RT | March 11, 2024
A Ukrainian tank crew got their UK-donated Challenger 2 stuck in a bog during a special demonstration for a British tabloid, the newspaper has reported.
The incident happened during an exercise The Sun described as being “close to the front line” and within view of plumes of smoke emanating from Russian airstrikes. With its crew atop the turret, the British-made tank attempted to drive through a gully, only becoming stuck at its deepest point.
Images shared by the newspaper showed the vehicle stuck in mud deep enough to fully cover its tracks. The incident confirmed that the British tank’s weight is an issue, The Sun said. An experienced squadron commander “blasted the rookie crew for going too slowly through the gully.”
The newspaper added that the tank team leader “turned the mishap into a training exercise” by calling in a second tank to haul the first one out of the mud.
The report noted Ukrainian praise for the tank’s main gun, but added that the conflict had not given the British military hardware a chance to demonstrate its ability in a classic tank-on-tank battle. Ukraine has been using the armor to target bunkers from a long distance and for charges on Russian trenches.
The maneuvers are a bluff, according to the tabloid, because the tanks “did not have the right type of ammunition for attacking infantry.”
While the British tank is superior to Soviet-made T-80s in many respects, Ukrainian crews told the outlet that they weigh some 20 tons more and have a 30% lower power-to-weight ratio, which limits their maneuverability.
German-made Leopard 2 tanks, which have a similar weight, have also reportedly become stuck in soft ground, according to images shared online.
The Challenger 2s are not only being bogged down, but are breaking down. Five of the 14 tanks donated by the UK are not operational because spare parts can take months to arrive, and Kiev lacks skilled mechanics to maintain them. With battle-damaged tanks accounted for, only half of the UK-donated squadron remain fit for battle.
The British tabloid also reported manpower shortages on the conflict frontline, meaning trained tank crews are forced to dig trenches. Nevertheless, the Ukrainians expressed gratitude to the British government for the tanks and, via the tabloid, asked London to “send more.”
By Svetlana Ekimenko – Sputnik – 11.03.2024
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz has repeatedly opposed the idea of supplying Ukraine with missiles capable of striking deep into Russian territory. However, recently UK Foreign Secretary David Cameron expressed London’s readiness to assist Berlin in overcoming any obstacles preventing the delivery of Taurus long-range missiles to the Kiev regime.
Germany’s Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock is open to her British colleague David Cameron’s suggestion of a swap of long-range cruise missiles for their further transfer to Ukraine, Der Spiegel reported.
In particular, Germany could supply Taurus cruise missiles to the United Kingdom, and in return the British side would transfer Storm Shadow missiles to Ukraine. Thus, Berlin would formally be relieved of responsibility for providing cruise missiles to the Kiev regime, the outlet stated.
“That would be an option,” Baerbock was quoted as saying regarding the proposed exchange on ARD’s program Caren Miosga.
The German minister on Sunday pointed out that exchanges of a similar nature had already taken place with respect to other material. This, according to the outlet, was a nod at Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s previous use of indirect military aid to Ukraine, when he was reluctant to send Leopard 2 main battle tanks to the conflict zone. In January, 2023, Berlin announced it would send its Leopard 2A6 main battle tanks to Ukraine, also agreeing to provide re-export licenses for other countries wanting to supply these German-made armored vehicles. Within weeks of their arrival on the battlefield, Russian forces began hunting the tanks down with missiles and kamikaze drones.
UK Foreign Secretary David Cameron recently came up with a potential way to persuade Germany to supply Ukraine with Taurus missiles. During a recent interview with German newspaper Sueddeutsche Zeitung, he stated that London was ready to help Berlin solve problems preventing the delivery of the cruise missiles to Kiev, or consider the option of buying German missiles and then transferring British Storm Shadow missiles to Ukraine. Cameron did not discount the possibility of imposing certain restrictions before supplying the weaponry to Kiev.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz has repeatedly dismissed the idea of providing Ukraine with missiles capable of striking deep into Russian territory, as such support would come dangerously close to direct German participation in the conflict.
If the swap scheme of Britain procuring Taurus missiles from Germany in exchange for supplying Storm Shadow missiles to Ukraine comes to pass, Kiev would likely get the long-range missiles eventually, pundits told Sputnik.
The issue of Taurus transfers made the headlines in the wake of a leaked conversation between German military officials discussing a potential attack on the Crimea Bridge.
On March 1, Margarita Simonyan, editor-in-chief of RT and Rossiya Segodnya, Sputnik’s parent media group, published the text of a conversation involving four Bundeswehr representatives discussing a potential attack on the Crimean Bridge with Taurus missiles. The talk, which took place on February 19, involved Inspector of the German Air Force Ingo Gerhartz, Brig. Gen. Frank Graefe, head of the Operations and Exercises Department at the Air Force Command in Berlin, and two employees of the air operations center of the Bundeswehr Space Command.
After the intercepted war talk, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz once again ruled out supplying the missiles to Ukraine since it could require the presence of German troops on the ground to help deploy them. German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius said that long-range Taurus missiles would not be decisive for the conflict in Ukraine and would only help in certain areas, but that Germany does not intend to cross this line.
“We have always emphasized that such long-range missiles will not solve this [crisis],” Pistorius said at a joint press conference with Finnish Defense Minister Antti Hakkanen.
The Kremlin reiterated that the contents of leaked conversations between German officials proved “the direct involvement of the collective West in the conflict in Ukraine.”
In the wake of Ukraine’s bungled counteroffensive, the Zelensky regime has been pressing Germany for the delivery of the missiles, which have a range of 500 kilometers (311 miles) and could strike deep inside Russian territory.
Moscow has repeatedly underscored that Western arms shipments to Kiev and the training of Ukrainian servicemen only prolong the conflict and will be unable to alter the situation at the battlefield.
Net Zero Watch | March 11, 2024
Campaign group Net Zero Watch is again calling for an inquiry into the Climate Change Committee (CCC), the Government’s official advisers on decarbonisation. The move follows revelations at the weekend that the organisation’s chief executive, Chris Stark, had tried to use obfuscation to “kill” questions over the adequacy of its energy system model, rather than addressing them directly. This behaviour put Stark in direct breach of the Nolan standards for public officeholders.
The scandal, published in the Sunday Telegraph, is just the latest of a series of controversies that have dogged the CCC since its inception.
In 2013, it was revealed that CCC chairman Lord Deben had a conflict of interest, retaining his position as chairman of a company involved in windfarm installations after his appointment. He had told the House of Commons Energy and Climate Change Committee that he would divest himself of all such interests if appointed.
In 2019, it was revealed that Lord Deben’s family company was still taking large sums of money from businesses working in the environmental sphere.
In 2023, it was revealed that those payments to Lord Deben’s company were not properly disclosed in the Register of Interests.
In 2021, it was revealed that the CCC had used spurious weather data in their modelling, thus enabling them to reduce the capacity of electricity generation and storage equipment apparently required.
It was also revealed that the CCC used spurious figures for the cost of electric vehicles, thus reducing the apparent costs.
The CCC tried to hide its model from public scrutiny, spending tens of thousands of pounds of taxpayer’s money fighting a lawful Freedom of Information request.
More recently, the CCC admitted that its electricity system modelling is inadequate. The resulting understatement of costs is as much as tens of billions of pounds per year.
It has also been revealed that the CCC “waves away” most of the cost problem, simply by assuming extraordinary cost reductions in future. With current technology, the cost of Net Zero will be hundreds of billions of pounds higher.
Net Zero Watch director Andrew Montford said:
The list of scandals at the Climate Change Committee seems to be endless, but Parliamentarians seem to want to let them get away with it. If the House of Commons Energy Security and Net Zero Committee again fails to launch an inquiry into the governance of the CCC, and in particular Chris Stark’s management and the adequacy of the modelling that underpinned the 2019 Net Zero report, it will look very bad.
By Didi Rankovic | Reclaim The Net | March 9, 2024
The authorities in the UK are continuing with attempts to broaden the definition of “extremism” and behavior deemed as “undermining/overturning” British values.
Critics say the whole wiggly thing is the road to authoritarianism.
A new step said to be in that direction is a proposal presented by Communities Secretary Michael Gove, who is reportedly using previous initiatives to usher in a new definition of extremism.
Likely to cover all political and ideological bases, Gove is mentioning both “Islamists” and “far Right” organizations and their harmful activities that slip under the radar as the reason the current understanding of extremism is “too narrow.”
But there doesn’t seem to be consensus on this in the cabinet, with some ministers voicing fears that a lot of groups taking a stance on several issues – such as those opposed to lockdowns, religious organizations that are anti-abortion, gay marriage, trans-gender women in places designated as same-sex, “radical” student groups, etc. – could get caught up in this widened “definition dragnet.”
The problem with that is that these groups are now operating lawfully, according to the Equality Act 2010.
And if the definition is also made enforceable, even political parties, such as the Scottish National Party, could end up on the wrong side of the new rules, reports say.
Right now, extremism in the UK is defined (since 2011) as “vocal or active opposition to fundamental British values, including democracy, the rule of law, individual liberty and mutual respect and tolerance of different faiths and beliefs.”
This definition is not statutory, which means it effectively prevents only the government and other administrative bodies from working with or funding such groups.
But Gove wants to “fix” this by making the broader definition statutory.
To achieve this, the current paragraph would get this addition:
“The promotion or advancement of any ideology which aims to overturn or undermine the UK’s system of parliamentary democracy, its institutions and values; or threaten the rights of individuals or create a permissive environment for radicalization, hate crime and terrorism.”
Rather than just “broader,” this reads as straight-up and worrisomely vague.
And when some political representatives, MPs among them, try to wrap their heads around the very concept of “British values,” it becomes clear that the conundrum of defining such things in a way acceptable to everyone becomes mission impossible.
“What does it even mean to undermine British values’ when there is no consensus – and certainly no legal definition – of what those values are?,” MP Miriam Cates summed it up.
BY CHRIS MORRISON | THE DAILY SCEPTIC | MARCH 6, 2024
Bankrupt, blackout Britain where the ever-expanding ranks of the poor get clobbered, open borders place intolerable burdens on public spending and services, the rich spivs get richer backing heavily-subsidised energy white elephants – and those of a certain age look back to the good old days of the 1970s. That isn’t quite how Professor Gordon Hughes spells it out in his excellent new report that crunches the energy transition numbers of the collectivist Net Zero project, but it might be considered a fair summation of reading between the lines.
The insanity of Net Zero becomes clearer by the day. The idea that hydrocarbons – a natural resource whose use from medicines to reliable energy is ubiquitous in modern industrial society – can be removed within less than 30 years is ridiculous. In his report published by the Global Warming Policy Foundation, Professor Hughes concerns himself with the transition from hydrocarbons to ‘green’ technologies such as wind and solar. Forget all the politically-inspired low-ball figures of transition, he is suggesting. Looking at you, Climate Change Committee. It is likely that the amount of new investment needed for the transition will be a minimum of 5% of gross domestic product for the next 20 years, and might exceed 7.5%. Gordon Hughes is a former World Bank economist, and is Professor of Economics at the University of Edinburgh.
There is no chance of borrowing such an “astronomical” amount, notes Hughes, and the only viable way to raise the cash for new capital expenditure would be a two decades-long reduction in private consumption of up to 10%. “Such a shock has never occurred in the last century outside war, and even then never for more than a decade,” he notes.
Recent polling in the U.S. has shown that the desire of a majority of citizens to pay for Net Zero barely stretches to more than the ‘chump’ change in their back pockets. “Commitment to the energy transition is a classic ‘luxury belief’ held most strongly by those who are sufficiently well-off not to worry about the costs… Indeed at least some of those who promote the transition most strongly are among those who expect to gain from the business opportunities.” On this latter point, Hughes was possibly recalling the recent activities of rising media star Dale Vince (£110 million in wind subsidies to date, and counting).
Politicians sometimes blather about the pioneering role taken by European countries in Net Zero. Hughes points out that leaders in China and India are not fools. “Posturing about targets that are patently not achievable and might be economically ruinous is unlikely to convince anyone, although most will be too polite to point this out,” he observed.
Writing a foreword, Lord Frost identified a make-believe world inhabited by Net Zero proponents where it is claimed costs will magically come down, new technologies will somehow be invented and promised green growth will pay for everything. “But they never give any evidence for believing this – and, where we can check what they say, for example in the real costs of wind power, we can see that these cost reductions are simply not happening,” he said.
On the immigration front, Hughes notes a 1% increase in the British population every year. He notes that 4% of GDP must be invested every year in new (not replacement) capital per head. Of course nothing like this is being spent and capital per head is falling rapidly. “Just maintaining the amounts of capital per head will eat up an amount of investment equivalent to that required for the energy transition,” he states.
Squeezing domestic consumption, in other words making the already squeezed poor even poorer by removing all their remaining luxuries in life (older cars, cheap foreign holidays, meat), is the only realistic way to fund the enormous sums required for the Net Zero energy transition. Possibly a glimmer of reality is creeping into political circles with the opposition Labour party having gone through “agonies” and ditched its £28 billion a year green deal. “Clearly, they concluded that it was impossible to sell an increase in the tax burden of that magnitude to a reluctant electorate,” he said. In fact, the sums involved in the Labour plan were only a fifth of the estimated cost of transition.
Any future Government wishing to travel the path of Net Zero must make the choices of reducing public services and mandating savage cuts in household expenditure. Needless to say, the general population is in almost total ignorance about these realities. Hughes notes that the electorate has given no indication that they are willing to bear the costs involved. “Indeed until now all they have been told is that there are few or no trade-offs required, and technology will somehow magically solve everything.”
Chris Morrison is the Daily Sceptic’s Environment Editor.
Press TV – March 7, 2024
UK news chiefs have defended their biased coverage of Israel’s brutalities in Gaza even as a new report has exposed significant distortions in the Western coverage of the war.
The report, Media Bias Gaza 2023-24, by Center for Media Monitoring (CFMM) was launched on Wednesday and analyzed data from 28 UK online media websites for a period of one month starting from October 7, 2023.
The study that examined more than 200,000 articles and TV reports said the British media had failed to represent the conflict in Gaza in a fair manner.
Speaking at the event hosted by CFMM in the House of Parliament, Richard Burgess, director of news content at the BBC, said it was unlikely that there would be no mistakes made by a 24-hour news channel.
“It’s impossible not to make mistakes, we will make mistakes,” Burgess said while justifying their coverage.
The CFMM report, however, found that “many prominent media personalities, senior editors and journalists regurgitated Islamophobic tropes about Muslim belief and identity, with the aim of undermining the Palestinian cause and/or Palestinian advocates.”
The study also found “how some media outlets and commentators have framed the conflict as being between Muslims and Jews.”
“Muslim opposition to Israel has been framed as anti-Semitic by some publications and commentators,” the study said
Defending the distortion of facts while reporting the war, Jonathan Levy, managing director and executive editor at Sky News, disputed criticism of a number of points made in the report, including reducing the conflict to “Israel-Hamas” war.
The study showed Israelis were 11 times more likely to be referred to as “victims of attacks” compared to the Palestinians, while 76 percent of online articles framed the conflict as an “Israel-Hamas war.” Only 24 percent mentioned “Palestine/Palestinian,” which they said indicated a lack of context.
Marwan Yaghi, a Palestinian diplomat in the UK, described the media coverage as “appallingly biased.”
Right wing news channels and right-wing British publications were at the forefront of misrepresenting pro-Palestinian protesters as anti-Semitic, the report said.
It also mentioned that pro-Palestinian voices faced misrepresentation and vilification by media outlets, with allegations of anti-Semitism and terrorism weaponized to discredit legitimate advocacy efforts.
It highlighted the lack of scrutiny around a number of stories perpetuated in the press, noting 361 mentions of the false “beheaded babies” story.
RT | March 5, 2024
Fresh from his election to the British parliament, MP George Galloway spoke with RT on Tuesday about the state of media freedom in Britain and London’s disastrous policies in the Middle East and Ukraine.
Galloway trounced both Tory and Labour candidates in last week’s Rochdale by-election, winning twice as many votes than both major parties combined. PM Rishi Sunak denounced the result as “beyond alarming” and a threat to “our democracy itself.”
As Galloway pointed out, however, he has been elected to Parliament a total of seven times – far more than Sunak or Labour leader Keir Starmer.
“These people are hypocrites. Things like democracy, human rights, rule of law, rules-based international order, it’s just lipstick on a pig. They wipe the lipstick off whenever they no longer feel the need to look prettier,” he claimed.
“As Sunak’s speech outside Number 10 [Downing Street] on Friday about my election makes clear, it’s not beyond them even to cancel elections,” he added.
British authorities have banned RT and the Iranian PressTV outright, refused to renew the license of China’s CGTN, and blocked outlets like Venezuela’s TeleSur.
“The reason is pretty simple if you think about it: Too many people were watching these TV channels. Too many people were watching RT. Not just in Britain, but even more so in Germany. That is why RT was closed down. Because too many of the public were watching it. How’s that for freedom?” said Galloway.
The best illustration of press freedom in the UK is that “a good friend of mine is lying in the dungeon of Belmarsh top security prison,” Galloway said.
“His name is Julian Assange He is convicted of no crime. And yet he is being held with mass murderers and terrorists in the worst prison for the worst people in England. And for what? For telling the truth as a publisher.”
He admitted the government might retaliate against him for speaking to RT, but said, “I don’t care.”
“I give interviews to everybody. I’m a free man, I’m an elected free man. I have the right to speak and I will go on speaking to whomsoever wants to hear me. Nothing is solved by covering things up. Nothing is solved by denying people access to a different point of view,” Galloway said, recalling RT’s long-time slogan, “Question More.”
Galloway is no stranger to RT. He has written many op-eds for the outlet and hosted his own TV show called ‘Sputnik Orbiting the World’ during his hiatus from Parliament.
By Jonathan Cook | March 6, 2024
The Guardian and other media continue to prioritise the ‘sensitivities’ of an ideological minority over the public’s right to protest against a genocide in which our elites are complicit
We all understand that, shamefully, a number of Zionist Jews and non-Jews identify so completely with Israel that they are not only willing to excuse the mass slaughter and starvation of civilians in Gaza but think others should not even be allowed to express disquiet at the slaughter.
Hardline Zionists tell us they find concern for the welfare of Palestinians “offensive”, and that they feel “unsafe” when others raise such concerns or call for a ceasefire to end the bloodshed.
The question for the rest of us is: How do we deal with those “sensitivities”, and how much do we prioritise the “offence” taken by hardline Zionists?
Not unreasonably, most ordinary people place very little weight on the “sensitivities” of those who believe mass slaughter and the starvation of children should be allowed to proceed, at least when weighed against the sensitivities of those opposed to mass death.
What’s so weird is the way, as far as official bodies and the western media are concerned, those priorities have been turned upside down.
Here, in typical fashion, the Guardian falls over backwards to indulge the “feelings” of a few Jewish Arsenal fans because they “felt unsafe” and “betrayed” by their club for not more aggressively stopping protests last weekend at a Women’s Super League game by other fans over the complicity of the UK government in Gaza’s genocide.
No evidence is produced by either the fans or the Guardian that any Jewish fan was in any danger whatsoever. Just that a few Palestinian flags were smuggled into the stadium, that leaflets and stickers were handed out, and that some protesters tried to “engage” with fans as they arrived at the stadium – presumably in that dangerous tradition of trying to persuade others of the validity of one’s position.
But the Guardian sympathetically dedicates a great deal of space to relaying the concerns of the handful of Jewish fans who “believe their safety was compromised by security staff not curtailing the protest” – that is, those who wanted to prevent an entirely peaceful demonstration taking place in a public space outside the ground.
The story is risible. It is news as therapy for Zionists and gaslighting for the rest of us.
But it is decades of nonsense journalism about Israel and its apologists of precisely this kind that has led us to the dismal place we are today.
The constant indulgence by the political and media class, the constant elevation of these kinds of ugly, ignoble “feelings” – feelings that dehumanise and vilify Palestinians, as well as anyone acting in solidarity with their suffering – the constant treatment of Zionist bigotry as warranted, as justified, as normal, that has gotten us to a position where Israel can commit genocide and its western allies and parts of their Jewish populations can treat it as “offensive” to raise the matter.
If we had not got so entirely used to it, we would immediately understand how completely nuts – and catastrophically inhumane – the coverage is.
By Finian Cunningham | Strategic Culture Foundation | March 6, 2024
German military leaders may have bungled foolishly over their private discussions regarding operational plans against Russia. However, the security of their incompetent communication – while laughable – does not lessen the seriousness of what was being discussed.
Lt. General Ingo Gerhartz and his aides were earnestly weighing up the technical and propaganda means by which to strike Russia with long-range ballistic missiles. In short, a NATO member was caught red-handed hatching an act of war against Russia.
After Russian media published the audio of the conversation, the German reaction has been to dismiss it as a cerebral war-gaming exercise and as an attempt by Russian disinformation to undermine the government of Olaf Scholz.
This obfuscation by Berlin will not wash. The incontrovertible fact is that the German commanders were deliberating on how to “optimize” the Ukrainian offensive capability to hit Russian targets with the long-range German Taurus cruise missile. The weapon has supposedly not yet been supplied to the Ukrainian regime due to concerns among some German politicians that doing so would escalate the war with Russia. It is clear from the audio tape that the German military chiefs are frustrated by the politicians not ordering the supply of the Taurus.
Gerhartz, the head of the German air force, tells his subordinates in no uncertain terms: “We are now fighting a war that uses much more modern technology than our good old Luftwaffe.”
There you have it: the top German commander says unequivocally, “We are now fighting a war”.
He also goes on to disclose that the American, British, and French militaries are deeply involved in the logistics and planning of attacks by the Ukrainian forces.
We know from numerous other sources that the NATO militaries are involved on the ground in Ukraine fighting against Russian forces. American HIMARS and Patriot missile systems, and the British Storm Shadow and the French Scalp cruise missiles are operated with military expertise from these NATO members.
Still, what is highly damaging from the German military leak is the extent to which the commanders endeavor to conceal the involvement of Germany in a war with Russia. The tortuous conversation about how to avoid the imputation of the German military makes it clear that the German high command knows full well the gravity of what they are organizing. They are discussing the conduct of a covert war against Russia. This is tantamount to the crime of aggression and it runs the risk of starting a full-on war which would no doubt escalate into a nuclear conflagration.
At one point in the discussion with his interlocutors, Lt Gen. Gerhartz talks about the need to conceal direct military involvement by Germany in supplying the Taurus missiles to Ukraine.
He says: “I understand what you are talking about. Politicians may be concerned about the direct, closed connection between Büchel [German air base] and Ukraine, which could become direct participation in the Ukrainian conflict. But in this case, we can say that the exchange of information will take place through MBDA [the German manufacturer of Taurus], and we will send one or two of our specialists to Schrobenhausen. Of course, this is a trick, but from a political point of view, it may look different. If information is exchanged through the manufacturer, then this is not associated with us.”
This is self-incriminating evidence that the German high command is participating in a conspiracy to expand the war against Russia. The only reservation is not to be identified publicly in waging war acts. With utmost cynicism, the German military leaders are looking for a way to claim plausible denial after the crime.
Former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev, now deputy chairman of the National Security Council, called it correctly when he said of the leaked audio tapes that they show Germany is planning war against Russia.
Berlin dismissed Medvedev’s claim as “absurd”. Berlin is the one being absurd if it thinks that the conversation of its military leaders can be palmed off as simply idle banter and theoretical war gaming.
In the 38-minute discussion, the Luftwaffe commander and his underlings explicitly talk about supplying up to 100 Taurus missiles for Ukrainian regime forces to strike deep into Russia. The German top brass refer to the Taurus as a “super tool” and they specifically identify the destruction of an important bridge in the east, which is presumably the Kerch Bridge linking the Russian mainland to Crimea.
The German missile has a range of over 500 kilometers which is twice that of the British or French weapons.
It looks like the German military is taking on the task of leading deep strikes into Russia. London is reportedly urging Berlin to supply the Taurus missiles despite the embarrassment of the leaked private conversation.
This week it is reported that a railway bridge was destroyed in Russia’s southwest Samara province near the city of Chapaevsk. The location is further east than Moscow and is around 1,000 km from the NATO-backed Kiev regime’s front lines in Ukraine. The attack appears to have been a precision strike.
As the German commanders noted in their discussions, collapsing a bridge is one of the most difficult aerial operations that requires precision capability and sophisticated radar evasion. Their conversation took place on February 19. The leak was published last weekend. Media reports say the German government is opposed to signing off on supplying the missiles. But with so much going on behind the public’s back who knows if and when these weapons are released? Have they been already?
If it is confirmed that the bridge near Chapaevsk was hit by a missile then it would appear that the NATO war against Russia has reached a new ominous threshold.
Some Western media outlets commented that the Russian publication of the Luftwaffe audio tape last weekend was aimed at embarrassing the German Chancellor Olaf Scholz into definitely ruling out any supply of Taurus missiles to Ukraine. However, such speculation assumes that Scholz is in control of his military commanders. Most likely they don’t answer to him; they answer to the occupying power in Germany – the United States.
By Robert Bridge | Strategic Culture Foundation | March 5, 2024
Western media is in full-blown hysteria mode, asserting that Vladimir Putin is ‘weaponising’ the flow of migrants in an effort to destabilize upcoming European elections.
Right up there with ridiculous claims of “little green men” and “tractor protests from Moscow,” Europe is now accusing Russia of fielding paramilitary forces and private mercenaries for the purpose of directing waves of migrants from Africa across the Mediterranean Sea and into the heart of Europe, an apparent effort to ratchet up the spring fever just in time for general elections across the continent.
With no loss of irony, Western propagandists are disseminating allegations that the Kremlin is in the process of agitating those African nations that for so long suffered from European colonial rule, namely Burkina Faso, Mali, Sudan, Ghana, Central African Republic and Libya, a formerly highly developed country that was destroyed by a U.S.-led attack in 2011.
The Telegraph would have its British readers believe it has “seen” intelligence documents detailing plans for “Russian agents” to create a “15,000-man strong border police force” comprising former militias in Libya to control the flow of migrants. Anyone hoping to review something like photographic evidence of this massive army would be advised not to hold their breath. Apparently, the thousands of Russian recruits are so technologically advanced they are invisible to spy satellites.
While it stands to reason that millions of desperate refugees from these turbulent nations would seek shelter in Europe, or possibly even in the United States, risking a trans-Atlantic journey to reach the wide-open U.S.-Mexican border, Brussels simply hopes to deflect attention away from its immigration failures onto Moscow, a sham that is transparent to anyone with even a half-functioning brain.
Let’s not forget that we’ve heard such allegations before.
Without so much as a single apprehended trespasser, Moscow was accused of trying to foment a refugee crisis by transferring asylum seekers to its border with Finland, thus prompting the new NATO lackey to close its land crossings with Russia in contravention of all diplomatic norms. The truth of the matter is that Helsinki was aggravating Russophobia to make the bitter pill of increased spending on Western-made (read: American) armaments go down smoother for Nordic voters.
Belarus, Russia’s closest ally, has also been accused – once again, without a shred of evidence – of sending immigrants from the Middle East and North Africa to its borders with Poland, Lithuania and Latvia.
The latest wave of Russophobia to strike the European capitals comes at a time when migration is set to be a key issue in general elections on the continent, as well as in the UK, where the drumbeat about Russian-sponsored migrant invasion parties resonates the loudest.
An unidentified security source reportedly told the Telegraph : “If you can control the migrant routes into Europe then you can effectively control elections, because you can restrict or flood a certain area with migrants in order to influence public opinion at a crucial time.”
“A failure to control the number of migrants coming to the UK is already seen as a major weakness for Rishi Sunak who is struggling to push through a scheme to deport illegal migrants to Rwanda to stop the flow of small boats across the Channel,” the British daily continued.
Sunak made “stopping the boats” one of his top priorities as Prime Minister, though a survey of British sentiment earlier this year showed that three-quarters of voters believe the pledge has not gone well.
Since June 2023, over 52,000 illegal migrants were recorded as entering the UK, up 17 percent on the previous year. Data released last month revealed that the number of illegal migrants granted asylum in the UK hit a record high in 2023 as border guards waved through thousands of applications “in an attempt to clear a huge post-pandemic backlog.” What is even more laughable, albeit totally predictable, is that the people doing the “waving through” were British border officials, not secret “Russian agents.”
With EU elections in June, the European parliament looks set to shift hard to the right, with migration already proving to be a key issue for voters. Who best to blame for this approaching debacle? Certainly not Angela Merkel, who is personally responsible for much of the mess. Once again, Russia serves as a convenient bogeyman for the blockheaded decision-making processes coming out of the EU, and we’ve heard such accusations before.
In February 2016, one year after Merkel opened the floodgates to some 2 million migrants, many of them Muslims from Syria, U.S. General Philip Breedlove, Head of NATO forces in Europe, blamed Russia for working to exacerbate the refugee flows in a dastardly ploy to destabilize and destroy the EU. In a testimony before the House Armed Services Committee, he said, “Together, Russia and the Assad regime are deliberately weaponizing migration from Syria. In an attempt to overwhelm European structures and break European resolve.”
Nearly a decade later, the same reckless utterances are being made, although this time around the European public, more skeptical about ‘Russia the enemy’ narrative following the Nord Stream fallout, is prepared to express its anger at the ballot box come June during elections for European Parliament. Far-right populist parties are polling well in several EU countries, notably in Austria, Germany, Italy and the Netherlands. This terrifies Brussels, as the threat of a right-wing takeover appears imminent, and Europe has only itself to blame for that.
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By Lisa Pease | Consortium News | September 16, 2013
More than a half century ago, just after midnight on Sept. 18, 1961, the plane carrying UN Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjöld and 15 others went down in a plane crash over Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia). All 16 died, but the facts of the crash were provocatively mysterious. … continue
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