Wartime

Escalation continues.
The downward spiral keeps on heading further down.
Consumer prices explode - and polititians behave like fools in trying to combat them.
While actually not really trying to fight them.

Winning a war, protecting the world climate, preventing an economic recession from happening, and keeping up the growth - all of this, they want to achieve at once.
While ignoring the technical (im-)possibilities to do so and, even the more, how much these targets altogether contradict themselves and cannot be unified.

Some more big names die and leave the world - like rats leaving a sinking ship?
Or just their time having run out - and it just happens at the right moment to still depart in happiness and not see how the world goes down...

Wishful thinking continues to conquer the human brains all over the world,
narrowing the corridor of their sight - fueling aggression and dogmatic thinking.
Valuing some rules or standards higher than the practice that comes attached to them - and which may require an adjustment of the rules because of their unworldly overidealistic absoluteness that no-one can truly live.

It's almost like the human behavior itself wants to say "we're too many here on this planet to be able to live as lavishly as we want to"...

In the light of today as the topic of “negotiations” is continuously being wiped off the table with arguments like “Putin started this war” and “Why should Ukraine aspire surrender while they’ve been attacked?” - let’s recall why negotiations are held at all in war scenarios.

When do officials and representatives hold them with representatives of the opponent?
Huh?
First and foremost, it’s not a question of giving up immaterial “values” and virtues” that one side thinks to have on its side - it’s not a question of ideology and idealism.
Plainly, it’s a matter of pragmatism.

Negotiations over truces and “peace” are being held if one side recognizes that it’s about to lose and being crushed, so the smarter people among the state officials figure they’ll be better off stopping to try to win the war by force and rather try to save the slice of the cake that they still have under their control instead of eventually maybe ending up with none of it.

The essence of sitting down to hold negotiations is not surrendering and handing everything over to the enemy that it wants, but more than that securing some little bits of what one still has instead of losing everything and then depending on the arbitrariness or mercy of the winning opponent what few bread crumbs will be granted to oneself.

You practically do that by trying to find things to offer to the enemy fraction for which it shows itself willing to give up the demands for another item. And you do that up until the enemy fraction becomes content and leaves again.

It’s no different than negotiating a price in a handshake deal.
A buyer has interest in obtaining a particular item, the seller tells you the price, but the buyer doesn’t have enough money or doesn’t want to pay that much, so it needs to approach the seller and see if they are hardened in their stance or if there’s some room that can be debated over.

In that case, it’s “only” that the item that you want to buy is “peace” - or at least a truce so that the fighting and the destruction stops.

Negotiating is a tactic that is known in wars and armed conflicts for centuries. As old as such scenarios.

So this isn’t like an “absolutely crazy idea” in this conflict.
Rather it should be asked: What speaks objectively so much against it?

(Unless the explanation is that there are very stubborn humans involved in this specific case that are occupied by ideology and emotional biases who have a very distorted understanding about war at all - that all that there is to obtain is winning, like in a manic fanatic attitude heading for a crusade, heading towards total war, not just mere self-defense.)

Here, with the war in Ukraine active soon-to-be for half a year, the world is still waiting for Russia to collapse under the consequences of that decision.
Instead consumer prices exploded around the world, certain goods have become even rarer than before after the slight relief of the global economy from Covid-19, and food supplies and heating have become not safe (the latter - let alone how much it will cost in the end and if you can afford it, if your wallet’s budget is tight).

May it not be that the community of the so-called “Western states” miscalculated in a very high degree in this issue?

Das neuste begehrte Objekt unter Hamsterkäufern (und allen, die wegen dem irrationalem Hamstern selbst anfangen, von einer Ware etwas mehr zu kaufen als sonst): Senf!
Hier speziell (eventuell regional bedingt): Bautz'ner Senf.

Important reminder, also for one's own well-being:

America and Europe are widely different.
So is Africa, so is Asia, so is South America and the remaining rest of the world.

Things that work in America don't need to work in Europe too.
Things that work in Africa or Asia don't need to work in America or Europe as well.

What each side should do even though is listening and understanding in order to identify problems and to pick out methods and aspects which improve each area's climate in any way.
This is a thing which should always happen in one direction and vice versa, not only just as a one-way-road.

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For the comment part:
Looking at the cultural dominance of the Western circle throughout the world since WWII, all area's adapting to its standards and its behavior, adopting patterns that work for them and dropping patterns again that don't, you'd say it's time for the West to listen to these other areas and adopt those things which have a base to work in their circle. 'Cause - those other areas had to reconsider their cultural systems in order to stay alive; the West didn't make such processes vice versa in the meantime.
It still keeps hanging around stirring in its own juice and in its pool of ideas, values, standards, customs etc., trying to lecture the rest of the world how a fair and meaningful life is supposed to look like (in their view).
While, all the while, actually being at war on the inside how that's even supposed to look for the people that live in its own circle.

Strangely quiet mass media are about concrete statistics in the current European refugee crisis. You never hear a number in nation-wide broadcasted media about how many people already had been deported back into their home countries again. Or you never hear about how the quotas are, how many people come from which point of the earth. There's only talking about Syrians.
Literally, possessing a Syrian passport is like owning a gold bar during these days.
And it must be fucking Russian media which actually ever tells about a number which they sometimes even took from publications made in the Western countries affected by the problem.
Why doesn't Western mass media report about this on a broader base?
...Well, it seems like there's not enough scandal in this.

In entourage to the circumstance that Germany grows to be a major power once again, it seems like it also calls those people from underneath the rock which like to rewrite history - which had to hide for a few decades because there was a huge war in their backs, one superior power that kept paying attention that they would not grow that great and independent again so they could become a threat to their interests, and one superior power opposing them, threating them with force should they grow that big again that they played with the thought to extend their sphere of influence.

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Another note on this here: https://matrixmann.dreamwidth.org/39119.html

On June 16 in 1953, on two large construction sides in the Stalinallee (Karl-Marx-Allee today) and the side of the reconstructing hospital Berlin-Friedrichshain work stoppages appeared, which formed a small protest march that went to the Haus der Gewerkschaften and Leipziger Straße. Haus der Gewerkschaften was the residence of the Free German Trade Union Federation which was in fact founded on March 18 in 1945 in Aachen, but was only grabbed and kept up in the Soviet occupation zone. Leipziger Straße contained the seat of the government at that time.
Refused to be talked to by the trade union leaders, they were told the news of the withdrawal from the Normenerhöhung at the side of the government building, however this didn't end the protest march, which then went to the inner-city and back to the Stalinallee in steadily growing numbers.
Meanwhile the march, choirs and a stolen loudspeaker van already chanted "general strike" and the public was called for another protest action on Strausberger Platz at 7 o'clock in the morning on the following day.

Assumedly in consequence of the reporting of the radio station RIAS (Rundfunk im amerikanischen Sektor, Broadcasting in the American Sector) about the protest, representatives of the strike movement went to the station and directly spoke to the intendant, who was Egon Bahr at this time. They wanted to proclaim the general strike via radio, however the station denied them this possibility.

On the next day, by the morning of June 17th 1953, a massive upheaval began to strike all over the country.
The staffs of the factories went on strike and formed protest marches, which went to the inner cities of big towns. Administration buildings of local politics as well as police stations and jails were occupied, dozens threaded to be, the police was overwhelmed and helpless by the power of the masses they had to face.

Centers of the protest concentrated in the area of the "chemical triangle" (Chemiedreieck) around Halle, as well as the towns of Magdeburg, Leipzig and Dresden - the biggest industrial and workforce gatherings.
The numbers of participants can only be estimated, varying from 400.000 to 1,5 million people.
However the crisis was enough to force the government of the GDR into fleeing into Berlin-Karlshorst under the protection of the Soviets - the place where the capitulation to the Soviet Union was signed in the night of May 8 to May 9 in 1945 and which was the headquarters of the Soviet Military Administration in Germany until the foundation of the GDR in October 1949.

The upheaval was eventually stopped by declaring martial law by the Soviet administrative bodies in 167 of 217 existing districts in the GDR, including East-Berlin. The Soviet army and tanks came into towns and by their sheer presence the turmoil soon lost its force. Even on the day it started, the army predominantly regained control over the proceedings of events, without making use of a single shot.

During the following days and the following month, scattered appearances of protests still took place, depending on the size and importance of the factory, but they didn't nearly reach the size or impact as the fallout on June 17th.

In the history writing of the GDR, this upheaval always remained as a "counter-revolutionary attempt of a coup" (konterrevolutionärer Putschversuch), while the day was celebrated as "Tag der deutschen Einheit" (German Unification Day) in the Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany) from 1954 until 1990.
However, the impression stated by Otto Grotewohl, Ministerpräsident of the GDR ( = premier, later called "Vorsitzender des Minsterrats", Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the GDR), in a declaration distributed by the Rundfunk der DDR (Radio of the GDR) at 2 o'clock in the afternoon of June 17th was not entirely by chance, as to RIAS played a big role in broadcasting and reporting about the uprising, especially in Berlin.
Even on the day June 17th, it aired a call of the senior of the West German DGB (deutscher Gewerkschaftsbund, Confederation of German Trade Unions, founded on October 12th 1949 in Munich, active trade union until today) Ernst Scharnowski for the East Germans to seek for their Stausberger Plätze (transl. for understanding: squares) everywhere.

Modern history writing recognizes that without the efforts of RIAS the upheaval would have never become that powerful as it took place, but connections to a foreign initiated action right from the start could not be found.
The reactions varied from mourning (West Germany) to the idea "it's the Soviets' plan" (United States), "it was their right to end the turmoil" (Great Britian, Churchill), national insecurity (Soviet Union, especially in regard to Stalin's death on March 5 1953; Poland due to the same strategy of Normenerhöhungen in even a stricter manner) and declarations of sympathy (theoretist Edvard Kardelj from Yugoslavia).

The actual causes of this rebellion can be attributed to a chain of events and circumstances caused by the mistakes and early forced propulsive behavior of socialism by the leadership of the GDR and the Soviet Union, in distant liability also the policy of the Western Allies that ended up in the foundation of the Federal Republic of Germany (→ Diversion of Germany).
In spring of 1953, there was a serious food crisis in the GDR due to the the lack of agricultural tools and machines that weren't newly handed out during the agrarian reform (Bodenreform). The year before, in fall, harvests had been very substandard - which in conclusion lead to a worse food situation than before the war.
In addition, the national budget for the military (for establishing the Kasernierte Volkspolizei, Barracked People's Police), occuption and reparation payments threatened to burst the capability of the state, which lead to the needs of raising and ever inventing new charges.
Investment mostly went into the heavy industry which had no base yet in the GDR.
In comparison, on the sides of the Federal Republic of Gemany, whose economy and supply stood pretty quickly again after the war, it was only a result of the United States' Marshall Plan that they could do so. Without the help of American credit financing and goods supply these "comfortable" circumstances couldn't have been brought up - which always went into ideological competition with the circumstances in the GDR.
The peak of the situation was reached as the Normenerhöhung was added, meaning "work more for the same money".
Although after a meeting in Moscow about the situation in the GDR and the pleas of the GDR-politicians remained unheard, a Neuer Kurs (New Course) was proclaimed. The Neuer Kurs policy was introduced not only into the GDR, but also into all the other satellite states of the Soviet Union. It contained withdrawals from new taxes, charges, rationing of ration cards for the middle class, restrictions to small private businesses, as well as offerings to farmers, people who left the GDR, easings to people who wanted their relatives to come to East Germany for a visit and intellectuals who wanted to attend conferences in West Germany. Students were taken back into schools and universities who had been driven out of them due to having religious beliefs. Also some rises of prices were revoked.

But the main problem the Normenerhöhung stayed, so that those relaxations did nothing to the working class.
In combination with the food supply problem, which couldn't be corrected until 1958 as ration cards vanished, the the blister of anger grew until there was a big bang - which was the upheaval on June 17 1953.