MY ANSWER TO TOMAS PUEYO'S QUESTION, - WHY DID ISLAM SPREAD SO FAST?

 Hugh Murray,  With the victory of Constantine, Rome turned its back on its religious and to some extent, its cultural past, - the opposition to the joys of the Coliseum, for example.  In the 500s, with the codification of Roman Law under Justinian, it is clear that pagans and Jews were to be 2nd class citizens of the new empire.  Homosexuality, which was prevalent in the Greek and even Roman worlds, brought with it in addition to the death penalty imposed around 320 with Constantine.  Under Justinian, there would still be the death penalty, but torture would precede that to make it worse.  There was no immediate end of all Roman culture, and the Library of Alexandria continued to inspire thought freely, but the trend was away from free inquiry, into religious issues, the beginning of the closed mindedness we associate with the Middle Ages.  When the Roman Empire (or if you prefer Byzantine) defeated the Seleucids the victors  took away their statue of the long haired Adonis, to show the old faith of the Mid-East was conquered..  When Islam came on the scene, That empire was no longer what it had been, and the Roman Empire no longer what it had been.  Suddenly, there was now one new group crashing onto the scene with a new culture and a new religion.  The clash of Islam was a war of one new religious group with 2 tired. spent empires.

  Jews were already 2nd class citizens in Christian Europe, so they might adopt more easily to the 2nd class status of Islam.  And while Christians and Muslims continued to war against each other  in the Med. Sea, Jews who had relatives in both Christian Europe and now also in Islam's N Africa could become what Pirenne called them, Jew and merchant were interchangable words by the time of Charlemagne.

     Islam conquered because the traditional values of Greco-Rome, and possible of the Mid East, had been overthrown already by another new religion.  So the struggle became a battle between the 2 newbies.

 Jews were already 2nd class citizens in Christian Europe,, so they might adopt more easily to the 2nd class status of Islam.  Christians in North Africa had been top dog; would they not decide to accept 2nd class citizenship under Islam?  Could they?  Wars continued between Islam and Christendom, especially in the Med Sea, each side enslaving the captives.  And while Christians and Muslims continued to war against each other, Jews who had relatives in both Christian Europe and now also in Islam's N Africa could be come merchants, a risky business as pirates, and war ships might confiscate their packages.  But in time, barred from owning land and doing many things, Jews became merchants.

     Islam conquered because the traditional values of Greco-Rome, and possible of the Mid East, had been overthrown already by another new religion.  So the struggle became a battle between the 2 newbies.  The Muslims also used camels, as they had in Arabia.  The Roman Empire's North Africa planned to defend itself through the sea, but the Muslims invaded Egypt and moved westward using camels, more adept to the sandy African expanse.  So Islam conquered to Morocco, then most of Spain and Portugal.  The land of St. Augustine was now the land of Allah. 

Much of the long post by Pueyo concerns rain etc., is interesting, but sometimes it is hard to believe the the tv weather man for one week, much less for over 600 years.  Interesting with a grain of salt.

His point about change in sexual population under Islam - a man can have 4 wives, so 25% of the men had no woman!  He says, this makes them more warlike, determined to capture a wife.  All those men without women!?  Greek armies, lovers.  Alexander may have fu**ed the wife of Darius, and his own wife, but his great love was his fellow warrior.  The Sacred Band of Thebes, a group of male lovers, etc.  Even the Roman general Julius Caesar was teased by his troops.  Much later a Prot. leader in France declared Paris is worth a mass, became Roman Catholic, and yhen king of France.  Caesar became quite friendly with the king of Pergamen?  Perhaps Caesar reasoned, a kingdom is worth my ass.  When the king died, he willed his kingdom to the Roman Republic.  Of course Caesar also had a wife, fu**ed Cleopatra, etc. Many swung both ways, and slaves had no choice.

     Even if Mohammad declared death for homos, in time, things changed in Islam.  The Janissaries', sons of Christians, taken around age 14 to become slaves of the Sultan, and some of them would eventually form the best fighting units in Islam.  They had new names, could not marry or have a family, forced to convert to Islam, so I suspect it was a gay group.  The Christians had the death penalty for homos until the French Revolution, when Justinian's legal work was revised, and in France Jews, homos, and Protestants won equal rights.  And where Napoleon's army swept in, so did his liberation of the oppressed.  Was it only under Islam that the army was a source of liberation?  Could armies be gay?  Well, a King of France decided it was also true of Knights Templar, and he therefore sought to confiscate all their properties as a consequence.  Proof- the Templar symbol of a knight riding a horse, but a young man riding the same horse at his back.  Whether the charges were true or false, several kings used the charges to confiscate Templar properties.  Others also say, twas the beginning of the Masons.

The original article by Tomas Pueyo raised the question of why Islam spread so quickly. 0n Substack, a source I seldom use.  Unfortunately, I began the read about it 1am; I am a poor typist, and with poor eyesight.  His article stressing geography was quite interesting, with maps; his discussion of the 2 major areas of long-lasting warfare rang true, and his discussion of the quick conquest of North Africa by Islam convincing.  It perked my interest, and I wanted to add other reasons, like internal weaknesses, especially of the Christian West. His article stresses climate, rain, etc.  I take the local tv weather forecast with a grain of salt, and that is only for a week; he covers weather for several hundred years.  His name appears only once, and I constantly had trouble on my computer going back and forth trying to get it right while Substack kept interrupting for my name, etc.  I am 87 and must urinate every hour or so, and had no time for the irritations.  Bottom line, he wrote an excellent article and I urge all to take a look.  My stress on the internal problems of Christian was written in an hour, top of my head, but I think it basically correct.  He raised an important question, perhaps more important as Islam and modified Christianity face another confrontation today.  Hope it inspires us to think about the earlier conflicts.  I also hope I finally got his name right.  I apologize for many more mistakes of spelling, typing than usual, but I was in a hurry to get this out.  We have only had 1,500 years of clashes now.   Hugh

An important point about the latest clash between the West and Islam.  There In the last 1,400 years since Muhammad, there have been some major changes in Christentum.  2 very important ones, the American Revolution providing a great deal of freedom for citizens without regard to their religions.  Also, the French Revolution, with its revision of the Justinian law code that had imposed legal restrictions on religious minorities and worse on homos.  There are probably several other equally important changes in the Christian West making in a freer place to live, work, and create.  Meanwhile, I know of no such reforms in Islam.  "Death to America, death to Israel," the terror attack destroying 2 of the then tallest buildings in the world, the World Trade Center in NYC, (where I worked some years ago) and other threats and terror attacks in the US.  To me the choice is clear - I stand with Trump and the West.  I do not mean all Muslims are terrorists, but enough are, enough are unwilling to accept the basics of freedom for all in the West.  So they cannot enjoy the same freedoms, as I see it.  Long live America and its Allies.  Hugh Murray

SIXTH FLOOR MUSEUM IN DALLAS INTERVIEW WITH HUGH MURRAY A DECADE AGO

 Yesterday Tony Flood, my friend and a fellow Aptheker research assistant decades ago on various projects re W E B Du Bois, stumbled upon an interview with me that The Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza conducted ten years ago. This blog's terms of service may not permit t me to provide the internet address here, but you can find it easily enough by searching <hugh murray jfk>.  The full interview is about 1  1/2 hours, no visual, just audio.  You also get to hear my voice, which is NOT a selling point.  The topic is the JFK assassination, or my tangential connection to those events.  My book will have more detailed material, and on other aspects of growing up in New Orleans many decades ago.----HUGH MURRAY

LEIPZIG, NEW ORLEANS, MINNEAPOLIS AND THROWING A ROCK

 This js my conclusion of the possibilities of bloodshed during protests.  I noted it took the Chinese authorities a month before they decided to crack down on Tiananmen, and they brought in troops from another province to do so.  I noted at a Black college in New Orleans, when a line of armed police was met by a line of Black students, that if a student had thrown a rock and hit a cop, blood, shooting first on campus, and possibly beyond might have occurred.

     Now I stress my support of ICE, the group trying to enforce the law in rounding up invaders who now reside in the US.  I would argue that the young man killed by ICE had provoked them, the equivalent of throwing a rock.  He was there to obstruct them from doing their duty in rounding up illegal aliens.  He had used violence against ICE and their vehicle, and they retaliated with force killing him.  HE WAS NOT A PEACEFUL PROTESTOR.  He was there to cause trouble, trained in tactics to provoke.  When you see the savagery of the mobs of Minneapolis, not just their vocal taunts, but throwing things aimed at the lawmen.  This is NOT peaceful protest.  The laws on the books for years should be enforced.  Billionaires like George Soros fund "non-governmental" organizations, which, in effect, train people to throw rocks, cause trouble, destroy law and order, loot stores, and if not revolution, promote chaos.  I also think the government should crack down on NGOs whose purpose is to create chaos in out country.

Hugh Murray

FROM RT - DISTURBING STORY ABOUT SCIENTISTS IN THE USA

 

High-profile US scientist deaths mark ‘disturbing pattern’ – media

Nine top American researchers and administrators in key fields have died or gone missing in the past three years

Published 8 Apr, 2026 21:31 | Updated 8 Apr, 2026 22:35

FILE PHOTO. ©  Yi-Chin Lee / Houston Chronicle via Getty Images

Nine deaths and disappearances of high-profile US scientists in the last three years has set a “disturbing pattern,” according to US intelligence sources cited by the Daily Mail.

In the latest incident, the body of missing cancer research scientist Jason Thomas was discovered in a Massachusetts lake last month. The month prior, retired Air Force General William McCasland, who reportedly worked on the US nuclear program, went missing, while astrophysicist Carl Grillmair was gunned down on his porch in California.

“You can say these are all suspicious, and these are scientists who have worked in critical technology,” the Daily Mail cited former FBI Assistant Director Chris Swecker as saying.

Foreign intelligence services belonging to both US allies and adversaries have targeted Americans in possession of top scientific secrets over the decades, he reportedly said. “It’s been happening since the Cold War… Especially when nuclear technology and missile technology were first coming to the forefront.”

Prior to his disappearance, McCasland led the Air Force Research Lab (AFRL), where he reportedly oversaw the funding of a jet engine project by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) materials chief Monica Reza, who also went missing last year, just months after assuming the position.

Grillmair’s work on the US NEOWISE and NEO Surveyor orbital telescope is also tied to the Air Force, as both are used by the US military to track foreign satellites and missile launches, the outlet reports.

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 America heads back to the Moon. But there’s a big problem

Two other scientists at NASA’s JPL have reportedly died since 2023: Frank Maiwald and Michael Hicks. No foul play has been alleged in the latter two cases, and no cause of death has been made public, according to the Daily Mail.

Anthony Chavez and Melissa Casias, who both worked at the Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), which has cooperated with the AFRL on nuclear research, were reported missing last summer. Both reportedly left their New Mexico homes on foot and left their cars, keys, wallets and phones before disappearing.

Another respected physicist Nuno Loureiro, who was reportedly working on breakthrough fusion energy research, was fatally shot in Massachusetts in December.

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It is possible that there are now so many scientists in the US that the murder, death, missing rate described in this story is simply comparable to that of the general population.  Still, it does make you wonder.  Hugh Murray.

From RT - CARLSON ON END OF AMERICAN EMPIRE

 

Iran war is ‘the end of American empire’ – Tucker Carlson

The US is unable to restore order in the Strait of Hormuz, casting doubt on its role as a global policeman, the conservative host has said

Published 3 Apr, 2026 13:26 | Updated 3 Apr, 2026 14:30

American journalist Tucker Carlson gestures during an interview with Russian President Vladimir Putin, on February 6, 2024. ©  Sputnik/Gavriil Grigorov

The Iran war has ushered in the “end of American Empire”, conservative host Tucker Carlson has argued, suggesting that US President Donald Trump’s call for allies to secure the Strait of Hormuz proved that Washington could no longer function as the world’s policeman.

Speaking on his podcast on Thursday, Carlson commented on Trump’s remarks in which the president threatened to bomb Iran into the “stone age” without providing an exact timeline for a ceasefire while urging other countries to “take the lead” in unblocking the Strait of Hormuz – a strategic chokepoint which accounts for around 20% of global oil trade.

Washington’s NATO allies, however, have been reluctant to step in following US-Israeli strikes on Iran.

Carlson argued that “the nation that forces the peace is the nation in charge,” adding that “the country that forces order on the Persian Gulf, that opens the Strait of Hormuz, is the nation that runs the world by definition.”

Read more

 Trump derides NATO over no-show in Iran war

For decades since WWII, the nation capable of maintaining order was assumed to be the US, but the Hormuz crisis has shown it’s no longer the case, the journalist continued. “We can’t open the Straits of Hormuz,” Carlson said. “The President of the United States said that last night – someone else do it. So we’re done.”

He argued that even if the US were to completely destroy Iran as a cohesive nation, the remaining warlords would have no difficulties in disrupting the maritime route by laying mines, using cheap drones, or even just by threatening to do so, meaning that the hostilities would have to end in a diplomatic settlement with Tehran sooner or later.

”What’s happening in Iran is the end of American empire as we understand it. And that’s sad. Empire’s dying. But it’s not the end of the United States,” he added.

Carlson acknowledged that the transition would bring “a lot of suffering and sadness,” but noted that it also carried the promise of a US that could turn its attention to the Western hemisphere, also rich in resources and vital for America’s stability, without the need to occupy “countries you’ve never been to.”

Carlson, generally supportive of Trump, has been a vocal critic of US-Israeli strikes on Iran, prompting the US president to claim that the journalist “has lost his way” and is not really part of the MAGA movement.

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TIANANMEN, LEIPZIG, and SUNO in NEW ORLEANS

In the fall of 1968 there was a poetry contest at Southern U. in New Orleans.  This was a branch of the much larger Southern U. in Baton Rouge, which around this time was the largest Black university in the world.  Baton Rouge also was home to Louisianad State U., the traditional white state university, which had been built up in the 1920a and 30 by Gov. and then Senator Huey Long.  The Long family had flirted with the Socialist Party decades earlier, but generally, there was only one political party in Louisiana, the Democratic Party.  

    In the early days of FDR;s New Deal, he won wide support, from the the radio priest Father Coughlin to the young Sen. Huey Long from Louisiana, who as governor had provided free text books for kids in public schools and improved roads, building a nes state capitol, and setting a new record for a filibuster in the national Senate.  Of course, he was a Democrat (like everyone else in the South who wanted to win an election, and he did not question segregation a white supremacy, the pillars of the Democratic Parties throughout the South.  The common phrase "the solid South" meant solidly Democratic, and solidly for segregation and white supremacy.

     Like other states after WWII, with expansion of universities, many in New Orleans did not want the added expense of going off to Baton Rough for public education, so there was pressure for a public institution in New Orleans.  The Crescent City actually had a number of universities - Tulane (and Newcomb), a private univ. with a high reputation, and like prestigious universities of the North, with a separate college for women.  It was a whites only institution.  There was Loyola U. of the South, a Roman Catholic institution, which in the 1950s permitted a few Blacks to attend its law school, and perhaps other departments for some colored priests.  There 0was Dillard U. a private, Protestant univ. for both young Black men and women (in the 1950s there was at least one white student, and in the 60s a few Northern whites did their "junior year abroad" at Dillard.  And there was Xavier U., a Roman Catholic univ. for Blacks, and it had a dental school.

     In the 1950s, to make a state univ. more affordable, LSUNO, a branch of Baton Rouge's LSU, was established in New Orleans.  Originally, all white, but judicial decisions re school integration in the city, leading to the school crisis of November 1960 when two elementary schools were integrated amid such great hostility it became an international incident.  Some Blacks began to enroll at LSUNO.   There was one thing forbidden to the new campus - it could not have a football team to compete with LSU's nationally recognized team.  Probably to prevent too much integration at LSUNO, SUNO was founded in New Orleans in a rather new middle-class Black subdivision of the city, Pontchartrain Park.  It was a commuter college with no dorms.  Most students were graduates of the segregated schools of NO, and some chose SUNO because they assumed it would be harder to get a good grade and a degree at the mainly white LSUNO.

    At SUNO, all the students were Blacks.  At first, all the faculty was Black too,  but around 1965 it hired a Korean, and for 1968-69, I was hired to teach History, Vera Krieger in English, and George Haggar, born in Lebanon, to teach Political Science.  He had published in a major PS journal.

     Back to the poetry contest of Fall 1968, both Vera and I were among the judges.  In high school, my debate partner had often partaken in dramatic readings, so I was familiar with that.  Our debate team of 4 guys had won state championship, so I was aware of oral readings.  I don't recall most of the contestants and their readings.  They were conventional.  They could have read Wordsworth or Poe or Whitman, or Keats.  The title of Val Ferdinand's poem, I can recall, but cannot place it on the blog without trouble - his title was "Nig***s In the Streets," and it was delivered with body motion, emotion, action.  After a decade of protests that grew steadily angrier and more violent, his poem and delivery struck a chord  of "relevant" a popular word of the era.  I don't recall the 3rd judge, but all 3 of us voted for Ferdinand who received the prize.

     New Orleans became the center of international news reporters when DA Jim Garrison opened the trial of Clay Shaw for conspiring to murder John Kennedy.  Haggar and I could not attend all sessions, but I drove from SUNO to the court when we had off periods, and we saw some significant testimony, like Dr. Finck from the autopsy who was ordered not to complete his probe of the entrance wound in Kennedy's back.  His testimony showed that military leaders, NOT DOCTORS, were in charge of Kennedy's autopsy.  Both Haggar and I were politically incorrect, and this added to our skepticism of the media.  Haggar informed me that the assassin of Robert Kennedy was a Palestinian, and if ever released, he would be a hero in the Middle East.  Haggar seemed to be close to Lynn French (a male), Ferdinand, and other students who tended toward activism.

     Haggar told me to be at the flag pole around 8am on the first of a month (April? 1969).

I was there when some students pulled the ropes to bring down the American flag, which they replaced with the black, red, and green of Black Nationalism, and they hoisted the new colors for the university.  They were not anti-American, but they wanted more from SUNO than a second-rate LSUNO.  Just as Du Bois who had studied at Harvard and Berlin, suddenly felt at home when he went to teach at Fisk, so the students now sought to infuse some Black culture into the new school.  To achieve this, a boycott of classes began. This n a student strike, demanding better facilities, a Black agenda, and facilities more akin to the "white" LSUNO campus.  The student boycott of classes began and lasted weeks, then into the next month.  A few students brought their rifles to the uni.  Class rooms were empty.  At one point the state police (or city police, I forget) were ordered to come on campus with loaded weapons and bring order to the university.  Perhaps 40 police with loaded weapons formed a line and began to move slowly from the grass to the buildings.  Then a line of say 60 students, perhaps 30 feet directly across  from the police line formed. 2 lines, with the Black students were Vera, me, and Haggar, and a Black Muslim young teacher.  The police moving slowly closer toward us.  The Black line beginning to grow.  Then no movement by either side.  Both sides staring at each other.  I thought then, if someone throws a rock and hits a cop, there will be blood from bullets.  Neither side is moving.  Glaring at the other.  What is going to happen?

     The police are armed, but they are in a Black university in a Black residential neighborhood.  Armed, they may be nervous. What might a thrown rock do?  After a few long minutes, the student line begins to disperse, then disappears.  The police go slowly to take over the campus.  After several more weeks, the strike was broken.  The Governor came to SUNO for the first time and promised some reforms.  (According to Haggar, the governor promised him anything he wanted if he would break the strike.  Haggar maintained, he did not lead the strike and lacked such power even if he had wanted a deal, which he did not.  But in summer 1969, one strike leader suddenly was editing a new Black newspaper, but it did not mean the governor was paying him off.  

     My promised job that summer was cancelled, and I was told I was now blacklisted.  I have no idea if it is true that I was on a blacklist, I only know I have never held another teaching post in the US since SUNO.  The talented Val Ferdinand soon headed the Free Southern Theater, changed his name to Kalamu Ya Salaam and then edited a most influential magazine, Black Collegiate for 13 years.  Haggar was deported to Canada, wrote a book praising a woman hi-jacker, changed the spelling of his name to Hajjar, and became more involved in the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.  Hajjar is still academic, but defending the cause of Palestinians.   To clarify, I am pro-Israeli.  I could find no info on Vera, and as she was rather young, attractive woman, she probably married and has a new name.  I forgot the name of the young Black Muslim teacher.  We all lost our jobs with SUNO, and Ferdinand and other student activists were expelled.  In 1977 Salaam and Tom Dent, son of the former Pres. of Dillard U. in NO were on a trip to Beijing.  overnight google changed its AI, and I had trouble finding who sponsored (paid for) the the Chinese govt., or the US State Dept. or whom?) Afro poets has this about the trip: " In 1977, he was part of the first African American activist delegation to the People's Republic of China.."   I finally found the answer, the trip of some 20 Black American educators was paid for by the Chinese government.  Interestingly, on some sites, Salaam mentions 2 other universities he attended, but does not mention SUNO.  True, he was expelled, but he was a leader of a major student strike there,.  The SUNO strike never gained the national publicity as the one at Cornell U. in New York, which occurred at the same time, but the SUNO strike was certainly a major strike among Black universities.

      My main point, for a few minutes on SUNO campus, if someone had thrown a rock and hit a policeman, there could have been students wounded, then trouble for the police as they tried to leave the area, and then trouble in New Orleans  with battles between the races.  In NO, there was no shooting, no deaths.  In Leipzig and Berlin, tense situations relaxed with no killings.  In Beijing, things went differently.  But I contend, in each case, things could have turned out differently.   Hugh Murray

TO SHOOT OR NOT TO SHOOT - BEIJING AND LEIPZIG

 The local PBS television station ran an old documentary tonight, In Their Own Voice, an hour long discussion on the rist of Angela Merkel.  Born in Hamburg, Fed. Rep. of Germany (West Germany) around 1954, her father, a Lutheran pastor was asked to take a church in the German Dem. Rep. (East Germany).  The baby Angela naturally accompanied her parents.  My point here is not to restate her schooling and her career as a physicist in the DDR.

     My shock with the program is something passed over quickly.  15 April 1989 to mourn the death of a reformist leader of the Chinese Communist Party, students began to gather in Beijing's Tiananmen Square.  Days passed and symbols of dissent appeared, such as a small statue of liberty, and signs urging reform.  On the night of 3 June the first reports of shooting, and the following day troops from the Peoples; Liberation Army began the crackdown on dissent, wounding and killing.  The Beijing spring was over, and the CCP asserted total control of the nation.

On 4 September 1989 Monday demonstrations for peace (and reform) began at the Nikolai Church in Leipzig, DDR, and though the authorities certainly were aware, and the usual police took notice, still, there seemed to be no consequences.  The following Monday, more demonstrators; and the Monday after that.  Hungary had opened its border to the West, and some DDR citizens had walked right through.  The Leipzig demos kept growing too, reaching 70,000 in early October.  Just down the street from the Nikolai Church was the famous Thomas Church, where Johann S. Bach had been choir director for 27 years.  And nearby was Auerbach's Keller where Faust had begun to seal a deal with Mephistopheles.

On 18 October 1989 Eric Honecker, leader of the DDR  and the ruling Socialist Unity Party resigned.  Was he deemed too soft to crack down, or to rigid?  The leaders of the DDR now seemed unsure of what to do.

On 9 November 1989, allegedly because of confusing announcements people began to rush the check points in the wall, hoping they would be open.  Finally, one did open and the wall was considered open thereafter.

I do not think either the Chinese crack down, or the DDR;s crack up were inevitable.  People made decisions, and German police and the NVA had cracked down on the East Berlin protests of 1963.  Why not in 1989?  An old German friend just wrote me to say I made a mistake.  He says the NVA was not created until 1955, and the Vopos (Peoples; Police remained in their barracks.  Instead Walter Ulbricht, then leading the DDR, called upon his Soviet allies for help, and it is they who crushed the protests of 1953 in East Berlin.  In time, however, the NVA and Vopos gained reputations of following the orders of the DDR leadership.

  One could ascribe the contrast between Beijing and Leipzig by saying China was a huge, rich nation, and it could crack down and tell the rest of the world, f u.  But China was not so rich in 1989, it was NOT the industrial giant we know today.  It was behind Japan and other Asian nations having suffered the Cultural Revolution and other "experiments" that usually did not work.  The DDR was never as rich as West Germany - while America's Marshall Plan helped rebuild the West, the Soviets, who had lost so much from Hitler's invasion, began by plundering what they could from what would become the DDR.  But the DDR had built up over the years; not as rich as its Western cousins, but high on the East European scale.  Why not shoot the peace demos in Leipzig?  Or open up to the West?  I do not think it was an easy decision for leaders of the DDR, certainly NOT inevitable.  To skip over this very important decision I find remarkable.  And I am here to criticize the failure to discuss the people who had to choose, to shoot or not to shoot, that was the question.  A most important one, and with an answer quite different from the one in Beijing just a few months earlier.  NEITHER THE DECISION IN BEIJING NOR IN LEIPZIG WAS INEVITABLE.  People make history; it is not an automatic setting of a clock.  And ignoring that decision, even if the theme of the program was Merkel, is unfair to history.

From April until November 1989 protests in 2 major nations occurred putting the leaders of those nations on the spot.  Each nation was led by communist parties, each had cracked down on dissent before.  The issue came before them again.  What would they do?  China cracked down; the DDR cracked up.  Each might have gone the other way.  The decisions of that year changed the world.  Hugh Murray

(On a personal note - I had taught in Leipzig a few years prior to the Monday demonstrations.  The uni. had a Sprachlager, a camp where students were to use English as much as possible, as it was not easy for DDR students to visit Britain.  One exercise for the students, they were to compose a poem akin to the limerick poems, popular is schools and in pubs.  As my German language was wanting, my British colleagues then demanded that I do like our German students, and compose a Limerick, but in German.  I went along with their demand.  I recall most of my poem - "Da war die Studenten aus Leipzig. sie waren nicht faul, sondern fleissig,  da la ti da, da la ti do (I forgot those lines, ending, Sie fordert die Wahrheit, nicht scheissig."  In English, There were the students from Leipzig, they were not lazy, but hardworking. la ti da, la ti da, They demanded the truth, not BS".  They liked my poem very much. - Hugh)

While in Leipzig, I visited the flat of one of my British teacher colleagues.  We were chatting and a knock on the door.  She opened it, and a handsome young man entered.  She introduced us.  She noted that his field was science, and he worked with Klaus Fuchs.  I immediately recognized the name - Fuchs was a German scientist who hated the Nazis, fled to the west, and became one of the scientists working to develop an A-bomb in the West.  He was also a spy for the Soviets, was caught, and spent a decade in prison.  I had no idea he was working in the DDR, but said, well, as an American, I should leave now, as to cause no troubles - I certainly did not want to be accused of spying.  The gal assured me that as a teacher here, there would be no trouble.  Feeling uncomfortable, I left her flat sooner than anticipated.  As she was a beautiful young woman, I suspect she and her other guest did not miss me.

Watching the PBS hour on Angela Merkel, I learned that she too was a scientist.  Did she work under Fuchs?  Google AI answered, Fuchs and Merkel were in different sections of science.  Moreover, he was about to retire as she was just beginning, so there was no real elder/novis contact between them.