Aletho News

ΑΛΗΘΩΣ

The Sacking of Germany after World War II

By John Wear | Inconvenient History | December 14, 2020

The devastation of Germany by total warfare during World War II cast serious doubt on Germany’s postwar ability to survive. Never before in history had a nation’s life-sustaining resources been so thoroughly demolished. Returning from victory in Europe, Gen. Omar Bradley stated, “I can tell you that Germany has been destroyed utterly and completely.”[1]

Despite soothing words from Allied leaders at the Yalta and Potsdam Conferences, it soon became evident to the Germans that the Allies did not arrive as liberators. Instead, the Allies arrived as conquerors as vengeful, greedy and ruthless as any who had ever won a war. This article documents the plundering and destruction of Germany that continued after the end of World War II.

The Plunder of Germany

The Red Army began the plunder of Europe as soon as it entered Germany in 1944. Soviet looting in the Russian Zone became prodigious after the end of the war. Factories, refineries, processing mills, and other heavy industrial installations were taken apart and sent east to the Soviet Union to be reassembled. All secondary rail lines, electric and steam locomotives and their rolling stock were sent to the Soviet Union. The plants that were left in Germany were operated by Germans solely for the benefit of the Soviet Union.[2]

Red Army soldiers joined the Soviet government in pillaging Germany on a massive scale. A woman from Silesia wrote:

The Russians systematically cleared out everything that was for them of value, such as all sewing machines, pianos, grand-pianos, baths, water taps, electric plants, beds, mattresses, carpets, etc. They destroyed what they could not take away with them. Trucks often stood for days in the rain, with the most valuable carpets and articles of furniture in them, until everything was completely spoiled and ruined…

If fuel was required, then whole woods were generally felled, or window-frames and doors were torn out of the empty houses, broken up on the spot, and immediately used for making fire. The Russians and Poles even used the staircases and banisters as firewood. In the course of time, even the roofs of houses were removed and used for heating… Empty houses, open, without window-panes, overgrown with weeds and filth, rats and mice in uncanny numbers, unharvested fields, land which had been fertile, now completely overgrown with weeds and lying fallow. Not in a single village did one see a cow, a horse or a pig… The Russians had taken everything away to the east, or used it up.[3]

The Russians destroyed much of what was not looted. A German woman describes what she saw when she found her way home at the end of the war:

We have been warned by others who have witnessed signs of Russian occupancy to expect bedlam and to abandon our hopeless mission altogether. Thus, we expect the worst, but our idea of the worst has not prepared us sufficiently for reality. Shocked to the point of collapse, we survey a battlefield—heaps of refuse through which broken pieces of furniture rise like cliffs; stench gags us, almost driving us to retreat. Ragged remnants of clothes, crushed dishes, books, pictures torn from frames–rubble in every room. We can’t look into the dining room because it is locked. Above all, the nauseating stench that emanates from the largest and totally wrecked living room! Spoiled contents ooze from splintered canning jars, garbage of indefinable origin is mixed with unmistakable human excrement, and dried stain of urine discolors crumpled paper and rags. We wade into the dump with care and poke at some of all but unrecognizable belongings. Overcoming our revulsion, we penetrate to the lower layers and discover unharmed books, loose photographs, bundles of old letters, odd pieces of silverware, an occasional unbroken dish.[4]

Soviet soldiers were awed by the abundance of material goods in Germany. The great number of automobiles, tractors, motorcycles, bicycles, stoves, radios and other common goods were beyond the comprehension of many Soviet soldiers. One Russian soldier commented that there was more to be taken out of one house in Germany than in a typical village in the Soviet Union. Another Soviet soldier admitted: “All of us, officers and men, saw the riches and prosperity of a capitalist country and couldn’t believe our eyes. We had never believed there could be such an abundance of goods.” This German material abundance was either looted or destroyed by the Red Army.[5]

Even in its ruined state, Berlin was the paragon of wealth to the Russians. The Russians stole all of the bicycles they could find. Gramophones, wristwatches, light bulbs, and cigarette lighters were not only new to most Russian soldiers, but prized possessions to be collected. They also confiscated any liquor they could lay their hands on. Anything the Red Army did not steal they destroyed, including valuable antiques, musical instruments and elegant clothes.[6]

American soldiers also stole from the German people and let German children go hungry. American aviation hero Charles Lindbergh wrote:

At home our papers carry articles about how we “liberate” oppressed countries and peoples. Here, our soldiers use the word “liberate” to describe the method of obtaining loot. Anything taken from an enemy home or person is “liberated” in the language of the G.I. Leica cameras are “liberated” (probably the most desired item); guns, food, art. Anything taken without being paid for is “liberated.” A soldier who rapes a German woman has “liberated” her…

German children look in through the window. We have more food than we need, but regulations prevent giving it to them. It is difficult to look at them. I feel ashamed, of myself, of my people, as I eat and watch those children. They are not to blame for the war. They are hungry children. What right have we to stuff ourselves while they look on—well-fed men eating, leaving unwanted food on plates, while hungry children look on?… There is an abundance of food in the American Army, and few men seem to care how hungry the German children are outside the door.[7]

Reporter William H. Stoneman of the Chicago Daily News was shocked by the vandalism and looting of American troops. Stoneman, who was stationed with the U.S. 3rd Army, wrote in May 1945:

I have been impressed by the careless manner in which the booty has been handled and the way in which great stocks of foodstuffs have been left to the reckless inroads of looters….

Millions of dollars worth of rare things varying from intricate Zeiss lenses to butter and cheese and costly automobiles are being destroyed because the Army has not organized a system for the recovery of valuable enemy material.

Frontline troops are rough and ready about enemy property. They naturally take what they find if it looks interesting, and, because they are in the frontlines, nobody says anything….

But what front-line troops take is nothing compared to the damage caused by wanton vandalism of some of the following troops. They seem to ruin everything, including the simplest personal belongings of the people in whose houses they are billeted.[8]

American Provost Marshal Lt. Col. Gerald F. Beane was assigned to deal with crimes committed by American soldiers. In an official report released in Berlin in late 1945, Beane stated that larceny and robbery were the crimes most-frequently committed by our soldiers. The Chicago Tribune commented on his report:

As to crimes committed against property, the explanation is fairly obvious. No effective steps were taken to discourage looting by the invading armies during the war. Officers and men alike committed this crime and for much the most part went unpunished. It was tolerated under some such euphemism as souvenir collecting. The habit of stealing, once formed, is difficult to break. The fault, of course, lies with the high command which permitted the abuse. Col. Beane’s pronouncement suggests that the army is tardily seeking to correct its error.[9]

Foreign workers and displaced persons also frequently plundered German property after the end of the war. Germans stood in fear as foreign workers “passed through the country looting, robbing and murdering.” Allied soldiers often looked on as foreign workers plundered German shops—something made easier when curfews were imposed on Germans but not on foreign workers. Displaced persons in Munich, who comprised 4% of the population, were held responsible for three-quarters of the crimes committed in the city. A priest in Görlitz wrote how after the war ended hordes of foreign workers had left the city littered with the debris from their looting.[10]

Theft in Germany after the war was not confined to petty larceny. Whole governments were involved in robbing Germany of anything of value. One Soviet priority was the seizure of important works of art found in Berlin and throughout Germany. This was a fully planned operation, with the artworks stolen by Soviet troops originally planned to be exhibited in a huge museum of war trophies. As world opinion changed against the Soviets after the war, they chose to conceal the artworks in special closed galleries throughout the Soviet Union. Many of the paintings remain hidden to this day.[11]

The British royal family also confiscated its share of German booty. For example, Hermann Göring’s yacht, the Karin II, ended up in the hands of the British royal family.[12] The British royal family commissioned Anthony Blunt, a Soviet spy, to travel to Hanover to take possession of the German crown jewels. Although the jewels later had to be returned to their rightful owners, some jewels were never recovered.[13]

While the United States did not take German plants and factories for itself, in partnership with Britain, it carried out a systematic campaign to root out all German contacts and assets located abroad. The plan was to eliminate German competition in world trade. Known as the “replacement program,” this campaign called for the forcible elimination of all accumulations of German capital abroad. The replacement program was designed to prevent Germany from ever again engaging in foreign commerce on an important scale.[14]

The United States also adopted the Safehaven Program, which denied to Germany the German capital investments located abroad when the war began. Pursuant to this program, the financial and corporate interests of German nationals located outside of Germany were either seized or subject to seizure. The external operation of the Safehaven Program forced Switzerland, Sweden, Spain and other countries to hand over to the United States their German-owned assets. The U.S. Justice Department also confiscated nearly a billion dollars’ worth of property in the United States believed to be owned by Germans, even though this property was held in the names of citizens of neutral countries such as Sweden and Switzerland.[15]

The Plunder of German Brains and Labor

Germany also experienced “mental dismantling” in that hundreds of German scientists were compelled to immigrate by the victors. One U.S. government agency quietly admitted that Operation Paperclip was the first time in history where conquerors had attempted to commandeer the inventive power of a nation. Life magazine added that the real gain in reparations of this war “was not in the confiscated factories, gold, or artworks, but in the German brains and in the German research results.”[16]

German chemist Otto Hahn wrote bitterly about the export of German scientists to foreign countries:

Most of the older professors leave Germany very unwillingly, because they feel that their place is here. Necessity compels them, because their livelihoods and working opportunities in their own country are taken away from them or else they are left in a constant state of fear of such an occurrence. All this, after our having experienced well enough what it means to replace competence with “politically irreproachable” dilettantes. But more depresses these men: the awareness that it is evidently not a matter of an honorable appointment to an independent American research institution or university of some rank but (at least according to the American press) forms a part of the “reparations.” Centuries ago, princes sent their countrymen away as plantation workers or soldiers. Today, scientists are exported.[17]

Bitterness is a word that appears frequently in the writings of German scientists after the war. Otto Hahn wrote in 1949: “It is certainly understandable that the factory dismantlings still taking place four years after the capitulation are being greeted with bitterness, particularly among the academic youth.”[18]

The Soviets also attempted to abduct or tempt away scientists and technicians who might be useful to them. The Nobel Prize-winning German physicist Gustav Hertz was taken to the Soviet Union to help the Soviets develop nuclear weapons. On October 21, 1945, a large number of skilled German workers, technicians and scientists were sent to the Soviet Union by train. The Western Allies made a weak protest, which the Russians simply ignored.[19]

Millions of Germans were also sent to the Soviet Union to be used as slave labor. The following report was published on June 29, 1945:

German prisoners in Russian hands are estimated to number from 4 to 5 million. When Berlin and Breslau surrendered, the long grey-green columns of prisoners were marched east downcast and fearful… toward huge depots near Leningrad, Moscow, Minsk, Stalingrad, Kiev, Kharkov, and Sevastopol. All fit men had to march some 22 miles a day. Those physically handicapped went in handcarts or carts pulled by spare beasts… They will be made to rebuild the Russian towns and villages which they destroyed. They will not return home until the work is completed.[20]

Some crippled and ailing Germans who survived the Russian slave labor camps were returned to Berlin, where they were interviewed by American correspondents. German Red Cross women on September 10, 1946 met a 20-car trainload of returning forced laborers from the Soviet Union. A professional nurse told their story:

They had been in the train almost a week traveling about 60 miles from Frankfurt-on-Oder. There had been deaths from starvation, not from starvation just during the ride, but from the hardships of the trip after months of malnutrition in Russian labor camps. Almost all of the 800 or 900 in the train were sick or crippled. You might say they were all invalids. With 40 to 50 packed in each of those little boxcars, the sick had to sleep beside the dead on their homeward journey. I did not count them but I am sure we removed more than 25 corpses. Others had to be taken to hospitals. I asked several of the men whether the Russian guards or doctors had done anything on the trip to care for the sick. They said “No.”

I met only one alert, healthy man in the lot and I have seen him since. He was just a kid of 17. The boy told me that prisoners leaving Russian camps for Germany are searched to prevent any from smuggling mail for their comrades. Therefore, when one of them has been diagnosed as a hopeless invalid, in anticipation of discharge he will memorize the names and addresses of relatives to whom he can report for his fellow prisoners. He said only prisoners in special favor are able to mail postcards to their nearest of kin. This kid of 17 has memorized 80 names and addresses in Berlin of relatives of his prison friends. He found the buildings at most of the addresses in rubble, with the present whereabouts of the former occupants unknown, but he visited all 80 addresses in his first six days in Berlin.[21]

If prisoners released by the Russians as unfit for further forced labor managed to recuperate, they were generally sent back to the Soviet Union to resume their slavery. Able-bodied Germans released in the British or American Zones and returned to their homes in the Soviet Zone were also typically sent to the Soviet Union for slave labor. The slightest disobedience in Russian camps was penalized by such heavy work that a third of the disobeyers died within three weeks from exhaustion. German prisoners being turned over to the Russians often committed suicide or tried to incapacitate themselves in order to avoid being sent to the Soviet slave-labor camps.[22]

According to the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), France had 680,000 former German soldiers slaving for her in August 1946. Of this number, 475,000 had been captured by the United States and turned over to the French for forced labor. After 320,000 German prisoners had been delivered, the French returned 2,474 of them to the United States because they were severely malnourished and unfit for work. Associated Press photographer Henry Griffin, who had taken pictures of the corpses piled in Buchenwald and Dachau, said of these returned Germans: “The only difference I can see between these men and those corpses is that here they are still breathing.”[23]

The ICRC reported that in August 1946, Great Britain was using 460,000 Germans as slave laborers; the United States 284,000; Yugoslavia 80,000; Belgium 48,000; Czechoslovakia 45,000; Luxembourg 4,000; and Holland 1,300. Keeping such large numbers of Germans away from their families (homes, livelihoods) was a direct attack against German homes and families, one by one. The ICRC condemned the Allied slave-labor system:

The United States, Britain, and France, nearly a year after peace, are violating International Red Cross agreements they solemnly signed in 1929.

Investigation at Geneva headquarters today disclosed that the transfer of German war prisoners captured by the American army to French and British authorities for forced labor is nowhere permitted in the statutes of the International Red Cross, which is the highest authority on the subject in the world.

Although thousands of the former German soldiers are being used in the hazardous work of clearing mine fields, sweeping sea mines, destroying surplus ammunition and razing shattered buildings, the Geneva Convention expressly forbids employing prisoners “in any dangerous labor or in the transport of any material used in warfare…”

“The American delivery of German prisoners to the French and British for forced labor already is being cited by the Russians as justification for them to retain German army captives for as long as they are able to work,” an International Red Cross official admitted. “The bartering of captured enemy soldiers by the victors throws the world back to the dark ages—when feudal barons raided adjoining duchies to replenish their human livestock.”[24]

Women, children and the aged also were forced by the Allies to perform labor. No job was too loathsome or degrading for the conquered Germans to be made to perform. Some work assignments were especially unpleasant, as one woman makes clear: “[A]s a result of the war damage… the toilets were stopped up and filthy. This filth we had to clear away with our hands, without any utensils to do so. The excrement was brought into the yard, shoveled into carts, which we had to bring to refuse pits. The awful part was that we got dirtied by the excrement which spurted up, but we could not clean ourselves.”[25]

Another German woman from the Soviet Zone added:

We had to build landing strips, and to break stones. In snow and rain, from six in the morning until nine at night, we were working along the roads. Any Russian who felt like it took us aside. In the morning and at night we received cold water and a piece of bread, and at noon soup of crushed, unpeeled potatoes, without salt. At night we slept on the floors of farmhouses or stables, dead tired, huddled together. But we woke up every so often, when a moaning and whimpering in the pitch-black room announced the presence of one of the guards.[26]

As this woman and others make clear, German women could be raped even when performing forced labor for the Allies. As one German woman who worked at planting potatoes said, “If they wanted a girl they just came in the field and got her.”[27]

Conclusion

U.S. President Harry Truman joined Gens. Eisenhower and Bradley on July 20, 1945 to watch the American flag officially being raised over the U.S. sector of Berlin. Speaking without notes, Truman told the American soldiers: “We are not fighting for conquest. There is not one piece of territory or one thing of a monetary nature that we want out of this war.”[28]

It is possible that President Truman believed these words when he spoke them. However, billions of dollars in gold, silver, currency, priceless paintings and art works were stolen from Germany and shipped to the United States. More-important, German patents and trademarks, complete drawings of German technological advances, and tons of secret documents were seized by the Allies. Hundreds of German scientists were compelled to immigrate to the United States. As one U.S. government agency admitted, “Operation Paper-Clip” was the first time in history wherein conquerors attempted to bleed dry the inventive power of an entire nation.[29]

Establishment historians claim that the American plunder of Germany was exonerated by the financial assistance the U.S. provided to Germany via the Marshall Plan. The Marshall Plan assistance, however, was mostly a loan, and Germany paid back this loan in full with interest in the succeeding years. By one estimate, the United States confiscated 10 times more German national wealth than the entire amount of Marshall Plan assistance.[30] James Bacque estimated that Americans took from Germany (permanently) at least 20 times the amount that Germans received (temporarily) under the Marshall Plan.[31] Marshall Plan assistance does not absolve the United States of the enormous crimes it committed against Germans after World War II.

Endnotes

[1] Keeling, Ralph Franklin, Gruesome Harvest: The Allies’ Postwar War against the German People, Torrance, Cal.: Institute for Historical Review, 1992, p. 1.

[2] Goodrich, Thomas, Hellstorm: The Death of Nazi Germany, 1944-1947, Sheridan, Colo.: Aberdeen Books, 2010, p. 280.

[3] Ibid., pp. 280-281.

[4] Shelton, Regina Maria, To Lose a War—Memories of a German Girl, Carbondale, Ill.: Southern Illinois University Press, 1982, p. 138.

[5] Goodrich, Thomas, Hellstorm: The Death of Nazi Germany, 1944-1947, Sheridan, Colo.: Aberdeen Books, 2010, pp. 152-154.

[6] MacDonogh, Giles, After the Reich: The Brutal History of the Allied Occupation, New York: Basic Books, 2007, pp. 96-98.

[7] Lindbergh, Charles, The Wartime Journals of Charles A. Lindbergh, New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc., 1970, pp. 953, 960-961, 989-990.

[8] Keeling, Ralph Franklin, Gruesome Harvest: The Allies’ Postwar War against the German People, Torrance, Cal.: Institute for Historical Review, 1992, pp. 42-43.

[9] Ibid., pp. 43-44. Quoted from Chicago Sunday Tribune, Nov. 18, 1945, p. 22.

[10] Bessel, Richard, Germany 1945: From War to Peace, London: Harper Perennial, 2010, pp. 165-166.

[11] MacDonogh, Giles, After the Reich: The Brutal History of the Allied Occupation, New York: Basic Books, 2007, p. 381.

[12] Ibid.

[13] Walsh, Michael, The Battle for Europe: Hidden Truths about the Second World War, East Sussex, United Kingdom: The Historical Review Press, 2012, p. 93.

[14] Keeling, Ralph Franklin, Gruesome Harvest: The Allies’ Postwar War against the German People, Torrance, Cal.: Institute for Historical Review, 1992, p. 53.

[15] Ibid., p. 54.

[16] Goodrich, Thomas, Hellstorm: The Death of Nazi Germany, 1944-1947, Sheridan, Colo.: Aberdeen Books, 2010, p. 282.

[17] Hentschel, Klaus, The Mental Aftermath: The Mentality of German Physicists, 1945-1949, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007, pp. 81-82.

[18] Ibid., p. 81.

[19] MacDonogh, Giles, After the Reich: The Brutal History of the Allied Occupation, New York: Basic Books, 2007, p. 391.

[20] Keeling, Ralph Franklin, Gruesome Harvest: The Allies’ Postwar War against the German People, Torrance, Cal.: Institute for Historical Review, 1992, pp. 19-20.

[21] Ibid., pp. 20-21.

[22] Ibid., pp. 21-22.

[23] Ibid., pp. 22-24.

[24] Ibid., pp. 25-28.

[25] Goodrich, Thomas, Hellstorm: The Death of Nazi Germany, 1944-1947, Sheridan, Colo.: Aberdeen Books, 2010, pp. 297-298.

[26] Ibid., p. 298.

[27] Ibid.

[28] Beschloss, Michael R., The Conquerors: Roosevelt, Truman and the Destruction of Hitler’s Germany, 1941-1945, New York: Simon & Schuster, 2002, p. 257.

[29] Goodrich, Thomas, Hellstorm: The Death of Nazi Germany, 1944-1947, Sheridan, Colo.: Aberdeen Books, 2010, p. 282.

[30] Schmidt, Hans, Hitler Boys in America: Re-Education Exposed, Pensacola, Fla.: Hans Schmidt Publications, 2003, pp. 266-267.

[31] Bacque, James, Crimes and Mercies: The Fate of German Civilians under Allied Occupation, 1944-1950, 2nd edition, Vancouver, British Columbia: Talonbooks, 2007, p. 167.

March 8, 2021 Posted by | Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , | Leave a comment

Russia calls on OPCW to unveil truth behind alleged 2018 chemical attack in Syria’s Douma

Press TV – March 7, 2021

Russia has called on the global chemical weapons watchdog, OPCW, to conduct an impartial and reliable investigation into an alleged chemical attack in the Syrian city of Douma near the capital Damascus on April 7, 2018.

Russia’s Permanent Representative to the OPCW, Alexander Shulgin underlined the need for launching a transparent technical inquiry aimed at clarifying the actual course of events in Douma in 2018,  Syria’s official news agency SANA reported on Sunday.

“Successful work at the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) will be impossible until trustworthy circumstances behind the incident in the Syrian town of Douma in April 2018 are established,” the Russian official said.

Shulgin added that this sad page could be over and an international dialogue could be built at the OPCW only after receiving reliable conclusions on the issue.

Moscow has for months cited dissent by two former OPCW employees who leaked a document and an email as evidence that the OPCW doctored the conclusions of a report which found that a toxic chemical containing chlorine was used in a 2018 attack near Damascus.

According to the Russian official, the results which the two inspectors have reached and the violations they have uncovered have undermined the Western allegations.

In late 2019, whistleblowing website WikiLeaks published several batches of documents suggesting that the OPCW may have intentionally doctored its findings, notably avoiding revelations which may point to terrorists having been behind the alleged chemical attack.

One of the published documents showed Sebastien Braha, chief of cabinet at the OPCW, had ordered in an email that “all traces” of a report from Henderson be erased from the body’s registries.

Ian Henderson had found out that the gas cylinders at the site of the Douma incident had been placed there manually most likely by militants given that the area was not controlled by Damascus at the time.

Following the suspected chemical attack, Western countries were quick to blame it on the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

On April 14, 2018, the US, Britain and France launched a coordinated missile attack against sites and research facilities near Damascus and Homs with the purported goal of paralyzing the Syrian government’s capability to produce chemicals.

Damascus, however, said that no chemical attack had happened and that the incident had been staged by foreign intelligence agencies to pressure the government in the face of army advances against militants back then.

The OPCW concluded that chlorine had most likely been used in the attack. However, Syria and Russia both rejected the findings, saying they believed the incident had been staged by the White Helmets, a group which claims to be a humanitarian NGO but has long been accused of working with anti-Damascus militants and staging false-flag gas attacks.

The Syrian government also surrendered its stockpiles of chemical weapons in 2014 to a joint mission led by the UN and the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), which oversaw the destruction of the weaponry. However, Western governments and their allies have never stopped pointing the finger at Damascus whenever an apparent chemical attack has taken place.

Syria has been gripped by foreign-backed militancy since March 2011. The Syrian government says the Israeli regime and its Western and regional allies are aiding Takfiri terrorist groups that are wreaking havoc in the country.

Syrian government forces have taken back many areas once controlled by the terrorist groups.

Russia on Wednesday also called for not politicizing and exploiting the work of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in Syria.

The IAEA in recent years has been investigating US claims that Syria allegedly tried to build a secret nuclear reactor at a remote desert site in Dayr al-Zawr in 2007, which no longer exists.

Syria and some other regional countries have time and again denounced the US and its Western allies for helping Israel develop its nuclear facilities and adopting double-standards on the issue of non-proliferation policies when it comes to Israel.

March 7, 2021 Posted by | Deception, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , , | Leave a comment

U.S.-made HIMARS missile systems in Romania aimed against Russian forces in Transnistria

By Paul Antonopoulos | March 5, 2021

The first batch of U.S.-made HIMARS multi-launch missile systems arrived in the Romanian Black Sea port of Constanța and is now a part of the national army. The first to receive the new missile system is the 81st Tactical Operational Missile Battalion, deployed in Focșani, about 70 kilometers from the border with Moldova.

HIMARS artillery missile systems are designed to attack areas with a concentration of artillery systems, air defenses, transport nodes and other major targets that are within a 300-kilometer range. Considering Romania borders Ukraine, Moldova, Bulgaria, Hungary and Serbia, the country has no enemies within the scope of HIMARS, bringing to question why it purchased such systems. It is difficult to explain why such a powerful weapon is deployed in eastern Romania, 220 kilometers from the Moldovan city of Tiraspol and 270 kilometers from the ammunition depot in Cobasna in the separatist region of Transnistria – which is internationally recognized as a part of Moldova.

It must be noted that the U.S. approved the sale of 20 HIMARS launchers, worth $655 million, to Poland. Romania received 54 launchers, more than double the amount of Poland, showing that the U.S. is prioritizing the Black Sea as a point of pressure against Russia – more so than the Baltics. Whereas the German Navy are present in the Baltics and the British can reach the area with relative ease, the Black Sea is effectively a “Russian lake,” particularly after Russia’s 2014 reunification with Crimea. NATO member states Turkey, Bulgaria and Romania do not have the capabilities to challenge the Russian Navy in the Black Sea, hence why Washington is also cooperating with Moldova, Ukraine and Georgia.

But the question still remains – why would Bucharest need 54 HIMARS launchers, more than the American artillery brigade has, and more than 10% of all such systems in the Pentagon’s arsenal?

It is excessive fire power for an army that has only 70,000, personnel and does not have the means to redeploy heavy weapons at a great distance. According to Firepower, Romania is ranked only 41st globally for their military power.

Hypothetically, in a war situation, the 41st U.S. Artillery Brigade could borrow the Romanian HIMARS systems and transport them to Georgia or Ukraine. At the end of 2020, U.S. ground forces conducted exercises to prepare for a “hi-tech war” in Romania. In a few hours they managed to transport by air two HIMARS systems from Germany to the Kogâlniceanu Air Base and launch several rockets towards the Black Sea – there is little doubt that the imagined target was Russian forces when we consider that it is only 400 kilometers between the Romanian coast and Russia. Although this is 100 kilometers less than the range of the HIMARS system, according to Forbes, the exercises were “a message for Moscow” and a “rocket surprise” for Russian forces in Crimea.

The political-military situation in the region is becoming increasingly tense, with Moldova coming within range of American weapons and soldiers based in Romania. According to the Constitution, the Republic of Moldova is a neutral state, but decisionmakers in the Moldovan capital of Chisinau and their Romanian counterparts in Bucharest concluded a military cooperation agreement in 2013, which de facto subordinates Moldovan troops to the Romanian General Staff and allows Romanian gendarmes to maintain “public order” in the country. With Romania effectively controlling Moldova’s security and President Maia Sandu pivoting her country towards NATO and the European Union, Chisinau could be a willing participant in the West’s sustained campaign to pressure Moscow.

Analysts at the Pentagon-affiliated RAND Corporation are examining how U.S. troops could enter Moldova to participate in military exercises and not leave, using the pretext of the so-called Russian threat. American maneuvers and armament in Eastern Europe not only threatens Russia, but serves to ensure that Romania and Baltic States stay loyal to Washington and against Moscow.

If the U.S. is successful in stationing troops in Moldova, they would effectively have new access to the Black Sea via the Port of Giurgiulești on the Danube River. In addition, U.S. troops would be within touching distance of the 1,500-strong Operational Group of Russian Forces in Transnistria, whose responsibilities include maintaining peace and guarding several tons of military equipment and ammunition in Cobasna.

Although the HIMARS system cannot reach Russia from Romania, it is likely that these missiles are aimed against Russian forces maintaining peace in Transnistria. 54 HIMARS in Romania’s arsenal demonstrates an escalation by Bucharest as it is clear that the excessive number of units is not for defensive purposes, especially considering the country’s cordial relations with its neighbors.

Paul Antonopoulos is an independent geopolitical analyst.

March 5, 2021 Posted by | Militarism | , , , , , | Leave a comment

Russia will take ‘tough measures’ against German media if Berlin impedes work of Russian journalists

RT | March 4, 2021

Moscow sees the closure of RT-affiliated companies’ accounts by a German bank as “political pressure” on Russia and will react in kind if the work of the Russian media in Germany is impeded, the Russian Foreign Ministry said.

“We consider such an openly hostile attitude … toward media, including the Russian ones, unacceptable,” Russia’s Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova told a news briefing on Thursday. She referred to the decision of the German Commerzbank to close the accounts of RT’s video agency Ruptly and RT DE Productions GmbH which runs the German-language website by May 31.

Such actions are an “element of political pressure” on journalists and they constitute a “violation of Germany’s commitment to protect the freedom of speech,” Zakharova said.

The Commerzbank decision came just about a month after RT announced its plans to launch a German-language TV channel later this year.

Zakharova said that it is such plans that apparently sparked an angry reaction among the “anti-Russian” forces within the German media and establishment and have led to what she described as a “persecution” campaign.

“All actions of the Russian broadcaster were legally valid. Therefore, such a primitive approach apparently was chosen to obstruct its work.”

RT has been trying to find a replacement for Commerzbank, but several financial institutions have either ignored RT’s inquiries or refused to open accounts on its behalf.

The Russian Foreign Ministry has called on Berlin to stop obstructing the work of Russian journalists in Germany and lift all restrictions imposed against the Russian media. “Otherwise, we will have to take tough reciprocal measures against German media working in Russia,” Zakharova warned.

Russia has its own concerns about the work of the German media and German journalists on its territory, Zakharova noted. She added, though, that all such issues are resolved in accordance with the law and on the basis of “mutual respect” and dialogue.

“We would very much like to see Germany doing the same,” the Russian Foreign Ministry’s spokeswoman added.

March 4, 2021 Posted by | Progressive Hypocrite, Russophobia | , | Leave a comment

Russia triples gas supplies to China via Power of Siberia pipeline

RT | March 1, 2021

Russia’s energy major Gazprom said on Monday that it had pumped more gas to China in February via the Power of Siberia pipeline than it had initially planned, more than tripling supplies compared to the same month last year.

“The export of gas to China through the Power of Siberia gas pipeline continues to grow. Supplies regularly exceed our daily contractual obligations. The actual monthly volume of supplies in February is 3.2 times more than in February 2020,” Gazprom said in a statement.

The 3,000km (1,864 mile) cross-border pipeline started official deliveries of Russian natural gas to China in 2019. The so-called eastern route’s capacity is 61 billion cubic meters of gas per year, including 38 billion cubic meters for export. Last year, Gazprom supplied 4.1 billion cubic meters of gas to China via the Power of Siberia. It plans to boost exports by an additional six billion cubic meters.

The agreement on gas supplies via the Power of Siberia pipeline was reached in 2014, with Gazprom and the China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC) inking a 30-year contract. It is Gazprom’s biggest-ever agreement and the first natural gas pipeline between Russia and China.

Russia is set to further increase supplies of piped gas to China, including via the Power of Siberia 2 project. This second pipeline entered the design stage last year, and will be capable of delivering as much as 50 billion cubic meters of gas once it’s finished. Gazprom intends to become China’s biggest natural gas supplier, accounting for more than 25 percent of Chinese imports by 2035.

March 2, 2021 Posted by | Economics | , | Leave a comment

US seizes UN aid allocated for Rukban refugees, distributes it among terrorists: Russia, Syria

Press TV – March 1, 2021

Syrian and Russian officials have warned that the United States is exploiting the deteriorating humanitarian situation at the Rukban refugee camp to seize UN aid consignments and distribute it among allied Takfiri militants after it turned the camp, located close to Syria’s border with Jordan, into a center for training terrorists.

“As usual, the United States hopes to acquire the aid in order to support terrorist groups operating under its command in the vicinity of al-Rukban camp. The camp has indeed become a seedbed for training extremist terrorists,” the Russian and Syrian Joint Coordination Committees on Repatriation of Syrian Refugees said in a joint statement.

The statement further noted that the US continues to impede all efforts aimed at the closure of the camp, prevents return of its residents to areas liberated from the grips of Takfiri terrorists and does not allow the life there to return to normal.

The joint committees then reiterated the Damascus government’s readiness to receive all Rukban camp residents, who are taken hostage by the US and its terrorist mercenaries, ensure their security, and provide them with decent living conditions.

This is not the first time that aid cargos delivered by the UN and the Syrian Arab Red Crescent to al-Rukban are seized by Us forces or US-backed militants.

Russia and Syria have on numerous occasions also criticized the US for blocking aid deliveries to the refugee camp.

The Rukban camp, described by Russian and Syrian authorities as the “death camp,” is reportedly home to some 25,000 internally-displaced Syrians, mostly women and children.

Just a handful of humanitarian aid convoys have reached the camp in recent years.

In a joint statement on March 28 last year, the interagency coordination headquarters of Russia and Syria, attributed the humanitarian crisis in Rukban refugee camp to the illegal occupation of the area by American forces.

“We believe that the American side’s reluctance to exert influence on their [allied] militants in order to ensure unhindered departure of people from the camp and safe activities of humanitarian representatives in the At-Tanf zone is a clear evidence of its intention,” the statement noted at the time.

The camp lies within a 55-kilometer zone occupied by the US around its military base in the Syrian town of At-Tanf.

The headquarters stated that the US military is using Rukban as an “assembly line for training extremists.”

US military forces smuggle wheat crops from Syria’s Hasakah into Iraq

Meanwhile, a convoy of dozens of US trucks has left Syria’s northeastern province of Hasakah for the neighboring Iraq carrying tens of tons of grain.

Syria’s official news agency SANA, citing local sources in Rmelan town, reported that a convoy of 45 military vehicles loaded with wheat and barley crops departed Kharab al-Jir military base in the countryside of al-Malikiya town, and headed towards Iraqi territories after having passed through al-Walid border crossing.

March 1, 2021 Posted by | Illegal Occupation, War Crimes | , , | Leave a comment

Russian Foreign Ministry: Twitter no longer independent social media, but a tool of ‘digital diktat’ under control of West

By Jonny Tickle | RT | February 26, 2021

Twitter is rapidly changing from an independent platform into a tool of Western countries to impose a dictatorship over the internet. That’s according to the Russian Foreign Ministry, following a recent ban of Russian accounts.

Speaking on Friday, Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova blasted the US tech giant for removing 100 accounts allegedly linked to the Kremlin. On Tuesday, the site’s owners announced that 69 were deleted for “undermining faith in the NATO alliance,” with a further 31 banned for “targeting the United States and European Union.”

“We once again can’t help but notice that Twitter is rapidly degenerating from an independent discussion platform into a tool of global digital diktat in the hands of the Western establishment,” she told journalists, noting that accounts from NATO members haven’t been victims of similar operations.

“Assumptions and unproven insinuations were once again presented as justifications,” she continued. “The reasoning in Twitter’s own report is absurd: the accounts allegedly broadcast messages related to the Russian government, undermined trust in NATO, and influenced the United States and the EU.”

In her opinion, the blocks were “arbitrary” and “illegal,” based on “opaque criteria.”

Following the ban, Russian regulator Roskomnadzor wrote to Twitter to demand a list of the blocked accounts and justifications for why Twitter blocked them.

On the same day, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov suggested the creation of national and international rules to regulate social networks to avoid censorship.

“We are increasingly concerned about the non-transparent policies of social media platforms, which, at their discretion, prohibit or censor user content, openly manipulating public opinion,” he said.

February 26, 2021 Posted by | Full Spectrum Dominance, Russophobia | , , , | Leave a comment

Russia must ditch ‘poisonous’ US dollar says Foreign Ministry as Moscow moves toward Chinese currency

RT | February 25, 2021

Moscow must act urgently to cut its reliance on American financial systems, including the use of the dollar, one of the country’s top diplomats has said, pointing to a wave of sanctions from Washington against the Russian economy.

Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov told the Bloomberg business news network that it was essential to preempt hostile confrontation with new President Joe Biden.

“We need to barricade ourselves against the US financial and economic system to eliminate dependence on this toxic source of permanent hostile actions,” he said. “We need to cut back the role of the dollar in any operations.”

Earlier this week, American media reported that the White House was preparing to unveil a package of punitive measures against Moscow in the wake of a worsening diplomatic row over the jailing of opposition figure Alexey Navalny. One senior administration official told POLITICO that, “suffice it to say, we won’t stand by idly in the face of these human rights abuses.”

At the same time, in a speech delivered to the Munich Security Conference last week, Biden announced that he was intent on challenging “Russian recklessness and hacking into computer networks in the United States and across Europe and the world has become critical to protecting our collective security.”

On Wednesday, the Ministry of Finance in Moscow reduced the share of US dollars and euros in the currency structure of its National Wealth Fund from 45 percent to 35 percent. Instead, it has taken on more Japanese yen and increased the proportion of assets held in the Chinese yuan by 15 percent. State investors retained a 10 percent stake in the British pound.

According to officials, the changes are aimed at “increasing profitability and diversifying the investment risks of placing funds of the NWF.”

February 25, 2021 Posted by | Economics | , | Leave a comment

Russia expects to win big from rapidly expanding LNG market

RT | February 24, 2021

Global liquefied natural gas (LNG) is set to grow in the next three decades and will outpace the share of pipeline gas supplies, Russian Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak believes.

“What the market and analysts definitely agree on is that the LNG market will at least double by 2050,” Novak, who previously served as Russia’s energy minister, told the Gas Exporting Countries Forum (GECF) on Wednesday.

Gas is the most promising and environmentally friendly type of hydrocarbon fuel, according to the deputy PM. Given that Russia boasts one of the largest gas reserves, the growth of the LNG market opens up even more prospects for the country.

Russia is the fourth largest global LNG exporter. Last year, it boosted LNG production by over three percent to 30.5 million tons, while in 2019 its LNG output surged over 47 percent. Novak says that the country aims to increase its annual LNG production to 120-140 million tons by 2035, amounting to around a fifth of the forecasted global LNG production.

Most of Russia’s LNG comes from the Yamal LNG project, majority owned and operated by the country’s biggest privately owned natural gas producer, Novatek. There are several other projects that can help to further boost Russian LNG exports, including the Arctic LNG 2 project, the first line of which is set to be launched in 2023.

February 24, 2021 Posted by | Economics | | Leave a comment

Biden adviser threatens to punish Russia with ‘tools seen & unseen’ for SolarWinds hack

RT | February 21, 2021

The Biden administration will soon deliver a sweeping response to SolarWinds breach, so that the usual suspect, Russia, understands where Washington draws the line on cyberattacks, US national security adviser Jake Sullivan said.

During his appearance on CBS’s Face The Nation program on Sunday, Sullivan was asked about what the team of new US President Joe Biden was going to do about the SolarWinds hack, given that sanctions have proven to be ineffective against Moscow.

The adviser replied by saying that the American “response will include a mix of tools seen and unseen.” He didn’t specify what those ‘tools’ might be.

And it will not simply be sanctions because, as you say, a response to a set of activities like this require a more comprehensive set of tools, and that is what the administration intends to do.

“It will be weeks, not months” before the US prepares retaliatory measures against Russia, Sullivan stated.

We will ensure that Russia understands where the US draws the line on this kind of activity.

SolarWinds breach was reported in December, becoming one of the largest and most sophisticated cyberattacks to date. The hackers were able to insert software backdoors into a widely used network-management program, distributed by Texas-based SolarWinds company. This allowed them to compromise the systems of more than a hundred commercial firms globally, as well as nine US government agencies, with the breach only discovered eight or nine months later.

Washington insists that such an operation could not have possibly been carried out without a foreign government support, while US intelligence and security agencies declared that the hack was ‘likely Russian in origin,’ echoing evidence-free mainstream media claims as well as their own language in the ‘assessments’ about the 2016 election. Moscow has denied any involvement in the SolarWinds breach, calling it “yet another unsubstantiated attempt” by the US to scapegoat Russia.

February 21, 2021 Posted by | Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Russophobia | , | Leave a comment

US Marines “Stay Put” In Norway, Russia Responds With Bomber ‘Warning’ Flights In Arctic

By Tyler Durden | Zero Hedge | February 21, 2021

In a hugely significant move that will put Russia-Europe relations further on edge amid an ongoing build-up of NATO forces along sensitive border regions, the large contingent of Marines that arrived in Norway last month are now expected to stay for an indefinite period.

“About 1,000 Marines who arrived in Norway last month — only to have their military exercises canceled due to the pandemic — will remain in the country for arctic training,” Military.com reports based on Marine Corps statements.

They plan to stay and engage in “valuable arctic and mountain warfare training” through at least the springtime. The deployed units are mostly from the 3rd Battalion, 6th Marines but will now essentially “stay put”.

Marines have been training on a rotational basis in Norway for years, but the reality is their stays and rotations have been increasingly extended over the past years. Moscow has meanwhile condemned a ‘Cold War’ style build-up near the Arctic Circle, where it also frequently conducts military exercises.

The AFP wrote that Russia is “fuming”, citing a Russian ambassador to say:

“Nobody in the Arctic is preparing for an armed conflict. However, there are signs of mounting tension and military escalation,”  Russia’s ambassador to the Arctic Council, Nikolai Korchunov, said.

The current militarization in the region “could turn us back decades to the days of the Cold War,” he told Russia’s RIA news agency in early February.

As we described earlier this month, the US Air Force for the first time ever sent multiple B-1 Lancer bombers along with 200 airmen to Norway, which came amid greater NATO calls to “confront Russia”.

And now just days ago, Forbes detailed that in response “the Russian air force is mobilizing its own warplanes. Fighters to intercept the B-1. And bombers to strike back.”

Here’s more on Russia’s response:

After the U.S. Air Force announced the B-1 deployment, the Russian air force wasted no time sortieing its own bombers. Two of the service’s Tu-160 heavy bombers flew an epic, 12-hour sweep of Northern Europe, the Kremlin announced on Feb. 9.

The 6,000-mile round-trip took the swing-wing Tu-160s from their base at Engels in western Russia north to the Arctic Ocean then west to Svalbard, south into the Norwegian Sea, east along the Norwegian coast and finally south back to Engels.

A pair of MiG-31 interceptors flying from Rogachevo air base in northern Russian briefly escorted the bombers as they roared across the Kara Sea toward the Arctic.

And not helping this Cold War style throwback, President Biden on Friday warned a global audience of Russian “bullying” and “autocracy”.

“The trans-Atlantic alliance is back,” he said before the Munich Security Conference in words intended to restore trust from European allies in NATO.

February 21, 2021 Posted by | Militarism | , , , | Leave a comment

The Tycoon Plot

By ISRAEL SHAMIR • Unz Review • February 11, 2021

Millionaires want to make money. Billionaires want to make history. We may add that multi-billionaires take it further; they want mankind to adapt to their needs and wishes. As for people who control trillions, why, they care about our wishes as much as we care about ants while sweeping the garden. We do not apply ant-killer until anthills encroach on our flowerbeds; but we do not hesitate if we deem it necessary. Mankind came across many megalomaniacs; some of them had a lot of power. Genghis Khan was one. However, they were always territorially limited. Mighty Genghis could send tremors all the way to Rome, but the English and French didn’t have to care about the rising Mongol empire. New super-tycoons have no such limitations. Globalisation has allowed them to think outside the box. Their moves had been long anticipated by cinema, the world of dreams. As dreams allow a psychologist to ponder man’s desires and fears, cinematography offers insights into the collective ego of mankind. What did we fear in the relatively free Seventies?

A classic villain of 1970s and 80s was the evil tycoon. James Bond took on some of them. Meet Hugo Drax of the Moonraker, or Karl Stromberg of The Spy Who Loved Me; these guys were willing to destroy mankind to replace it with a better version. Stromberg planned to trigger a global nuclear war and survive it underwater. Drax intended to poison mankind with his deadly gas and repopulate the world with his new chosen ones. Another one was de Wynter, the super-villain of The Avengers, played by Sean Connery. He controlled the world weather, and could kill us all off by hurricanes and tsunamis.

Before the tycoons, when the Cold war raged, a villain was a KGB agent or a Chinese operative. As détente calmed relations between the blocks, the agents went out of fashion; later, the fantastic villains of Marvel came into a vogue. The evil tycoons were uncomfortably close to the real thing; and they moved from the cinematic world into our reality.

The world we live in is the world formed by evil tycoons. They are the modern Demiurges, the evil creators of the Gnostics, an early sect that confronted the Church. Like the Demiurges, they are practically omnipotent; stronger than the State. The government needs lot of permissions and authorisations to spend a penny. If a penny had been misspent, the dark word ‘corruption’ will sound. ‘Corruption’ is a silly concept; by applying it, the oligarchs eliminated state competition, for they can pay whatever they want to whomever they wish. The State must observe intricate arcane rules, while the tycoons have no such limits. As a result, they shape our minds and lives, making the State a poor legitimate king among powerful and wealthy barons.

The Corona crisis is a result of their activity. Now, a group of WHO scientists completed its four weeks inspection tour of Wuhan trying to find out how the virus found its way to humans; some of them think (as President Trump did) the virus escaped the Wuhan Lab. Matt Ridley of The Daily Telegraph concluded his piece analysing their findings: “A growing number of top experts [he provides the list] say that a lab leak remains a plausible scientific hypothesis to be investigated”. It is rather unlikely, said the WHO, but other explanations (pangolins etc) also border on the improbable. The Chinese are understandably upset. Hua Chunying, the spokeswoman for the Foreign Affairs ministry (the Chinese counterpart for the State Department’s Ned Price) rejected the idea saying, “The United States should open the biological lab at Fort Detrick, and invite WHO experts to conduct origin-tracing in the United States”. The Guardian report said she promoted “a conspiracy theory that it came from a US army lab”; while Ms Hua accused the US of spreading “conspiracy theories and lies” tracing the source to Wuhan. Whatever we say is a fact-based result of diligent research; whatever you say is a conspiracy theory – both the US and China representatives subscribe to this mantra.

Our own Ron Unz made an excellent analysis of these accusations and counter-accusations in his April 2020 piece. He noted that the virus attack in Wuhan took place at the worst possible time and place for the Chinese; therefore, an incidental release (or intentional release by the Chinese) is extremely unlikely. Ron Unz suggested that it was an American biowarfare attack upon China. Didn’t American people suffer from the disease? Yes, the US government is “grotesquely and manifestly incompetent” and they were likely to expect “a massive coronavirus outbreak in China would never spread back to America”.

Perhaps, but a better explanation is that some evil tycoon(s) played the part of Karl Stromberg who intended to nuke both Moscow and New York causing war and world-wide devastation, as in the James Bond movie. It could be somebody like Bill Gates, who is a major investor in Wuhan Lab. A fact-checking site with its weasel language admitted that the Lab “has received funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, but Bill Gates can hardly be called a “partner” in the laboratory.” Sure, not a partner. Just an investor, and that is more important than a partner. And he is not the only one; other multi-billionaires also are involved in bioresearch, in vaccine manufacturing, in Big Pharma. “Glaxo, BlackRock, and Bill Gates are all partners, but not owners of Pfizer”, says another fact-checker. “In 2015, Anthony Fauci did issue a USD 3.7 million grant to the Wuhan Institute of Virology, but not to “create the coronavirus” – the fact-checking site adds. Well, you could not possibly expect Fauci to word the grant in such a straightforward way, could you?

Perhaps it is too formidable a job even for an evil tycoon like Gates. A plot of several evil tycoons is more likely. Together, they could try to change the world and mankind to suit them.

The evil tycoons could poison China on their New Year holiday and take this uppity state down a ring or two. They could import the virus into the US to undermine and remove Trump whom they hated. (He was certain to win the elections but for Corona.) They could poison Europe to weaken it and make it more docile and obedient to their demands – and to buy their assets on the cheap. Corona and lockdown did not harm them for they are normally withdrawn from the bustle of the common man’s life.

The billionaires control the media; that much we know, and the part media has played in the Corona crisis was enormous. The media coverage of the crisis has a huge hidden cost. Try to publish information you consider important on the front page of a newspaper. It will cost you a lot. Still, all newspapers belonging to the Billionaires’ Media block beginning with the New York Times and ending with Haaretz gave at least a third of its front page to Corona news each day. The sheer cost of this advertising runs into billions. Will we ever know who paid for it?

Steven Soderbergh’s (2011) film Contagion predicted many features of the Covid-19, notably the origin of the virus. In the film, the disease originates from bats in China and is spread through markets where contaminated pork meat is sold. How could Soderbergh (or his script writer Scott Z. Burns) possibly know eight years before the event that the contagion should originate in the Chinese bats? Who told him? Wouldn’t you expect he knew something? Burns was instructed by WHO experts, the CNN site explains. Isn’t it interesting that the same Bill Gates is a major donor of WHO? Is it entirely impossible that already in 2011 Gates’ people began to leak some details of the future virus through their own WHO to Hollywood?

The tycoons could force a weak state to follow their instructions. Scientists do obey orders: otherwise, no grants, no positions. In April 2020, the German scientists were ordered, “to instill the fear of Corona”. And they did it, as we learned this week, producing numbers of dead on demand.

It seems that tycoons gained most from the Corona Crisis. Their assets grew by trillions, while the assets of the middle classes decreased by the same amount. More importantly, all states suffered from the crisis; they took loans and credit, they were responsible for their citizens’ health, while billionaires just had fun and enjoyed it. For this reason, I tend to dismiss the case against states, be it the US or China, while (some) billionaires appear the only possible villains.

These billionaires are able to influence people much better that the state. Consider Pierre Omidyar. Besides being the owner of eBay, he is the force behind hundreds of NGOs. His organisations form the ‘progressive’ agenda and train the foot soldiers of the Green Deal. Roslyn Fuller of Spiked-online checked the plethora of NGOs he employs.

She says his NGOs and charities are “engaged in ‘social engineering’ – that is, using their resources to artificially change the structure of society to how they think it should be. If successful this would amount to an extreme circumvention of democracy, utilising money not just to win elections, but to substitute paid or subsidised content for actual support, and thereby flip an entire political culture on to a different track by amplifying some voices and drowning out others.”

He is just one of the Masters of Discourse, next to the infamous George Soros. Facebook, Google, Twitter and Amazon are even more powerful. The billionaires have immense clout and they decide what we can and can’t say and write. Just last week Amazon banned my Cabbala of Power, a book that was sold by them for some ten years. The estimable The Unz Review is banned on Facebook and shadow-banned on Google. Twitter switched-off President Trump, showing who is the real boss of the United States. Probably almost all movements described as ‘leftists’ nowadays are engineered by the tycoons like Omidyar or Soros. True left had been left for dead on the battlefield of ideas.

The tycoons are directly involved in the Corona Crisis, because its results are good for them. And it means they have us where they want to have us, and they won’t let us out. We are cancelled until we regain the government and cancel them.

SAGE, as British Corona management team rather presumptuously named itself (it included the ridiculous figure of Neil Ferguson, he of the millions of predicted deaths), already declared that lockdowns will be a part of British life for years to come, vaccine or no vaccine. The Guardian, the Voice of the Oligarchs, gently pooh-poohed them, for it is not good to declare what must happen right away. Let people have some hope, so they run to vaccinate themselves, and then only afterwards can we reveal that, sorry, it does not help, you still have to don a mask and observe social distance and, yes, suffer lockdowns. “It’s much easier to follow the rules if we think of them as temporary.”

The plotters’ plans aren’t secret; they were described by Klaus Schwab in his book The Great Reset. Schwab is not a great thinker, being merely a weak scientist with just a few publications, and not a good or even decent writer. He had to collaborate with a journalist Thierry Malleret to produce the book. He is just a voice for the tycoons. But the question is, will he/they get what they want?

My preliminary answer is No. We recently had an important event, Davos-2021, the online gathering of tycoons and their intellectual henchmen. For the first time in many years, they invited Vladimir Putin. Chairman Xi gave the first talk. The idea was to demonstrate that Russia and China agree to their plans. I was very worried, I must admit, and the Chinese leader’s speech didn’t calm me (as opposed to our friend Pepe Escobar who celebrated his appearance). Yes, Xi said China will proceed at its own speed and by its own route but towards the same goals. Sustainable, inclusive, all the dog-whistle words were there. I expected an even worse talk by Putin. For years he has wanted to be invited and co-opted by the Western decision-makers, and here was a great opportunity to jump on their bandwagon.

Putin surprised me. He flatly refused the offer of Schwab and his ilk. He condemned the manner of recent pre-Covid growth, for all the growth went into a few deep pockets. Moreover, he noted that digital tycoons are dangerous for the world. In his own words, “Modern technological giants, especially digital companies, are de facto competing with states. In the opinion of these companies, their monopoly is optimal. Maybe so but society is wondering whether such monopolism meets public interests”.

The tycoons were probably amazed. In 2007 in Munich, they laughed at him. Max Boot, a Russian Jewish émigré, called Putin, “The louse that roared” and added, “in Putin’s sinister and absurd rhetoric, you can hear an empire dying”. Mad Max didn’t know yet which empire is dying.

Putin was supposed to be softened up by pro-Navalny demos on January 23 (The Davos talk was on January 27), but he was not. Quite the reverse. The Russian President does not like to be pushed. The demo on January 31 was met with force; those detained were sentenced to heavy (by Russian standards) fines. Three European diplomats were expelled from Russia for joining the demonstration. Josep Borrell, a Spanish diplomat and a representative of the EU, went to Moscow and was harshly treated. In the concluding press-conference, the Russian minister for foreign affairs Sergey Lavrov told the press that Russia does not (repeat, not) consider the EU to be a “reliable partner”. The expulsions were carried out at the same time. In addition, Putin warned the West that ‘sanctions’ (acts of economic warfare) could cause Russia to use direct military force. It was probably the first such warning since 1968.

At the same time, Russia practically ended corona restrictions. Bars and restaurants have been opened for night revellers; sport events have returned; schools are open; in some parts of Russia, the masks became “recommended” instead of “compulsory”. Russians are now allowed to travel and return freely from many countries. The Russians have easy access for their vaccine Sputnik-V that was deemed by The Lancet the best of all existing Corona vaccines. It is a coup comparable to the first Sputnik launched in 1957, the Western experts said. Thus Russia has derailed the Grand Reset.

This development had caused a huge shift in consciousness in Russia. If until now (since 1970, at least) the Russian educated classes tended to feel inferior to the West, the prosperous lands of the free, then this has now changed. One of the leading Russian theatre directors, Constantine Bogomolov declared that the West is undone. The West’s compulsory political correctness, its culture-cancelling, its kneeling and boot-licking of BLM, its cult of transgenders, its fear of ‘harassment’ and sex, its obligatory smile, its wokeness, its fear of death (and of life!), are comparable to the behaviour of Alex, the victim of Clockwork Orange therapy, said Bogomolov.

The young man [Alex] does not just get rid of aggression – he is sick of music, he cannot see a naked woman, sex disgusts him. And in response to the blow, he licks the boot of the striker. The modern West is such a criminal who has undergone chemical castration and lobotomy. Hence this false smile of goodwill and all-acceptance, frozen on the face of a Western person. This is not the smile of Culture. It is a smile of degeneration.

He concludes:

The West tells us: Russia is at the tail of progress.

Wrong.

Just by chance, we have found ourselves at the tail of a runaway train, rushing headlong into [Hieronymus] Bosch’s hell, where we will be greeted by smiling multicultural, gender-neutral devils.

We should uncouple our carriage off the train, make a sign of cross and start rebuilding our good old Europe, the Europe we dreamed of. The Europe they have lost.

Take notice of his call to ‘make the sign of the cross’. In the West, the churches are barred, service had been discontinued. The Anglican Church is on the verge of dying, with its Archbishop of Canterbury celebrating BLM, removing statues from the churches, accepting every SAGE edict locking the churches up. Meanwhile Russian churches are all open and worshippers are pouring into their cathedrals every feast and Sunday.

Russian boys and girls are flirting with each other, fearless of MeToo and harassment charges. Russian cafes are open. Whoever wants, can get a jab against Covid, or ignore it.

For the first time in many years, Russia shows the way for the West. This is good. Perhaps, the West, after a long-needed correction, will be able to overtake Russia again. Though Russia showed the way of socialism to Europe, the best results of socialism were achieved elsewhere, in the North of Europe. Good old Europe (and the US, its overseas offshoot) are still able to repeat this feat and get rid of the plotting tycoons and their preaching of compulsory love. At this occasion, perhaps banning all tycoons is a good idea. In the better world before their rise, there were no multi-billionaires. History is not over; we are entering the most interesting part of it. Be of good cheer!

Israel Shamir can be reached at adam@israelshamir.net

February 11, 2021 Posted by | Corruption, Deception, Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | , , , , , | Leave a comment

« Previous Entries     Next Entries »