Aletho News

ΑΛΗΘΩΣ

Germany to build 10GW of baseload gas plants (disguised as “future” hydrogen plants)

By Jo Nova | January 17, 2026

Facing industrial death, Germany has finally decided it needs dispatchable reliable electricity. But they can’t announce that they suddenly need to build 10 gigawatts of fossil fueled gas power plants. It would be like admitting the sacred Energiewende had been a ghastly mistake that wasted billions of dollars on a reckless vanity quest to change the clouds. So instead, these new “power plants” with a focus on “gas-fired sites” must be convertible to run on hydrogen by 2045. Of course, they may never run on hydrogen, given that makes pipes brittle, leaks, and costs four times as much as natural gas, but it makes a good cover story.

This is exactly what I would do if I wanted to hide a major backflip and pretend this was just a slight variation on the renewables theme. (Especially if I had no scruples).

Note that the Reuters Blob-Media story (below) does not mention the words “fossil fuels” or “dispatchable” it just talks about the need to generate electricity over “a longer period of time”.

The gas to hydrogen plant story is the PR cover and escape hatch from the Sacred Renewables Mission.

It’s just another marker of how fast the renewable energy plan is coming undone…

Germany, EU reach general agreement on power plant strategy

Holger Hansen and Christoph Steitz – January 16, 2026

BERLIN/FRANKFURT, Jan 15 (Reuters) – Germany said on Thursday it had reached an agreement with the European Commission on a plan to build new power stations, adding it would tender 12 gigawatts (GW) worth of capacity in 2026, with a focus on gas-fired sites.

This is a major step on Germany’s path to ensure security of supply in light of the country’s ongoing phase-out of coal-fired power capacity. “With the short-term tenders … we are also laying the foundation for a secure electricity supply in Germany in the future and thus for the competitiveness of our industry,” Economy Minister Katherina Reiche said.

Most of the new capacity, 10 GW, must be able to generate electricity over a longer period of time to ensure steady supply, Germany’s economy ministry said, adding that this included but was not limited to gas-fired power stations.

The new power stations, which are expected to enter service in 2031, will be able to run on hydrogen by 2045 at the latest, in line with Germany’s goal of becoming climate neutral that year, the ministry said.

Obviously, there are no apologies, no honesty, and they will never admit they were wrong.

January 25, 2026 Posted by | Deception, Malthusian Ideology, Phony Scarcity | | Leave a comment

Max Otte: How Germany Destroyed Itself – No Turning Back

Glenn Diesen | January 20, 2026

Max Otte discusses how Germany began to ignore and undermine its own national interests after the Cold War. Max Otte is an entrepreneur, political economist, investment manager, philanthropist and political activist. With 141 votes, he was the runner-up for the election of the President of the Federal Republic of Germany on 13 February 2022.

Follow Prof. Glenn Diesen: Substack: https://glenndiesen.substack.com/

X/Twitter: https://x.com/Glenn_Diesen Patreon:   / glenndiesen  

Support the research by Prof. Glenn Diesen: PayPal: https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/glenn…

Buy me a Coffee: buymeacoffee.com/gdieseng

Go Fund Me: https://gofund.me/09ea012f

Books by Prof. Glenn Diesen: https://www.amazon.com/stores/author/…

January 21, 2026 Posted by | Economics, Militarism | | Leave a comment

Europe is ‘run by German war troika’ – Orban

RT | January 20, 2026

The “German war troika” at the top of the EU is shaping the bloc’s bellicose policy, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban has alleged.

Speaking at a political rally in Budapest on Monday, he identified the three “pro-war Germans” as European Commission (EC) President Ursula von der Leyen, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz and the leader of the EU Parliament’s largest party, EPP, Manfred Weber.

“The fact is that Europe is controlled by a German war troika… These three people are the ones who shape Europe’s war policy today,” Orban said.

He cited the latest EU €90 billion ($106 billion) loan package to Kiev, arguing that the bloc was effectively financing the Ukraine conflict for another two years with money Brussels did not have. As Kiev will never be able to pay the money back, “our children and grandchildren will pay,” he added.

Western leaders are already openly discussing eventual troop deployments to Ukraine as so-called peacekeeping contingents, he said.

“Prior experience shows that European peacekeepers always tend to become warkeepers. That is why I do not recommend that Hungary send troops outside its own borders within any European peacekeeping framework.”

NATO troops in Ukraine under any pretext have long been an absolute red line for Russia, and initiatives to deploy them have been viewed in Moscow as undermining the US-brokered diplomatic efforts.

Russia has also pointed to an increase in warlike rhetoric from von der Leyen, EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas and the leaders of the UK, France and Germany.

“They are seriously preparing for war against the Russian Federation, and, in fact, are not even hiding it,” Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said at a press conference on Tuesday.

Moscow has long been focused on eliminating the core causes of the Ukraine conflict, which the West has been fueling for years in an effort to turn Kiev into a “threat to Russia’s security,” the top diplomat said.

January 20, 2026 Posted by | Militarism, Russophobia | , | Leave a comment

Why are EU leaders suddenly being nice to Russia?

By Tarik Cyril Amar | RT | January 16, 2026

Sometimes a surprising statement made almost in passing on a minor occasion can pack a lot of political oomph. And sometimes, it’s just a slip and won’t tell you much about either the present or the future. But how do you know?

That is the challenge posed by German Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s recent – and very unusual – talk about a “compromise”  (“Ausgleich” in German) with Russia, which, he also stressed, is “a European country,” indeed “our greatest European neighbor.”

Outside the context of current Western and, in particular, German and EU politics, such a statement may seem almost commonplace. Obviously, it would make sense for Berlin – and Brussels, too – to work toward a peaceful, productive, mutually beneficial relationship with Moscow. Equally obviously, this is not merely an option but, in reality, a vital necessity (as Merz may have been hinting at when emphasizing that Russia is Germany’s greatest European neighbor: Greatest as in indispensable?).

Yet once you add the actual context of escalating German and EU policies toward Russia since 2014 at the very latest, Merz’s sudden insight into the obvious appears almost sensational. For over a decade, German and EU policy toward Moscow has been based on three simple – and self-damagingly insane – ideas: First, Russia is our enemy by default and “forever” (see the refreshingly frank admission by German Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul). Second, using Ukraine (and a lot of Ukrainians), we can defeat that enemy with a combination of economic and diplomatic warfare and a very bloody proxy war on the ground. Finally, there is no alternative: it is VERBOTEN to even think about genuine give-and-take negotiations and any compromise that would also be good enough for Moscow.

Merz, moreover, has no record as a doubter of these moronic dogmas. On the contrary, he has been a consistent uber-hawk, combining the requisite constant Russophobic undertone with a long series of hardline initiatives and positions. Just a few months ago, for instance, Merz fought tooth and nail for confiscating Russian sovereign assets frozen in the EU. That he lost that fight was due to resistance from Belgium – which would have been exposed to absurdly irrational risks by permitting that robbery – and France and Italy, whose leaders tripped up their hapless German “ally” at the last minute.

In a similar combination of public belligerence and final futility, Merz had long been a proponent of delivering advanced German Taurus cruise missiles – particularly well-suited for destroying things such as Russia’s Kerch Bridge – to Ukraine, before abandoning that awful idea. Ultimately and wisely, he shied away from involving Germany even more deeply in the proxy fight against Russia, most likely under the impression of very firm warnings from Moscow.

Just this month, the German chancellor declared he is ready to send German soldiers to secure a “ceasefire” in Ukraine. Yes, that would be that ceasefire that Moscow has ruled out as a dishonest half-measure. It is true that Merz hedged this announcement with conditions that make it irrelevant. But, nonetheless, it was not a contribution to de-escalation with Russia.

Yet here we are. Speaking not in Berlin, but the provincial metropolis of Halle in Eastern Germany, Merz used the occasion of a fairly humdrum meeting under the auspices of a regional IHK (Industrie und Handelskammer) meeting to speak about Germany’s relationship with Russia.

The IHK is a chamber of industry and commerce, an economic association of some weight. But it is not the parliament in Berlin or, for instance, even a foreign-policy information war outfit/think tank. Most of Merz’s remarks, unsurprisingly, concerned the German economy, which, he had to admit, is not in a good state, but, he promised, will be better soon. He also gave his word to fight and reduce bureaucracy, not only in Germany but the EU as well. That sort of stuff, nothing special, political potboiler.

But then, in the middle of the absolutely predictable and rather boring meeting, the chancellor suddenly extended a hand to Moscow. Or did he? Merz himself knows that his having anything to say about Russia that comes without foam at the mouth is extraordinary: he took care to assure his listeners that it was not the location “in the East” (that is, the former East Germany) that made him strike such a new tone regarding Russia.

His audience may or may not have been convinced by that all-too-quick denial. Halle is not only a major city in Germany’s East, but also, more specifically, the second-largest conurbation in the Land of Saxony-Anhalt. That is where, polls suggest, the new-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party may well win a crucial election in September, particularly by outdistancing Merz’s own mainstream conservatives (CDU). A similar scenario is possible in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, also in Germany’s East.

In both places, even a relative (not absolute) AfD majority, which seems certain at this point, would expose the traditional parties and especially the CDU to one of their worst nightmares: the end of the so-called “firewall,” that is, the harebrained and undemocratic policy of simply freezing the AfD out of the building of ruling coalitions. Merz personally has been an iron proponent of the “firewall.” Razing it, even regionally, will cost him his political career or force him into a brutal, humiliating 180-degree turn.

One important reason voters in Germany’s East are unhappy with the traditional parties is their policy of relentless, self-damaging confrontation toward Russia and equally relentless, really masochistic support for Zelensky’s regime in Ukraine. Just now, one of Germany’s highest courts has finally, in essence, recognized the fact that Ukraine was deeply involved in the worst vital-infrastructure attack in postwar German history, the destruction of most of the Nord Stream pipelines. Many Germans have had enough, not only but especially in Germany’s East.

That is why Merz knows that any apparent concessions to Moscow will meet healthy skepticism there. He also has a solid and well-deserved reputation for breaking his promises. His listeners in Halle may well have dismissed the new Merz sound as nothing but cheap pre-electoral manipulation.

And perhaps that is all it was. But there are good reasons to keep an open mind. For one thing, Merz has not been the only EU leader striking a more conciliatory note recently. As the Russian government has noted, similar statements have been made in France and Italy. The leaders of both countries, Emmanuel Macron and Georgia Meloni, have been no less bold than Merz in stating the obvious, namely – to summarize – that not even talking to Moscow is a daft policy.

It is not hard to see why EU politicians may be prepared to pursue diplomacy again. Their imperial overlord in Washington has made it clear that the Ukraine war will be their problem and theirs alone, while also displaying a brutality towards the world, including the clients/vassals in Europe, that is unusually open even by American standards.

After the tariff wars, the new US National Security Strategy, Venezuela, and the threats against Denmark over Greenland, could it be that, at very long last, some in Europe are slowly waking up to the fact that the worst threat to the sorry remains of their sovereignty, their economies, and also their traditional political elites is Washington, not Moscow? It would be very rash to assume so. But we can hope.

Tarik Cyril Amar is a historian from Germany working at Koç University, Istanbul, on Russia, Ukraine, and Eastern Europe, the history of World War II, the cultural Cold War, and the politics of memory.

January 16, 2026 Posted by | Militarism, Russophobia | , , | Leave a comment

Germany Considers Broader Legal Authority for Internet Surveillance and State Hacking

By Ken Macon | Reclaim The Net | January 10, 2026

Germany’s government is preparing to give its foreign intelligence service, the Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND), far broader powers over online surveillance and hacking than it has ever had before.

A draft amendment to the BND Act, circulating by German media, would transform the agency’s reach by authorizing it to break into foreign digital systems, collect and store large portions of internet traffic, and analyze those communications retroactively.

At the core of this plan is Frankfurt’s DE-CIX internet exchange, one of the largest data junctions on the planet.

For thirty years, global traffic has passed through this node, and for just as long, the BND has quietly operated there under government supervision, scanning international data streams for intelligence clues.

Until now, this monitoring has been limited. The agency could capture metadata such as connection records, but not the full content of messages, and any data collected had to be reviewed and filtered quickly.

The proposed legal reform would overturn those restrictions.

The BND would be permitted to copy and retain not only metadata but also entire online conversations, including emails, chats, and other content, for up to six months.

Officials expect that roughly 30 percent of the world’s internet traffic moving through German collection points could be subject to capture.

A two-step process would follow. First, the BND would stockpile the data. Later, analysts could open and inspect specific content after the fact.

Supporters in the Chancellery say that this is not a radical expansion but a modernization that brings Germany into alignment with foreign partners. They claim that other countries’ intelligence services already hold data for longer periods, two years in the Netherlands, four years in France, and indefinitely in Britain and Italy.

The government’s view is that the BND must have comparable tools to operate independently rather than relying on allied services for insight.

Yet the amendment goes far beyond storage. It would also legalize direct hacking operations against companies and infrastructure that do not cooperate voluntarily with BND requests.

Under the term “Computer Network Exploitation,” the agency could secretly access the systems of online providers like Google, Meta, or X.

These intrusions would be permitted both abroad and, in some circumstances, within Germany itself, especially if justified as a defense against cyberattacks.

Another provision would sharply reduce existing privacy protections for journalists. At present, reporters enjoy near absolute protection from state surveillance.

The draft law, however, introduces an exception. Employees of media organizations tied to “authoritarian” governments could be monitored, with the justification that such journalists might be acting on behalf of their states rather than as independent observers.

The Chancellery has declined to comment publicly, saying only that the amendment is still under internal review.

But the direction is unmistakable. Germany appears ready to embed mass interception and hacking powers into law, effectively normalizing surveillance once viewed as excessive during the Snowden era.

While the government frames this as a strategic update, the effect would be the routine collection and long-term storage of personal communications flowing through German networks.

Such a structure risks making mass surveillance a permanent feature of the digital world, one that alters the balance of power further away from individual privacy and toward an intelligence system designed to watch nearly everything that passes through its cables.

January 10, 2026 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , | Leave a comment

European Politics in Crisis as Right-Wingers Fear for Safety – Ex-Austrian Minister

Sputnik – 10.01.2026

European politics are in a deep crisis as many people, particularly in right-wing parties, are afraid to enter the spotlight due to concerns for their personal safety, former Austrian Foreign Minister Karin Kneissl told Sputnik.

“Most right-wing parties, with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban being a special case, such as Marine Le Pen’s National Rally in France or the Freedom Party of Austria, are running short on qualified personnel. All parties struggle to recruit skilled people, but today many are unwilling to risk their personal safety. If you engage in politics, you are under constant threat,” she said.

In Europe, having ties to those considered to be on the right of the political spectrum comes with a price such as a threat of physical violence, Kneissl said.

“There are many who have already paid a high price. As soon as you have even the most minimal contact with the right, you get serious problems. Members of the AfD [Alternative for Germany] have been attacked. There are also party officials whose bank accounts have been closed and whose children have been harassed at school,” she said.

The lack of capable personnel is also linked to a decline in the quality of Europe’s elites, Kneissl said. The education system that is meant to cultivate those elites no longer serves as a competitive environment for the skilled and talented.

January 10, 2026 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , , | Leave a comment

From Industrial Power to Military Keynesianism: Germany’s Engineered Collapse

By Gerry Nolan | Ron Paul Institute | January 8, 2026

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz now admits that “parts of Germany’s economy are in very critical condition” and that his government “hasn’t done enough.” That phrasing is an evasion. Germany did not drift into this collapse. The numbers were visible in real time. The warnings were explicit. And suicidal decisions were made anyway.

Start with energy, because everything downstream flows from it.

Before the 2022 launch of Russia’s special military operation (SMO), Germany’s industrial model rested on stable Russian pipeline gas priced roughly €15–25 per MWh. Wholesale electricity averaged €30–50 per MWh. That price stability, and not hysterical slogans, powered German competitiveness. It allowed long planning cycles, protected margins, and kept energy-intensive manufacturing viable. It also kept household bills manageable, wages meaningful, and social cohesion intact.

Post Russian SMO, that foundation was deliberately dismantled.

Gas prices predictably exploded, peaking above €300 per MWh in 2022 — a 12–20× increase at the height of the engineered crisis. Electricity followed. German wholesale power prices averaged ~€235 per MWh that year, with intraday spikes well north of €400 per MWh. Even after emergency subsidies, rationing, and accounting tricks, prices today still sit around €100–130 per MWh, approx three to four times the pre-SMO norm.

This cannot be blamed on volatility. This is permanent repricing of German industry — the direct result of Berlin going along with the Nord Stream sabotage, ending the era of cheap, reliable Russian energy without protest, without investigation, and without dignity.

That humiliation solely laid at the feet of supplicant German elite. It was downloaded directly onto German households via higher heating bills, higher electricity costs, higher food prices, shrinking real wages, all while being told this was the price of “standing with Ukraine.” Germans paid more to live worse, and were instructed to feel morally superior about it.

Berlin knew exactly what this would do.

Energy-intensive industrial output has fallen by 20% from pre-SMO levels. Chemical production shrank. Auto suppliers cut jobs at double-digit rates. BASF downsized at home and expanded abroad. New industrial investment increasingly flows to the United States and Asia, not Germany. The costs were socialized downward; the consequences localized.

Then came the autos, the core of the economy.

German carmakers have lost close to half of their China market position since 2020, with market share falling from the high-20s into the mid-teens. Porsche’s China sales are down ~25–30%. Volkswagen’s operating margins have collapsed toward 4%. Employment across the auto-supplier ecosystem has fallen by high single digits, with major firms cutting 10% or more of their workforce. These weren’t hidden trends. China was Germany’s largest trading partner. Berlin chose ideological obedience over industrial reality and paid the price.

And still, the policies continued. Why?

Because collapse below coincided with profit above.

While Germany’s civilian manufacturing base contracted, its military-industrial sector surged. Germany’s defense budget has ballooned as a share of federal outlays, with the Bundestag approving record arms contracts worth around €50–€52 billion in late-2025 alone, including 29 major procurement orders for vehicles, missiles, and satellites, one of the largest such spending decisions in the nation’s history.

At the center of that boom sits Rheinmetall, once a marginal player, now the engine of the continent’s rearmament. Its order backlog hit a new high of roughly €63 billion, with incoming framework agreements jumping 181 % year-on-year in early 2025, and sales surging 36 % in 2024 as defense demand exploded.

Rheinmetall’s stock performance answers the question of who profits. Its shares have more than doubled and at times tripled in value in recent years as markets priced in Europe’s structural defense spending shift, even as the broader economy languished.

Defense equities across the continent have followed suit. European defense indices returned well into the double digits in 2025, making military contractors some of the best-performing assets even as traditional industrial sectors faded.

Rearmament became the one form of “growth” Brussels would never question: losses socialized, gains concentrated. Civilian factories closed and exports faltered, but state-backed military contracts flowed like a firehose. De-industrialization for thee (Germans), weapons profits for me (Germany’s MIC).

Contrast this with Russia and China, and the comparison becomes merciless.

Russia ring-fenced energy, secured domestic supply, redirected trade flows east and south, and surged industrial output under sanctions designed to cripple it. China did the opposite of austerity theater by doubling down on production, scaled EVs, batteries, and supply chains, and absorbed global shocks without blowing up its own infrastructure or pricing its industry out of existence.

Neither country sacrificed its economic base to signal virtue and moralized itself into decline. But Germany did.

So when Merz says “we haven’t done enough,” the timeline exposes the lie. Enough for whom? The households rationing heat? German workers losing jobs? The firms closing plants? Or the protection racket (alliance) managers who demanded compliance regardless of cost?

Ask the question Berlin refuses to ask… If the energy calculus was known, if the China dependence was obvious, if the auto collapse was measurable in real time — at what point does failure become design?

Germany didn’t lose competitiveness by accident or incompetence alone. It surrendered it, to expensive LNG, to trade self-sabotage with China, to an EU architecture that rewards submission over outcomes and treats war as a military Keynesianism.

This was betrayal of the German people. An EU structure that treats Germans as an invoice, not a constituency. A population forced to absorb humiliation, higher bills, and industrial decay — while being told this sacrifice makes them morally superior.

But the bill has arrived. The damage is done.

And that is precisely why Merz and his fellow Eurocrats will cling to this war against Russia at all costs. Not because peace is dangerous, but because peace would bring a reckoning. Not from Moscow, but from German streets. From workers, households, and industries that would finally ask why their prosperity was sacrificed, who profited, and who signed the orders.

No letter to lawmakers, no partial confession, will erase who made these choices, or who paid for them.

Gerry Nolan is a political analyst, writer, and strategist focused on geopolitics, security affairs, and the structural dynamics of global power. He is the founder and editor of The Islander, an independent media platform examining war, diplomacy, economic statecraft, and the accelerating shift toward a multipolar world.

January 9, 2026 Posted by | Economics, Militarism | | Leave a comment

Climate extremists claim responsibility for blackout affecting 50,000 households

RT | January 4, 2026

A group of self-described climate activists has claimed responsibility for a massive power outage that hit five districts in southwestern Berlin, saying the action targeted the fossil fuel industry and “the rich.”

Up to 50,000 households and 2,200 commercial entities were affected by the blackout in the early hours of Saturday, a spokesman for the local electricity provider, Stromnetz Berlin, told the Berliner Zeitung. “Full restoration of power supply” is expected no sooner than January 8, according to the company. The residents of the affected areas would have to remain without power in “freezing temperatures” ranging from -7C to -1C, the paper reported.

Police are treating the incident as a targeted arson attack, according to local media. The blackout was caused by a blaze that hit a power bridge over the Teltow Canal, which goes through the southern part of the city. Several nursing homes and elderly care centers had to be evacuated because of the incident, according to a local fire department. No casualties have been reported in connection to the incident.

Police also said they had received a letter signed by the “Volcano Group” on Saturday evening, in which the climate activists and anti-Fascists claimed responsibility for the incident. The group blamed the industrial extraction of natural resources for the “destruction” of Earth and that humanity “can no longer afford the rich.” The group then said they had “successfully sabotaged” a gas power plant, adding that their action was “socially beneficial” and targeted the fossil fuel industry.

The regional office of the German domestic security service was verifying the letter’s authenticity, according to the police.

According to the Berliner Zeitung, the group had carried out similar attacks in the past. They claimed responsibility for the sabotage of two power cables in southeastern Berlin in September. That attack also left around 50,000 households without power at the time.

January 4, 2026 Posted by | Malthusian Ideology, Phony Scarcity | | Leave a comment

Why rich ‘refugees’ flock to Ukraine from impoverished Europe for Christmas

By Sonja van den Ende | Strategic Culture Foundation | January 2, 2026

Anger is boiling over in German and Dutch cities – and rightly so. While many Europeans are having to count every euro twice in this crisis of Europe’s own making, convoys of Ukrainian cars are heading east during the Christmas holidays. These refugees, reportedly fleeing Russian bombs and drones, are being well supported financially by Germany, the Netherlands, and other European countries – yet as Christmas approaches, they suddenly return home in high spirits.

At the Polish-Ukrainian border, cars are stuck in traffic jams for kilometers. Journalists report hours-long waits, and the flow of returning travelers shows no signs of abating. Families registered as war refugees are heading back to Ukraine for the Christmas and New Year holidays. While air raid sirens supposedly never cease in Ukraine, the fear of missiles and drones appears to fade. The contradiction is stark. Mainstream outlets like Deutsche Welle, whose reporter Christopher Wanner covered the border traffic, have reported on these queues (the report can be viewed here).

Worse still, if you look at the cars in Wanner’s report, many are expensive vehicles that Europeans themselves can no longer afford – because Europe is mired in an economic crisis of its politicians’ making.

Is this still fleeing war? Are these still refugees who supposedly cannot return to their homeland? Or is it simply vacation travel at the expense of the European taxpayer? Calls are growing for every refugee to be thoroughly screened. Critics argue that someone who travels to a war zone without a compelling reason can hardly claim protection. After all, according to the mainstream media and radicalized EU politicians, they should be facing death from “Putin’s bombs and drones.”

Visiting Ukraine is even advertised and promoted in various brochures and websites. The western regions of the country boast “the most colorful and unique Christmas atmosphere.” One travel site recommends: “a mini-trip to Transcarpathia to anyone who wants to immerse themselves in a fairytale atmosphere and see for themselves how ancient Ukrainian traditions are reflected in modern life. Find more New Year’s and winter trips to Ukraine here.”

These so-called Ukrainian refugees are among the approximately 6.5 million people who have sought refuge across Europe. Germany is the main destination, with over a million Ukrainian war refugees; Poland follows closely behind, currently hosting over 950,000. But are they really refugees? No, of course not. The majority come from western Ukraine, where there is no war. The people of the Donbas – now part of Russia – should be the real refugees. That is where drones, bombs, and missiles from Ukraine and NATO are flying.

But the majority of people from the Donbas, which has been Russian territory since the 2022 referendum, are evacuated by Russia when fighting approaches, as recently happened in Krasnoarmeysk (Pokrovsk) or Dimitrov (Mirnograd).

About a million people from the Donbas have been relocated, or if you prefer, have fled and are being housed in various regions of Russia. Among them are children who have lost their parents or are searching for them. Europe calls this “child stealing,” an absurd claim. Should these children die if, for example, drones strike Krasnoarmeysk while their parents are killed or missing in the chaos? Ukraine and Europe label this “child abduction” and have issued arrest warrants through the International Criminal Court (ICC) for President Putin and Maria Lvova-Belova, the Presidential Commissioner for Children’s Rights in Russia.

The European population is slowly waking up, perhaps too late. Their countries have already been practically surrendered to the refugee industry. It is rampant across Europe and worsening daily. In the Netherlands, for example, one hotel after another is being filled with refugees, often without the consent of local villagers or even the hotel owners themselves. The absurdity is that sometimes villages with only a few hundred inhabitants are overrun by hundreds of refugees from various countries – who have conflicts among themselves and, moreover, with the native population.

Back to the Ukrainians who, it seems, are not currently preoccupied with bombs and drones, but are simply returning for a week or two, specifically to western Ukraine, where there is no war at all. These are the profiteers of European taxpayers. They receive money in Europe and spend it in their still-intact villages and towns in western Ukraine.

Ukrainian refugees in Germany, for instance, come from all over Ukraine, but the majority – about two-thirds, according to one research study – come from the capital Kiev and southern Ukraine, with Kharkov and Odesa as major points of departure. Lvov is considered a transit hub. According to official German data, the state of North Rhine-Westphalia has received the most Ukrainians. In July 2024, 232,252 Ukrainians lived in this region.

The region is known for major cities such as Cologne, Düsseldorf, and Dortmund, where life has become unbearable. No-go areas have emerged due to high crime rates. Many remnants of al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups, or so-called Arab clans (mafia), brought there by the UN after the fall of Aleppo, Syria in 2016, reside there. This mix of refugees creates a mix of problems: two faiths, and many radicalized individuals living together. The real Germans fled these areas and cities long ago.

On social media platforms like X, discussions about the so-called Christmas holidays of Ukrainian refugees are intensifying. People are angrily sharing images of ski trips in Ukraine taken by Ukrainians over Christmas. Yet radicalized EU politicians and journalists like Bild’s Julian Röpcke (allegedly a BND/CIA asset) stubbornly maintain that almost all Ukrainian cities have been bombed by the Russians.

Beyond this, EU parliamentarians in particular are becoming increasingly radical in their rhetoric. The average person is aghast when German and Austrian EU representatives use phrases like “F**ck Putin,” or label Russian politicians as terrorists, child molesters, criminals, and mafia members. If you examine their CVs, they are graduates of renowned universities where such language was presumably not taught…

Of course, EU politicians and their brainwashed journalists continue to insist that Christmas in Ukraine is now celebrated on December 25 and 26 (since 2024). However, the reality in Ukraine is quite different. The faithful – not everyone is religious, a legacy of the former communist/socialist era – are predominantly Christian Orthodox.

Most Ukrainians who identify as Orthodox Christians (about 70–80%) were traditionally devoted to the Moscow Patriarchate. But Ukraine has banned that patriarchate and declared a new church. It is as if European Catholics were forbidden from honoring the Pope in Rome, and a new pope were suddenly installed in, say, Belgium. That is the simplest explanation. But believers, of course, remain followers of Moscow or Rome.

Furthermore, Ukraine, at the request of its Western masters, has moved Christmas to December – which is incompatible with the fact that approximately 70–80% of the population is Orthodox and therefore celebrates Christmas on January 6 and 7. Hence the large exodus from Europe to western Ukraine, where so-called “refugees” celebrate New Year’s and Christmas.

Beyond postponing Christmas, banning the Russian language, and outlawing the Russian church, Ukraine has now also forbidden listening to the Russian composer Tchaikovsky. “Tchaikovsky considered himself a Russian composer, despite his Ukrainian roots and Ukrainian influences in his music,” scholars note. Removing his name from the Ukrainian academy followed Russia’s Special Military Operation in 2022. Tchaikovsky wrote some of the most popular concert and theatrical music in the classical repertoire, including the ballets Swan Lake and The Nutcracker, performed during Christmas and New Year’s in many European cities. One wonders: will this too be banned in Europe?

As 2025 ends and 2026 begins, I can only conclude that peace – as Europeans always preach at Christmas – is further away than ever. Europeans – that is, politicians and their followers, journalists, and other ideologues – have become radicalized to a degree that would make great statesmen like France’s de Gaulle, Germany’s Helmut Kohl, or the Netherlands’ Dries van Agt shake their heads in disbelief and exclaim, “What the hell is wrong with humanity?” How did we reach the point where fools rule the people? Well, there is a saying: every country gets the leaders it deserves. Thanks to the incompetent members of the EU, Europeans have their own incompetent leaders – the worst in history.

January 2, 2026 Posted by | Aletho News | , , | Leave a comment

Welcome To 2026: Europe Laying Groundwork For Climate Science Censorship!

By P Gosselin | No Tricks Zone | December 31, 2025

As EU narratives collapse, desparate leaders are planning more tyrannical measures to keep it all from sinking.

Currently, EU leaders are fuming that US officials would be so audacious as to accuse them of practicing censorship. Yet, when it comes to suppressing open discussions and differing viewpoints on major issues, things are in fact worse than most people think. And, it’s about to get even worse.

A recent (indirectly EU-funded) report released earlier this year shows how the EU is planning to broaden censorship to include the topics of climate and energy science.

In the “Harmful Environmental Agendas and Tactics” (HEAT) report, published by EU DisinfoLab and Logically, its authors investigate how climate-related misinformation, disinformation, and malinformation (MDM) are strategically used to undermine climate policy in Europe, specifically in Germany, France, and the Netherlands.

Climate science skeptics threaten democracy

The report argues that climate disinformation has moved beyond simple science denial and has become a tool for broader political and social polarization.

Outright denial of climate change, the authors claim, is being replaced by narratives focused on “climate delay.” These often acknowledge climate change but attack the feasibility, cost, and fairness of solutions, e.g., they claim green policies will bankrupt households or destroy industries.

The enemies

The report identifies four main pillars driving these agendas:

  1. The Conspiracy Milieu: Distrust of elites and “deep state” narratives (e.g., the “Great Reset”).
  2. Culture War/Partisan Discourse: Framing climate action as an authoritarian or elitist project.
  3. Hostile State Actors (HSAs): Significant involvement of Russian-linked networks (e.g., Portal Kombat) that use localized domains like Pravda DE to amplify divisive climate content.
  4. Big Oil Alignment: Narratives that align with fossil fuel interests, even if direct corporate attribution is often obscured.

In Germany, for example, there are attacks on the Energiewende (energy transition) and the Building Heating Act.

In France, there are links between climate policy and the “Yellow Vest” movement or anti-elitist sentiments.

Meanwhile, the “nitrogen crisis” has been reframed as “government land theft” in the Netherlands. 

European leaders are convinced that their policies have nothing to do with all the failure going on. In their eyes, it’s all the fault of unruly citizens and their disinfoarmtion campaigns.

The report’s key recommendations

The authors call for decisive institutional and platform-level action to treat climate disinformation as a structural threat and a danger to democracy. This all needs to stop!

Platforms must act!

The primary recommendation is for the EU to explicitly recognize climate disinformation as a systemic risk under the Digital Services Act (a.k.a. by critics the Digital Censorship Act). This would force so-called Very Large Online Platforms (VLOPs) to take proactive measures and conduct risk assessments.

The authors also call for mandating algorithm audits and public reporting on content moderation, specifically for climate content. It’s time to crack down on skeptics, they say. 

“Independent” auditors

Moreover “independent researchers” are to be provided with access to disaggregated platform data to track how these narratives spread.

Another recommendation is calling for the labelling and limiting the reach of “ideological or sponsored” climate disinformation.

“Trusted flaggers”

The authors also are calling for greater monitoring of Russian-aligned and other hostile state operations that exploit climate debates to weaken EU democratic resilience.

Another step suggested to counter “climate disinformation” is the establishment of reporting channels for civil society organizations (so-called “trusted flaggers”) to flag coordinated inauthentic behavior (CIB) and harmful narratives to regulators.

“Prebunking”

Also “prebunking” campaigns aimed at proactively educating the public on disinformation tactics before they are exposed to them—especially in lower-educated rural and working-class areas that are frequently targeted.

December 31, 2025 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Science and Pseudo-Science | , , , | Leave a comment

The new German totalitarianism

The German liberal order resorts to totalitarianism to preserve the hegemony of its elites

By Raphael Machado | Strategic Culture Foundation | December 30, 2025

Mentioning “totalitarianism” in Germany quickly forces our minds to associate it with the Nazi period in that country’s history. 12 years during which Germany was under the command of Hitler and his party; a command that culminated in the Second World War and the greatest military hecatomb in human history. Indeed, historically, and thanks to figures like Hannah Arendt, the political category of “totalitarianism” has been restricted to the manifestations of illiberal political theories, such as fascism and communism. Liberalism, on the other hand, could not, it never could, it could never be totalitarian; that would be a “contradiction in terms.”

However, a closer look would quickly point out that many post-war Western philosophers, particularly Jewish ones like Karl Popper and Theodor Adorno, in dealing with attempts to understand Germany’s fascist turn, argued that legalistic concerns would have prevented the state from removing from the political game a political force, like Nazism, which very obviously intended to liquidate democracy and, therefore, put an end to the political game as such. This is the so-called “paradox of tolerance.” Popper, from the right, and Adorno, from the left, both agree in defending that the liberal-democratic state must be intolerant towards the “intolerant”; that is, to pursue, silence, and liquidate, without formalist concerns, any figure or political group that openly opposes the fundamental values of liberal democracy and human rights.

Very obviously, we can see that this is an attempt to philosophically legitimize the establishment of a totalitarian regime under the justification of defending “democracy” against fascists and/or communists. Despite its specific emphasis on rational deliberation, even Jürgen Habermas, the philosophical “pope” of German democratic liberalism, places the enemies of liberal society outside the umbrella of tolerant society, insofar as, if tolerated, they themselves would lead to the end of tolerant society.

The evident risk, nonetheless, lies in the decision that designates a figure, group, or ideology as “contrary to the liberal system.” In the 21st century, neither in Germany nor anywhere else in Europe, is there a serious and grave threat of the rise of openly fascist or communist political groups. Thus, at every moment, it is necessary to make a judgment about the possibility of an analogy between each political challenge to the existing order and the historical anti-liberal ideologies.

Since the definitions of fascism and communism are obviously imprecise (each theorist, each academic, etc., has their own definition of these ideologies), accusing an opponent of being “fascist” or “communist” is easy. And with that, it becomes possible to construct the possibility of silencing and excluding the opponent from the public sphere.

The German state, therefore, has all the necessary theoretical foundation to justify the persecution of citizens who oppose its designs and values.

And now it has the technical and legal means to discover who all the “enemies of tolerant society” are among its citizens.

In December 2025, the Berlin House of Representatives passed an amendment to the General Law on Security and Public Order that significantly expands state surveillance capabilities. The amendment introduces several tools that are, to say the least, controversial, such as authorizing police forces to install spyware on the smartphones and computers of “suspicious” citizens, as well as to intercept encrypted communications. If these actions are not feasible remotely, the new regulations allow police forces to secretly break into citizens’ homes to install the spyware physically.

Another innovation is the possibility for police forces to access traffic data from cell towers for all devices in a specific area and moment, without the need for specific judicial authorization. With this, the police could map the movements of any citizen during protests and public events. Furthermore, the legislation also authorizes the collected data to be used for training artificial intelligence systems.

This is a clear institutional slide toward totalitarianism. It is impossible to twist the narrative to deny, therefore, the possibility of liberalism also degenerating into totalitarianism, just as this possibility is recognized for fascism and communism. However, the regulations in question will only apply to the state of Berlin; it is not a change at the federal level.

But it may only be a matter of time. A similar bill is advancing in the Bundestag that promotes mass monitoring at the federal level, with the possibility of chat controls, weakening encryption, and digital and physical invasions of citizens’ property.

This intensification of state surveillance is no coincidence. It appears at a time when the legitimacy of the German liberal republic is being questioned by its citizens, disheartened by the achievements of recent decades, mass immigration, rising violence, and a clear effort by the government to push its citizens into a conflict with Russia. Questioned and under the threat of the rise of anti-system political forces, the German liberal order resorts to totalitarianism to preserve the hegemony of its elites.

December 31, 2025 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , | Leave a comment

Anti-Russia States Cannot Join Ukraine Peacekeeping – German Lawmaker

Sputnik – 28.12.2025

NATO and EU countries using anti-Russian propaganda cannot join any potential peacekeeping mission in Ukraine, while Germany’s direct military involvement risks dragging it into foreign conflict, Steffen Kotre, a Bundestag member of the Alternative for Germany party, told Sputnik.

On Friday, Manfred Weber, the leader of the European Parliament’s largest European People’s Party called for sending troops from EU countries to Ukraine. The politician added that he would like to see soldiers with the European flag on their uniforms in Ukraine.

“Such measures should be seen as part of militarization that contributes to prolonged confrontation with Russia. If we are talking about deploying contingents, they should be provided by neutral countries, not states with anti-Russian propaganda or NATO members,” Kotre said.

In addition, Kotre opposed further supplying Ukraine with weapons, as well as the EU countries’ intention to commit to permanently maintaining the Ukrainian armed forces at a high level of combat readiness.

“I fundamentally oppose sending multinational military forces to Ukraine – even if they are called ‘protection forces’ or ‘multinational forces.’ I consider German direct military involvement a mistake, as it could drag the country into someone else’s war and entail significant risks of escalation,” he said.

Since this spring France, as the co-chair of the so-called Coalition of the Willing, has been trying to broker a deployment of a multinational “deterrent” contingent to Ukraine. In September, French President Emmanuel Macron said that 26 countries committed to joining the deployment after a ceasefire is reached in Ukraine.

On December 15, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said that the European Union and the United States had agreed to provide security guarantees to Ukraine, modeled on NATO’s Article 5. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said that Moscow and Washington had reached an understanding that Ukraine should return to being a non-aligned, neutral, non-nuclear state.

In 2024, the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) said that the West planned to deploy the so-called peacekeeping contingent of about 100,000 in Ukraine to restore its combat capability. The SVR called this scenario a de facto occupation of Ukraine. Russian President Vladimir Putin has stated that there is no point in the presence of foreign military personnel in Ukraine after a possible sustainable peace agreement. The Russian leader also stressed that Russia would consider any troops on the territory of Ukraine to be legitimate targets.

December 28, 2025 Posted by | Militarism, Russophobia | , , , , | Leave a comment

« Previous Entries     Next Entries »