Despite the hot sun, few Americans were wearing rose-colored glasses these days, but rather fear dark clouds ahead. Many feel worried, even despairing. But sometimes they could rejoice at bright spots. The victory of Zohran Mamdani in my home town, with an amazingly courageous, even defiant platform, is causing the wealthy spenders to move heaven and earth to stop him. Can they?

Far bigger geographically, two, three, maybe five million Americans marked “No Kings Day” – Trump’s birthday – in over 2100 cities and towns, even in Guam, Puerto Rico, the Virgins. The motivation varied, but fightback protests were even bigger in number than on Viet Nam or civil rights!

Resistance is urgent against Trump’s frightening domestic plans. His foreign policy is unpredictable; I‘d bet he hasn’t a clue about the outside world, hardly knows Liberia from Siberia, except where golden Trump towers or golf courses are involved or fat contracts for the family. This has meant crazy, merry-go-round tariff plans, criminally illegal air raids, the murder of undesirable generals, brutal genocide in Gaza. At times there seemed to be glimpses of steps towards peace. It would be reckless and stupid to trust him or have illusions, but I think even weak feelers, if any remain, should be built upon!

Have you noticed? Many who listed all of Trump’s dangerous plans made sure to slip any idea about peace in Ukraine in among the negatives. With some folks, I suspect that their main worry is that some peaceful solution might indeed be found, and words like war-readiness, security-defense or armament-buildup give way in media headlines to reconciliation or rapprochement. How fearful!!!

Above all in Germany, I’m afraid, I must remove any rose-colored specs: I hear too many echoes from the past! For those pushing German expansion, some with the same bloody corporation names as in 1939, 1914, even the 1860s, their big victory was “German unification” (still called “annexation” or “colonization” by many affected). Combined with similar victories elsewhere in eastern Europe, all barriers were down, all gates wide open to investment, exploitation and control, the latter most obviously in the land-by-land extension of NATO, despite all promises of 1990 “not to move one inch further eastward.”

This eastward ”Sturm und Drang” has meant permanently stationing a brigade of German soldiers in Lithuania, almost within spitting distance of St. Petersburg. Also domination of the Baltic Sea, Russia’s key exit to world trade and world economy, with a new naval control center in Rostock (once the main GDR seaport, built up with rocks collected voluntarily by young people all over the republic).

A clearly orchestrated media barrage insists: “Putin threatens Germany, we need a powerful war machine! Urgently!” Constitutional budget limits on debt have been scrapped; for weapons, the sky’s the limit! It is all a myth; Russia would not dream of attacking Germany: NATO outnumbers Russia . in aircraft 22,377 to 4,957, in naval power 1,143 ships to 339, in battle tanks 11,495 to 5,750. NATO surrounds Russia geographically, north, west and mostly south, with Georgia, Moldava and Ukraine meant to close the circle. France and Britain have atomic weapons. Some twenty US nuclear missiles are polished and ready to fly eastward with swift German planes from Büchel Air Base. That threat has always been a myth!

But it still works, and training is in! TV demands ever more admiration for dashing young men (and women) in full uniform and painted faces charging bravely through the woods, or tanks splashing across rivers. There is a new ”Soldiers’ Day” and a ”Veterans Day” – to honor the lucky and less lucky ones (after waiting for survivors from 1939-1945 to die out and avoid confusion as to which veterans were being honored) and give little boys and girls a chance to climb into a tank or fighter plane. The message is clear: “Be patriotic! Join in the fun!” and the war fever increasingly recalls, with modern variants, the heel-clicking and barked Prussian commands of past years! “Intelligence experts” who predicted 2030, maybe 2027, as the year “when Putin’s army will be fit enough to fight us after his losses in the Ukraine war” now say such dates offer a “false sense of security” and even speak of 2026.

Marching in the vanguard, with military bands for background music, is the new chancellor, Friedrich Merz. He seems more genteel, more intelligent, than his new friend in Washington, and avoids loud-mouth rabble-rousing. But his texts go even further: he has already concluded that “we are already under attack from Russia…the dividing line between war and peace is a fluid one.”

There are loud dissonances, however. For decades economically proud and powerful, Germany........

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