President Donald Trump announced just after 6pm on Sunday that the US will delay the implementation of a 50% tariff on European Union products to July 9 from June 1. Sunday’s decision to extend the tariff deadline was made after a phone call with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen earlier in the day, and comes after Trump unexpectedly threatened duties of 50% on the EU on Friday morning. The move surprised European officials who thought they were making progress with his administration on talks to avert the 20% “reciprocal” tariffs Trump announced in April, and then paused for 90 days. “I received a call today from Ursula von der Leyen, President of the European Commission, requesting an extension on the June 1st deadline on the 50% Tariff with respect to Trade and the European Union,” Trump wrote on Truth Social.
“I agreed to the extension—July 9, 2025—It was my privilege to do so. The Commission President said that talks will begin rapidly.” Trump’s statement followed a post from von der Leyen on the social media platform X, in which she described her conversation with Trump as a “good call.”“The EU and US share the world’s most consequential and close trade relationship. Europe is ready to advance talks swiftly and decisively. To reach a good deal, we would need the time until July 9,” she wrote. Trump initially said on May 23 that the United States will impose a 50 percent tariff on the European Union starting June 1 after the president wrote on Truth Social that he felt talks with the EU were “going nowhere,” and cited a litany of his trade irritants, from the EU’s value-added taxes to fines and regulations on U.S. companies.
The sides also have yet to agree on how to align their trade policies on China, though the EU has privately indicated it is willing to work with the U.S. to combat Beijing’s subsidies for key industries such as steel according to the WSJ. Trump has long maligned the EU, which he says was formed to take advantage of the US, and decried the U.S.’s persistent trade deficit with the continent. The EU, meanwhile, has said it wouldn’t negotiate over certain Trump demands, such as value-added taxes. And some European ministers have made clear that they wouldn’t accept a deal that keeps Trump’s 10% baseline tariff in place—a concession the U.K. made in a pact signed early this month. Trump’s statement on Sunday reverts the negotiations back to where they were before his Friday missive, giving the sides just over a month to come to an agreement.
The United States and EU share the largest bilateral economic relationship in the world. Yet, U.S. goods and services face persistent tariff and non-tariff barriers in the EU market, according to the latest Foreign Trade Barriers report issued by U.S. Trade Representative (USTR). Although the EU’s average Most Favored Nation tariff rate stands at a relatively low 5 percent, certain goods face disproportionately high levies, such as fish and seafood (up to 26 percent), trucks (22 percent), bicycles (14 percent), passenger vehicles (10 percent), and fertilizers and plastics (6.5 percent).Many processed foods such as confectionary products and baked goods also face complex and burdensome tariffs under the EU’s Meursing Table system, which calculates duties based on product composition.
Under this system, the EU charges a tariff on each imported good based on the products’ content of milk fat, milk protein, starch, and sugar. This system not only increases administrative burden but also creates uncertainty for U.S. food exporters, according to the USTR. In addition, the EU does not administer its laws through a single customs administration, which presents another layer of complexity for U.S. exporters. Each EU member state enforces customs law independently, resulting in different interpretations and enforcement throughout the bloc. The EU’s technical barriers to trade also remain a sticking point. For example, Europe’s adoption of regional standards for safety, quality, environmental protection, labeling, and packaging impede market access for U.S. products even if they meet international standards, according to the USTR.
Note: In my opinion neither Putin nor Trump are engaged in “peace negotiations” for the purpose of ending the military conflict in Ukraine. Putin’s purpose is to use negotiations to achieve a Great Power Agreement, a New Yalta. Putin says the purpose of the negotiations is to solve the “root cause of the conflict,” which is the absence of a Great Power Agreement. For Trump the purpose is to withdraw US focus, money and weapons and to concentrate them on China, which is regarded as Washington’s more dangerous and powerful enemy.
It is amazing how difficult it is for the Western foreign policy community and media to recognize and acknowledge facts. Generally speaking, analysts who tell you the difference between the truth and the narrative are brushed aside. All sorts of dismissive names are applied to us few, and false narratives serving agendas prevail. Policymakers themselves end up believing the false narratives, and this raises the risks of dangerous miscalculations. For example, one of the most dangerous of the false narratives is that the slowness of Russia’s military advance against Ukraine is the consequence of Russian military weakness, high Russian battlefield casualties, the vulnerability of the Russian economy to US sanctions, and Putin’s unrealistic expectation to be regarded by Ukrainians as a liberator.
The truth is entirely different. Every time Putin endorses negotiations, he emphasizes that they must address the “root cause” of the conflict. The root cause is the absence of a Great Power Agreement. Putin is using a long drawn out war that the West tires of to initiate “peace negotiations” that Putin hopes to turn into a Great Power Agreement like the one he and his foreign minister failed to achieve in the winter of 2021-2022. Washington policymakers have concluded that Russia’s weakness allows the US to withdraw from Ukraine and turn the war over to Europeans, while Washington gears up to deal with the more dangerous enemy–China. Failed Ukraine peace negotiations are the intended excuse for Trump washing his hands and walking away. What it signifies is Washington’s refocusing on China as the most dangerous adversary.
It is my opinion that China is not an adversary any more than Russia and Iran are, but the narrative demands that they are adversaries. The American military/security complex cannot exist without adversaries. That is the reason America has adversaries. Without adversaries what would the CIA, NSA, Defense Intelligence Agency, think tanks such as the Center for Strategic and International Studies, organizations such as the Council on Foreign Relations, university international studies departments, and publications such as Foreign Affairs do? The United States has massive vested interests in having adversaries, the more dangerous the better.
The question has arisen: How does the US deal with so many adversaries. Formerly, we were assured that we could defeat all adversaries simultaneously. Today it is recognized that we cannot. Wess Mitchell in a recent article in Foreign Affairs says it is the policy of the Trump administration to sequence its conflicts. As Washington regards Russia as the weaker of its two main “adversaries,” Washington is turning the Ukraine conflict over to its European puppets while Washington takes on China.Wess Mitchell, a former Trump senior defense department official, wipes out the narratives and tells us the policy. And no one other than John Helper and myself have commented on it.
Here is Secretary of State Marco Rubio telling the US Senate yesterday what I have told you, what John Helmer has told you, and what Wess Mitchell has told you: The purpose of the Ukraine “peace negotiations” is for the US to exit the conflict and focus on China. Here are Rubio’s words: “The war against China, Secretary of State Marco Rubio told a Senate committee hearing on Tuesday (May 20) – is now the strategic priority for the US. Implementing it requires sequencing Washington’s wars. “Every minute we spend, every dollar we spend on this conflict in Europe [Ukraine] is distracting both our focus and our resources away from a potential for a much more serious and much more cataclysmic confrontation in the Indo-Pacific…they are related but they’re related both ways — they’re related on the one hand by the precedent that it could set, but they’re also related by the fact that every minute that we spend on this [Ukraine] conflict that cannot be won by military means, every resource that’s expended into it [Ukraine] is money and time that’s not being spent on preventing a much more serious confrontation from a global perspective in the Indo-Pacific.” Rubio clearly states that the prime target is China.”
In my judgment based on the knowledge I have at the present time, Putin and the Russian foreign policy commentators do not understand what is afoot. Putin is lost in hopes that peace negotiations can be turned into a Great Power Agreement, a new Yalta. That would be a greater achievement than merely winning a military conflict with Ukraine and, therefore, is worth the sacrifices of Russian troops in a conflict in which Putin prevents a victory, as a victory would prevent the negotiations that Putin imagines could become a Great Power Agreement. If Putin had immediately smashed Ukraine, Russia would be regarded as a Great Power and would have obtained its Great Power Agreement. Instead, Putin created the image of a weak Russia that can be sidelined to Europe while Washington takes on China.
The US is essentially facilitating the persecution of Christians in Ukraine by supporting the Kiev government, which has been waging a purge campaign against the nation’s canonical Orthodox church, American journalist Tucker Carlson has said. Carlson made the statement during an interview with a former Ukrainian MP, Vadim Novinsky, released on Friday. “Every day, churches and temples are seized by soldiers with machine guns who come in, throw out priests, beat believers, children, old people, women…” the former lawmaker stated, adding that “it is happening all over Ukraine.” “I think very few Americans understand the degree to which the Ukrainian government under [Vladimir] Zelensky has persecuted the Ukrainian Orthodox Church,” Carlson said.
The former Fox News host then asked Novinsky what he would like to say to the American lawmakers who have nevertheless approved financial aid to Kiev. “The Speaker of the House of the United States Congress is a man who describes himself as a Christian and he has been paying for this,” the journalist said, referring to Mike Johnson, a Louisiana Republican. The former Ukrainian MP replied that he would like to see the US aid going directly to ordinary Ukrainians and not the authorities, who “live in parallel realities.” US government agencies appropriated a total of $182.8 billion on various forms of assistance to Kiev between 2022 and the end of 2024, according to Ukraine Oversight, an official portal that tracks such expenditures. Last week, US President Donald Trump stated he was concerned that billions of dollars were being wasted on aid to Ukraine. He said Congress was “very upset about it” and that lawmakers were asking where all the money was going.
Kiev has accused the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC) of maintaining ties to Russia even though it declared independence from the Moscow Patriarchate in May 2022. The crackdown has included numerous arrests of clergymen and church raids, one of the most notorious of which took place in the catacombs of the Kiev-Pechersk Lavra, where holy relics are kept. Last year, Zelensky signed legislation allowing the state to ban religious organizations affiliated with governments that Kiev deems “aggressors,” effectively targeting the UOC. Earlier this week, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said that Moscow would not abandon the Orthodox believers in Ukraine and vowed to make sure that “their lawful rights are respected.”
Tighter national migration and border control policies could spell doom for the European Union, former German Chancellor Angela Merkel has warned, following Berlin’s recent move to curb the influx of asylum seekers. Merkel made the remarks at the ‘Southwestern Press Forum’ event in Neu-Ulm last week, where she appeared to present her memoir, Freedom. “I do not believe we can decisively combat illegal migration at the German-Austrian or German-Polish border… I have always advocated European solutions,” Merkel said when asked about the latest measures adopted by Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s cabinet. The new policies, introduced earlier this month by Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt, prohibit asylum applications at all German land borders – marking a sharp reversal of Merkel’s 2015 open-border stance.
Exceptions are made for children, pregnant women, and other vulnerable individuals. According to Merkel, the move threatens both freedom of movement within the EU and the integrity of the Schengen zone, which allows visa-free travel across most of the bloc. She insisted that any immigration and travel reforms should be agreed upon at the EU level. “Otherwise, we could see Europe destroyed,” she warned. Merkel’s open-door policy in 2015 was met with fierce political backlash, with critics branding it “disastrous” after more than a million migrants were allowed into Germany during the peak of the 2015–16 refugee crisis. Germany remains the EU’s top destination for asylum seekers. In 2023, it received over 237,000 asylum applications – roughly a quarter of the bloc’s total, according to EU statistics.
Merz had pledged to tighten border controls during his campaign ahead of February’s snap elections, amid surging public support for the right-wing Alternative for Germany (AfD), known for its hardline anti-immigration stance. The AfD ultimately secured second place with 20.8% of the national vote but was excluded from coalition talks and government formation by mainstream parties. Earlier this month, Germany’s domestic intelligence agency (BfV) officially designated the AfD a “confirmed extremist entity.” The classification was temporarily suspended following legal challenges and mounting public backlash, but senior officials – including members of the ruling coalition – have continued to seek legal grounds to pursue a formal ban on the party. Earlier this week, German police warned that offi’rs to support the 11,000 already stationed at key crossings.
Germany should consider adopting a “positive approach” toward Moscow that would including restoring the Nord Stream gas pipelines, Michael Kretschmer, the prime minister of the state of Saxony in eastern Germany, has argued. The current hostile policy has been unproductive and has only harmed Germany’s economy, the politician, who also serves as one of the deputy heads of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) party, said in an interview with Die Zeit on Sunday. “Nord Stream is a possible opening for a conversation with Russia,” Kretschmer suggested, adding that such talks would benefit both nations. The German economy requires at least one-fifth of its gas supplies to come from Russia to function normally, he claimed.
He also pointed out that various companies had begun relocating due to high production costs and energy prices. If the situation in the economy does not improve, Germany, not Russia, will have to “change [its] course in one or two years,” he warned. Kretschmer’s stance contrasts sharply with that of his party leader and federal chancellor, Friedrich Merz. Earlier this week, as part of a new sanctions push, Merz expressed support for an EU plan to ban any use of the Nord Stream gas pipelines and to block attempts to revive energy trade with Russia. The head of Saxony considers such an approach counterproductive. “As long as we say that we don’t want anything, we don’t want gas supplies, we only impose sanctions, no one will talk to us,” he argued.
The Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipeline systems were built under the Baltic Sea to deliver Russian natural gas directly to Germany. Each system consisting of two pipelines was capable of delivering up to 55 billion cubic meters of gas a year. Three out of the pipelines’ four lines were destroyed by underwater explosions in September 2022 in an act of sabotage that Russia believes was orchestrated by Western intelligence agencies. European gas prices surged after the Ukraine conflict escalated in 2022 as pipeline gas imports from Russia mostly ceased due to sanctions and the Nord Stream sabotage. In 2021, Russian pipeline gas accounted for 32% of the total demand of the EU and UK, while Germany relied on Russia for 55% of its consumption, according to the European Council.
Make no mistake about it: The Democratic Party is facing an existential crisis that even their media allies can’t spin anymore. The New York Times, the crown jewel of the liberal media establishment, just published a devastating analysis showing how the Democrats’ supposed stronghold on American politics has crumbled under the MAGA movement. While Democrats continue their tired routine of Trump-bashing and pretending to care about working Americans, the numbers tell a completely different story. The Times’ analysis reveals a political earthquake that’s reshaping the electoral landscape, and it’s not in the Democrats’ favor. “All told, Mr. Trump has increased the Republican Party’s share of the presidential vote in each election he’s been on the ballot in close to half the counties in America — 1,433 in all,” the paper writes.
“It is a staggering political achievement, especially considering that Mr. Trump was defeated in the second of those three races, in 2020. By contrast, Democrats have steadily expanded their vote share in those three elections in only 57 of the nation’s 3,100-plus counties.” In the 2024 election, six times as many counties shifted toward the GOP as toward the Democrats. While 435 counties trended more Democratic compared to 2012, 2,678 moved more Republican—by an even larger average margin of 13.3 points versus 8.8 for Democrats. That’s not just a loss; that’s a political bloodbath. The Democrats’ problem? They’re increasingly becoming the party of coastal elites and college-educated snobs. Meanwhile, Trump has built an unstoppable coalition that includes working-class voters across all racial and ethnic backgrounds.
The New York Times didn’t sugarcoat the situation for the Democrats. Counties that have become steadily more Republican exist in some of the country’s bluest strongholds, including New York City, Philadelphia and Honolulu. Mr. Trump’s party is still losing in those places, but by significantly less. At the same time, Mr. Trump has driven Republican margins to dizzying new heights in the nation’s reddest bastions. In New York, 43 out of 62 counties shifted at least 10 points more Republican in 2024 compared to 2012, cutting the statewide Democratic margin in half. The only county to consistently trend Democratic was ultra-progressive Tompkins County, home to Ithaca. Meanwhile, even deep-blue and diverse areas like the Bronx, Queens, and Brooklyn have trended Republican in multiple elections, alongside rural upstate counties like St. Lawrence and Lewis.
“We could be entering a world where the greatest predictor of voting behavior is no longer race,” Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-N.Y.) told the New York Times. “Donald Trump’s greatest achievement — his greatest electoral achievement — lies not in breaking the blue wall in the industrial Midwest, but in beginning to break the blue walls in states like New York, and in counties like the Bronx.” The Democrats’ old playbook is dead, and they know it. Their own pollster Ben Tulchin admitted “the math doesn’t work” anymore. While they’re stuck pandering to wealthy urbanites and pushing radical policies that normal Americans reject, Trump’s MAGA coalition keeps growing stronger. The only thing that could derail this momentum is if Republicans get complacent or drop the ball. I hope they don’t.
US President Donald Trump has claimed that Moscow targeted Ukraine “for no reason whatsoever,” after Russia launched a series of missile strikes against military targets in Kiev and other locations – following a week of constant Ukrainian drone raids involving hundreds of UAVs. Ukraine significantly intensified its drone attacks inside Russia last week, with at least 764 drones intercepted over Russian territory between Tuesday and Friday, and hundreds more destroyed over the weekend. The helicopter carrying Russian President Vladimir Putin was reportedly caught in the “epicenter” of a massive drone raid while he was visiting the Kursk Region on Tuesday. In response, the Russian military conducted a major strike against a drone and missile production plant in Kiev on Saturday, followed by additional reported strikes on Ukrainian military facilities on Sunday.
Speaking to journalists on Sunday, Trump claimed Russia’s response was unwarranted and said he was “surprised” by what he is seeing. “I’m not happy with what Putin’s doing,” he said. “We’re in the middle of talking and he’s shooting rockets into Kiev and other cities. I don’t like it at all… We’ll see what I’m going to do.”“I’ve always had a very good relationship with Vladimir Putin of Russia, but something has happened to him. He has gone absolutely CRAZY!” Trump added in a post on Truth Social, claiming that “missiles and drones are being shot into cities in Ukraine for no reason whatsoever.” Trump also criticized Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky, in an apparent reference to his remarks about Washington’s “silence” in response to the latest Russian attacks.
“Likewise, President Zelensky is doing his country no favors by talking the way he does. Everything out of his mouth causes problems. I don’t like it, and it better stop,” the US leader stated, reiterating that the Ukraine conflict is “not his war.”The Russian Foreign Ministry suggested that the spike in UAV incursions was an attempt to derail the US-brokered peace talks between Moscow and Kiev, while Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said that “some European nations led by the UK, France, Germany, and the EU leadership,” who are supporting Kiev and want the conflict to continue, bear some responsibility for the drone raids.Meanwhile, Russia and Ukraine have completed a record prisoner exchange, agreed to during direct talks in Türkiye earlier this month. Lavrov stated earlier that the sides will exchange draft ceasefire proposals once the swap process is complete.
The Kremlin as well as Russian state media are alleging a huge, potentially conflict-altering incident which will surely escalate the war in Ukraine – an attempted attack on Russian President Vladimir Putin himself. A high-ranking Russian military commander on Sunday described that last week, as Putin traveled to the Kursk region for the first time since is liberation after 6+ months of Ukrainian occupation, Ukraine tried to attack Putin’s helicopter mid-flight, sending a wave of drones to swarm the flight path of the chopper. The presidential helicopter was caught in the “epicenter” of a massive Ukrainian drone attack, commander of an air defense division in Kursk, Yury Dashkin, told Russian media. The headline is the top featured story of English-language RT on Sunday, something which suggests the allegations are largely aimed at grabbing the attention of the West.
The incident is said to have happened Tuesday as the helicopter transported Putin to tour Kursk – a southern oblast which has suffered much destruction since the initial Ukrainian cross-border incursion of last August. Commander Yury Dashkin told Russia 1 in an interview which aired Sunday said that Putin’s helicopter had found itself “in the epicenter of an operation to repel a massive drone attack by the enemy” in Kursk Region.He went on to describe that this “unprecedented” attack was successfully repelled by anti-air defenses in the region. Air defense units in the area had to “simultaneously conduct anti-aircraft combat and ensure the safety of the president’s helicopter in the air. The task was accomplished,” Dashkin stated. “The attack of the enemy drones was repelled, with all aerial targets being hit.”
While this could just be a mid-level officer’s attempt to toot his own horn, given the world is just hearing about what’s tantamount to an ‘assassination attempt’ on one of the world’s most powerful leaders being alleged – and coming belatedly a number of days after the incident in question – this seems part of Moscow’s ongoing messaging that the UAV incursions are an attempt to derail the US-brokered peace talks between Moscow and Kiev. The drones are being launched on Russia in record numbers, with literally multiple hundreds sent over the past week, in some cases halting inbound and outbound flights at major airports, including in the Moscow area. Ukrainian officials have boasted that the operations is trying to disrupt and destabilize daily life in Russia, in hopes that the government could lose control. A major new allegation coming from Russia’s military:
[..] Significantly, Russia’s military pummeled the Ukrainian capital of Kiev again overnight, with emerging images showing raging fires and devastation in city neighborhoods and populated areas. Other regions were hit as well, in a second straight night of some of the largest strikes of the war. There were significant casualties. According to Ukrainian emergency authorities, cited in national media: Russia attacked Kyiv and other Ukrainian regions with drones and missiles overnight on May 25, killing 12 people, including three children, and injuring more than 60, Interior Minister Ihor Klymenko said on Telegram.
Russia launched 69 missiles overnight and 298 drones, according to Ukraine’s Air Force. The Air Force reported that 45 cruise missiles were shot down by air defense and 266 drones were neutralized, while 22 locations recorded a direct strike. The attacks come one night after one of the heaviest Russian assaults on Kyiv throughout the full-scale war. The attack also coincides with Kyiv Day, a city holiday typically celebrated on the last Sunday in May. US media outlet NPR also acknowledges that “The scale of the onslaught was stunning — Russia hit Ukraine with 367 drones and missiles, making this the largest single attack of the more than three-years-long war.”
The attack featured heavy use of Iranian-designed Shahed drones, Yuriy Ihnat, a spokesperson for Ukraine’s Air Force, said. It was “the most massive strike in terms of the number of air attack weapons on the territory of Ukraine since the beginning of the full-scale invasion in 2022,” Ihnat emphasized.Given the sizeable death toll and casualties, this is sure to get Washington and Europe’s attention, at a moment the Trump administration has been losing patience with both sides over lack of progress in attempted peace negotiations, the last round which was held in Istanbul just over a week ago. Washington is still threatening more anti-Moscow sanctions, a move which would likely terminate the peace negotiation proces By all appearances, Putin is actually ready to expand the ground operation inside Ukraine, in part to establish a ‘buffer zone’ in order to better defend the constant drone attacks coming out of Ukraine on Russian territory.
Russian troops at the same time continue advancing slowly on the eastern front in Donbass, having reportedly captured two settlements in Donetsk region as well as one in Ukraine’s northern region of Sumy, according to a Saturday Russian Defense Ministry statement. Reuters cites the statement as saying Russian forces had “captured the village of Stupochky in Donetsk region, east of Kostiantynivka, a town under recent Russian pressure.” It also named the villags of Otradne and Loknya, the latter which is inside the Russian border in Sumy region – as coming under Russian control. That makes three more settlements captured in eastern Ukraine. All of this strongly suggests that peace is no closer on the horizon.
Russia has continued the operation to secure a “buffer zone” between the held regions in the Eastern part of Ukraine and the area west of the Kursk, Bryansk and Belgorod regions. The NATO alliance continues pouring weapons in to support Ukraine defenses, but the Russians are methodically grinding down the Ukrainian military. Volodymyr Zelenskyy is now saying President Trump’s silence is emboldening the Russian assaults. “Each such terrorist attack by Russia is a sufficient reason for new sanctions against Russia. Russia is dragging out this war and continues to kill every day,” Zelensky said in a post on Telegram Sunday morning. “The world may go on vacation, but the war continues, despite weekends and weekdays.
This cannot be ignored. America’s silence, and the silence of others in the world, only encourages Putin,” he continued. This is an interesting dynamic to continue watching unfold. In the background as Tulsi Gabbard, Marco Rubio and perhaps even John Ratcliffe begin confronting rogue elements within the CIA and pulling them away from covert operation in Ukraine, per the strategic withdrawal of influence announced by President Trump, the position of Zelenskyy could weaken quickly.
VIDEO: A helicopter successfully herds 16 critically endangered banteng onto a truck in Cambodia for the first time.
Conservation groups Rising Phoenix and Siem Pang said that the banteng found in the wild were relocated to a wildlife sanctuary. Banteng are a type of wild… pic.twitter.com/0cynkRi93w
When I read that Angela Merkel visited Auschwitz this week (for the first time ever, curiously, after 14 years as Chancellor, and now it’s important?), my first thought was: she should have visited Julian Assange instead. I don’t even know why, it just popped into my head. And then reflecting on it afterwards, of course first I wondered if it’s acceptable to compare nazi victims to Assange in any way, shape or form.
There are many paths to argue it is not. He is not persecuted solely for being part of a group of people (we can’t really use “race” here). There are not millions like him who are being tortured and persecuted for the same reasons he is. There is no grand scheme to take out all like him. There is no major police or army force to execute any such scheme. These things are all obvious.
But I grew up in Holland, where unlike in Merkel’s Germany, the aftermath of WWII and the Holocaust was very much present. I looked it up, and it’s already almost 10 years ago that I wrote Miep Gies Died Today, in which I explained this. Miep Gies was a woman who worked for Anne Frank’s father Otto, helped hide the family in the annex, and after the war secured Anne’s diary (or we would never have known about it) and handed it to Otto Frank.
So accusing me of anti-semitism for comparing the Holocaust to what is being done to Assange is not going to work. Why then did Merkel never visit Auschwitz before this week, and when she did, said how important it is to German history? And why did she not visit Assange instead?
Unlike the people who died in Auschwitz and other concentration camps (Anne Frank died in Bergen Belsen from typhoid), Julian Assange today, as we speak, IS being persecuted, he IS being tortured, and he IS likely to die in a prison. What does Angela Merkel think that Anne Frank would have thought about that? Would she have written in her diary that it was okay?
Would all those millions of Jewish and Roma and gay victims have thought that? There are 75+ years that have gone by. We can not get these victims back, we can not magically revive them. But we CAN make sure that what happened to them, torture and murder, doesn’t happen to people today. “Never Again”, right? Well, it IS happening again.
Are we all supposed to go say “I didn’t know” -“Ich hab es nicht gewüsst”- like the Germans did, and all those who collaborated with them across Europe?
There are victims who are dead, and there are victims who are -barely- alive. And if you claim you wish to honor the dead victims, you must ask what they would have felt about the ones like them who are still alive. Otherwise, you’re not honoring them, you’re just posing and acting and, in the end, grossly insulting them.
Julian Assange is not in a German prison, true, but Angela Merkel is still the uncrowned queen of Europe, and if she would visit Julian in his Belmarsh torture chamber it would make a huge difference. That she elects to visit Auschwitz instead, does not only make her appear hollow and empty, it is a grave insult to the likes of Anne Frank and all the other nazi victims.
Which brings me to another Assange-related issue. The Guardian’s editor, Katharine Viner, launched an appeal yesterday for people to donate money to her paper’s “climate emergency” fund. That in itself is fine. If people think they need to help save the planet with their savings, sure.
Though I will always have suspicions about all these things. From where I stand, I see too many people claiming to save the planet, oil CEOs and billionaires first, and too much money being invited to join their funds. If you want to donate something for the cause, why do it via a newspaper? But even with that in mind, yeah, whatever, it’s Christmas time. Who cares how effective the money will be?
My problem with Katharine Viner and the Guardian is that they have played a very active role in the smearing and persecution of Julian Assange. They’ve published articles that were proven to be 100% false, and never retracted them, or apologized, or attempted to make things right. The Guardian is a major reason why Julian is where he is. It has accommodated, make that encouraged, the British people’s “Ich hab es nicht gewüsst”.
You can donate to the Guardian’s climate emergency fund, if you believe they don’t run it to make you think they really care about the planet more than about their bottom line, but be careful: you will also be supporting the further smearing and persecution of Julian Assange. Are you sure you want to do that?
See, the headline for Katharine Viner’s article is: The Climate Crisis Is The Most Urgent Threat Of Our Time. And it’s not. The most urgent threat is that to Julian Assange’s health. That is today, not in 5 or 10 or 100 years. After all, what is the use of saving the planet if we allow the smartest and bravest among us to be tortured to death? What do we think Anne Frank would have said about that?
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