wohl gehen. Eventuell ein Haus in Sotschi kaufen. Ich habe vor einigen Jahren aufgehört zu arbeiten, weil ich noch – weit vor der Rente – mein Leben genießen wollte. Wie kann ich Dich erreichen? Mail?
Glücklich, wer solche Möglichkeiten hat. /:) Ich bin privat noch an D gebunden. Du kannst mich unter paulsch at gmx punkt net erreichen.
Thanks for revealing the author’s “yellow star” status under the global Con-19 regime. I sympathise as a fellow “untermensch” in another country, likewise excluded from social amenities for refusing to be injected with experimental substances contrary to Nuremberg code. It is indeed good of Putin to remind Russian authorities that injection with a Con-19 RNA “vaxx” is voluntary and not mandatory; something that Leaders in “the freedom loving West” appear to have forgotten. Enjoy this particular irony of History.
“History has many cunning passages, contrived corridors
Neither fear nor courage saves us. Unnatural vices
Are fathered by our heroism. Virtues
Are forced upon us by our impudent crimes.
These tears are shaken from the wrath-bearing tree. ” — TS Eliot.
More and more Crimethinkers are going to get asylum in Russia or Iran in the future
The quite rightful believers in Russia may still have things to learn…also about Iran I think, but leave it at that, it is good to have hope and springs eternal are derived from this. (Since the intro by the west of poison Bolshevism into Russia, many aspects of the world could be characterized in some manner more by the distasteful and ironic analogy of having become a muddy soup.)
Thanks very much for the article and all the hard work Saker, more from Germany would be appreciated!
What do you mean by the “intro by the west of poison Bolshevism into Russia”? This was not planned, and did not happen as the western propaganda states. Perhaps we should stop accusing those who for the first time in history adopted ideals shared by the workers of the world in a country.
Consider the USSR a great, successfrul experiment that has teached us how to proceed from now on without commiting similar mistakes. Yes, the Bolsheviks were dogmatic, as Lenin pointed out without being heard. However, they had won the revolution and they were not about to lose it for any idea that could get them out of the track. Their enemies at the time were probably more numerous than we can imagine, and the risks were high.
No, the west did not send ‘poisonous Bolshevism’ to Russia. They were shocked with the Russian Revolution and started to attack it from day one with sabotage and a filthy propaganda that lasts until today.
“What do you mean…” – can it be sending Lenin in a sealed train through the battlefields of WWI from Switzerland to St. Petersburg in the hope that he might start a Socialist Revolution there and thus stop the war at Germland’s eastern front?
bp
“Muratov received the Nobel Peace Prize in the fall, is now world famous.”
Oh really?!
World famous?!
How could I’ve missed this one?
What exactly did he do for preserving the World Peace?
But I might be a bit naive for expecting the Nobel Pizza Prize Committee to care about the world peace… After all, amongst the Pizza Prize laureates are “world infamous” personalities like Yasser Arafat and Barack Obama, the latter spending every single day of his two terms as president of the USA at war. He even established a world record of bombs dropped on civilians per year.
If you look at who has been awarded this “prize” in the recent past, you would have to sink into the ground with shame, if the same “fate” befell you.
I remember Yasser from the television news as a child … I know more than that, I’ve read more than that … as a dependent, a nonmilitary rug rat belonging to a high school dropout jar head with no front teeth … I thought Yasser was pretty f’ing cool. Still do. You obviously don’t understand him, or you wouldn’t mention that Oreo’s name in the same sentence as Yassar. The Oreo was always a crook who if you disagreed with in the slightest degree, you were an avowed racist.
Sleep with the dogs get up with fleas. I pity normal Germans who have not been brainwashed by their “media”.
In that case, you feel sorry for the wrong person.
His “tirades” are definitely still remembered here.
For him, Russia is probably some kind of amusing dollhouse, the “people” and the “life” are quite wonderful – but the “state” …
Such people bleat “democracy” … and of course “freedom”, and they always mean only their own…
At such “liberal intellectuals” the Russians have already, as we once said, “Überplanbestände”.
(And in German I could stomp this “Sippschaft” verbally into the ground…)
I stand firmly, in life, by anything AM says. Everything he says is well considered and not flippant in any way, shape or form. To me, he is a saint and not in the US neutered sense of the word.
So, a “saint” then..
Reitschuster was once a welcome guest of the media empires here as a “Russia expert”. And his “expertise” was on the same level, as the one that Mr. Martyanov always picks apart in such a refreshing way…
By the way, I don’t know, why I should agree with him on every question.
However, in the most important questions I cannot be different opinion, because I simply lack there the knowledge – however reason and logic tell me there, that he is right.
It is as the author Kurt Tucholsky once wrote: “Germany is an anatomical oddity: it writes with the left and does with the right.”
It is a good idea to introduce this gentleman, because he is a good example of the confused mood among the “progressive reactionaries”, which above all reflects the spirit of the times, this “Zeitgeist” of a society that is becoming more and more disillusioned and feels abounded by worker unions, major political parties etc…
There are many more of these authors. And there are more and more. Most of them are journos who lost their jobs to younger, inexperienced and thus “malleable” colleagues in the course of the “downsizing” in the MSM staff. This new generation of journalists are cheaper and above all they meet the Zeitgeist of what has become a clear form of a “vox populi” culture to be now some kind of “government press”.
These “Reitschusters” have similar tactics to the AfD, a right-wing party that copies its arguments from the left and explains, under the mask of solidarity, to its audience how bad social-democrats and leftists are. They see it as their task to convince disappointed citizens of a political home that does not even exist. In addition, there is the specific element of a different political approach to everyday life. As someone who grew up in West Germany, I have to admit that the vast majority of people in the former East Germany see through the political machinations much better.
Cicero, Focus et c. but also AfD would have disappeared long ago without financial support from interest groups if they had not been installed to suggest artificially a diversity of opinions that then multiplies right-wing opinions by linking on “social” networks. These journalists and publications are always deeply core populist. Anyone who equates this with a critical or oppositional press has not understood the German media landscape.
For example, they have collectively sworn to blame Putin for everything. They deliberately ignore facts. Statements like Putin’s during the Munich Security Conference: “Russia is part of European culture. Therefore it is difficult for me to consider NATO as an enemy” are ignored as well as the background of the situation of the NS2 pipeline and that it is not Putin or Gazprom who are allegedly responsible for this energy situation. In fact it is a mixture of anti-Russian activism, the liberalisation of the gas markets and the profit motive of German gas traders are to be held responsible for the misery.
The “Reitschusters” will not succeed in getting their message across to the increasingly impoverished people. They will have enough other worries because of existential problems. If you look at the bumbling activism, especially of the Greens, you will soon come to the realisation that a generation in Germany has come to the helm of government that is not grieving over the organised crimes of 1933-45 but over the fact that the Germans are not a master race, this shabby “Herrenvolk” after all.
Ted, this is an excellent description of the current German media landscape, thank you very much! Besides the Nachdenkseiten and partly Rubikon and Telepolis you can forget most of the German-language media, only NATO and Covid trash.
Telepolis and Heise seem pretty controlled nowadays. I would not trust them very far. Occasionally there is some interesting piece, but this has become very rare.
I agree with Ted and kp229 – but, gentlemen, why can’t we read (or, if necessary) write such things anywhere in our beloved fatherland and our beloved mothertongue? For some time already I have the suspicion that the Germ Saker (www.vineyardsaker.de) is in reality still a part of the Saker Empire of Self-Expression in Your Own Languevitch for those wanting just that, but… that… those of us germs who write in germish are simply not able to do better than *those* *there*…???…!!!. I am not sure about Telepolis and could not stand the professoral attitude at Nachdenkseiten, but found opablog.net acceptable and am delighted that the production of “Katharina vom Tanneneck” (tanneneck.blogspot.com), whatever this was initially meant to be, has by now evolved into a place with a mainly correct use of our, äh, mothertongue, and rather quick reporting of “alternative political events”, whatever they may be (or not) worth. Perhaps The Saker, having learned that letting us germs write in German will lead to a disaster like that at vineyardsaker, could create a space, ein Eckchen, for discussing namely germ questions in a normal language like this one. These comments here have already produced more sense about our present reality than I found anywhere during the last years: a great start that deserves a possibility to continue and improve.
That’s an easy way out blame the Afd for everything. The blame is in reality always with the traditional parties that stop to listen to the electorate, promising a lot during election and then doing the opposite when they win. They create a situation where the electorate votes for extreme candidates who most of the time come out of nowhere but are supported by MSM. The effects of MSM can be seen in your posting .
Boris Reitschuster is emblematic of the opposition in Germany. I’m not talking of the CDU as the main opposition party but generally anybody who recognizes that his country is evolving in a bad direction and who dares to voice unhappiness about it (in private, in alternative media or, though less likely, in a political party).
These folks criticize the numerous policy failures such as the energy transition, the mass migration, the infrastructure decay or the Euro monetary policy, just to name the most obvious follies. What they don’t do is to think in geopolitical terms, how foreign policy alignments interact with domestic affairs.
They disapprove of degenerate wokeism and the financialisation of the economy but never tire of pointing out that the alliance with America is the bedrock of German foreign policy. I don’t know whether they are so brainwashed or whether some kind of Stockholm Syndrom prevents them to realize this absurd contradiction:
To oppose certain ideologies while at the same time insisting to remain allied under any circumstances with the one foreign power that is pushing these same ideologies that are vastly contributing to the decay of Germany. This goes hand in hand with an incredible lack of understanding of the multipolar powers.
What these wannabe dissidents want is to return to the supposedly idyllic world of West Germany from 1949 to 1989. A somewhat boring, apolitical yet well functioning entity that doesn’t have to take over any international responsibility and is also sheltered from the big international problems under the protection from the big brother from overseas.
Maybe this is the geopolitical expression of German Romanticism, daydreaming about a past that will never come back and refusing to see the world as it is.
Thanks for the translation.
It adds to understanding to read Ukfkotte’s “Gekaufte Journalisten”, and remember that essentially all the “journos” in zone A (and many in other zones) are under considerable pressure from occult forces. As a practical matter they’re agents in a racket. Once we see them for what they are, and their work for what it is, their writings become transparent and their content actually undermines the Policies and Goal of their masters.
I do not believe that the book is available in English…which says, all by itself, much.
A review/synopsis of “Gekaufte Journalisten” might be a project some Sakerite affiliated person might undertake. A precis perhaps.
“I do not believe that the book is available in English…which says, all by itself, much.”
It is available in English.
Title: Prestitutes
Author: Udo Ukfkotte
Publisher : Progressivepress.com
Last version 1.7 1/2020
ISBN 1-61577-017-8
Evaluation Horizon too short context excludes efforts since 1945 including Why the British donated newsprint to Mr. Springer in Hamburgh in 1945 and CIC/CIA then BND efforts in co-ordination not restricted to journalism.
My belief was evidently dated, and thus wrong. Many thanks. For a time the translation(s) were suppressed. So I got a copy in German and slogged along with my school-boy German, rather painfully. Nevertheless that suppression remains as a signal.
My point, also, remains. “Media” in zone A is pretty much a racket, as Udo described.
Recall “racket” as defined by Brother Smedley> “A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of the people. Only a small “inside” group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few, at the expense of the very many. Out of war a few people make huge fortunes.
There are several other good quotes from Brother Smedley @ https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/191777-war-is-a-racket …one I favor is> “Let the workers in these plants get the same wages — all the workers, all presidents, all executives, all directors, all managers, all bankers — yes, and all generals and all admirals and all officers and all politicians and all government office holders — everyone in the nation be restricted to a total monthly income not to exceed that paid to the soldier in the trenches! Let all these kings and tycoons and masters of business and all those workers in industry and all our senators and governors and majors pay half of their monthly $30 wage to their families and pay war risk insurance and buy Liberty Bonds. Why shouldn’t they? They aren’t running any risk of being killed or of having their bodies mangled or their minds shattered. They aren’t sleeping in muddy trenches. They aren’t hungry. The soldiers are! Give capital and industry and labor thirty days to think it over and you will find, by that time, there will be no war. That will smash the war racket — that and nothing else. Maybe”
I am happy that I am not going to have to precis the book, and assume Sakerites have read it. Is this correct?
Who, here, other than I, has read it?
Well, maybe I should set the record straight here in regards to Boris Reitschuster, whom the Saker described as:
“German VERY mainstream and doubleplusgoodthinking journo”!
Sorry, this description is just PLAIN wrong and misleading. Reitschuster is as far from mainstream journalism as heaven is from hell. His alternative website is one of, if not, THE most popular alternative, vaccination critical website in Germany. To give a number here: In December 2021 he had over 50 million hits! See for yourself: reitschuster.de
The reason he became a (symbolic) correspondent for the Novaya Gazeta is simply that because of his “conspiracy mongering” his membership in the prestigious Bundespresskonferenz (National Media Association) was cancelled. He is hoping that working for the in Germany highly esteemed Novaya Gazeta as a foreign correspondent, he will be granted access to the BPK again.
However, that maybe wishful thinking the way I know the VERY mainstream and doubleplusgoodthinking BPK…
“I have never been to Russia and know it only from the media…”
… sounds like you would appreciate to learn more; using “Russian … media” could mean that you can read Russian. If this is the case then I could recommend visiting “yandex.ru”, which will show several short pieces of text as many other such sites – but the texts are much better und much more interesting and re–supplied in never ending number, once you start reading them. I tried what happens when you do *not* read and understand enough Russian: the english version is yandex.com, and it offers no articles at all, it is just a search engine. But once you start using it – you might search for “Red Square” or whatever – you are again presented some initial articles (in english, and of good quality, obviously), and I am sure it will continue as described, from a never ending supply.
A while ago I was there again, and used for the first time the service of a Russian Reisebüro in Berlin for booking the flights and the hotel. Although the staff was minuscule, the service was excellent. This became much more important when during this travel certain difficulties arose, the return flight had to be rearranged, and everything was done again perfectly via an intelligent person in Berlin using their telephone. Without that the turbulences – in covid times – could have ended in a nightmare. So, using such a service seems a good idea.
Otherwise I agree with your characterisation of our debile Täuschland – I was disgusted with an advertising campaign in Berlin’s U-Bahn by Frau Lambrecht, then minister of justice – but now of (sly) war instead of (simply) peace, producing good feelings for bad deeds.
bp
It is one thing when the journalists professional skills of analysing and reporting the truth are corrupted by outside influences such as editorial policy or newsprint owners following a particular prejudice but quite another when a journalist does have some freedom of expression but is indolent in his research: A classic case was Mark Franchetti. For decades, Ukrainians travelled from Kiev to the Crimea on holiday. It cost a family $7.50 per head and was thus affordable. Post 2014, Mark Franchetti then reported that the Ukrainians were “so offended by the Russian annexation that they refused to go there again” on their annual holiday. My Ukrainian friends at the time, pointed out that Yatsenyuk had raised the train fare from $7.50 to $150 per head…and it was THIS alone, which created the reluctance to travel there again…
I recently made some informal opinion research amongst western and eastern Ukrainian friends. None blamed Russia for the current crisis. Amusingly some were even offended by my questions and told me that they were perfectly capable of reading between the lines and “never took any news coming from Kiev at face value..”