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Unvaccinated German care home worker, accused of sparking a November 2021 outbreak that left three elderly women dead, faces criminal trial

eugyppius: a plague chronicle | January 18, 2023

From the Deutsche Presse-Agentur :

After a Corona outbreak that left three dead in a Hildesheim care home, a former employee will face trial in February…. She stands accused of one count of negligent homicide and two counts of negligent bodily injury, as well as forgery. The 45-year-old allegedly faked double vaccination against Corona by presenting a fake vaccine certificate …

Despite the infection of her son, the woman was at first allowed to continue working in late November 2021. … She is alleged to have been infected without noticing, and initially transmitted the virus to a colleague during a coffee break. Thus, a “chain of infection is alleged to have been set in motion.” Three female residents aged 80, 85 and 93 died in the outbreak.

According to the indictment, forensic medical examination revealed that Corona was the cause of death in the case of the 80-year-old. Other causes could not be ruled out for the other two victims … The woman has admitted to falsifying her vaccine certificate, but denies responsibility for the outbreak.

There were three other infections among home staff, and 11 among residents … Because the woman was known to oppose vaccination, her employer obtained information about the the date and batch numbers [listed on her certificate]. These … made it clear it was a forgery.

I’ve followed this case for a while, but I’ve avoided writing about it, because it just makes me depressed.

There’s the little things that irritate me, like the contact-tracing hocus-pocus and the ridiculous assumption that moments of transmission can be located as precisely as a coffee break. Or the awkward fact, that of the three Covid deaths this incident achieved for our un-unpluggable mortality ticker, medical examiners could assign only one to the virus with any confidence. The main thing, though, is just the incredible injustice of blaming fellow humans for infections with pervasive seasonal respiratory pathogens. This poor woman only faked vaccination to keep her job, and the outbreak at her home occurred well after the myth of vaccine efficacy against infection had collapsed. There’s just no reason to bring charges here.

If anything killed those old women, it was the care home and their decision to keep employees with positive close contacts at work. They almost certainly had no choice: These places suffer chronic staffing shortages, vastly exacerbated by pandemic-era mismanagement. And indeed, why should anyone work in a care home now? The pay is poor, you endure unusual levels of harassment over personal medical choices, and you can even face prosecution for passing on viruses your kids pick up at school.

January 25, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Science and Pseudo-Science | , , | 4 Comments

Stop Whining & Turn Tap On: Why German Politicians Fear to Tell Truth About EU Energy Crunch

By Ekaterina Blinova – Sputnik – 25.01.2023

German Economy Minister Robert Habeck pinned the blame for the nation’s energy crunch and shift to dirty fuels on Russian President Vladimir Putin, who, according to the minister, “turned off the gas tap.” International observers dismissed Habeck’s remarks as utter nonsense while speaking to Sputnik.

“What else is left for Mr. Habeck to do? He cannot say that it were his actions that led to such unfortunate consequences for the German economy and for German consumers,” Alexey Grivach, deputy head of Russia’s National Energy Security Fund, told Sputnik.

“After all, it is precisely because of his rash actions that all German citizens are now suffering – and not only Germany, but the entire European Union. Therefore, Habeck has engaged in such a political, verbal balancing act, trying to convince someone that if there is no gas in the pipe, then Russia is to blame. But, fortunately, everyone knows perfectly well what really happened.”

Speaking to journalists last Friday, Habeck claimed that half of Germany’s entire gas supply had been stopped by Russia. He added that given that Nord Stream pipelines had been destroyed, Germany would not be able to get Russian fuel through them in the foreseeable future.

Done by Habeck’s Own Hands

Sputnik’s interlocutors have been perplexed by Habeck’s whining: it was Berlin that succumbed to Washington’s pressure last year and froze Gazprom’s Nord Stream 2 pipeline project that would have doubled the total capacity of the Nord Stream system from 55 billion cubic meters (bcm) to 110 bcm.

It was Robert Habeck, in propria persona, who on February 22, 2022, instructed the withdrawal of a security-of-supply assessment granted under former German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s tenure, which was required to authorize Nord Stream 2.

It was Habeck, again, who pledged in early May 2022 to replace all Russian energy imports, most notably natural gas, by as soon as mid-2024, following the beginning of Moscow’s special operation to demilitarize and de-Nazify Ukraine on February 24, 2022.

The minister gleefully announced at that time that Germany’s share of Russian gas had already dropped from 55% in 2021 to around 35% by mid-April 2022, adding that even faster progress was achieved for oil and coal where shares had dropped to 12% and 8%, respectively. To that end, Berlin leased four floating LNG terminals online to supply some 33 bcm/year, seeking to start operating the first of the Floating Storage Regasification Units (FSRU) in late 2022 and 2023.

Apparently, Germany did not resist the actions of Canada which slapped sanctions on Russia and had long refused to return a Gazprom turbine for Nord Stream’s gas equipment. Russia initially sent the turbine to Siemens Canada in Montreal for a scheduled overhaul.

However, in June 2022, Canada imposed restrictions on Russia’s energy companies, including Gazprom, and the turbine remained stuck in the North American country. That disrupted the Nord Stream system’s work and raised concerns about pre-planned maintenance service for the other five turbines. After back-and-forths, Ottawa agreed to issue a “time-limited and revocable permit” to exempt the return of the equipment.

“For some reason, this turbine was returned to Germany without the appropriate documents and guarantees that further maintenance of such turbines will be carried out in accordance with the obligations and not in some kind of sanctions mood,” Grivach noted.

Only in late August 2022, the Canadian authorities said that they would allow for the maintenance of the remaining five turbines used by the Nord Stream 1 pipeline, but the damage was done in terms of reducing the flow of natural gas from Russia to Germany.

A month later, a sabotage attack destroyed three out of Gazprom’s four Nord Stream pipelines. So far, neither Germany nor its European peers have lifted a finger to initiate repair works. This apparently indicates that they don’t need Russian gas, remarked Alexey Fenenko, associate professor of the Department of International Security, Faculty of World Politics of Moscow State University.

Furthermore, following the September 2022 sabotage, European leaders immediately pointed the finger of blame at Russia and did not allow Moscow’s specialists to participate in EU investigations into the blast.

However, in December 2022, the US mainstream press quoted European officials and investigators as saying that they had not found any evidence confirming Russia’s guilt. They admitted that Moscow would have nothing to gain from blasting its own pipelines and agreed that there had been plenty of international players interested in Nord Stream’s destruction. Nonetheless, western journalists and European officials have not made any step to name potential suspects.

“It is clear that if it were Russia, as some had the audacity to assert, then they would have proved it very quickly. But, apparently, the facts indicate some very unpleasant, and maybe even some taboo topics,” Grivach remarked.

Habeck’s gloomy sentiment with regard to Germany’s prospects of receiving Russia’s gas is sly, according to Sputnik’s interlocutors.

First, in October 2022, Russian President Vladimir Putin signaled his readiness to deliver gas to Germany through a Nord Stream pipeline not damaged by the blast. “It has a capacity of 27.5 billion cubic meters per year, which is about eight percent of all gas imports to Europe,” Putin stated on October 12, 2022, stressing that the ball is in Europe’s court. “Russia is ready for the start of these deliveries (…) If [European leaders] want it – they have to turn on the tap, and that’s it.”

Second, the same month, Moscow suggested creating a new gas hub in Turkey capable of delivering the fuel to the Old Continent.

Third, Russia is ready to restore gas supplies through other gas pipelines, as Vladislav Belov, deputy director of the Institute of Europe of the Russian Academy of Sciences and head of the Center for German Studies told Sputnik.

“Germany still has every opportunity to receive [Russian gas],” said Belov. “There is the Yamal-Europe gas pipeline, blocked by Poland, there is a gas pipeline through Ukraine, but it has reduced pumping through it by 40%. Germany has ample opportunity to put pressure on its allies. In addition, there is also the Turkish Stream, through which Russia fully fulfills all its obligations. In general, Russia is ready to supply gas to Germany, but the Germans themselves turned the tap off. It is up to them to be able to get as much gas as they need to keep their homes warm, to fill storage facilities and get gas at the prices that are currently on the spot market.”

It Was Europe’s Decision to Axe Russia’s Gas Supplies

The dramatic reduction of Russia’s gas supplies to Europe is the result of a political decision by EU member states, according to observers.

“The reasons are political. The European Union decided to stop the supply of all raw materials coming from Russia for political reasons.”

For his part, former Greek Energy Minister Panagiotis Lafazanis noted in an interview with Sputnik that he fully supports the position of former Austrian Vice-Chancellor Strache, who said that the German authorities are afraid to tell their own population the truth about the real reasons for rising gas and electricity prices and about a possible shortage of energy resources.

“Europe is paying a high price for the expensive natural gas it now has to buy,” said Lafazanis, adding that Europe itself is entirely responsible for the consequences of its energy policy and shift to LNG.

What’s more interesting, some European countries are continuing to buy Russia’s energy commodities nonetheless, Stepan noted.

“For example, Russian LNG is bought by France, the Netherlands, Belgium, Spain and, of course, the United States are continuing to buy Russian LNG,” Stepan said. “The same applies to Russian oil. The UK claims it does not import anything from Russia, and suddenly there is news in the newspapers that several tankers with Russian oil will arrive in Britain (…) It turns out that there’s a double standard approach: on the one hand, politicians issue statements, and on the other hand, in practice, governments pretend that they know nothing about their companies continuing to import Russian raw materials, or they themselves violate their regulations.”

The allegations that Russia “weaponized” its energy supplies repeatedly voiced by western politicians look ridiculous to say the least, according to Sputnik’s interlocutors.

Moreover, Europe’s energy crisis started long before the Russian special operation in Ukraine, which is routinely cited as one of the causes behind spiking gas prices, according to Mehmet Dogan, a Turkish energy expert and CEO of energy consulting agency GazDay.

“Even before the aggravation of the situation in Ukraine, everyone was talking about the threat of an energy crisis,” Dogan told Sputnik. “Gas prices skyrocketed even before the outbreak of hostilities.”

“The gas crisis in Europe began even before the escalation in Ukraine. It was based on a sharp rise in prices for blue fuel. But European countries have tried to make Russia and Putin responsible for this crisis,” echoed Turkish energy expert Volkan Aslanoglu, stressing that Habeck’s recent statement appears to be completely detached from reality.

Russia Supplying EU Despite Sanctions & Military Aid to Kiev

There is yet another aspect to the ongoing debate that is rarely touched upon, according to Alexey Fenenko. The Russian academic considers Habeck’s remark about the blocking of the “gas valve” by Russia strange, given the intention of the EU to defeat the Russian Federation in an economic war.

Moreover, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz made it clear at the latest World Economic Forum in Davos that to end the conflict in Ukraine Russia’s special military operation “must fail.” To that end, Germany and other western countries provide the Kiev regime with heavy weapons as long as needed, according to Scholz.

Indeed, the German media has reported that Berlin is now planning to send its Leopard 2 tanks to Kiev, something that the German leadership had been previously reluctant to do. Earlier this month, Berlin vowed to supply Ukraine with armored personnel carriers and a Patriot missile battery. In addition, on January 15, expanded combat training of Ukrainian forces kicked off in Germany, according to the US press.

European leaders have stepped up supplies of weapons to Kiev since the beginning of Russia’s special military operation with prominent leaders rubbishing the idea of a diplomatic solution to the conflict, rather claiming that it should be sorted out on the battlefield.

All this time, despite the EU’s bellicose rhetoric and their de facto participation in the Russo-Ukrainian conflict, Russia’s energy producers continued to observe their obligations and supply Europe with natural gas, oil and petroleum products.

Russia is still warming up the Old Continent, be it direct oil and gas exports or ensuring the flow of energy carriers through its territory, energy expert Milos Zdravkovic told Sputnik. Moscow is signaling openness and readiness to provide Europe with energy, even though Russia has enough lucrative opportunities in Asia.

European Gamble Doesn’t Bode Well

Meanwhile, EU economic prospects don’t look good, according to Zdravkovic. He noted that the EU does not know what energy prices will be in the foreseeable future both for heating and the needs of industry. European goods are set to become much more expensive than those produced by Asians and Americans due to turbulent gas costs. This will adversely affect the economy of Europe, Zdravkovic warned.

“Europe consumed at least 500 billion cubic meters (bcm) a year,” Zdravkovic explained. “Its consumption grew by about 10 bcm per year.”

In 2021, the EU imported 83% of its natural gas with Russia delivering over 40% of this volume. Given that, it’s impossible to swiftly replace Russia’s gas with LNG supplies, according to Zdravkovic.

“The capacity of the total fleet of LNG tankers and all terminals on our planet, on all continents, is 400 bcm,” the Serbian energy expert noted, adding that European leaders shouldn’t expect that these volumes will all go to the Old Continent.

Moreover, a complete shift to American LNG would require building the appropriate infrastructure, according to Alexey Fenenko. One should also add fuel costs for tankers which will carry LNG from the US to Europe when supplies become regular. All these costs will make energy pretty expensive for Europeans, the Russian scholar remarked.

Of course, European countries could also switch to coal and nuclear energy, but it will take at least ten years for them to reorient to these sources of energy, Fenenko added.

“Every cloud has its silver lining,” said Zdravkovic. “I am convinced that at the end of this crisis (…), no one will ever be able to force large European economies, EU civilians and inhabitants of [the Old Continent] to join such a gamble again. I think this will definitely never happen again and that in the future there will be much more cooperation.”

January 25, 2023 Posted by | Economics, Russophobia | , , | Leave a comment

Will the Bundeswehr special fund be increased to 300 billion euros?

Free West Media | January 25, 2023

In the spring of 2022, in response to the war in Ukraine, the German government launched the so-called “Bundeswehr special fund”. For the sum of 100 billion euros, the Bundeswehr was going to be modernized and decades of neglect in equipping the troops would be corrected.

But months later there is still nothing happening. It was only at the beginning of January that the Federal Ministry of Defense announced that eight procurement and modernization projects had now been launched, but it will take years for them to be implemented.

At the same time, it has long been apparent that the 100 billion euros set by the government will not be nearly enough. The current Parliamentary Commissioner for the Armed Forces, Eva Högl (SPD), is therefore going all out: She wants the “special fund” to be increased from 100 to 300 billion euros. With revealing openness, Högl also let the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung (FAS) know what the money should be used for: not for the modernization of the Bundeswehr, but for even more support for Ukraine, and which “cannot be done without new production capacities”.

Högl is thus passing on the official NATO course unfiltered to German taxpayers. Only recently, NATO Secretary General Stoltenberg emphasized that armaments production must increase “in order to replenish the Allies’ stocks and to ensure that we can continue to supply Ukraine for a long time”. The conflict “is consuming a tremendous amount of ammunition and devouring our stockpiles”.

German Leopard tanks to Ukraine

With its reserved position on the issue of German main battle tank deliveries to Ukraine, the German government under Chancellor Scholz has aroused the intense displeasure of its alleged NATO “partners”. In Washington, in particular, there is open indignation. According to one report, a meeting of the US Secretary of Defense at the Chancellery was “tense”.

During Lloyd Austin’s visit to Berlin and the US Air Force base in Ramstein on Thursday and Friday, US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin tried in vain to persuade Germany to at least grant export permits for third countries. This was reported by the Süddeutsche Zeitung, citing an internal report from American government circles. According to the report, Austin got into a heated argument with Chancellor Wolfgang Schmidt during his visit to the Federal Chancellery.

The meeting came about because the new Defense Minister, Pistorius, was only sworn in on Thursday and the arms export decision is being made in the Chancellery and by Chancellor Olaf Scholz anyway. The meeting between Schmidt and Austin was “tense”. The media report was denied by government circles. “We cannot confirm the report – neither in tone nor in content,” said Reuters information from Berlin.

Reports that the German government would only be willing to supply Leopard tanks to Ukraine if the US in turn supplied Abrams main battle tanks, are said to have been the last straw.

According to the report, Austin received this information on the way to Berlin. The White House then intervened with unusual severity: US Security Advisor Jake Sullivan called the Chancellery and spoke to Scholz’s foreign policy advisor, Jens Plötner. According to the Süddeutsche Zeitung, Sullivan read the Germans the riot act – a formulation that describes a particularly harsh confrontation in diplomatic circles.

The American side confirmed that there could be no joint delivery of Abrams and Leopard main battle tanks, citing a “delay”. Austin pointed out that moving and operating the Abrams would be too costly and time consuming. In this context, the US Secretary of Defense also emphasized that the US had already delivered far more armaments than Germany, including explosive devices that could hit Crimea.

January 25, 2023 Posted by | Militarism | , , , | Leave a comment

Germany ‘at war’ with Russia – FM

RT | January 25, 2023

Arguing in favor of sending tanks to Kiev, German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock said EU countries were fighting a war against Russia. US and EU officials have previously gone out of their way to claim they were not a party to the conflict in Ukraine.

“And therefore I’ve said already in the last days – yes, we have to do more to defend Ukraine. Yes, we have to do more also on tanks,” Baerbock said during a debate at the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) on Tuesday. “But the most important and the crucial part is that we do it together and that we do not do the blame game in Europe, because we are fighting a war against Russia and not against each other.”

While Chancellor Olaf Scholz has insisted that Germany ought to support Ukraine but avoid direct confrontation with Russia, his coalition partner Baerbock has taken a more hawkish position. According to German media, her Green Party has been in favor of sending Leopard 2 tanks to Kiev, and eventually managed to pressure Scholz into agreeing. Defense Minister Christine Lambrecht, who was reluctant to send tanks to Ukraine, was pushed to resign.

This is not the first time Baerbock has made waves with her position on the conflict. She told an EU gathering in Prague last August that she intends to deliver on her promises to Ukraine “no matter what my German voters think.”

Quoting Baerbock’s words on Wednesday, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said the West just keeps admitting that they had been planning the current conflict for years.

“If we add this to Merkel’s revelations that they were strengthening Ukraine and did not count on the Minsk agreements, then we are talking about a war against Russia that was planned in advance. Don’t say later that we didn’t warn you,” Zakharova said.

Former German chancellor Angela Merkel told German media in early December that the 2014 ceasefire brokered by Berlin and Paris was actually a ploy to “give Ukraine valuable time” for a military build-up. Former French president Francois Hollande has confirmed this, while Ukraine’s leader at that time, Pyotr Poroshenko, openly admitted it as well.

Russia’s operation in Ukraine was a “forced and last-resort response to preparations for aggression by the US and its satellites,” former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev said on Monday.

January 25, 2023 Posted by | Militarism, Russophobia | , | 3 Comments

Are demands that Scholz green-light export of Leopard 2 tanks more about hurting Germany than helping Ukraine?

eugyppius: a plague chronicle | January 22, 2023

In 1952, Hastings Ismay famously remarked that the purpose of NATO is “to keep the Russians out, the Americans in and the Germans down,” and the war in Ukraine has made it very hard to doubt that he was wrong.

From the Neue Zürcher Zeitung:

The Ukraine needs battle tanks to defend itself against the Russian onslaught. But Chancellor Olaf Scholz has hesitated to provide them. For this reason, he’s come under massive pressure from many allies. [German Defence Minister Boris] Pistorius explained why Germany is still hesitating with two sentences: There are good reasons for delivering the tanks, and good reasons against doing so. All arguments have to be weighed carefully …

When American Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin appeared before the press in Ramstein shortly after Pistorius, he was asked whether Germany was doing its part as a leading European power. Austin couldn’t help smiling, but then he replied that Germany was doing enough and that it was a “reliable ally”. He ought to know exactly what Pistorius meant, in speaking of good reasons for and good reasons against providing tanks to Ukraine. The reasons in favour are military in nature: Without tanks, the Ukraine cannot defend itself.

The German government has been rather more evasive about the reasons against. The German defence industry is concerned that the Americans will replace the [German-manufactured European] Leopards with their own tanks. The war in Ukraine offers the United States the opportunity to displace German competition and secure a foothold in the European defence market by supplying its own armoured vehicles, as it has already done with helicopters, fighter jets and missiles.

Years of peace in Europe, an ageing population and a corresponding focus on expensive social programmes have caused Germany to put its defence industry into near-hibernation. Only a little over 2,000 Leopard 2s have ever seen the light of day. Each one is a hand-built machine that takes two years to make. If Germany permits the export of the European supply of Leopard 2s to Ukraine, the Russians will grind them to nothing within months, and then Europe will have no tanks except the tanks that the Americans sell them:

Defence industry representatives, who wish to remain anonymous, report that the Americans are offering their own used tanks as replacements to [European] countries able to supply Leopard 2s to Ukraine, together with a long-term industrial partnership. Any country that accepts the American offer would be hard to win back for the German tank industry. Berlin’s influence in armament policy would decrease correspondingly.

Tanks are driven by men, who have to be trained in the operation of specific models. Their use moreover requires a whole supply chain of munitions and especially spare parts, which the Americans are eager to offer. The upshot is that, once Europe opts into American armour, it will never switch back, and Germany will be out of the game for good. Nor should we lend much credence to the idea that our very few tanks will make any difference either way for Ukraine’s prospects. The insistence that Scholz release the Leopard 2s is simply an attempt to edge Germany further out of the European arms industry and into a position of lesser political and economic influence in Europe, so that the United States can fill the gap.

Noah Carl, over at the Daily Sceptic, drew attention last week to remarks by the French intellectual Emmanuel Todd that “this war is about Germany”:

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Zbigniew Brzezinski called Eurasia the new “great chessboard” of world politics … The Russian nationalists and ideologues like Alexander Dugin indeed dream of Eurasia. It is on this “chessboard” that America must defend its supremacy – this is Brzezinski’s doctrine. In other words, it must prevent the rapprochement of Russia and China. The financial crisis of 2008 made it clear that with reunification Germany had become the leading power in Europe and thus also a rival of the United States. Until 1989, it had been a political dwarf. Now Berlin let it be known that it was willing to engage with the Russians. The fight against this rapprochement became a priority of American strategy. The United States had always made it clear that they wanted to torpedo [Nord Stream 2]. The expansion of NATO in Eastern Europe was not primarily directed against Russia, but against Germany. Germany, which had entrusted its security to America, became the Americans’ target [in the destruction of the pipeline]. I feel a great deal of sympathy for Germany. It suffers from this trauma of betrayal by its protective friend – who was also a liberator in 1945.

After the anti-Russian sanctions regime and its clear deindustrialising effects on the German economy, followed by the attack on the Baltic Nord Stream pipelines, and even smaller things, such as the high-profile anti-industry protests by the American-funded activist group Letzte Generation, I am willing to believe many conspiratorial things about the Ukraine war.

Still, I think Todd’s thesis is overdrawn. This war is about Russia primarily, and about Germany only secondarily. It’s an attempt of the Global American Empire to hem in Russia via an extended proxy campaign. In the longer term, this effort will require that Europe remain an American outpost, as it was during the Cold War, and this means the economic and political influence of Germany must be sharply curtailed. America – and not Germany – must dominate the Continent. The Scholz government has gone very far in making concessions to the Americans, but he appears to have finally drawn a line of sorts, at giving the Americans a pretence to sell their tanks in Europe. It will be important to see whether he can hold out.

January 23, 2023 Posted by | Economics, Militarism | , | 1 Comment

German electricity to be rationed as EVs and heat pumps threaten collapse of local power grids

Net Zero Watch | January 19, 2023

The Federal Network Agency is planning to ration the power supply to heat pumps and EV charging stations in order to protect the distribution grids from collapse. Charging times of three hours to charge electric cars will be allowed so that they can cover a distance of 50 kilometers.

Electric cars, heat pumps and private solar systems are booming. This is pushing the power grids in cities and communities to their limits.

An expert quoted by the “FAZ” warns that the local power grids are in danger of becoming the bottleneck for the energy transition. According to estimates, expanding it would cost a three-digit billion amount.

The Federal Network Agency wants to ration electricity for consumers to prevent a collapse in supply.

Electric cars are booming, as are heat pumps and private solar systems on roofs. This should only be the beginning of the energy transition in Germany. But the energy industry is already warning that the local power grids in cities and communities are reaching their performance limits. This has been reported by the “Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung” (FAZ). According to the report, the Federal Network Agency is planning to temporarily ration the power supply to heat pumps and charging stations in order to protect the distribution grids from overload.

A year ago, the network agency confirmed a “network development plan” in which up to seven million heat pumps in households are expected for 2035. So far there have been around one million heat pump systems.

Enormous growth is also expected in electric vehicles. For large network operators such as Eon, the current figures are a challenge. “The applications for the connection of new systems are going through the roof, and we assume that the growth rates will continue to grow,” said Eon board member Thomas König. According to the “FAZ”, the electricity supplier registered around 100,000 new charging stations for electric cars in 2021.

Local power grids threatened to become the bottleneck for the energy transition, Krzysztof Rudion, professor at the Institute for Energy Transmission and High Voltage Technology at the TU Stuttgart, told the newspaper. “The expansion of the distribution network simply cannot keep up with the boom in heat pumps, electric cars and solar systems.”

In order to arm the distribution grids, between 100 and 135 billion euros would have to be invested in Germany in the next decade and a half, the FAZ reports, citing a new study by the management consultancy Oliver Wyman.

Full story (in German)
Translation Net Zero Watch

January 21, 2023 Posted by | Malthusian Ideology, Phony Scarcity | , | 1 Comment

Russian State Duma Speaker calls for Angela Merkel and François Hollande to be put on trial

VOLTAIRE NETWORK | JANUARY 19, 2023

Russian State Duma Speaker Vyacheslav Volodin has called for an international military trial, similar to the one held in Nuremberg, to prosecute former German Chancellor Merkel and former French President Francois Hollande.

“Confessions made by the representative of the Kiev regime and the former leaders of Germany and France should be used as evidence for an international military tribunal. These leaders plotted to start a world war with predictable consequences. And they deserve punishment for their crimes,” he said.

In an interview with Die Zeit, Angela Merkel asserted that she negotiated and signed the Minsk Accords not to make peace in Ukraine, but to give the Ukrainian military time to prepare for the current war [1]. François Hollande confirmed her declaration in an interview with Kyiv Independent [2].

International law considers “crimes against peace” to be more serious than crimes against humanity. However, the United Nations has never clearly defined what they actually are.

The non-application of the Minsk Accords prolonged the civil war in Ukraine for 8 years, causing at least 20,000 deaths.

Russia did not invade Ukraine, but launched a special military operation to enforce Security Council Resolution 2202; resolution validating the Minsk Accords.

[1] “Hatten Sie gedacht, ich komme mit Pferdeschwanz?“, Tina Hildebrandt und Giovanni di Lorenzo, Die Zeit, 7. Dezember 2022.

[2] “Hollande: ‘There will only be a way out of the conflict when Russia fails on the ground’“, Theo Prouvost, The Kyiv Independant, December 28, 2022.

January 21, 2023 Posted by | Militarism, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , , | 1 Comment

Germany, “standing atop a billion-dollar mountain of masks,” begins to incinerate the rapidly expiring surplus

eugyppius: a plague chronicle | January 20, 2023

From Welt :

Authorities have come up with a term that sounds at least halfway sane. They’re calling it “thermal reprocessing.” Four federal states now claim to have thermally reprocessed – or, in plain language, to have incinerated – a total of 17.25 million expired Corona masks.

Baden-Württemberg has destroyed 6.1 million masks, Saxony 5.5 million, North Rhine-Westphalia 5 million, and Mecklenburg-Vorpommern 656,000 …

The Federal Ministry of Health (BMG) in Berlin has also “thermally recycled” masks in recent months. The number so far is “less than one million units,” a spokesperson said … The destroyed masks were purchased during the peak of the pandemic, and have exceeded their expiration date …

The federal and state governments are currently standing atop a billion-dollar mountain of masks. According to information provided by the Ministry of Health in September, there are a total of 3.7 billion masks in the federal inventory … The federal states have have an additional 180 million Corona masks at their disposal …

The states want to burn even more masks, but for the moment they’re not allowed, because much of the surplus in their possession is technically federal property. Thus they’ve begun begging the government to take the masks back:

“The Interior ministry of Hesse, together with many ministries of other states, have turned to the federal government with an urgent request to either take back their unusable masks … or grant permission for their destruction…” says a spokesperson. Unfortunately, the federal government has not yet agreed. “The Federal Ministry of Health has referenced uncertainties in customs law that the government has not yet been able to clarify.”

I’m going to go out on a limb here, and say the Scholz government is reluctant to write off the masks purely because of the negative publicity it’ll generate. I can’t imagine how customs regulations would prevent the Health Ministry from destroying its own expiring property.

Karsten Klein, chairman of the FDP faction in the Bundestag Budget Committee, has criticised the previous government’s over-procurement: “The coalition has inherited a hugely expensive mask mountain [Merkel health minister] Jens Spahn. As important as federal support for procuring masks was in 2020, under Spahn it led to literal frenzied buying that completely lost sight of actual demand” …

But we haven’t even gotten to the best part. The idiot pandemicists are still hoarding masks, even as they’re burning them:

… Additionally, the “National Health Protection Reserve is still stockpiling masks. The Reserve was established in mid-2020 by the Merkel government to prevent future shortages. According to the Ministry of Health, there are currently 245 million masks in the reserve, part of which will expire at the end of 2023.

Doubts about the usefulness of the Reserve are growing. In November, the Budget Committee called on the government to … examine “whether a federal physical stockpile for the health system is at all necessary or economical” …

For the taxpayer, mask procurement is very expensive. The costs at the federal level alone have totalled 5.8 billion Euros since the beginning of the pandemic.

It’s just so astounding, this entirely pointless and still ongoing mass delusion. Masks do nothing to stop infection, we have spent three years learning in excruciating detail that they do nothing to stop infection, we are now setting fire to millions of masks heedlessly purchased at the height of pandemic hysteria when there was every reason to expect that masks would do nothing to stop infection, and still we’re pouring millions of Euros into some kind of retarded national strategic mask reserve that will also surely be incinerated in the coming years because masks do nothing to stop infection. Even more unfathomable is this ridiculous fiction that useless products which do nothing can ever “expire.” What is the fear, that expired masks will do even more of nothing than new masks?

Everything about Corona is such a multifaceted ridiculous farce.

January 20, 2023 Posted by | Science and Pseudo-Science | , | 2 Comments

US and allies must address Russia’s security concerns and their past deceptions on Donbass, the Kremlin says

RT | January 20, 2023

US-Russia relations are at their lowest point ever amid the crisis in Ukraine, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Friday. As the conflict deteriorates, the only way to reverse it is for Western nations to acknowledge their mistakes and change their policies, he added.

Despite initial hopes that under President Joe Biden the US would engage Russia diplomatically, the last two years “have been very bad for our bilateral relations,” the official told journalists. They are now “probably at their lowest point, historically” he added, and “there is no hope for improvement anytime soon.”

The Ukraine hostilities – the focus of the confrontation between Russia and Western nations – are in “an upward spiral” according to Peskov.

“We can see a growing indirect, and sometimes direct involvement of NATO nations in this conflict,” he stated. The nations that back Kiev are acting under “a delusion that Ukraine has any chance to win on the battlefield,” he explained.

Asked how the vicious circle could be broken, Peskov suggested that the US and its allies had to mentally turn the clock back to the end of 2021, “when Russia was suggesting a discussion of its concerns at the negotiations table” only to be dismissed.

Western repentance for its “cynicism” was also in order, he added.

“Germany, France and Ukraine were playing a swindle game with the Minsk agreements. Now is payback time,” he said, referring to the roadmap for Ukraine reconciliation, which the three nations signed with Russia in 2015.

Angela Merkel, Francois Hollande and Pyotr Poroshenko, the leaders at the time of Germany, France and Ukraine respectively, have since stated that the deal they negotiated with Russia was meant to give Kiev time to rebuild its military.

Moscow considers these admissions to be evidence that the negotiations were conducted in bad faith and that the Ukrainian government and its backers had always intended for the Minsk agreements to fail and for the Donbass standoff to be resolved by military means. Russia claimed that its military campaign in Ukraine launched last February preempted an offensive planned by Kiev with NATO’s help.

Ukraine, Germany, and France “lied to the people of Donbass, as they had a terrible fate planned for them, which Russia prevented,” Peskov explained.

January 20, 2023 Posted by | Militarism | , , , , , | Leave a comment

Famous French Historian: “This War is About Germany”

BY NOAH CARL | THE DAILY SCEPTIC | JANUARY 18, 2023

Historian Emmanuel Todd is one of France’s leading public intellectuals. At the age of just 25, he predicted the collapse of the Soviet Union in his book The Final Fall: An Essay on the Decomposition of the Soviet Sphere. Later in his career, he carried out pioneering work on family structure and how it impacts societal development.

Now at the age of 71, Todd doesn’t seem to mind ruffling feathers – as his remarks in a recent interview with Swiss magazine Weltwoche make clear. “I’ll give you the first interview because you write in German,” he begins by saying. “This war is about Germany.”

About Germany? What does he mean? Todd explains:

The financial crisis of 2008 made it clear that with reunification Germany became the leading power in Europe and thus also a rival of the USA. Until 1989 it was politically a dwarf. Now Berlin showed its willingness to get involved with the Russians. Combating this rapprochement became a priority of American strategy. The United States had always made it clear that they wanted to torpedo the gas agreement. The expansion of NATO in Eastern Europe was not primarily directed against Russia, but against Germany.

Asked who sabotaged the Nord Stream pipelines, Todd replies, “Of course the Americans. But that is completely unimportant. It is normal.” The important question is, “How can a society believe that it could have been the Russians?”

“We are dealing here with an inversion of possible reality,” says Todd. “The newspapers tell us how the Russians are shooting at prisons they have occupied. That they shoot at nuclear power plants that they control locally. That they blow up pipelines that they built themselves.”

It’s clear, then, that Todd subscribes to the theory I first discussed back in August: that the U.S. deliberately provoked conflict between Russia and Ukraine to sabotage the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, thereby ending (or at least severely curtailing) Russo-European interdependence.

Unfortunately, Todd doesn’t provide any specific evidence to back up his provocative claims. So the theory remains speculative. Of course, this doesn’t mean we should accept the conventional narrative that America just really cares about democracy.

So what, in Todd’s view, should be done? “I wish the Germans would understand: The side of the good they want to be on this time is not that of the United States,” he says. “The good means: end this war.”

While Todd certainly represents a minority viewpoint among Western intellectuals, as he himself acknowledges, it’s still worth considering.

January 18, 2023 Posted by | Economics, Militarism | , , | Leave a comment

Betrayed by a friend – French historian outlines German-US dilemma

Free West Media | January 14, 2023

The French sociologist, historian and publicist Emmanuel Todd spoke in an interview with a Swiss weekly magazine about an interim assessment of the current East-West conflict. He also commented in detail on the situation in Germany, whose sovereignty has almost completely disappeared under the tutelage of the US.

Asked for an overall assessment by Weltwoche, Todd first noted that the US was in many respects on the decline, while Russia is doing better than Western media coverage suggested.

According to Todd: “The US withdrew from Afghanistan and Iraq. They could not stop the rise of Iran. Just as little as that of China. The Saudis no longer take the US seriously. In America, mortality is rising and life expectancy is falling. All the newspapers are writing: the West is normal and Putin is insane. The Russians are bloodthirsty monsters. Demographics say otherwise: Russia has become more stable and its society more civilized.”

The Europeans find themselves in a particularly regrettable position in the current conflict – they are practically defenseless and beyond that without orientation: “They have lost their geopolitical thinking. Between the offensive strategy of the Americans and the defensive strategy of the Russians, the Europeans are in a breathtaking state of mental confusion.”

This applies not least to the Germans, who are currently having to awaken from the illusion that they are being protected by the US. In reality, they are the main victims of US geopolitics, according to Todd. Washington has not forgiven Berlin for relying on cheap Russian gas to supply its industry and for striving for a rapprochement with Russia.

“The fight against this rapprochement became a priority of American strategy. The USA had always made it clear that they wanted to torpedo the gas agreement. The expansion of NATO in Eastern Europe was not primarily directed against Russia, but against Germany. Germany, which had entrusted its security to America, became a target for the Americans. I feel a lot of sympathy for Germany”.

Besides, the Germans “know only too well that Nord Stream was destroyed by the Americans. Through a joint military action by the Americans, British and Poles. Against Germany. But they can’t tell.”

Against this background, Todd, who dedicated a much-noticed “obituary” to the USA back in 2002, considered German China policy under Chancellor Scholz to be one of the last domains of an independent German policy: “Scholz traveled to Beijing. Germany refuses to cut the cord off from China.”

Europe as a whole is now coming under increasing American control and is also suffering from its devastating demographics. But even Russia, although it has rejected Western “values”, is not in a better position demographically. “In Ukraine they are at war with each other. If it’s not stopped, everyone will lose,” warned Todd.

The French publicist and scholar graduated from the Institut d’études politiques de Paris and received his PhD in history from Cambridge. From 1977 to 1984 he was literary critic for the French newspaper Le Monde. Since then he has been working at the Institut national d’études démographiques.

Predicting the fall of the US Empire

Todd attracted attention in 1976 when, at age 25, he predicted the fall of the Soviet Union, based on indicators such as increasing infant mortality rates: La chute finale: Essais sur la décomposition de la sphère Soviétique [The Final Fall: An Essay on the Decomposition of the Soviet Sphere].

In a later book After the Empire: The Breakdown of the American Order (2001), Todd argued that many indices that he had examined (economic, demographic and ideological) showed both that the United States has outlived its status as sole superpower, and that much of the rest of the world is becoming “modern” (declining birth rates etc.) far more rapidly than predicted.

Todd outlined the fundamental weaknesses of the United States to conclude that, contrary to American conventional wisdom, America is fast losing its grip on the world stage in economic, military and ideological terms.

Controversially, he proposed that many US foreign policy moves were designed to mask what he sees as the redundancy of the United States. In his analysis, Putin’s Russia emerges as probably a more trustworthy partner in today’s world than the US.

In late 2002, he believed that the world was about to repeat the same mistake that it had made in regard to the Soviet Union during the 1970s – misinterpreting an expansion in US military activity as a sign of its increasing power, when in fact this aggression masks a decline.

According to him, the United States became an empire not by strategy but by accident, following the sudden collapse of its main adversary, the Soviet Union. With the globalization of investment, it then indulged in the luxury of conspicuous consumption using incoming capital while going deeper and deeper into debt.

In reality America is like a crumbling Roman Empire – overextended with excessive arms spending, inequality and disgruntlement at home. To keep the rest of the world in line, and prevent its creditors calling in their debts, all America needs to do then is to wield a big stick.

“The real America is too weak to take on anyone except military midgets,” Todd believes. This is why there is such hostility to states such as North Korea, Cuba, and Iraq, an underdeveloped country of 24 million exhausted by a decade of sanctions. Such “conflicts that represent little or no military risk” allow a US presence throughout the world.

Further, the “theatrical media coverage… must not blind us to a fundamental reality: the size of the opponent chosen by the US is the true indicator of its current power”. Todd argued that America would be incapable of challenging a more powerful country, and that “only one threat to global stability hangs over the world today – the United States itself, which was once a protector and is now a predator.”

Todd is above all a demographer, and he bases much of his opinion on statistical elements. Therefore, Todd notes some disturbing American trends, such as rising stratification based on educational credentials, and the “obsolescence of irreformable political institutions”.

January 14, 2023 Posted by | Economics, Militarism, Timeless or most popular | , , | Leave a comment

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