About 10 Oil Tankers From Kazakhstan Stuck in Turkish Straits
Samizdat – 08.12.2022
Up to 10 tankers carrying oil from Kazakhstan remain stranded in the Turkish straits of the Bosphorus and Dardanelles, the head of the KazMunayGas Kazakh oil and gas company, Magzum Mirzagaliev, said on Thursday.
“As of yesterday, there were 21 tankers there, including six tankers with oil from TCO [Kazakh oil producer]. In general, we estimate that about eight tankers related to Kazakhstan — from eight to 10 — are among those stranded,” Mirzagaliev told reporters.
Mirzagaliev cited the Kazakh Energy Ministry as saying on Wednesday that the delay in the passage of ships through the Turkish straits had already lasted six days at that point. He also recalled the 14-day bottleneck in the same waters last December.
On December 1, Turkey started requiring from oil shippers crossing the Bosphorus Strait and the Dardanelles a letter from an insurer confirming that the vessel is covered by the necessary Protection and Indemnity Insurance (P&I).
On Monday, as the European Union’s sanctions on Russian oil exports by sea went into effect, media reported that about 19 oil tankers were prevented from passing through the Turkish straits.
Merkel confirms Ukraine peace deal was a ploy

RT | December 7, 2022
The 2014 ceasefire brokered by Berlin and Paris in Minsk was an attempt to give Kiev time to strengthen its military and was successful in that regard, former German chancellor Angela Merkel argued in an interview published on Wednesday.
In an extensive interview about her 16 years in power, Merkel told Zeit magazine her policy towards Russia and Ukraine was correct, even if not successful.
“I thought the initiation of NATO accession for Ukraine and Georgia discussed in 2008 to be wrong,” Merkel said. “The countries neither had the necessary prerequisites for this, nor had the consequences of such a decision been fully considered, both with regard to Russia’s actions against Georgia and Ukraine and to NATO and its rules of assistance.”
She described the September 2014 Minsk agreement as “an attempt to give Ukraine time.” France and Germany had brokered a ceasefire after the failure of Ukraine’s attempt to subdue the republics of Donetsk and Lugansk by force.
“[Ukraine] used this time to get stronger, as you can see today,” Merkel continued. “The Ukraine of 2014/15 is not the Ukraine of today. As you saw in the battle for Debaltsevo in early 2015, [Russian President Vladimir] Putin could easily have overrun them at the time. And I very much doubt that the NATO countries could have done as much then as they do now to help Ukraine.”
The defeat at Debaltsevo resulted in the second Minsk protocol being signed in February 2015. Merkel said that it was “clear to all of us that the conflict was frozen, that the problem had not been solved, but that gave Ukraine valuable time.”
Meanwhile, she defended the decision to build the Nord Stream 2 pipeline for Russian gas, since refusing to do so would have “have dangerously worsened the climate” with Moscow given the situation in Ukraine. It just so happened that Germany couldn’t get gas elsewhere, she added.
Asked for any self-criticism, Merkel told Zeit that “the Cold War never really ended because Russia was basically not at peace,” and that NATO “should have reacted more quickly to Russia’s aggressiveness” in 2014.
Pyotr Poroshenko, who became president of Ukraine after the 2014 US-backed coup in Kiev, told a domestic audience in August 2015 that Minsk was a ruse to buy time for a military build-up. He admitted as much to the West in July 2022, in an interview with German media.
Russia sent troops into Ukraine on February 24, citing Kiev’s failure to implement the Minsk agreements, designed to give the regions of Donetsk and Lugansk special status within the Ukrainian state. The Kremlin recognized the Donbass republics as independent states, which have since voted to join Russia alongside with most of the regions of Kherson and Zaporozhye, and demanded that Ukraine officially declare itself a neutral country that will never join any Western military bloc. Kiev insists the Russian offensive was completely unprovoked.
Can Germany’s plan for confrontation with Russia work?
By Drago Bosnic | December 8, 2022
On November 14, Der Spiegel published a report according to which leaked documents of the German Ministry of Defense indicate that the Bundeswehr is preparing for a war with Russia. The secret draft titled “Operational guidelines for the Armed Forces” was authored by the German Chief of Defense Staff, General Eberhard Zorn. It was written in late September and according to General Zorn, “an attack on Germany can potentially happen without warning and can cause serious damage, even existential. Therefore, the defense capabilities of the Bundeswehr are essential for the survival of the country.” The German Chief of Defense Staff stressed the need for a “mega-reform” of the Bundeswehr, adding that “for approximately 30 years, the focus placed on missions abroad no longer does justice to the current situation, with possible consequences that endanger the system.”
Instead, General Zorn thinks it’s crucial for Germany to focus on “the Atlantic defense of the Alliance,” with the “capacity to provide visible and credible deterrence, to dominate Germany’s military action plan.” In this regard, specifically, “the Bundeswehr must arm itself for a forced war, since a potential confrontation on NATO’s eastern flank has once again become more probable.”
The draft clearly identified Russia as the “immediate threat”. However, the designation makes little sense, as Russia is now over 1,500 km away from Germany, with Belarus, Poland and Ukraine standing between the two countries. While it made some sense for Germany to maintain a large, highly trained military force with constant combat readiness during the (First) Cold War, as the USSR had approximately half a million soldiers in East Germany at the time (in addition to other Warsaw Pact member states), the situation is effectively reversed nowadays.
It’s precisely NATO that’s encroaching on Russia’s western borders, with the crawling expansion including coups and other interventions in various Eastern European and post-Soviet states. This aggression by the political West forced Moscow’s hand, culminating with the February 24 counteroffensive. However, the German plan has already been set in motion and no matter how ill-conceived it is, an analysis of how it could play out is in order. The plan certainly isn’t new, as it has been in the works for well over half a year. Back in early March, the German government announced it would allocate approximately €100 billion to upgrade the Bundeswehr, which has become a mere shadow of what it was during the heydays of the (First) Cold War.
The 2021 budget for Bundeswehr was approximately €50 billion. If Berlin was to increase that by close to 100%, it would put extreme pressure on the struggling German economy. Such a massive upsurge in military spending wouldn’t only take away from other branches of the government, but it would also come at a time when the sanctions boomerang from the failed economic siege of Russia is ravaging all of the European Union. The bloc hasn’t even begun recovery from the fallout of the COVID-19 pandemic, but it’s already facing severe economic contraction resulting from anti-Russian sanctions and policies. Much of Germany’s prosperity was based on access to cheap Russian energy, which is now a thing of the past thanks to Berlin’s suicidal subservience to “Euro-Atlantic values”.
In essence, this means that Germany is doomed to massively increase military spending while having significantly fewer resources at its disposal to do so. This doesn’t even factor in how the German people would react to such a momentous foreign (and, to a large extent, domestic) policy shift. As the EU’s largest and most important economy, Germany would also cause shockwaves throughout the bloc if it were to go ahead with such a plan. With Russian energy supplies either gone or effectively unaffordable, any government in power in Berlin would have virtually the entire German private sector against it, with the notable exception of the arms industry, which would be the only one not contracting thanks to increased orders for the Bundeswehr.
On the other hand, even this plan is bound to hit several major snags before it’s even put in motion. The US Military Industrial Complex dominates in NATO, making it the primary beneficiary of German (re)militarization. Domestic weapons production has atrophied significantly in the last 30 years, while the globalization of the world economy led to the rest of it being outsourced to other countries, both in Europe and elsewhere around the globe.
New reports indicate that Berlin’s decision to supply weapons and munitions to the Kiev regime is severely depleting German stockpiles, a problem further exacerbated by the significant slowdown of component imports from China. This is also the result of the German government’s self-destructive push for an economic decoupling of the EU and the Asian giant. Beijing has been extremely patient with the bloc’s subservience to Washington DC, but it seems this patience has now run out.
Another major issue will be the reaction of other EU members. With the notable exception of the clinically Russophobic Baltic states and Poland, the rest of the bloc is extremely concerned with the economic fallout of the failed sanctions war on Russia. As the German economy contracts, the rest of the EU will almost certainly follow suit, causing massive political instability.
At least half a dozen European governments have already fallen, while the neoliberal elites in Brussels are now forced to contend with new anti-liberal political parties in power in several EU member states. This is bound to cause further rifts within the bloc. It will be followed by the general militarization of the EU, which will further erode the already falling living standards and cause more political instability. This will turn Europe into an economically devastated bulwark that serves no other purpose except to contain Russia while the US shifts focus to the Asia-Pacific region.
Drago Bosnic is an independent geopolitical and military analyst.
Reignite Democracy Australia – Senator Gerard Rennick
December 2, 2022
US defense bill authorizes more Ukraine and Taiwan aid
RT | December 7, 2022
US lawmakers have reached a compromise on the National Defense Authorization Act, agreeing to approve $45 billion more in overall military spending in 2023 than President Joe Biden had requested, as well as multiple provisions for new “security assistance” to Ukraine and increased cooperation with Taiwan.
The House and Senate Armed Services Committees released their final draft of the NDAA on Tuesday night following lengthy negotiations, seeking to bring it up for a vote in the House by the end of the week. The massive spending bill would devote a total of $858 billion for next year’s defense budget, with lawmakers arguing the increase compared to 2022 is needed due to soaring inflation and costly arms shipments to Kiev.
In addition to setting out basic yearly funding for the Defense Department and the Department of Energy, which manages America’s nuclear arsenal, the latest NDAA would approve another $800 million for the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative – $500 million more than President Biden’s initial request.
Since February, the Biden administration has approved more than $19 billion in direct military aid for Kiev from the Pentagon’s stockpiles, and the bill seeks additional funding to boost production and replenish the US military’s dwindling stocks.
US officials also agreed to require periodic reports from the Pentagon in the “short and medium term” on US arms sent to Ukraine, after several Republican lawmakers raised concerns that American weapons were not being properly tracked on reaching the country’s chaotic battlefield.
The new spending bill also authorizes the Taiwan Enhanced Resilience Act, which is designed to “increase security cooperation” with the island and would allocate up to $10 billion for that purpose over the next five years. The latter provision is likely to trigger condemnation from Beijing, which considers Taiwan part of its sovereign territory and has repeatedly urged Washington to halt all direct dealings with Taipei.
Another project targeting China, the US Pacific Deterrence Initiative, will receive another $11.5 billion in new investments under the current draft legislation. The Pentagon has noted the initiative aims to confront the supposed “multi-domain threat” posed by Beijing and expand the US military footprint in the Indo-Pacific region.
Considered ‘must-pass’ legislation due to its increasingly wide scope, versions of the NDAA have been approved by US lawmakers every year since 1961. The measure is also frequently described as a “legislative vehicle,” as Republicans and Democrats usually seek to include a range of issues unrelated to defense in each year’s spending bill.
Why Doctors Push COVID-19 Vaccination so Hard
By Peter A. McCullough, MD, MPH | Courageous Discourse | December 7, 2022
Patients commonly ask me why their other doctors push COVID-19 vaccination so hard still to this day with alarming safety statistics, loss of efficacy, and now a complete lack of human trial data with the bivalent boosters?
The answer may come by following a money trail from HHS and CDC called “COVID-19 Community Corps” that early in 2021 made undisclosed individual payments to hundreds of organizations to promote mass vaccination. There were notable medical groups including the American Medical Association, American Association of Family Physicians, American Association of Nurse Practitioners, American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology, American Academy of Pediatrics, American Association of Pediatrics, and the American Medical Student Association.

More investigation is likely to reveal that federal money received was temporally linked to e-mail blasts, town hall meetings, and many other activities pushing mass vaccination.
Could COVID-19 Community Corps money to the AMA have been the reason why the AMA launched its campaign to “abolish” the use of ivermectin in 2021 so the public would be panicked into taking more shots?
How could the pediatric associations take federal money before the clinical trials for their patients were completed or the vaccines approved via EUA?
Did they promote the vaccines to pediatricians before clinical trial results were known?
Finally, how could federal dollars flow to gynecologists/obstetricians when pregnant women and those of childbearing potential where excluded from randomized trials reported just a few months before the HHS initiative?
These broad acts of public bribery, corruption, and vaccine racketeering worked to put millions of lives danger as we learned about the risks of COVID-19 vaccination in 2021.
As we sit here today, the CDC VAERS system through November 25, 2022, is reporting 15,508 US deaths after COVID-19 vaccination, 22% occurred within 96 hours of the shot. There have been 15,505 Americans disabled, 9266 with heart damage, and 356,269 office visits, urgent care encounters, or hospitalizations attributed to vaccine side effects.
Never again can we allow our public health agencies use unchecked financial power to promote any medication or vaccine to healthcare providers. Corruption and indoctrination are deadly.
The Constitution Has Already Been Terminated

By John & Nisha Whitehead | The Rutherford Institute | December 6, 2022
If there is one point on which there should be no disagreement, it is this: for anyone to advocate terminating or suspending the Constitution is tantamount to a declaration of war against the founding principles of our representative government and the rule of law.
Then again, one could well make the case that the Constitution has already been terminated after years on life support, given the extent to which the safeguards enshrined in the Bill of Rights—adopted 231 years ago as a means of protecting the people against government overreach and abuse—have been steadily chipped away at, undermined, eroded, whittled down, and generally discarded with the support of Congress, the White House, and the courts.
Consider for yourself.
We are in the grip of martial law. We have what the founders feared most: a “standing” or permanent army on American soil. This de facto standing army is made up of weaponized, militarized domestic police forces which look like, dress like, and act like the military; are armed with guns, ammunition and military-style equipment; are authorized to make arrests; and are trained in military tactics.
We are in the government’s crosshairs. The U.S. government continues to act as judge, jury and executioner over a populace that have been pre-judged and found guilty, stripped of their rights, and left to suffer at the hands of government agents trained to respond with the utmost degree of violence.
We have no real freedom of speech. We are moving fast down a slippery slope to an authoritarian society in which the only opinions, ideas and speech expressed are the ones permitted by the government and its corporate cohorts.
We have no real privacy. We’re being spied on by a domestic army of government snitches, spies and techno-warriors. This government of Peeping Toms is watching everything we do, reading everything we write, listening to everything we say, and monitoring everything we spend. Moreover, we continue to be reminded that we have no real privacy, no real presumption of innocence, and no real control over what happens to our bodies during an encounter with government officials.
We no longer have a right to private property. If government agents can invade your home, break down your doors, kill your dog, damage your furnishings and terrorize your family, your property is no longer private and secure—it belongs to the government.
We have no due process. The groundwork has been laid for a new kind of government where it won’t matter if you’re innocent or guilty, whether you’re a threat to the nation, or even if you’re a citizen. If the powers-that-be think you’re a threat to the nation and should be locked up, then you’ll be locked up with no access to the protections our Constitution provides.
We are no longer presumed innocent. The burden of proof has been reversed. Now we’re presumed guilty unless we can prove our innocence beyond a reasonable doubt in a court of law. Rarely, are we even given the opportunity to do so.
We have lost the right to be anonymous and move about freely. At every turn, we’re hemmed in by laws, fines and penalties that regulate and restrict our autonomy, and surveillance cameras that monitor our movements. Likewise, digital currency provides the government and its corporate partners with a mode of commerce that can easily be monitored, tracked, tabulated, mined for data, hacked, hijacked and confiscated when convenient
We no longer have a government of the people, by the people and for the people. The U.S. government does not represent the majority of American citizens. Rather, we are ruled by an oligarchy disguised as a democracy, and arguably on our way towards fascism—a form of government where private corporate interests rule, money calls the shots, and the people are seen as mere subjects to be controlled.
We have no guardians of justice. The courts were established to intervene and protect the people against the government and its agents when they overstep their bounds. Yet through their deference to police power, preference for security over freedom, and evisceration of our most basic rights for the sake of order and expediency, the courts have become the guardians of the American police state in which we now live.
We have been saddled with a dictator for life. Secret, unchecked presidential powers—acquired through the use of executive orders, decrees, memorandums, proclamations, national security directives and legislative signing statements and which can be activated by any sitting president—now enable past, president and future presidents to operate above the law and beyond the reach of the Constitution.
Unfortunately, we have done this to ourselves.
We allowed ourselves to be seduced by the false siren song of politicians promising safety in exchange for relinquished freedom. We placed our trust in political saviors and failed to ask questions to hold our representatives accountable to abiding by the Constitution. We looked the other way and made excuses while the government amassed an amazing amount of power over us, and backed up that power-grab with a terrifying amount of military might and weaponry, and got the courts to sanction their actions every step of the way. We chose to let partisan politics divide us and turn us into easy targets for the government’s oppression.
Mind you, the powers-that-be want us to be censored, silenced, muzzled, gagged, zoned out, caged in and shut down. They want our speech and activities monitored for any sign of “extremist” activity. They want us to be estranged from each other and kept at a distance from those who are supposed to represent us. They want taxation without representation. They want a government without the consent of the governed.
They want the Constitution terminated.
“We” may have contributed to our downfall through our inaction and gullibility, but we are also the only hope for a free future.
After all, the Constitution begins with those three beautiful words, “We the people.” Those three words were intended as a reminder to future generations that there is no government without us—our sheer numbers, our muscle, our economy, our physical presence in this land.
As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, when we forget that, when we allow the “Me” of a self-absorbed, narcissistic, politically polarizing culture to override our civic duties as citizens to collectively stand up to tyranny and make the government play by the rules of the Constitution, there can be no surprise when tyranny rises and freedom falls.
Constitutional attorney and author John W. Whitehead is founder and president of The Rutherford Institute. His most recent books are the best-selling Battlefield America: The War on the American People, the award-winning A Government of Wolves: The Emerging American Police State, and a debut dystopian fiction novel, The Erik Blair Diaries. Whitehead can be contacted at staff@rutherford.org. Nisha Whitehead is the Executive Director of The Rutherford Institute. Information about The Rutherford Institute is available at www.rutherford.org.
CDC and Census Bureau had direct access to Twitter portal where they could flag speech for censorship
By Tom Parker | Reclaim The Net | December 7, 2022
Emails between an employee at the United States (US) Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and Twitter have revealed that at least one CDC staff member and the US Census Bureau had access to Twitter’s dedicated “Partner Support Portal” which allows approved government partners to flag content to Twitter for censorship.
The emails were released by the nonprofit organization America First Legal and show Twitter enrolling a CDC employee into this portal through their personal account in May 2021 (pages 182-194).
On May 10, 2021, the CDC’s Carol Crawford sent Twitter employee Todd O’Boyle a list of example posts highlighting “two issues that we [the CDC] are seeing a great deal of misinfo about.” O’Boyle responded by saying that enrolling in Twitter’s Partner Support Portal is the best way for Crawford to get posts like this reviewed in the future.

Crawford asked O’Boyle if she could enroll in the portal with her personal Twitter account and on May 27, 2021, O’Boyle confirmed that Crawford had been enrolled in the portal.

In other emails, Crawford asked O’Boyle whether the federal government could flag “COVID misinformation on the portal using the existing census.gov accounts that have access” and questioned how to flag “misinformation” via the portal.
June 2021 emails (pages 359-360) also show another CDC employee attempting to enroll in a Facebook portal but getting error messages. While these emails don’t describe the portal, it appears to be Facebook’s content takedown portal which is similar to the Twitter portal and allows government agencies to flag content for censorship.
Additionally, a February 4, 2021 email (pages 354-355) shows Facebook’s US Head of Public Policy, Payton Iheme, asking Crawford whether she’s aware of the US Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS’s) misinformation work.
“I saw that DHS/CISA is planning /possibly working on COVID-19 misinfo concerns?” Iheme wrote to Crawford. “Are you aware of that aspect?”
This email was sent more than a year before the DHS announced its controversial “Disinformation Governance Board” in April 2022.
Another revelation from this email is that Iheme acknowledges the focus on misinformation “growing among members of Congress.”
These emails provide more evidence of the Big Tech-Biden administration censorship collusion that’s currently facing a legal challenge over potential First Amendment violations.
“In recent months, millions of Americans have witnessed the peeling of the ‘misinformation’ onion,” Gene Hamilton, America First Legal Vice-President and General Counsel, said. “Beneath each layer of shocking details about a partnership between the federal government and Big Tech is yet another layer of connections, conspiracy, and collaboration between power centers that seek to suppress information from the American people. We are proud to play a leading role in fighting for the rights of all Americans and revealing this vital information to the American people.”
We obtained a copy of the emails for you here.
The emails also shine a light on the government departments that have access to these direct Big Tech censorship portals. Previous reports and document releases have shown that the California Secretary of State’s Office of Elections Cybersecurity (OEC) has access to the Twitter portal while the DHS and the New Zealand government have access to the Facebook portal.
Nigerian Army Preformed Over 10,000 Forced Abortions
By Kyle Anzalone | The Libertarian Institute | December 7, 2022
Nigerian soldiers fighting against a jihadist group regularly ordered women to be given abortions without their consent, according to a new Reuters investigation. The US has provided Nigeria with billions in military aid, weapons and training.
Victims and soldiers told Reuters that women and girls in the custody of Nigeria’s 7 Division were given injections to terminate their pregnancies. Some victims were killed by the abortions, and women who resisted were beaten. It is unclear when the program started,” but had existed since at least 2014.
One of the over thirty survivors that spoke with the outlet said victims – while undergoing abortions – were not provided medical treatment. “That woman was more pregnant than the rest of us, almost six or seven months. She was crying, yelling, rolling around, and at long last she stopped rolling and shouting. She became so weak and traumatized, and then she stopped breathing, she said. Adding, “they just dug a hole, and they put sand over it and buried her.”
The 7 Division operates in the country’s northeast, fighting against the Salafist group Boko Haram. According to the Quincy Institute’s Nick Turse, Nigeria’s military is heavily dependent on America. “Since 2000, the U.S. has provided, facilitated, or approved more than $2 billion in security assistance and military weapons and equipment sales to Nigeria and has conducted more than 41,000 training courses for Nigerian military personnel to support counterterrorism efforts aimed at defeating Boko Haram and the Islamic State,” he wrote in May.
While the Reuters report is shocking, Nigerian armed forces have a history of human rights abuses. “Impunity, exacerbated by corruption and a weak judiciary, remained a significant problem in the security forces, especially in police, military, and the Department of State Services,” the State Department wrote in its 2021 human rights report on Nigeria. Adding, “the military arbitrarily arrested and detained – often in unmonitored military detention facilities – persons in the context of the fight against Boko Haram and ISIS-WA in the North East.”
The abuses have not deterred several American presidents from supporting Abuja. Barack Obama authorized millions in funding to support the Sahel nations’ fight against Boko Haram. Under Donald Trump, American troops conducted multiple training courses for Nigerian soldiers fighting Salafists. President Joe Biden has already authorized a nearly $1 billion sale of attack helicopters to Abuja.
Nigeria denied the claims made by Reuters. The outlet said the 7 Division adopted the tactics out of a belief it would help eliminate Boko Haram. “Central to the abortion program is a notion widely held within the military and among some civilians in the northeast: that the children of insurgents are predestined, by the blood in their veins, to one day take up arms against the Nigerian government and society.” The report continued, “four soldiers and one guard said they were told by superiors that the program was needed to destroy insurgent fighters before they could be born.”
Coup plot an example of government’s diversionary tactics – German MP
RT | December 7, 2022
A lawmaker from the right-wing Alternative for Germany party, Eugen Schmidt, has called into question the authorities’ claims that a group of QAnon followers had been plotting a coup to overthrow the German government. The MP alleged that the powers-that-be in Berlin arranged the arrest of dozens of people on Wednesday merely to divert Germans’ attention from an increasingly acute energy crisis.
Speaking to Russia’s Izvestia media outlet on Wednesday, Schmidt pointed out that the vast majority of the suspects are in their 60s or even 70s. He noted that the elite troops who officials say were part of the conspiracy had served before 1990, when the German Democratic Republic was still around, and added that these soldiers are “long past their prime.”
With this in mind, the lawmaker argued, the official position that these individuals had been planning to storm the German parliament sounds downright “absurd” and “ludicrous.”
According to Schmidt, the entire case is merely an attempt by the German government to create a furor in the media that would eclipse “catastrophic problems in the German economy.”
He stressed that, amid the worsening energy crisis and with deteriorating weather, many Germans “have no means to pay [the bills]” because they “receive fairly modest salaries.” The MP also cited energy prices that are up to five times higher than last year.
He went on to say that ever more people are starting to ask themselves “who’s to blame?” Bearing the responsibility for the current situation, the MP proposed, is the “incompetent government.”
“So, now, right before our eyes, a media provocation is being concocted with the sole purpose of diverting [the people’s] attention from their everyday problems,” the AfD politician concluded.
On Wednesday morning, German police announced it had carried out multiple raids across the country, arresting 25 members and supporters of an alleged terrorist group.
According to officials, the suspected conspirators had been planning to form an armed group to overthrow the government and install a regime modeled after the German Reich of 1871.
A former MP for the AfD is among the detainees, along with a Russian national.
Ambassador proud of Germany’s destruction under her regime

RT | December 7, 2022
The conflict in Ukraine has fundamentally transformed Germany for the better, Berlin’s envoy to Washington has argued, while acknowledging her country has been far more affected by the economic backlash of anti-Russian sanctions than the US.
Emily Haber opened the op-ed, published by the Washington Post on Monday, with a description of “dimly lit” German airports and streets, cold homes and public buildings, rising gas prices and inflation running at 10%. The country also has to deal with over a million displaced Ukrainians, who are entitled to full health insurance, social benefits, housing and education at government expense.
“Increasingly, it is Europe (and not least Germany) that is bearing the brunt of the sanctions, not the United States,” writes Haber, before pivoting to argue that this doesn’t really matter.
German suffering is “almost nothing” compared to the hardships of the Ukrainian people, according to Haber, but more importantly, “our national psychology is undergoing a profound transformation.”
She calls the decades-long assumptions underlying Berlin’s policies, mainly that trade would promote “stability, transparency and, eventually, systemic change” an illusion that has been dispelled by the conflict.
“To be sure, there are dissenting voices, and there is discontent brewing in some parts of the country,” the ambassador notes in passing.
Germany has cut itself off from Russian energy imports, increased the export of weapons – mainly to Ukraine – and amended its constitution to create a 100 billion-euro fund for NATO-mandated “defense spending.”
Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s decision to increase military spending in February is the “most significant turning point in decades” for Germany, according to Haber. Even the reunification in 1990 “vindicated past strategic decisions and did not require a break with them,” unlike what’s happening now.
While admitting that all of this may seem irrelevant to Ukraine – whose priorities ought to matter more, she suggests – Haber is still proud of the “real and lasting” change Germany has achieved “in such a short time and at great psychological and material cost.”
“And we are happy to see that it is deepening our already close ties with our allies – first and foremost the United States,” she concludes.

