Germany is not a sovereign nation – Moscow
RT | March 14, 2023
Germany is facing an inevitable economic decline after losing its access to Russian energy, but cannot do anything about it because it is not a sovereign nation, the secretary of the Russian National Security Council has claimed.
“Germany tried for many years to build its economy on a combination of cheap Russian energy and advanced German technologies. Like no one else, it realizes that the terrorist attack against the [Nord Stream pipelines] will definitely cause the German economy to decline further,” Nikolay Patrushev said in an interview published in Argumenti i Fakti newspaper on Monday.
The advantages that German businesses enjoyed by getting access to Russian fuel has long irritated the governments of the US and the UK, he continued. But Berlin is not at liberty to continue cooperating with Moscow, “because the German nation is not independent.”
“Washington imposes on Berlin its economic and environmental agenda and keeps a 35,000-strong military force on its soil. For years, the White House controlled [former chancellor] Angela Merkel, and now it forces the German leadership to side with the version of the pipeline sabotage that is advantageous to the US authorities,” Patrushev said, describing America’s treatment of Germany as “humiliating.”
The remarks were part of Patrushev’s comments on the sabotage of the undersea pipelines, which were built to supply Germany with Russian natural gas. The Nord Stream links were ruptured by powerful explosions last September in what Russia has called a blatant terrorist attack.
A series of articles published by Western media this month claimed that Western intelligence services believe that a “pro-Ukrainian group” not associated with any government was behind the attack. Patrushev argued that, considering the training and equipment that such a complicated operation required, this scenario would seem plausible only to people who “cannot think logically.”
Investigative journalist Seymour Hersh had previously reported that the operation was ordered by US President Joe Biden and conducted by a US-Norwegian team of saboteurs. Both nations deny this allegation.
Hersh said Washington wanted to prevent Berlin from making a U-turn on its decision to phase out Russian gas supplies in response to the Ukrainian crisis. Liquified natural gas, which is produced by American companies and costs significantly more, took over a large portion of the European energy market previously held by Russian fuel.
The Washington scenario in phase two is to fight Russia to the last European
By Gilbert Doctorow | March 12, 2023
My latest essay on the wrongheadedness of Belgian and French labor leaders fiddling while Rome burns elicited a number of Contact messages that are too important to keep to myself. What is at issue is how we read the scenario for the further course of the ongoing war in and over Ukraine: will it go on for years at the present level of intensity or is some devastating escalation to be feared in the coming months when the long-promised Ukrainian counter-offensive gets under way.
Allow me to say up front that no one knows for sure. But some observers point to schisms within the Washington establishment, in particular within the State Department, over how determined Russia is to react to violation of its red lines.
One can blame Vladimir Putin all one wishes for the restraint in prosecuting this war that is misinterpreted as cowardice or indecisiveness in the halls of power in Washington. Assigning blame for the misreading of Russia’s intentions changes nothing. The result is that the more hawkish side of the Washington establishment is urging upon the President measures that risk the onset of a full-blown war between Russia and the European powers in the immediate future.
I say “European powers” rather than NATO, because nearly all commentators agree that the U.S. has no intention of putting its own soldiers and homeland at risk when it can play with self-sacrificing proxies. The incredible acceptance of such rules by European leaders has been demonstrated manifestly by German Chancellor Schulz’s silence over the U.S. planned and executed destruction of the Nord Stream II pipelines.
Stage one of the Ukraine war as scripted by the USA was to fight against Russia to the last Ukrainian. Stage two is to fight against Russia to the last European.
In the past few weeks, the USA has delivered to Bremerhaven in Germany and to Gdansk in Poland vast quantities of military hardware that is not going to Kiev but is being prepared for a war with Russia to be fought by either of those states with or without NATO backing. A week ago, one of the US “Doomsday Planes” that coordinate action in a nuclear war came to Europe via Iceland. Smart observers noted this could be an exercise to prepare nuclear attacks on Russia using warheads and delivery systems already on European soil.
Let us remember that Victoria Nuland remains the most important personality in the State Department, head and shoulders above her nominal boss, Blinken. This is the lady who famously, while planning the coup d’etat of February 2014 that overthrew Ukrainian President Yanukovich, was recorded as telling the then U.S. ambassador to Kiev “fuck the EU.” Well, according to information in the public domain that is exactly what she is cooking up today and we, Europeans, are in the soup.
Nuland is said to be the loudest mouth calling for provision to Kiev of long range precision missiles for a summer attack on Crimea which will surely elicit a game-changing level of violence in the response from Russia, possibly entailing strikes against the logistical centers in Poland, Romania and Germany which are delivering the new weapons systems to Ukraine. There are ways this can happen which will make invocation of NATO’s ‘one for all and all for one’ Article 5 problematic.
This is not to say that the United States is not at the same time preparing a back-up scenario in case the Russians go for the principal villain and not for the European implementers. In the past week, a nuclear capable B-52 bomber of the U.S. Air Force is said to have been rehearsing an attack on St Petersburg.
In conclusion, I ask those of my European readers who are leaders in financial institutions, in wealth management, in manufacturing industry, in global shipping, in universities and in widely respected think tanks (from my LinkedIn account I know that some of you are daily followers of these essays), I ask you to use your voices, in public and in private to save Europe from the disaster that may befall us in a matter of months. Salvation will come only when several more European heads of state join Viktor Orban in voting against further arms to Kiev and for an immediate cease-fire. What we need now is definitive peace negotiations between Moscow and Kiev based on the principle of a neutral Ukraine.
©Gilbert Doctorow, 2023
German minister lied to advance career
RT | March 12, 2023
German Health Minister Karl Lauterbach claimed to have led a government-funded breast cancer research project when he applied for a professorship at the University of Tubingen in 1995, Die Welt reported on Sunday. However, the study never existed, according to the outlet.
Lauterbach was 32 years old at the time, and had just received a Doctor of Science degree from the Harvard School of Public Health. Back in Germany, he applied for the position in Tubingen, claiming that he was the head of a research project into breast cancer diagnostics and therapy at an oncology department in Aachen.
Lauterbach said that the project had received two million Deutschmarks (around $1.38 million at the time) from the German government, a portion of which he reportedly promised to transfer to the cash-strapped university if hired.
However, the government and the Aachen oncology center told Die Welt that the project – as described by Lauterbach – never existed. A similar cancer study did take place at Aachen, the paper noted, but Lauterbach was not listed as an author.
Lauterbach also claimed to have raised funding for a study at Princeton University in the US, which staff at the university deny, and to have received 20,000 Deutschmarks for a book project, which ultimately was never paid as he never finished the book.
The minister was offered the position at Tubingen, but turned it down in favor of a placement in Cologne. Questioned by Germany’s Merkur news outlet on Sunday, Lauterbach said that he “can no longer recall the specific case.”
According to Die Welt reporter Tim Rohn, Lauterbach turned down an invitation to speak to the newspaper.
The Empire of Lies Strikes Back… Extraordinary Cover-Up of Nord Stream Terrorism
Strategic Culture Foundation | March 10, 2023
The New York Times and other Western news media ran with clumsy and blatantly diversionary claims this week, which in the end only serve to draw even more attention to the guilt of the United States in blowing up the Nord Stream gas pipelines.
Not only is the administration of U.S. President Joe Biden even more indictable over the criminal act; the absurd cover-up attempt this week exposes the Western media as nothing but a ministry of propaganda masquerading as journalism.
Four weeks ago, the eminent independent American journalist, Seymour Hersh, published a blockbuster investigative report that revealed how President Biden and senior White House staff ordered the explosive detonation of the natural gas pipelines connecting Russia to the European Union via the Baltic Sea and Germany. The legendary Hersh has an impeccable record of groundbreaking stories, from the My Lai massacre committed by U.S. troops in Vietnam in 1968 to the Abu Ghraib prison torture in Iraq under American occupation to the operation of ratlines to funnel weapons and mercenaries from Libya to Syria to fight Washington’s proxy war for regime change in Damascus.
In his seminal report on the sabotage of the Nord Stream pipelines, Hersh relied on insider Washington sources. He published claims that the United States carried out the covert operation using a team of U.S. Navy divers under the cover of NATO war maneuvers known as BALTOPS 22 last summer. Explosives were planted on the seabed during the exercises held in June 2022 and then later detonated on September 26 with the help of Norwegian military aircraft.
The convincing aspect of Hersh’s report was not just the credible detail of the operation, but that it confirmed what many independent observers had already concluded from strong circumstantial evidence about who had the motive and means to conduct the sabotage. Readers are referred to a recent editorial by Strategic Culture Foundation which compiles the background of why the United States is deemed to be the culprit.
Now here is a curious thing. While Hersh’s report provoked shockwaves around the world, Western governments and the mainstream media chose to ignore his report. In a weird parallel universe sort of way, they pretended that Hersh’s resounding revelations did not exist.
One would think that given Hersh’s reputation for world-news-breaking scoops, and given that his latest report revealed a rock-solid plausible account of how a major civilian infrastructure project was sabotaged, and further given that the implication of this report was the inculpation of the United States and its president and his senior staff in ordering an act of terrorism – one would think that, maybe, just maybe, the Western media would be obliged to give some reportage on that matter. No, far from it, they unanimously kept schtum. In a way that is quite shocking and a travesty.
The charade of silence was maintained for a month until this week when the New York Times published a report claiming an alternative explanation for the Nord Stream explosions. As if on cue, there then followed a rash of other Western media reports regurgitating or spinning the same story.
Laughably, the New York Times claimed its report was “the first significant known lead about who was responsible for the attack on the Nord Stream pipelines”. This after a month of pointedly ignoring and effectively censoring from the public any knowledge of the spellbinding Hersh article.
The thrust of this week’s “reports” (if they could be called that) are that the sabotage was carried out by “pro-Ukrainian groups” which may have involved Ukrainian or Russian nationals. The source of the claims was anonymous US officials citing purported “new intelligence”. It was also claimed that a private yacht owned by Ukrainians was used and that the CIA had tipped off German intelligence about the impending attack months before it happened.
The information reported is so vague as to be impossible to verify, or frankly to even merit credibility. We are led to believe that a sophisticated, highly technical military operation on the Baltic seabed was somehow carried off by a group of unknown paramilitaries. The New York Times and other Western media outlets published stories that on their face are outlandish. This is gutter press stuff.
Furthermore, from the way the reports are formulated it is obvious that they are meant to serve as a rebuttal to the Hersh report without actually properly acknowledging the Hersh report. Thus, the United States denies any involvement in a criminal act that it barely refuses to acknowledge. This double-think is itself indicative of guilt in the Empire of Lies.
The problem for the Western propaganda peddlers – besides sheer implausibility – is the further burden of having to provide an alibi for the Kiev regime. The U.S. and its NATO allies need to distract from Washington as the obvious author of the crime, but they also cannot afford to implicate the Kiev regime because that could inflame European and American public antipathy towards the NATO-sponsored junta. This is why the New York Times & Co appear to be involved in a tortuous balancing act of blaming Ukrainian militants for the Nord Stream blasts but also claiming that these intrepid militants managed to do so without the knowledge of President Vladimir Zelensky and his cabal. Which again makes the narrative doubly ridiculous.
There is also an important element of timing to all these Western media shenanigans. Last week, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz was hosted in the White House by Joe Biden on March 3 in what was a bizarrely private meeting. Their conversations behind closed doors were not disclosed. Both leaders stonewalled reporters about their discussions. It can be fairly speculated that Scholz was pleading with Biden for some political cover because of the mounting anger among the German public about the economic consequences of America’s policy over Ukraine and Russia. Germany’s industry and export-led economy have been ravaged by the loss of Russia’s traditional natural gas supply. Scholz and his government are seen to be behaving treacherously by going along with what appears to be American vandalism of the German economy. For the Hersh report to go unanswered is causing massive public pressure on the Berlin government. Hence this week, we saw attempts to divert public attention with a concerted Western media campaign about who supposedly blew up Nord Stream. The aim is to absolve Washington and its lackeys in Berlin.
Another timing issue was the sudden appearance of Ukrainian and Russian fascist commandoes who carried out the terrorist attack in Russia’s Bryansk region on March 2 last week. Two adults were killed and a young boy was badly injured in what was a gratuitous atrocity that made international headlines. That daring raid, however, brought to public attention the existence of pro-Ukrainian militants who appear to act as lone wolves in international operations. This is the very kind of profile that the New York Times and other Western media outfits attributed to the Nord Stream sabotage. That begs the reasonable question: was the Bryansk terror attack enabled by Western military intelligence handlers in order to promote the subsequent media disinformation effort concerning the Nord Stream pipelines?
Let’s cut to the chase. The Western media disinformation campaign is a crude joke. It can’t distract from the glaring facts that the United States and its NATO allies carried out an act of international terrorism against European companies and governments, and an act of war against Russia as the main owner of the 1,200-kilometer Nord Stream pipelines worth at least $20 billion to construct. That criminal act was plausibly ordered by an American president and his White House aides. The geopolitical motives are overwhelming as are the self-indicting admissions by Biden and his aides before and after the odious event.
The cack-handed attempts this week to cover up by the Western media only serve to further incriminate the United States and its NATO crime partners. In addition, the Western media are exposed more than ever as being complicit in propagandizing war crimes. The New York Times and other Western news outlets pompously claim to be pinnacles of journalism and defenders of public interest and democracy. They are nothing but the propaganda ministry for Washington – the Empire of Lies.
Did US raise a false flag on Nord Stream blasts?
BY BRADLEY K. MARTIN | ASIA TIMES | MARCH 9, 2023
Investigative reporter Seymour Hersh said an odd thing on March 7 when TASS asked him to compare his version of the Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipeline explosions (US Navy divers did it, he had reported February 8) with a newly released version from the New York Times and German media that points to non-governmental Ukrainians as culprits.
“I don’t want to get into it,” Hersh replied to the Russian wire service. “You should decide for yourself. It’s up to you.” The TASS reporter persisted, asking if Hersh thought the New York Times account had come in response to Hersh’s own investigation. He gave the same reply, saying people should come to their own conclusions.
That was pretty clever. Read both versions and you may conclude that they could fit together to point to a plausible account of how, as war raged over Ukraine, three pipelines supplying Germany’s gas supply from Russia were blown up before Vladimir Putin could use their existence to try to lure Germany out of the pro-Ukraine camp. Before the war, over half of Germany’s gas imports came from Russia.
Assemble a whole from the two versions and you might come up with this: On US President Joe Biden’s orders, US government covert types put together and with Norwegian help carried out the operation (that’s Hersh’s story); to avoid detection, they left some clues pointing elsewhere, to Ukrainians or “pro-Ukrainians” – the main clue mentioned so far being that the yacht from which the divers worked could be traced back to a yacht-rental company in Poland, a company owned by Ukrainians.
The German media account
What you might end up suspecting is a false flag.
Die Zeit, a leading German newspaper that is part of a media investigative consortium that talked with officials in several countries to put together its narrative, acknowledges the possibility thusly: “Even if traces lead to Ukraine, the investigators have not yet been able to find out who commissioned the suspected group of perpetrators. In international security circles, it is not ruled out that it could also be a false flag operation.”
The paper hastens to add that investigators “have apparently not found evidence that confirms such a scenario.” But “the nationalities of the perpetrators are apparently unclear” since they used “professionally forged passports.”
Die Zeit narrows the gang down to “a team of six people. It is said to have been five men and one woman.” Functionally, they were “a captain, two divers, two diving assistants and a doctor.”
Like the New York Times, the German media outlets suggest that the demolition crew consisted of Ukrainian civilians from a non-governmental “commando” force opposed to the Russian invasion.
There’s no point in asking for a smoking gun at this point. His critics point out that Hersh – who has acknowledged he opposed NATO expansion into the former Soviet Union and who is not known to be a fan of allied efforts to help Ukraine fight the war – based his own account on a single unnamed US government source. Likewise, the German media organizations that make up the investigative consortium name no sources.
Die Zeit reports that “a Western secret service is said to have sent a tip to European partner services in the autumn, shortly after the destruction,” talking about Ukrainian commando responsibility for the destruction. “After that, there are said to have been further intelligence indications that a pro-Ukrainian group could be responsible.”
A Kremlin spokesperson on March 8 was having none of it, telling journalists that “Western media reports which exonerate NATO state actors from involvement in the explosions that ruptured the Nord Stream 1 and 2 gas pipelines have the hallmarks of a synchronized misinformation campaign.”
The Hersh version
Hersh’s version is that US Navy divers, “operating under the cover of a widely publicized mid-summer NATO exercise known as BALTOPS 22, planted the remotely triggered explosives that, three months later, destroyed three of the four Nord Stream pipelines, according to a source with direct knowledge of the operational planning.”
Remarkable for its detail, the Hersh account claims that “Biden’s decision to sabotage the pipelines came after more than nine months of highly secret back-and-forth debate inside Washington’s national security community about how to best achieve that goal. For much of that time, the issue was not whether to do the mission, but how to get it done with no overt clue as to who was responsible.”
The debate and preparations proceeded from December 2021 when Russia was marshaling its troops, preparing to strike Ukraine from Belarus and Crimea, Hersh writes. “As long as Europe remained dependent on the pipelines for cheap natural gas, Washington was afraid that countries like Germany would be reluctant to supply Ukraine with the money and weapons it needed to defeat Russia,” he notes.
The interagency task force thus assembled “was initially skeptical of the CIA’s enthusiasm for a covert deep-sea attack. There were too many unanswered questions. The waters of the Baltic Sea were heavily patrolled by the Russian navy, and there were no oil rigs that could be used as cover for a diving operation,” Hersh writes.
“‘It would be a goat fuck,’ the agency was told. Throughout ‘all of this scheming,’ the source said, ‘some working guys in the CIA and the State Department were saying, “Don’t do this. It’s stupid and will be a political nightmare if it comes out.”’
“Nevertheless, in early 2022, the CIA working group reported back to [national security adviser Jake] Sullivan’s interagency group: ‘We have a way to blow up the pipelines.’ What came next was stunning. On February 7, less than three weeks before the seemingly inevitable Russian invasion of Ukraine, Biden met in his White House office with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, who, after some wobbling, was now firmly on the American team. At the press briefing that followed, Biden defiantly said, ‘If Russia invades … there will be no longer a Nord Stream 2. We will bring an end to it.’”
Undersecretary of State Victoria Nuland gave a similar warning, Hersh says, and lower-ranking officials were concerned by what they viewed as their seniors’ indiscretion.
The operation was headquartered in Norway, whose navy, Hersh says,
was quick to find the right spot, in the shallow waters of the Baltic sea a few miles off Denmark’s Bornholm Island. The pipelines ran more than a mile apart along a seafloor that was only 260 feet deep. That would be well within the range of the divers, who, operating from a Norwegian Alta-class mine hunter, would dive with a mixture of oxygen, nitrogen and helium streaming from their tanks, and plant shaped C4 charges on the four pipelines with concrete protective covers. It would be tedious, time consuming and dangerous work, but the waters off Bornholm had another advantage: there were no major tidal currents, which would have made the task of diving much more difficult.
As cover, Hersh writes, the Americans had Sixth Fleet planners add to the annual naval maneuvers, already scheduled for that time and place, a research and development exercise involving “NATO teams of divers planting mines, with competing teams using the latest underwater technology to find and destroy them… The C4 explosives would be in place by the end of BALTOPS22.”
After a decent interval of three months,
on September 26, 2022, a Norwegian Navy P8 surveillance plane made a seemingly routine flight and dropped a sonar buoy. The signal spread underwater, initially to Nord Stream 2 and then on to Nord Stream 1. A few hours later, the high-powered C4 explosives were triggered and three of the four pipelines were put out of commission…
In the immediate aftermath of the pipeline bombing, the American media treated it like an unsolved mystery. Russia was repeatedly cited as a likely culprit, spurred on by calculated leaks from the White House – but without ever establishing a clear motive for such an act of self-sabotage, beyond simple retribution… No major American newspaper dug into the earlier threats to the pipelines made by Biden and Undersecretary of State Nuland.
Fact-checkers and Hersh
Critics found what they said were some errors in Hersh’s version. Here is Wikipedia on that:
Hersh wrote that NATO General Secretary Jens Stoltenberg had been cooperating with US intelligence services since the Vietnam War and has been cleared ever since. At the time the Vietnam War ended, Stoltenberg was 16 years old, and he had participated during the peak of the Anti-Vietnam War demonstrations in Norway. In 1985, Stoltenberg was part of the Workers’ Youth League in Norway, when the Labor Party was working to withdraw Norway from NATO.
Hersh’s article said the US divers who planted the explosives had operated from a Norwegian Alta-class minesweeper. The Norwegian Defence Forces said no Norwegian Alta-class mine sweepers had participated in BALTOPS 22 and were not in the vicinity of the explosions during the exercise.
Regarding Hersh’s allegations against the Norwegian P-8 Poseidon surveillance plane, Lieutenant Colonel Vegard Norstad Finberg of the Norwegian armed forces said the Norwegian P-8 Poseidon surveillance plane is a brand new plane that has never been in an operational operation, and has only flown test flights in Norwegian airspace, and has never been over the Baltic Sea…
In the German Bundestag, members of parliament from the government disputed Hersh’s credibility and urged that public discussion of the topic be minimized for security reasons; opposition members of parliament from AfD and Die Linke initiated a parliamentary debate on February 10 about Hersh’s allegations, with Die Linke MP Sevim Dağdelen arguing that the government seemed uninterested in clarifying the truth about the bombings.
If the divers’ platform wasn’t an Alta-class minesweeper, then was it a yacht rented from a Ukrainian-owned company in Poland – the vessel the German media/European intel account mentions?
The German account tells us that the saboteurs on their rented yacht proceeded to the dive location on September 6, 2022, from the German Baltic Sea port of Rostock after loading their equipment aboard there from a delivery truck. Rostok’s a long day’s sail (325 nautical miles) from Gdynia, the major Polish port on the Baltic (in case that’s where, in Poland, the Ukrainian-owned yacht rental company is situated).
The New York Times
Disclaimer here: In my 54 years in the news business, I have generally avoided asking spooks for help. I have nothing against them and realize they are colleagues of sorts, but I can recall only a couple of cases when I sought their help. They have their jobs and I have mine. I certainly don’t rush to get their version of events whenever something happens. I assume their version is whatever their agencies have told them should be their version so I prefer to spend my time getting my own version from more direct sources.
That may help to explain why the New York Times piece bothers me. The reporters – maybe the spooks are their beat and they have to get along, or else? – seem overeager to peddle Washington’s version:
Ukraine and its allies have been seen by some officials as having the most logical potential motive to attack the pipelines. They have opposed the project for years, calling it a national security threat because it would allow Russia to sell gas more easily to Europe.
I’d advise checking your wallet if you hear from your pipe-smoking spook source that “officials who have reviewed the intelligence said they believed the saboteurs were most likely Ukrainian or Russian nationals or some combination of the two. US officials said no American or British nationals were involved.”
Would you credit “US officials who have reviewed the new intelligence” and who say that “the explosives were most likely planted with the help of experienced divers who did not appear to be working for military or intelligence services”?
After all that Seymour Hersh has told you?
Well, at least they have a policy at the New York Times permitting them to emulate Seymour Hersh (born 1937, a real veteran with a record) and stick to anonymous sources:
Do the sources know the information? What’s their motivation for telling us? Have they proved reliable in the past? Can we corroborate the information? Even with these questions satisfied, The Times uses anonymous sources as a last resort. The reporter and at least one editor know the identity of the source.
Whew. What a relief.
Bradley K Martin is a veteran foreign correspondent.
Kremlin: New Reports on Nord Stream Attacks Are Part of a Coordinated Disinformation Campaign
Sputnik – 08.03.2023
Media reports about the attacks on Russia’s Nord Stream pipelines are part of a coordinated spread of disinformation and an attempt to divert attention from the real perpetrators, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told Sputnik on Wednesday.
“Obviously, the authors of the terrorist attack want to divert attention. This is obviously a coordinated spread of disinformation in the media,” Peskov said, commenting on the Western media reports.
He said the Kremlin wonders how US officials that media reports cite can assume anything about the attacks without an investigation.
Peskov also called for a transparent investigation into the Nord Stream attacks; one where Russia would be a participant in the probe.
“We are still prevented from taking part in the investigation. Only a few days ago, we received relevant notes from Denmark and Sweden. This is not just strange, it has scent of a heinous crime. At a minimum, Nord Stream shareholders and the UN should demand an urgent transparent investigation with the participation of those who can shed light on the matter,” the Kremlin spokesman underscored.
A US newspaper earlier cited American officials as saying that new intelligence suggested a “pro-Ukrainian group” had carried out the attacks on the Nord Stream pipelines. A few hours later, a German newspaper reported that the investigators had identified the vessel used to carry out the attack on the pipelines.
The developments come about a week after Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov told Sputnik that Moscow would do its utmost to make the Nord Stream probe happen.
“You remember how the West reacted to the investigation into Nord Stream published by Seymour Hersh – their nervous reaction. They started saying it’s nonsense and that they were not even going to discuss it. I think this makes everything clear. But we will do our best to make this investigation happen, we will not allow them to just sweep it all under the rug,” Lavrov stressed.
This followed Russian Ambassador to the United Nations Vasily Nebenzia saying that Russia’s Western partners on the UN Security Council were not demonstrating any desire to cooperate in an independent investigation to verify a report that presented significant details that the US was behind the sabotage of the Nord Stream pipelines.
The investigative report was published by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Seymour Hersh, who revealed that US Navy divers had planted explosives to destroy the Nord Stream pipelines during NATO’s Baltops exercises in the summer of 2022. Norway activated the bombs three months later at the behest of US President Joe Biden, the journalist wrote, citing insiders.
In September 2022, underwater blasts occurred at three of the four strings of the Nord Stream 1 and 2 underwater pipelines, built to carry a combined 110 billion cubic meters of Russian gas to Europe annually. Germany, Denmark, and Sweden launched separate investigations into the incident, while Russia wasn’t given access to their probes.
Scholz’s US tour shows Germany’s subservience to Washington
By Lucas Leiroz | March 6, 2023
Despite all the recent humiliation against Germany and reports from credible sources that the US indeed bombed the Nord Stream 1 and 2 gas pipelines, the German government seems willing to continue maintaining a policy of absolute submission to Washington. In the first week of March, German Prime Minister Olaf Scholz traveled to the US. First, analysts suggested that he was trying to negotiate new economically interesting deals for Berlin. However, conversations with Biden were restricted to the Ukrainian topic, and revealed the submission of the German leader to the American.
The visit of the head of the German government seems to have had the intention of negotiating with President Biden the position to be occupied by Berlin in the current European context. In the midst of the economic, energy and social crisis that affects the country, the leadership position that Germany previously maintained on the continent (in partnership with France) has been strongly shaken in recent times – which motivates the German government to seek agreements that enable it to recover its status.
Commenting on the matter, Alexander Rahr, German political scientist and head of Eurasian Society, said: “Germany wants, anyway, to restore its leadership in Europe, and this can be done only with the assistance, support and blessing of America”.
As expected, in order to obtain such a “blessing” the tactic used by Scholz was to show himself even more willing to help the US in its proxy war against Russia. The German Chancellor proposed discussions on his country’s role in the conflict and emphasized his commitment to help Kiev. Biden thanked his counterpart for the effort to help Ukraine and both reinforced their votes of friendship.
“You (Olaf Scholz) stepped up to provide critical military support. And I would argue, beyond the military support, the moral support you’ve given Ukrainians has been profound. Profound”, US President Joe Biden said.
However, Scholz does not seem to have heard anything very special from Biden regarding the German role in Europe. Significant agreements were not signed and topics of great strategic interest do not seem to have been included in the conversations. To summarize, the meeting did not have content worthy of a summit between two leaders of world powers. This was more like a meeting that could have been held by telephone or online, since the central issue was to discuss the situation of another country – Ukraine. If Scholz expected Biden to be “pleased” with the German willingness to help Kiev and propose to “bless” German projects in return, the objective definitely failed.
Rahr considers that Scholz received “a slap in the face from the US”, and that the Prime Minister “can do nothing but obey”. The expert recalled that Biden made several tours in Europe, visiting countries like Ukraine and Poland, but ignoring Germany. Clearly, Scholz is not seen as “an equal” by Biden, not being “worth visiting.” This seems to have led to much criticism within Germany over the prime minister’s visit to Washington.
“There is a lot of talk in Germany about why Scholz really needs to go to Washington now. Many believe that he and Biden are discussing everything on the phone, so what could have prompted Biden to allegedly call Scholz on the carpet in Washington? I think a lot has to do with the fact that Biden himself was recently in Europe, but did not visit Germany. He has not visited Germany as a president, so far. He was twice in Poland and by this he clearly emphasized that Poland is the main ally in Europe for him today. I think it’s a slap in the face for Germany,” Rahr said.
As if it were not enough to assume a passive posture and visit Washington after being repeatedly ignored by Biden, there is still the aggravating factor related to Nord Stream. Lately, the discussion on the gas pipeline has been a trending topic on social media. Thousands of people inside and outside Germany have been absolutely shocked by reports that American intelligence has destroyed the gas pipelines. And Scholz simply ignored this situation and visited the accused country.
Rhar claims that German officials already know the truth about the case and that the Scholz government is aware that the country was attacked by the US, but adds that Scholz seems to have no choice but to accept, ignore and continue trying to appear even more like a “good friend ” for Washington, since Germany has no military protection other than NATO.
“It seems to me that everything is already clear to Scholz. I do not believe that German intelligence or the military structures of Europe, which should have known what happened, have any doubts about the US role in [destroying Nord Stream pipelines]. And there were publications and investigations into this in the US. But Scholz also clearly understands that it is impossible to act against America, because today America provides Europe, including Germany, with that security, that nuclear umbrella that Europe itself does not have”, he added.
In fact, the failure of the Scholz government shows how the US has proved to be a terrible ally for its partner countries. American international conduct has simply consisted of demanding weapons for its proxy war against Russia while illegal coercive measures (such as sanctions) and even terrorist sabotage (such as the Nord Stream case) are simultaneously taken to harm these same allies.
The case is simple to understand: subjugating its partners and making them more submissive and dependent, Washington consolidates a zone of influence in the midst of the current process of geopolitical transition to multipolarity. It was not by chance that many sovereigntist projects in Europe, such as Nord Stream itself, the EU-China agreement and the plan for a “European army, have been abandoned or sabotaged since last year.
However, as difficult as it is to face the US, this is a step that will become inevitable for the Germans. If Scholz remains submissive to Washington even after recent sabotage, the government will enter an unprecedented crisis of legitimacy.
Lucas Leiroz is a researcher in Social Sciences at the Federal Rural University of Rio de Janeiro; geopolitical consultant.
ARD Public Broadcasting Expects Regular Germans To Eat Worms, Live In Squalor
By P Gosselin | No Tricks Zone | March 4, 2023
Privileged ARD German Public Television journalist Anja Reschke wants to turn Germans into worm-eaters, to save the planet. From paternalism to abuse.
Generously funded, spoiled ARD public television treats its regular viewers like Cinderellas who are to be exploited, to live in squalor and eat worms instead of meat. AI generated image by DALL E 2.
Hat-tip: By Daniel Matissek, AUF 1
Germany’s ARD public broadcasting network is funded to the tune of more than eight billion euros by compulsory fees levied on every German household each year.
But the network has gone far beyond its original charter of keeping the public informed and educated, and now appears to have even drifted past being an paternalistic institution with the self-assigned role of properly upbringing the masses of the working uncouth.
Let them eat worms
Today, if the latest is anything to go by, it seems the massive ARD network has gone yet a step further and now sees its viewers as Cinderellas who are to be exploited and relegated to live under forsaken conditions. Not long ago one highly paid and pampered ARD commentator even gleefully welcomed the energy price shocks and seemed glad that the uncouth masses would soon have to wear rags and live in attics. “That’s good!” said Detlef Flintz.
The latest comes from ARD left-wing know-it-all Anja Reschke who appeared in the early evening program “Wissen vor Acht” (Knowledge before Eight) with a new nutrition tip for those who don’t want to wean themselves off “climate- destroying” meat: They can can simply grow worm meat in their “kitchens of tomorrow”.
“Round and juicy” after 6 weeks!
In the ARD show, Reschke demonstrates how worms can be grown and then fattened in six to eight weeks until they become “round and juicy”.
Then all they have to do is put them in the freezer “and later they can be processed into minced meat,” says the leftie journalist Reschke. Supposedly, the plant yields 200 to 500 grams of meat per week, but uses “only a fraction of the land, food and water compared to cattle or pig farming,” Reschke enthuses.
While a kilogram of beef produces around 70 kilos of CO2, a kilo of worm meat produces “just under three kilos.”
People will just have to get over their disgust
There’s only one obstacle: We only have to “overcome our disgust against insects as food, because insects surely belong on the menu of the future,” says Rescke. It just takes a little getting used to, Reschke seems to imply as she and her dim-witted daughters at the ARD ready themselves for the royal evening ball.
Meat eaters like “consumers of child pornography”
“This is no April Fools joke,” writes AUF 1. The ARD is dead serious about it: “This madness is meant dead-seriously. The climate mania serves to encourage people in all seriousness to eat vermin in order to save the world.”
Deutschlandfunk, also a part of the massive German public broadcasting organization, recently compared meat eaters to “consumers of child pornography”.
Wow! Even Cinderella’s evil stepmother never went that far.
Germany’s Rheinmetall in Talks With Kiev on Construction of Tank Plant in Ukraine
Sputnik – 04.03.2023
German arms manufacturer Rheinmetall is currently holding “promising” talks with Kiev on the construction of a tank plant worth 200 million euros ($213 million) in Ukraine, Armin Papperger, the head of the company, said on Saturday.
“A Rheinmetall plant could be built in Ukraine for about 200 million euros,” Papperger told the German newspaper, adding that the negotiations were “promising.”
Such a plant will be able to produce up to 400 Panther tanks per year, the company’s chief said. He expressed hope that a final decision on the deal would be made “in the next two months.”
Ukraine needs from 600 to 800 tanks to win in the conflict with Russia, so even if Berlin gives Kiev all 300 Leopard 2 tanks from the reserves of the German armed forces, this will still “not be enough,” Papperger told the news outlet.
Over the past months, the German arms manufacturer has been an active participant in projects aimed at providing military support to Ukraine. Rheinmetall is supplying ammunition for German-made Gepard self-propelled anti-aircraft guns used by Ukraine in the conflict, as well as providing Kiev with high-mobility HX swap-body trucks and automated reconnaissance systems, among other items.
Western countries have been supplying Ukraine with various types of weapon systems, including air defense missiles, multiple launch rocket systems, tanks, self-propelled artillery and anti-aircraft guns since Russia launched its special military operation in Ukraine over a year ago. Moscow has warned that arms deliveries do not contribute to a peaceful resolution and further escalate the conflict, risking full-scale NATO involvement in the fighting.
RT DE accounts frozen
RT | March 3, 2023
RT’s German production company has had its bank accounts frozen amid an EU-wide crackdown on Russian media. The company was already prohibited by the bloc’s sanctions from carrying out its work in Germany, but said it will continue publishing and broadcasting news online.
“The bank accounts of RT DE Productions have been frozen,” RT’s press service said in a statement on Friday. “Despite this move and the ongoing liquidation of RT DE Productions GmbH, RT DE’s online, broadcast and social media platforms will continue to provide German-speaking readers and viewers across the world with quality content.”
RT Productions GmbH is a German-based company that produces content for the RT DE TV channel and website in Moscow. The firm announced at the beginning of February that it would halt journalistic activities in Germany, due to the “repressive state of media freedoms within the EU.”
An EU sanctions package introduced in December blacklisted RT’s parent company, TV-Novosti, as well as revoking the EU broadcasting licenses of Russian media outlets including NTV, NTV Mir, Rossiya 1, REN TV and Perviy Channel. These measures left RT DE Productions cut off from funding and unable to work in Germany.
RT’s French subsidiary faced a similar situation in January. With its accounts frozen by authorities in Paris, the network shut its doors but continued to broadcast on various online platforms and to publish news in French on its website. While the French government had previously been content to allow RT France to operate, a number of prominent French media outlets campaigned for its closure at the beginning of the year.
Even before the conflict in Ukraine, RT DE faced a difficult legal battle to broadcast in Germany. German banks refused to work with the broadcaster, and regulators in Berlin threatened legal action when the network finally began broadcasting into Germany from Serbia in December 2021.
The regulators eventually blocked RT DE last February, a month before the European Commission ordered a bloc-wide ban on all RT channels and websites. Russia’s Foreign Ministry responded by withdrawing the press accreditation of German state broadcaster Deutsche Welle, and listing the network as a foreign agent.
German lawmakers demand Nord Stream explosion investigation
By Uriel Araujo | February 28, 2023
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz will fly to the US to meet President Joe Biden on March 3. According to the White House’s press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, the visit is an opportunity to “reaffirm the deep bonds of friendship” between the two NATO allies. One could, however, describe such a friendship as quite a peculiar one. In fact, more often than not, it looks much more like a veiled enmity.
For one thing, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Seymour Hersh’s 8 February piece has denounced the Nord Stream pipelines’ explosion as a sabotage act clandestinely carried out by Washington. In fact, on February 7, Biden himself, during a press briefing, promised: “If Russia invades (…) there will be no longer a Nord Stream 2. We will bring an end to it.” When asked just how, his reply, with a smile, was: “I promise we will be able to do it.” Scholz was right next to him. This astonishing statement echoed Undersecretary of State for Policy Victoria Nuland’s own remarks just two days earlier – it is no wonder that many suspected American involvement in the still unexplained explosion.
In the aforementioned piece, respected journalist Hersh quotes unnamed intelligent sources who claim the US did fulfill its promise/threat by planting the explosives while using the June 2022 Baltic Operations (BALTOPS 22) exercise as a cover. So far, Hungary’s Minister of Foreign Relations Peter Szijjarto has been a lone voice in calling the episode a terrorist attack and calling for an investigation.
Nord Stream 1, as two of the pipelines were collectively known, had been providing cheap gas to Germany for over a decade, something which Washington always opposed; Nord Stream 2 pipelines in turn could double the amount of such cheap gas provided. The explosion harmed all of Europe and the UK, bringing back the ghost of a new depression – but mainly Germany. I have written on how the European energy crisis has served US interests well and hurt European industry as well as on how economic nationalism is once again on the rise, especially today when Europe and, particularly Germany, is facing de-industrialization. I have also written on how American aggressive subsidy war against Europe, in the form of the Inflation Reduction Act, only adds fuel to the fire and risks dividing the political West. In post-Nord Stream Europe, gas prices are to remain high, condemning the continent to inflation, while American interests profit from making the conflict in Ukraine perpetual.
When it comes to Russia, Ukraine and Europe, Washington’s geopolitical and geoeconomic interests are intertwined. The tragedy of the European continent lies in the paradox that it is still heavily dependent on Washington for security, while it would benefit from energy cooperation with neighboring giant Russia. Washington has been consistently betraying European interests to its own benefit, and Germany is the clearest instance of that contradiction.
Berlin could be an industrial power, but Washington’s long campaign against Nord Stream, among other things, has hampered its potential and now its auto industry is particularly vulnerable to the US IRA legislation, which has created new barriers for European electric vehicles. On top of that, Washington has been pressuring Germany to further spend on Ukraine, while German Armed Forces face shortages.
Despite Berlin’s silence regarding the attack on its strategic infrastructure, in the wake of the explosion, both far-left and far-right lawmakers from the Die Linke and the Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) political parties, respectively, were calling for the setting up of investigative committees. AfD’s Co-Chairman Tino Chrupalla has demanded the government coalition clarify the matter. In his speech he rhetorically asked whether the NATO alliance “guarantees security in Europe or rather endangers it”. In an interesting development, the leftist Die Linke expressed its solidarity with the rightist AfD on this matter.
European “populists” and the far-right have been capitalizing the growing popular discontent with NATO and the EU itself. In April 2022, defeated French Presidential candidate Marine Le Pen promised to pull France out of NATO, following Charles de Gaulle steps. Regarding the disastrous anti-Russian sanctions (which have backfired against Europe), Viktor Orban’s Hungary has been a kind of lone voice. One should however expect to see a multiplication of such voices, be it from the far-left or from the far-right.
Although often described as an “extreme” and marginal party, the AfD has been growing in popularity in Germany, reaching 17% in a poll for the first time in years, according to a YouGov February poll. It is about time for Europe to assert its sovereignty, and Berlin and France could lead the way in this regard. Calls for investigation regarding the Nord Stream’s sabotage in fact might be gaining traction among wider portions of German society.
In his 2020 book, Udo Ulfkotte, a former editor for German mass daily newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, denounced how the German Federal Intelligence Agency (BND) has cooperated with the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to recruit German journalists and shape public opinion. This could partly explain the overall silence amongst German media on the Nord Stream issue.
As long as the traditional media keeps covering up the topic, one should expect trust in the press to decrease and support for far-right and far-left parties to grow, with potential electoral results in the near future. Such a political wave can increase skepticism about NATO, but before it could advance any rethinking of the European relationship with the Atlantic Alliance (as proposed by Le Pen), it may first cause instability and turmoil in a continent already isolated and deindustrialized. In Germany, right now only Die Linke has supported AfD calls for an investigation, but more voices within the German broader political spectrum are expected to join them.
Featured Video
Roosevelt’s Partnership with Stalin
or go to
Aletho News Archives – Video-Images
From the Archives
The great ADHD swindle
By Daniel Ken | TCW Defending Freedom | May 20, 2023
Over more than two decades in the classroom I’ve taught thousands of children and teenagers: some were lovely and lots were hard-working. On the other hand, quite a number were disruptive and argumentative, and a number were violently opposed to learning. But I don’t think I’ve taught more than a handful of kids who could be properly described as having the symptoms of ADHD. And that handful could just as easily have had something else wrong with them. Because here’s the thing: despite the fact that the best part of a million children are medicated for the condition, ADHD doesn’t exist.
There’s no definitive medical test for it, experts can’t agree on what it actually means, and most of the symptoms disappear if the child in question has lots of exercise, good diet and, crucially, a set of clear behavioural boundaries, preferably set early in childhood and, for the boys at least, enforced by a stable adult male living at home. … continue
Blog Roll
Aletho News- Syria, Lebanon, and the limits of power
- How Multipolarity Forced Trump to Capitulate… For Now
- Switzerland confirms US-Iran talks planned for Friday are cancelled
- Iran Beat Back The Greater Israel Project
- Roosevelt’s Partnership with Stalin
- Strategic Ambiguity (If We Must)
- Finland shreds nuclear weapons ban
- Kiev turns to ‘systematic killing’ of Zaporozhye plant staff – Russia’s nuclear chief
- Censored Lavrov article Politico refused to publish (FULL TEXT)
- Israel’s censor silenced 5,700 reports in 2025
- If Americans Knew
- JD Vance speaks truth to Israel: “You can’t just kill your way out of every problem” – Daily Update
- What Ceasefire? Israel Has Now Killed Over 1,000 Palestinians in Gaza Since October
- U.S. Whole-of-Government Takeover by Israel
- Netanyahu’s Mouthpieces Turn on Trump, Revealing a Deeper Israeli Ingratitude
- Senate wants to force US to share sensitive intel with Israel
- Trump ended his idiotic Iran war. Good.
- Khanna Becomes First in Congress to Sign ‘Peace Pledge’ Promising to Reject AIPAC Funds
- Look who’s losing it over Trump’s Iran deal
- Israel has killed over 1,000 Gazans during 8-month “ceasefire” – Daily Update
- REVEALED: Former Top DEA Official Says Israel Spies on US Law Enforcement
- No Tricks Zone
- New Study: Chile’s Relative Sea Level Was 3.2 Meters Higher Than Today During The Mid-Holocene
- Beyond The Pitch: Why FIFA’s World Cup Is One Of Humanity’s Best Investments
- Climate Alarmists Now Using Natural Phenomena To Support Their Claims
- New Study: Significant CO2 Fluxes From Non-Volcanic Sources Are Largely Neglected In Carbon Budgets
- Women Climate Scientists Being Harassed, Insulted By Skeptics, Claims Berkeley Earth Researcher
- Germany’s Longterm Spring Climate Data Show “No Climate Trend”
- New Study: Solar Photovoltaic, Wind Power Fail To Meet Annual Energy Demands 62% Of The Time
- Germany’s Die Welt: “Too Much Is Too Much” … Green Energies Are Cannabalizing Each Other!
- Germany’s Ecological Holocaust… Once Fairy Tale Forests Getting Cleared For Wind Turbines
- A Grand Solar Minimum Has Arrived…Global Cooling Of At Least 1°C Is Expected By The 2030s, 2040s
Aletho News 