A pretty mesmerising interview by the amazing Terry Gross today on Fresh Air i.a. told the story of beleaguered and betrayed Molly Kyle (pictured) of the Osage nation almost a century ago, in Oklahoma. Because the local tribe had been given a bit of land by edict of the then current U.S. president, only to find rich oil resources on Molly's part of the land - and surroundings - greedy & soulless white men moved in, married the women to get a legal title by marriage, and then proceeded to murder them - either quickly, e.g. by a gunshot to the back of the head, or slowly, by poisoning...

It's hard to grasp how bigotted these men - and U.S. society in general - were at that time, to have something like this happen over a relatively long time. How Osage natives were treated judicially as only partial citizens, as incapable of managing their own wealth, and finally as a bloody means to oil barony. At round about the time one of my favourite novels was being written: The Great Gatsby.

But then, only a decade later, my own nation was gearing up to give even greater & far more vicious murderers absolute power over millions of people, and killing many of them after stripping them and their kin of all means of earning income, then of all they owned, then of their lives!

So, as a German, a child of children who lived at that time, all I can really do - with singular vigour - is point out just how deadly hate & bigotry can become. We are living at a time, when we've been living a good life in the 1st World for several decades, on average... so now we look idly on, as every 5th or 4th person surrounding us - together with attention-greedy "big" politicians - is kick-starting the great & bloody hate machine again: In the United Kingdom break'xiting away; in the U.S.A. to help an old redneck surf a wave of whining hate into the vicinity of the nuclear football; in France in just a few days to decide on the fate of the EU.

We can. Or we can gear up - with thousandfold vigour - for another, more global "no hate" campaign!