“No, there is a limit to the tyrant’s power! When the oppressed man finds no justice, When the burden grows unbearable, he appeals with fearless heart to heaven, and thence brings down his everlasting rights, which there abide, inalienably his, and indestructible as stars themselves. The primal state of nature reappears, wherein man confronts his fellow man; and if all other means shall fail his need, one last resort remains—his own good sword. The dearest of our goods we may defend, From violence. We stand before our country, We stand before our wives, before our children!

We want to be a single band of brothers, Never to part in danger or distress. We want to be free, as our fathers were, And rather die than live in slavery. We want to trust in the one highest God, And never be afraid of human power.”

“The Rütli Oath”, Friedrich Schiller’s “Wilhelm Tell”

On March 1^st, Valery Gergiev was dropped by his manager and fired from his position as Chief Director of the Munich Philharmonic Orchestra by Munich Mayor Dieter Reiter, for not denouncing Russia over its military intervention into Ukraine. Gergiev’s former manager Marcus Felsner stated to The Guardian that the Russian conductor is “the greatest conductor alive and an extraordinary human being with a profound sense of decency,” but he was unable to “publicly end his long-expressed support for a regime that has come to commit such crimes.”

The question is, who is the biggest loser in all of this? That is, who will suffer the greatest loss culturally from the voluntary dismissal of “the greatest conductor alive”?

No decent human being longs for war. War has historically been recognized as the weapon, the tool of the tyrant. To threaten force upon a people, a civilization and risk its destruction, only to usurp a temporary and precarious throne is rightfully seen as the ambitions of a mad man.

The question is, to whose mad ambitions and designs of war are we, as a global populace, held hostage? That is, who is the tyrant? And who are the upholders of liberty, who have a right to “defend from violence” by their “own good sword”?

Many of you may be wondering what is the “Rütli Oath” and who is Friedrich Schiller?

Well, that is exactly the point. If you do not know, you have been robbed of something and it was done consciously so that you should not know, or remember such things. A citizenry that wishes to be free and would “rather die than live in slavery” and “never be afraid of human power” is certainly not acceptable storytelling for children, let alone adults, in a world where we do not have a right to choose what the future holds.

Schiller is in many ways, the forgotten Shakespeare of Germany.

Today, we can still hear the name of Goethe mentioned frequently, but rarely do we hear the name of his dear friend, collaborator and in many ways mentor, Friedrich Schiller.

The Goethe and Schiller Monument in front of the National Theater in Weimar (1857)

Goethe and Schiller were recognised in the 19^th century as the two most revered figures in German literature. Both men had lived in the city of Weimar located in central Germany and were the seminal figures of the literary movement known as Weimar Classicism.

Weimar Classicism, contrary to what Wikipedia would have you believe, was never a new humanism which emerged from the ideas of Romanticism.

In fact, it was the mythologies of the Romantic movement that launched a form of cultural warfare against the German classics. From Nietzsche, to Wagner, the “Romantic” protest movement of the Jugendbewegung [German Youth Movement], to the Romantic cultural pessimism and existentialism of the post-WWI period known as the “Lost Generation,” all of these waves of “thought” were essentially a part of the same uninterrupted tradition that ran counter to German classicism, since it was Germany who had become a leader in creating geniuses of the Classics.

All of these so-called “Romantic” movements promoted forms of “heroic nihilism” as seen with such individuals as Ernst Jünger, Oswald Spengler, Arthur Moeller van den Brück and others, who helped shape the ideological environment of the Nazis.

The attack on Weimar Classicism began with the Congress of Vienna (1814-1815). Many historians in fact recognise that the Congress of Vienna, which was responsible for the inhumane carving up of Europe after the Napoleonic Wars, was largely to blame for the political foment that led to WWI a century later.

The Carlsbad decrees were adopted by the German Confederation in 1819 as an offshoot to the vision for Europe as defined by the Congress of Vienna which upheld the rule of empire and monarchy. It established severe limitations on academic and press freedoms and set up a federal commission to investigate all signs of political unrest in the German states. This was in reaction to the wave of republicanism that was sweeping throughout Europe after the success of the American Revolution against Britain’s monarchy. Thus, the organizers of the Congress of Vienna saw this spirit of republicanism as a form of revolutionary sedition which had to be crushed at its cultural root at all costs.

What is Weimar Classicism?

The “Weimar Classical” period, beginning around 1772, was named after the place in which much of the leading thinkers lived at the time, such as Goethe, Schiller, Wilhelm and Alexander von Humboldt, among others [The Humboldt educational reforms became heavily attacked under the Carlsbad decrees and many of the best teachers in Germany ended up migrating to the United States due to heavy censorship].

The Weimar Classical period was defined by a revolutionary spirit for creativity in literature and culture. It was not just about creating anew, but about building upon the richest classical traditions of the past and was very much influenced by Greek Classicism.

Goethe (1749-1832) and Schiller (1759-1805) became the leaders of the literary dimension of this movement. Goethe would be appointed the Director of the Weimar Theater (the National Theater today) in 1791, and it was during this period that Schiller’s epic dramas such as “The Wallenstein Trilogy,” “The Maid of Orleans” (about Joan of Arc), “Maria Stuart” and “Wilhelm Tell” were first performed on the stage.

Schiller, known during his time and beyond as the Poet of Freedom, wrote “Wilhelm Tell” in 1804. It is considered a masterpiece to this day and is especially loved by many in Germany and Switzerland. It is a story of how tyranny and empire were defeated by a people who upheld and defended their dignity and liberty.

The folk story is set in 14^th century Switzerland during the Habsburg rule of the Austrian Empire. According to historical records, referenced in the White Book of Sarnen, written in 1474 as a collection of medieval manuscripts, the Rütli Oath was a conspiracy to overthrow the Habsburg tyranny and is what launched the Burgenbruch rebellion. Among the names mentioned in the medieval manuscript is that of the hero, Wilhelm Tell.

This small grouping of Swiss people from just three cantons (townships) at the time, which grew to 26 cantons, went on to oppose the tyrannical rule of the Austrian Empire and form the Heveltic Confederation. The Rütli Oath was the first declaration of independence for Switzerland.

Germany during the time of Schiller’s writing “Wilhelm Tell,” was not a sovereign nation but rather was ruled between the Austrian Habsburg Monarchy and the Kingdom of Prussia. After the Napoleonic era, the Congress of Vienna founded the German Confederation (as a replacement to the Holy Roman Empire), loosely made up of 39 states. The Emperor of Austria held the permanent “presidency” of this German Confederation until the Seven Weeks’ War between the Kingdom of Prussia and the Austrian Empire in 1866. Prussia won and took over the “inherent right” to rule the German lands.

Thus, the effects of Schiller’s controversial choice of historical setting for his epic drama “Wilhelm Tell” during his life and beyond, should not go unnoticed. Schiller had chosen to stress this period in history, very much like what Shakespeare had done, as a lesson for the people of his time, that no one should subject themselves to the folly and whim of a tyrant. In turn, Schiller defined the spirit that would be required to oppose the bondages of empire and imperial rule. It is for this reason that “Wilhelm Tell” is among the most loved dramas by Schiller.

It is no coincidence that Beethoven (1770-1827) would choose a poem by Schiller, “Ode to Joy” to culminate his own life’s work in his 9^th Symphony.

Beethoven was also for republicanism and his 9^th Symphony is clearly a call for the voice of the people to rejoice in the recognition that all men are brothers and that all humankind was destined to live in harmony and peace. Ode to Joy was originally titled “Ode to Freedom” by Schiller. Alexander Thayer in his biography of Beethoven wrote “the thought lies near that it was the early form of the poem, when it was still an ‘Ode to Freedom’ (not ‘to Joy’), which first aroused enthusiastic admiration for it in Beethoven’s mind.”

This was the spirit that had come under attack by the Carlsbad Decrees and the Romantic movement, as epitomised by Richard Wagner (1813-1883) and Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900).

It is also no coincidence that Wagner was Adolf Hitler’s favourite composer. You may think this unfair to Wagner, but it is nonetheless very relevant.

Hollywood movies have long projected the idea that a deep appreciation of classical music is connected to Nazis or psychopaths, especially where the music of Johannes Sebastian Bach (1685-1750) is concerned.

Besides countless movie scenes of SS officers playing classical music on their gramophones right before doing something heinous, there are also scenes like this one in Schindler’s List where Bach’s Prelude from English Suite no. 2 is played while horrific acts of violence are conducted by Nazis.

We also see this in Hannibal Lecter’s love for Bach’s Goldberg Variations along with scenes of cannibalism, seen in the original and the 2013 tv series remake. And once again in Stanley Kubrick’s Clockwork Orange where Beethoven’s 9^th Symphony is played during the “brainwashing scene” with Nazi references and symbolism, and in another scene where the protagonist is having violent visions and fantasies.

Pairing classical music with Nazis and psychopaths is no coincidence. It is part of the ongoing cultural warfare against Weimar Classicism and classicism in general as something akin to totalitarianism. Whereas in fact, it was the very opposite. Totalitarianism viewed Weimar Classicism with its revolutionary bent of liberty for the people as a mortal threat to its existence.

Hitler made it known who were among his favourites, including “Germanic” composers such as Wagner and Anton Bruckner who were both paragons of the Romantic movement. During the Nazi reign, heavy censorship and cultural controls were enforced to uphold what Hitler identified as a strong Germanic identity, heavily influenced by artists from the Romantic movement.

The legendary and extremely gifted German conductor Wilhelm Furtwängler (1886-1954), stands out during this period of heavy censorship. He not only refused to become a Nazi adherent, but the Gestapo was aware that he was providing assistance to Jews and giving much of his salary to German emigrants during his concerts outside of Germany. (1) Georg Gerullis, a director at the Ministry of Culture remarked in a letter to Goebbels, “Can you name me a Jew on whose behalf Furtwängler has not intervened?” (2)

Furtwängler was the principal conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic from 1922-1945. In 1934, Furtwängler publicly described Hitler as an “enemy of the human race” and the political situation in Germany as a “schweinerei” (meaning literally swinishness). (3)

In 1933, Furtwängler met with Hitler to try to stop the antisemitic policy in the domain of music. Berta Geissmar, a close associate of Furtwängler, wrote “After the audience, he told me that he knew now what was behind Hitler’s narrow-minded measures. This is not only antisemitism, but the rejection of any form of artistic, philosophical thought, the rejection of any form of free culture...” (4)

So many years later, Furtwängler would be a major target for destruction by the new CIA-run cultural witch-hunt known as the Congress for Cultural Freedom (the new Congress of Vienna) founded in 1949 to launch a post-modernist assault on German classical culture.

Furtwängler wrote in his diary in 1935 that there was a complete contradiction between the racial ideology of the Nazis and the true German culture, the one of Schiller, Goethe and Beethoven. (5) He added in 1936: “living today is more than ever a question of courage”. (6)

It is this question of courage that will define what will dictate the future culture of Germany. Would Culture and Art be ultimately judged by the standards of truth, beauty and goodness? Or would such things be buried in the ground, and forgotten, as what largely happened to both Schiller’s works and his mysterious and abrupt death in 1805 which led to his body being dumped in a mass grave before a proper funeral service could be held?

[For more on this story, refer to Irene Eckerts’ beautiful paper “Schiller vs. the Congress for Cultural Freedom.”]

An Ode to the “Pearl of the Desert”: the Ancient City of Palmyra

Palmyra is an ancient city in Syria that dates as far back as the second millennium BC. It grew in wealth from the trade routes along the Silk Road. This wealth enabled the construction of monumental projects such as the Great Colonnade, the Temple of Bel and the tower tombs. Greco-Roman culture influenced the culture of Palmyra, which in turn produced distinctive architecture that combined eastern and western traditions. Palmyra is considered one of the most important historical sites in West Asia.

Syria is located within the cradle of civilization. For this reason, it is immensely rich in a diversity of cultures, religions and schools of thought. It has many ancient cities, many ancient memories.

In 2015, the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), occupied the city of Palmyra and began executions of hostages within the amphitheater. They also detonated explosives that destroyed the iconic Baalshamin Temple among other ancient architectural treasures.

As the ancient city was being destroyed over a period of two years, the west used ISIL photos to boost their news ratings as clickbait. It should also not go unmentioned, that the United States in particular, but several western countries in total, have been responsible for the backing of terrorism in West Asia.

ISIL was clear with its intention, they were not just attacking anyone who did not fit into their idea of what they thought a Muslim world should look like, attacking both Muslims and non-Muslims who did not fit into this narrow and barbarous view. They were also attacking the history of all civilization itself. For in their eyes, it was all of civilization that was at fault and would have to be wiped off the face of the Earth so that the new world could be built anew. ISIL, though very much a war against the people, was ultimately a war against whole civilizations and their ancient cultures.

During this tragedy, as with countless others, the west was largely unaffected. On March 2, 2017, the Syrian Army, along with support from the Russian military, were successful in taking back Palmyra.

Extensive damage had been done during the ISIL occupation and much of the ruins of Palmyra have been lost forever. There was also the painful memory that was now associated with the ancient city, that of death and terror, for public executions were displayed in the amphitheater for a two-year period, including that of Khaled al-Assad who was the director of antiquities and had been tortured for days for information on hidden artifacts.

It seemed like the memory of Palmyra would be stained with this tragedy for many generations. ISIL may have left, but its spirit of terror and destruction remained.

The response to this destruction was one of the most beautiful displays of courage and dignity that I have ever seen in my lifetime. And of course, many in the west have likely never heard of it or understood its strength and magnitude in face of what was occurring in West Asia.

In response to the attempt to erase all memory of civilization, the Mariinsky Symphony Orchestra from St. Petersburg traveled to Palmyra’s Roman Theatre and performed for an audience of Syrian people and some western dignitaries. The date of the concert coincided with the handover for the burial of the remains of special forces officer Aleksander Prokhorenko, who died after ordering an airstrike on his own position after he was surrounded by IS fighters.

The concert “Pray for Palmyra” was conducted by none other than Valery Gergiev, and the first piece that was chosen by Maestro Gergiev was Bach’s Chaconne piece performed by Pavel Mulyukov (his performance starts at min 27:26).

For anyone who has not seen this performance, it is really a must. It speaks to both the pain and sorrow from such horrific tragedy. But, it also speaks to hope and optimism, to beauty and strength. There were no words that could respond to what happened in Palmyra, it was only through the beauty of the music from the German classic composer Bach, that was profound enough to both acknowledge the level of pain and despair as well as the immortality of the soul and the sacredness of the individual. That no matter the level of carnage and mayhem, it could never eradicate the sanctity of human life.

This beautiful message was a Russian initiative, and we should all thank Russia for reminding us of this.

Munich Fires “the Greatest Conductor Alive”

Valery Gergiev, who was the chief conductor of the Munich Philharmonic from September 2015, was fired on March 1, 2022, for refusing to denounce President Vladimir Putin and Russia’s intervention in Ukraine. That is, Maestro Gergiev was fired for what he wouldn’t say, and not for what he said.

Alongside this, 20 year old pianist Alexander Malofeev who was scheduled to play a Vancouver concert in August was “postponed” indefinitely. Why? Because Malofeev is Russian. It is as simple as that.

Leila Getz, Vancouver Recital Society’s artistic director felt that hosting a Russian performer might impact Vancouver’s large Ukrainian Canadian community. In this case, it did not even matter if Malofeev was willing to publicly criticize Russia’s intervention.

Anna Netrebko, a famous Russian opera singer was withdrawn from her future performance at New York City’s Metropolitan Opera because she refused to denounce President Putin, although she did publicly denounce the war. In this new McCarthyite atmosphere, that was not enough. The Met General Manager Peter Gelb acknowledged that Netrebko “is one of the greatest singers in Met history…”

This purging of Russian artists in the music domain also coincides with the smearing of 15 year old Russian skater Kamilia Valieva during the 2022 Olympic Games. Valieva was vilified after the suspicious and unprofessional handling of details around possible doping, which was a carefully-timed set-up in order to manipulate the relative standings of the figure skater. The International Olympic Committee (IOC) and the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) bent their own rules and guidelines in order to baselessly ostracise and vilify Valieva.

Valeria Nollan and Alexandra G. Kostina write in their article “Has the West Lost Its Soul and Feelings for Beauty and Fairness?”:

“For the envious elites, it is precisely Valieva’s otherworldly beauty and innocence, especially when connected with Russianness, that must be destroyed.  [Finnian] Cunningham notes, ‘Such a beauty could not be tolerated for it destroyed the US media campaign to otherwise demonize Russia and instill enmity towards that nation.’ They detest the Russianness that manifests sheer joy and freedom from their control, at the same time envying the culture that could provide such fertile soil for beauty to flourish.  How, they say, can a nation of barbarians and Untermenschen grow such magnificent flowers?  Ultimately, they want to banish the “alien” country that dares to remind them of what they have lost—the feelings for beauty and innocence.  Because beauty is both an aesthetic and spiritual category in which perception of something outside the self can resurrect the human being, it also encompasses feelings for one’s homeland, its flag, and its national anthem.  Perhaps this tearing away of these sources of pride and inspiration for Russian Olympic athletes is part of the carefully curated humiliation imposed on Russia as a result of dubious charges of doping, both individual and institutional.”

Although much of the witch-hunt against Russian artists, performers of beauty and optimism, is clearly an attack on Russian culture, where now even Russian art will be subjected to censorship for the mere fact that it is Russian, with the goal of causing shame and humiliation for merely being Russian. The loss is not one sided and the greatest loser in all of this will not be the Russian people.

As seen in the historical case of Germany, any artist that is a vehicle for beauty and optimism is considered a threat to the status quo within a system of empire. For it is beauty and optimism which allows a people, a culture, to find the courage to oppose the shackles of the censors, and dare to fight for liberty. For if one recognises the sanctity that lies within all human life, the unnatural bondage and humiliation of that life becomes intolerable. Thus, when a people, a culture, would rather die to fight for this liberty from empire than live a life of drudgery, forever the servant of another; this is obviously unsustainable to the status quo and an empire will always seek to crush such a spirit.

Thus, any culture, any art that represents such an idea, is a threat to the western system of our present day.

This can be clearly seen with the attack on anything deemed “classical” by the Frankfurt School (7) and the Congress for Cultural Freedom. The removal of these Russian artists is not only being done as an attack on the Russian people and Russian culture, it is an attack on all of us, for it is robbing us all of that beauty and optimism needed to fight for true political freedom.

If we are to believe that the Russians are inherently villainous by nature, it can no longer be tolerated that high standards of Russian artistry be permitted to be shown to the world, for it would stand in stark and sublime contradiction to what the censors would have us believe. That perhaps, the Russians actually remember something that we here in the west have forgotten, but once knew.

When Maestro Gergiev was fired from the Munich Philharmonic Orchestra for refusing to denounce President Putin, his manager, Marcus Felsner said in a statement to The Guardian that dropping Maestro Gergiev was “the saddest day of my professional life.” He called Maestro Gergiev “the greatest conductor alive and an extraordinary human being with a profound sense of decency,” and yet this was apparently not enough. If you are not with the censors, you are against the censors, and a powerful influencer of beauty and optimism like Maestro Gergiev thus had to be banished from their lands.

Who truly looses from such a banishment?

Perhaps the German people would do well to remember the attack, that is ongoing, on their own classical culture, which was among the greatest in the world. The German people would also do well to remember that their country has never truly been sovereign; once again cut up into pieces by the Versailles Treaty, which led to the crippling of German industry and the slow starvation of the German people.

However, most importantly, the Germans would do well in remembering that it was never their choice to join NATO, but that West Germany was an occupied country by the UK, USA and France from 1945 to 1955. And that this direct occupation only ended after West Germany agreed to join NATO in 1955. It was never Germany’s choice but rather was an offer by gun point for a piece, a crumb of “liberty.”

“Independence” on a short leash.

However, the occupation never truly ended, and Germany in all of its history has never truly been free.

It is time Germany break free from its Stockholm Syndrome, for it is their own classical cultural heritage that is at risk of being entirely erased.

The author can be reached at cynthiachung.substack.com

(1) Prieberg, Fred K. (1991). Trial of Strength: Wilhelm Furtwängler and the Third Reich. Quartet Books.
(2) Ibid.
(3) L’atelier du Maître “, article by Philippe Jacquard
(4) Geissmar, Berta (1944). The Baton and the Jackboot: Recollections of Musical Life. London and Edinburgh: Morrison and Gibb ltd.
(5) Wilhelm Furtwängler (trad. Ursula Wetzel, Jean-Jacques Rapin, préf. Pierre Brunel), Carnets 1924-1954 : suivis d’Écrits fragmentaires, Genève, éditions Georg, 1995, p. 39.
(6) Wilhelm Furtwängler (trad. Ursula Wetzel, Jean-Jacques Rapin, préf. Pierre Brunel), Carnets 1924-1954 : suivis d’Écrits fragmentaires, Genève, éditions Georg, 1995, p. 11.
(7) While many have come to realize that the rot within the western education system is tied to the growth of Critical Race Theory, few have come to realize that the school that birthed this perverse analysis of sociology and history is found in a group called the Frankfurt School that emerged out of a sick network of Marxist academics in Frankfurt Germany who envisioned curing society from the tyranny of its traditions which they concluded were the source of fascism. Using a mix of Freudian and Marxist theories applied to sociology, these nihilistic reformers shaped the entire Congress for Cultural Freedom, promoted relativism and destroyed the classical humanist foundations in education that had formerly governed western schooling relegating the study of the classics to obsolete “dead white European males”.

Three developments in the past week herald a profound shift in European politics. It is tempting, but ultimately futile, to contextually place this shift as a reaction to the Russian decision to launch military operations in Ukraine. The pretext only provides the alibi, while the shift is anchored on power play and has a dynamic of its own.

Without doubt, the three developments — Germany’s decision to step up its militarisation, the European Union’s (EU) decision to finance arms supplies to Ukraine and Germany’s historic decision to reverse its policy not to supply weapons to conflict zones — mark a radical departure in European politics since World War II.

In a speech Sunday during a special session of parliament in Berlin on Germany’s response to the situation around Ukraine, Chancellor Olaf Scholz announced a plan to beef up German military, earmarking for the armed forces an additional €100 billion ($112.7 billion) out of the 2022 budget as a one-time allocation and underscoring his promise to reach the 2% of gross domestic product spending on defence. He said the additional spending would include investments and armaments projects for the German military.

As for the rationale behind the decision, Scholz said, “It’s clear we need to invest significantly more in the security of our country in order to protect our freedom and our democracy.” As it is, Germany has a record high defence budget (€53 billion) for the current year, which is an increase of 3.2% over the previous year. The proposed €100 billion additional financial outlay will boost acquisition of drones, new fighter jets, etc. and fund investments in medium and long term defence build-up. Scholz also committed that the hiked up defence spending of 2% of GDP is going to be a permanent norm.

Germany is belatedly complying with the former U.S. President Donald Trump’s persistent demand! No doubt, the decision will immensely please Washington. It conveys German commitment to the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation and helps silence the criticism in the U.S. that Germany has lately turned into a disloyal ally.

On the German government’s decision to directly supply weapons to Ukrainian troops, Scholz claimed, “We need to support Ukraine in its hour of desperate need.” He squarely blamed Russia for this important policy reversal. Additionally, Berlin also signalled that third countries could transfer German-made weapons to Ukraine, whereas previously such permission had been denied.

The argument that Germany intends to secure peace in Europe by this policy reversal is spurious but Scholz is getting away with it. In reality, Scholz has overturned a long-standing German policy that was rooted in Germany’s history as an aggressor during World War II and for which there is significant public support still within Germany. To be sure, this clever move will help boost Germany’s performance as an arms exporter in the global market and is a boon to the corporate industry.

Germany already figures as the fourth biggest arms exporter in the world, ahead of China. Germany’s arms exports reached record levels in 2021, following significant sales of maritime and air defence weapons to Egypt last year. Germany exported arms worth 9.35 billion euros ($10.65 billion) last year, an increase of 61% compared to 2020. This topped the previous record amount of 8 billion euros in 2019.

Germany’s military build-up is a poignant issue in European politics, and what trajectory it will take once the dust settles in Ukraine, only time can tell. Of course, there is no question of going back. But with the U.S. in decline and France and Britain becoming much diminished players in recent years, Germany’s surge as a superpower will change the power dynamic. Thus, it is no longer possible to take for granted Germany’s nuclear latency — being a “paranuclear” state with complete technical prowess to develop a nuclear weapon quickly.

The thinking toward a military build-up, the need for Germany to be a “forceful” participant in global politics and the jettisoning of its guilt complex and get “combat ready” — all these by far predate the current situation around Ukraine. What has been happening is that a new generation has appeared at the helm of German politics, replacing the Old Guard. Alongside, the “grand coalitions” running the country have narrowed the ideological divide between the CDU and the SPD.

Today, the SPD is only notionally “left wing” and is actually an enthusiastic promoter of Germany’s rearmament, as much as the CDU. As for the guilt complex, it has vanished from the German political ecosystem. Curiously, Germany’s former defence minister from CDU, Ursula von der Leyen had a Nazi ancestry to claim both on her side and her husband’s side. But that hardly mattered when Angela Merkel assigned to her the job of running the Bundeswehr for seven years.

By the way, von der Leyen’s grandfather was a Nazi who volunteered to fight in 1940, became a staff sergeant in the Wehrmacht and led a so-called “anti-partisan” unit on the eastern Soviet front hunting down resistance groups, participated in the capture of Ukraine’s capital Kiev and took part in the barbaric September 1941 Babi Yar massacre, in which more than 33,000 Jewish inhabitants of Kiev were shot in cold blood. It’s said that “Until his death he would rant about Jews, the French and the perfidious Albion. He never left the country again and he’d be in a near panic when coming close to a border.”

Yet, von der Leyen would co-habit comfortably in the CDU-SPD grand coalition under Merkel with the then Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier, who was from SPD — the party of Willy Brandt, known as reformists and moderates! In fact, Steinmeier himself maintained — and still does as President of Germany — good personal equations with the leadership of Svoboda, the Neo-Nazi faction in Ukraine.

That is why Germany’s growing stature as the driving force in the EU will remake European politics. Von der Leyen’s current term as the president of the EU Commission, heading the bureaucracy in Brussels, gives her a pivotal role and it runs till December 2024. The body language of her last week’s announcements regarding Ukraine and her performance at the recent Munich Security Conference betrayed that she takes a vicarious pleasure to insult Russia and its leadership, as if it is a private crusade for her to settle scores for the defeat of Nazi Germany at the hands of the Red Army. Unsurprisingly, she has become Washington’s darling in Europe, more important than the German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock or Scholz himself.

However, the big question is: How will Germany’s growing national pride — Deutscher Nationalismus — work with the EU’s consensual politics? It remains to be seen how far the EU can come to terms with the German ambitions, once the genie leaps out of the bottle. Clearly, one alternative will be to divert the explosive energy toward external activities. That is where the EU decision to fund arms supplies to conflict zones and so on opens a new vista.

Without doubt, the EU reaction to the Ukraine situation is by far disproportional. Germany used the present crisis to surge. The EU, in turn, has been lulled into the (false) belief that it now wields the big stick from Brussels — although a European consensus on foreign policy still remains elusive. In normal times, such radical EU moves or the German militarisation itself might have met with some degree of unease or discussion. But France is caught up in an election cycle. And Germany has brusquely crossed the Rubicon when the weather turned favourable.

Prima facie, it may seem German Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s inexperience in world politics showed in his first appearance at the Munich Security Conference on Saturday when he was dismissive about a remark by Russian leader earlier in the week at a joint press conference with him in Moscow that the events that unfolded in Ukraine’s eastern regions amounted to “genocide.”

Scholz mockingly said, “Putin is coming to argue that in Donbass there is something like genocide, which is really ridiculous, to be very clear on that.” What prompted Scholz to step onto that minefield he only knows. There was deliberateness in his performance.

Perhaps, Scholz thought it made excellent politics in front of all those powerful American politicians present in the audience in Munich to mark his distance publicly from Russia at a time when the U.S. media has been lampooning that Germany is no longer a western ally.

Surely, Scholz would know there is a taboo about the word “genocide” slipping out of the lips of a German politician. It harks back to Nazi Germany. On a rough estimation, the major genocides carried out by the Nazis alone add up to 16,315,000 victims. Germany is the world champion on this blood-stained chapter of human history, unlikely to be ever surpassed.

Scholz’s gaffe will not end here. It is overnight dovetailing into the current crisis between Russia and the West. Ironically, Scholz may have unwittingly ended up drawing attention to Moscow’s concerns over a humanitarian catastrophe brewing in Donbass, where millions of Russians live. Moscow is going to present to Scholz full documentary evidence of the genocide that Putin had referred to.

Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on Saturday, “My message to counterparts at the German Foreign Ministry is this: In connection with statements by Chancellor Scholz, we will present evidence concerning mass graves in this region for the German leadership to study closely.”

Zakharova disclosed that these materials have already been shared with Washington, but Moscow kept them out of public domain intentionally since their content is “unbearable.” To be sure, Scholz has a challenging week ahead.

Why is all this happening? For a start, Germany’s involvement in the Ukraine question itself is highly controversial. Germany actively promoted the unrest in Ukraine in late 2013 to push then President Viktor Yanukovich to hurry through his country’s EU accession. German intelligence encouraged street protests in Kiev while Berlin did the arm-twisting, which ultimately forced Yanukovich to agree to hold mid-term elections to test people’s will.

Germany, France and Russia backed such an approach as the best way out of the stalemate. However, within forty-eight hours of that deal, protests took a violent turn in Kiev’s main square and agents provocateurs working for western intelligence deployed snipers at vantage points to attack the security forces.

To cut a long story short, the Ukrainian security apparatus collapsed, Yanukovich fled the country and an anti-Russian leadership emerged in Kiev with the street power of extreme nationalist forces led by neo-Nazi elements.

The bottom line is that Germany had a hand in destabilising Ukraine. The events in Ukraine expose the propaganda lie that its foreign policy offensive serves the interests of democracy and freedom. In reality, the Berlin government is working with an opposition movement whose leaders include Oleh Tyahnybok of the neo-fascist All-Ukrainian Union, or “Svoboda.” (Tyahnybok said recently that Russia would have to be “dismembered” and divided into “20 nation-states”!)

Germany played a similar dubious role in negotiating the Minsk Accords. The Steinmeier Formula proposing special status for the separatist region is a compromise path named after the present German president, but Berlin subsequently retracted from its obligation to navigate the regime in Kiev to implement the accord. Possibly, Germany heeded American wishes.

This being the sordid backdrop, the big question is: What is Germany really up to?

The heart of the matter is that Germany is back on the path of militarisation for the third time in the past century. The vaulting German ambition is once again surfacing, first articulated by then the Foreign Minister and current President Frank-Walter Steinmeier in a Bundestag speech — and in a speech at the Munich Security Conference — in late January-early February 2014 to the effect that Germany was “too big and too important” to confine itself any longer “to commenting on world politics from the sidelines.”

Steinmeier declared that due to its economic power and geographical location in the centre of Europe, Germany bore a special responsibility in regard to world affairs, adding, “We recognise our responsibility,” and, while Germany would serve as a catalyst for a common European foreign and security policy and the use of military force was only a last resort, it could not any longer be ruled out!

That was the moment of truth in German history. Germany was bidding farewell to its post-World War 2 self-diminution in foreign and security policy. Interestingly, the German Defence Minister at that time was none other than Ursula von der Leyen, the staunchly pro-American — and notoriously anti-Russian — head of the EU Commission presently.

German militarisation is simply not possible without tacit U.S. encouragement stemming out of geopolitical considerations — Washington’s containment strategy against Russia. As in the past with Nazi Germany initially, American corporations are taking part in German re-armament, supplying German companies with everything from raw materials to technology and patent knowledge. This is happening thanks to a a complex network of business interests, joint ventures, cooperation agreements, and cross-ownership between American and German corporations and their subsidiaries.

In the American calculus, Germany is an economic powerhouse and is the only credible European power today that can potentially checkmate Russia in terms of history and geography and geo-strategy. Unsurprisingly, meddling in the Russian-German relationship has been Washington’s approach throughout.

Germany is playing a brilliant game of hedging. It is heavily dependent on Russia for its vast market, massive natural resources and energy supplies, and, therefore, adopts a “win-win” attitude in the bilateral ties. However, Germany cannot and will not jeopardise its trans-Atlantic bonds, either. Atlanticism remains as the core of German strategies.

Bundeswehr is right in the forefront of the NATO’s aggressive buildup against Russia. German Minister Christine Lambrecht told Spiegel last week that a rapid and massive increase in defence spending is needed to prepare the German armed forces for a possible war against Russia. An additional €37.6 billion is reportedly being planned as defence spending to prepare the German military to fight full-scale wars.

Any whichever way the U.S.-Russian tensions pan out — or, get protracted — Germany hopes to be the net winner. It may seem an audacious hope, but is a realistic expectation. The Ukraine crisis marks Germany’s return to the centre court of European security as a superpower. France, UK, Italy etc. stand much diminished and belong to a junior league. Germany senses that its hour of reckoning is at hand. The U.S. once again encourages Germany as its principal European partner.

If Lord Ismay, NATO’s first Secretary-General, were alive today, he might revise his famous 1949 remark that the alliance’s goal was “to keep the Russians out, the Americans in, and the Germans down.” Instead, he might say, looking ahead, that NATO would aim to “keep the Russians out, the Americans in, and the Germans out and about.”

The Dem combo remote-controlling the senile President of the United States by earpiece/teleprompter was never accused of being the brightest bulbs in the room – any room.

That explains why one of their own, Nancy Pelosi, on ABC News, gave the whole Russian “invasion” game away two – or three – days, depending on their math, before the “canceled” non-event.

First she said, “If we were not threatening the sanctions and the rest, it would guarantee that Putin would invade.” And then the clincher:

“If Russia doesn’t invade, it’s not that he never intended to. It’s just that the sanctions worked.”

Here, fully unveiled, is the whole Dem “strategy”: a dubiously effective foreign policy “victory” which will melt away months ahead of the inevitable debacle at the US midterms.

Maria Zakharova, that female Slav counterpart of Hermes, the Messenger of the Gods in Ancient Greece, got closer to the truth while framing the psyops: “February 15, 2022 will go down in history as the day Western war propaganda failed. Humiliated and destroyed without a single shot fired.”

Add to it Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, unplugged, on “information terrorism”: “We have to learn from the tricks [our Western colleagues] pull.”

Putin, once again, applied Sun Tzu to win without a battle: “win” as in attending the objectives set for this round.

But it gets dicier. The Duma, by 78%, voted to ask the President to recognize the Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics as “separate, sovereign and independent” states.

The final decision rests with Putin, who has already hinted what happens next. Even as he qualified “what is happening now in Donbass” as “a genocide” – taking into context the previous eight years – he pointed out how “we must do everything to solve the problems of Donbass, but first of all, based on (…) the implementation of the Minsk agreements.”

What this means is that Putin will give Kiev yet another – final? – chance to implement Minsk: the agreement – enshrined as UN law – that the Americans have been de facto sabotaging since 2015.

Russia’s Security Council won’t be fooled, characterizing how “the West is conducting a carefully planned information operation against Russia based on the concept of ‘hybrid war’.” The Security Council also reaffirms that “European countries will be responsible for very likely provocations against the DPR and LPR from Kiev.” This is Patrushev speaking, not a deer-caught-in-the-headlights Jake Sullivan.

Neo-nazis on parade

German Chancellor Scholz’s visit to Moscow was not exactly a Porsche negotiating Nurburgring. One never gets away spewing out platitudes in front of Putin. Scholz: “For our generation, war in Europe is unimaginable”. Putin: “One has already been unleashed by NATO against Belgrade.”

After weeks of non-stop American hysteria cum war fever, it might be tempting to consider that Macron and Scholz could be on the same page with Putin, demanding that Kiev sit on the same table with Donetsk and Luhansk and work on the necessary constitutional amendments to grant them autonomy. That would be the only path towards a possible solution. Yet there’s no guarantee it will be taken, because of the immovable American veto.

Valentina Matvienko, the speaker of the Russian Federation Council, once again has stressed the only possible way Russia would “intervene”: in the “event of an invasion of the Armed Forces of Ukraine in the DPR and LPR, Russia’s response will be proportionate to the scale of aggression.”

Even Scholz, timidly, has somehow agreed that like NATO in Yugoslavia, Russia in this case would have the right to invoke Responsibility to Protect (R2P) to save millions of Russian passport holders from the oligarchic Banderastan/neo-nazi shock troops of what Andrei Martyanov memorably described as country 404.

These include the Azov Batallion – which recruits neo-nazis from all across Europe – sporting Wolfsangel arm patches straight from the SS, and is now incorporated in Ukraine’s National Guard. The vast, CIA/MI6 “revitalized” stay-behind networks. And of course the in-progress $10 billion Eric Prince (Blackwater/Academi) scheme of setting up a private mercenary army via a partnership between the Lancaster 6 company and CIA-controlled Ukraine intel.

The two crucial developments

The serial American fake news/pysops/fog of war offensive did manage to obscure the two really crucial developments of the heady past few days.

1. The de facto invasion of Russian territorial waters by a US Virginia-class sub, described as a “completely unreasonable and incomprehensible activity” by Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu.
2. Mr. Kinzhal’s recent flight to Kaliningrad onboard a Mach 3-capable MIG-31K “Foxhound”. In case NATOstan clowns continue to entertain funny ideas, they could place a call to Mr. Khinzal. He’ll answer the call with hypersonic speed. Literally.

Before the scheduled Russian non-invasion “invasion” was canceled, Martyanov had deliciously outlined how the “strategic ambivalence of Russia is terrifying for the US now because the US doesn’t know what will follow after the false flag, granted this false flag succeeds to dupe European poodles into utter submission.”

Yes, it ain’t over till the fat transgender sings. A false flag, or flags, remain on the radar – considering the tons of weapons showered on 404; over 150,000 troops massed right in front of the line of contact, equipped with absolutely lethal 120mm Grad rockets with warheads that when exploded, release thousands of sharp metal fragments; and the thousands of mercenaries trained by Polish, Brit and Blackwater/Academi instructors.

What really happened in the Kuril islands, between Hokkaido and Kamchatka, diplomatically described by Shoigu, eventually landed on Russian media. The first explanation was that a Russian vessel might have launched warning torpedoes against the American sub.

What happened was that the Virginia-class was detected by a Russian SSK or SSN, there was a sweep, and then the Marshal Shaposhnikov frigate used a sonar to intimate the uninvited guest to beat it. That was rather polite. In any other circumstances the Virginia-class would have been sunk.

Of course this should be interpreted for what it is: one more graphic illustration that the “indispensable nation” has lost its maritime invulnerability. Certainly to Russia. And sooner rather than later, also to China.

And that is a direct consequence of the dire state of the US defense industry, Martyanov’s key area of study, and exemplified by the latest report by the National Defense Industrial Association (NDIA).

The full report is here. Take a look, for instance, at this table charting the emphasis on research in emerging technologies.

Key areas such as space, hypersonics and cyber are down. In parallel, there’s an “increase” in three interconnected areas: AI, fully networked C3 and microelectronics. This would suggest the same old American obsession, since Rumsfeld, with deploying in a “smart battlefield”.

The key takeaway may be the increase in biotechnology. Because that would point to a desperate Empire – already outclassed by Russia and soon neutralized by China – resorting to biowarfare. It’s no wonder the landmark February 4 Russia-China joint statement pointedly refers to the danger of US bioweapon labs.

To the dustbin, Batman!

Moscow has not deviated for a moment from its Sun Tzu approach – while detailing all demands and all red lines many times over. Washington and Brussels have been warned in no uncertain terms that if they entice their goons/mercenaries to attack Donbass, 404 will be smashed to smithereens. And that is only the easily dismissible part of the package: all NATOstan security systems will also go.

Russia is waiting – like an army of Taoist monks. After the canceled “invasion”, it can even afford to enjoy some comic relief. The “technical and military” responses are ready – and once again: it’s their strategic ambiguity that is driving the Americans crazy. They are coming to realize they must negotiate indivisibility of security and missiles in Eastern Europe because no one in the Ukrainized Empire knows what Putin, Shoigu and Gerasimov could do next.

And then, there are the headless chickens. In the aftermath of the “invasion” not showing up as scheduled, G-7 Foreign Ministers will have an “emergency” meeting later his week in Germany to scratch their collective heads on why the invasion did not show up as scheduled.

As it stands, in the calm before the next storm, let’s sit back, relax and remember February 16, 2022: the day when the latest, concerted, full spectrum fake news psyops ended up hurling NATOstan’s “credibility” to a one-way trip to the dustbin of History.

So far, the “war in Crimea” has been a paper war, fought in the media editorial offices, and let’s hope it stays that way forever. Anyway, also in this kind of Metaverse conflict, there is a clear loser: Europe. No one noticed the EU foreign policy chief Joseph Borrell weakly protesting that “Europeans have to be part of the table” in the Ukrainian talks. The general perception is that he doesn’t exist. Crushed by its bully American ally, faint-hearted and blind to its genuine interest, the Union is in a decline’s spiral. Less and less, it is an economic giant and more and more a political and military worm. In a tightly interconnected world, it has to restrain its crucial commercial relationship with China and Russia (and Iran) to please Washington.

Once comparable in principle with the American one, the European economy is falling back. From rough parity in 2008, the U.S.’s economy is now one-third bigger than the EU and the UK combined.

In 2008 the EU’s economy slightly exceeded America’s: $16.2 trillion against $14.7 trillion. By 2020, the U.S. economy had grown to $20.9 trillion, whereas the EU’s had fallen to $15.7 trillion. The former major general in the People’s Liberation Army Air Force Qiao Liang’s studies brilliantly pointed out that Washington is ruling through a weaponised dollar. The world’s primary reserve currency accounts for about 60% of official foreign exchange reserves, while the euro for only 21%. Sadly smiling, one could remember the 2000’s Saddam’s switch from the dollar to the euro for oil trading. It was an attempt to rebuke Washington’s hard-line on sanctions and encourage Europeans to challenge it. We know how it ended.

Europe is almost irrevocably falling behind China and the U.S. in the global race to technological leadership. Inside the EU, everyone is worried about the over-dependence on foreign-owned technology providers and the lack of industrial edge as in the semiconductors field. These concerns are particularly acute in the realms where “Europe does not have a strong indigenous industrial base, such as in cloud computing (76 per cent express concerns), artificial intelligence (68 per cent), and to a lesser extent by 5G mobile technology (54 per cent)”.

Have you ever seen a working European PC operative system? Or a competitive European search engine? But today’s problems are mainly EDTs, the Emerging and Disruptive Technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI), autonomous weapons systems, big data, biotechnologies and quantum technologies. They are strategic and can give adversaries significant advantages, overtake existing governance systems, outpace regulatory efforts, and subvert military concepts and dual-use capabilities.

Europe is lagging behind also in the military field. European ground forces are mainly tailored for peacekeeping or anti-terrorist mission. Accustomed to occasionally fighting against a technologically inferior enemy, they are entirely unprepared against a real powerful army. Their command and communication infrastructure are highly vulnerable to the most advanced electronic warfare.

Still, it would be a gross attitude to insinuate that they are all a bunch of incompetent in Brussels. They know pretty well what is coming, but the machine is paralysed by political elites still squashed by a post-war mentality. Then, sometimes, the Americans forget to keep up the appearances; recently, Biden threatened to close for retaliation North Stream II, a pipeline on a foreign country over which Washington haven’t any jurisdiction. You can write unpalatable university papers full of data, but to say it in one world: Europe is an American colony.

Sometimes someone tries to break the chain with little success. In a famous speech at the Sorbonne in 2017, French President Emmanuel Macron said: “Only Europe can, in a word, guarantee genuine sovereignty or ability to exist in today’s world to defend values and interests”.

It was the first time that a European leader stressed the need for the EU’s strategic autonomy comprehensively, and the word “sovereignty” sounded like a bomb. The reaction of the other states of the Union was freezing cold. Many suspected a covert attempt to enhance the French military industries behind the grand idea. Even though it might also be partially true, the main issue was the usual lack of political perspectives and the petty particularism that still hold way in the relationship among the European partners.

This narrow-minded stance is deeply rooted in recent history. The substantial European enlargement of 2004, when ten nations, the great majority from the former Communist bloc, joined the EU in one fell swoop, was substantially a rushed way to attract the countries in the NATO’S foyer. Especially at the time, it was an appealing idea. Still, the absorption process, dense with bureaucratic steps, lacks accurate political compatibility assessments or a realistic reflection on a practicable roadmap. The result was an almost paralysed giant, in which some countries like Poland or Baltic countries trusted more Washington than Brussels despite being inside the Union. Their fear of the Soviet Empire has understandable links to their history, but they don’t like to realise that USSR and its socialist mission is over forever. They are stuck in the past and see Germany’s efforts to protect its legitimate business with Moscow as a betrayal.

Macron’s bold push for European sovereignty clashes with a fragmented reality. What is Europe? Brussels’ ruthless neoliberalism? Berlin’s Rhine capitalism, Budapest’s illiberal democracy? Warsaw’s Catholic ethical state? Up to now, only His American Master’s Voice brings everyone together, unfortunately not according to the true Union’s interests.

In a much-quoted article, written for the Financial Times and then rejected for unclear reasons, Professor Sergey Karaganov, a man said to be near the Kremlin, talks of a “wider Greater Asian framework”. Inside it, “Russia needs a safe and friendly Western flank in the future world competition. Europe without Russia or even against it has been rapidly losing its international positions”.

A besieged Russia may be tuning into Beijing wavelength for self-preservation, but its natural destiny is a bridge with the West. A Europe conscious of its strength must recognise that a good economic relationship with Russia is a geopolitical truism. At the same time, you cannot forget the American elephant in the room. It is unthinkable for a strong “sovereign” Union to cut its ties with WWII’s “Liberators” (even though the USSR paid the highest price to beat the Nazis). But the European can try to contain the over-power of the dollar a little more successfully. The problem with the American is remaining friends without being suffocated from the excesses of such a big guy’s friendship.

The Anglo-Americans are running a modern-day reworking of Operation Overlord, the June 1944 military invasion plan billed to liberate Western Europe from Nazi Germany. This time around, the billed objective is to “liberate” the European Union from its “tyrannical” dependency on Russian natural gas.

In reality, the unspoken objective is to maintain U.S. tyrannical control over Europe. That control is essential for upholding American hegemony and global power. The ultimate price is economic devastation and even war for Europe which the “noble” American hegemon is all too willing for its peons to pay.

This week, U.S. President Joe Biden showed off his overlord status when he arrogantly spoke for German Chancellor Olaf Scholz at a White House press conference. Biden was asked about the fate of the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline from Russia to Germany in the hypothetical event of an invasion of Ukraine by Russia. Biden didn’t skip a beat to consult with the German leader. He peremptorily asserted the gas project would be terminated.

“There will be no longer a Nord Stream 2,” said Biden without hesitation. “We will bring an end to it.”

The American president was asked how this could be done given that the functioning of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline is nominally under the control of Germany, not the United States. “We will — I promise you, we’ll be able to do it,” asserted Biden without so much as a hint of seeking any kind of agreement from the German chancellor.

The assuredness of Washington’s presumed ability to over-ride European sovereignty was a revealing and disturbing display of American imperial arrogance.

It was also an excruciating display of American contempt for supposed European “allies”. Scholz, Germany, Europe, was made to look like a nonentity by Biden. Later press reports indicated that too.

Washington and London have led the ramping up of geopolitical tensions with relentless accusations that Russia is about to invade Ukraine and jeopardize European security. From the way the Anglo-American propaganda has contrived it, one would think that the scenario is a re-run of Nazi aggression threatening Europe for which they alone are the noble defenders. Putin is Hitler, the Kremlin is the Third Reich, and diplomacy is appeasement, so the preposterous propaganda goes.

Moscow has repeatedly said it has no intention to invade Ukraine and that in fact it is Russia that is being threatened by the U.S.-led NATO military alliance after year-on-year expansion of the bloc all the way to Russia’s borders.

Ratcheting up the tensions further, Washington and London are demanding that Europe must adopt draconian sanctions against Moscow including the commitment to abandon the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline from Russia to Germany. That pipeline took five years and a €10-billion investment to complete despite constant American objections. The crisis over Ukraine contrived by Washington and its British flunkey have ensured that the gas supply has been suspended for the past six months despite an energy crunch in Europe. What the Anglo-American overlords want to see finally is the entire gas project being scrapped. That’s the end-game even if it means European households freezing from un-payable gas bills. The overlords don’t care.

That’s why the Americans and the Brits are doing their best to scupper any diplomatic effort to calm the inordinate crisis with Russia over Ukraine. Hence, Washington and London are funneling weapons to Ukraine and deploying paratroopers to Eastern Europe in a reckless bid to escalate the confrontation.

While visiting the White House this week, Chancellor Scholz was peppered with petulant demands to explicitly state that the Nord Stream 2 project would be axed “if Russia invaded Ukraine”. Scholz refused to state that, although in an apparent attempt to offer a sop he claimed that Germany and the United States were united in their resolve. There is a palpable peeved sense among the Americans and British that Berlin is not being sufficiently hostile towards Russia.

Likewise, when French President Emmanuel Macron went to Moscow this week for diplomatic talks with Russia’s Vladimir Putin there was also an unmistakable sense of rancor from Washington and London that their militaristic “unanimity” was being undermined.

There’s little doubt that Berlin and Paris know that the Anglo-American bravado is a cynical provocation that is “nobly” signing a suicide note on behalf of Europe in the event of a war with Russia.

Macron’s bitter experience of France being shafted last year by the U.S., Britain and Australia over the €50 billion AUKUS submarine contract has probably helped engender a bit of healthy skepticism too. He’s also got an eye on French presidential elections in April.

The bottomline is that Washington wants to sabotage the strategic partnership between Europe and Russia for energy trade and the general normalization of relations. The objectives are maintaining U.S. hegemony, selling its own more expensive gas to Europe and of course endless sales of weapons for NATO members in a perennially agitated state of insecurity. The Brits as ever are in it for ingratiating with Uncle Sam and serving their usual function of being the geopolitical butler to U.S. imperial power.

Energy analysts know that Germany and Europe cannot survive economically without Russia gas, which accounts for at least 40 percent of the continent’s consumption. Even Biden at the White House press conference could not pretend that the U.S. was able replace Russia’s supply. If Russia’s gas trade to Europe was to be disrupted by conflict or deeper sanctions the repercussions for the European Union’s economies would be devastating. There is no way that Germany, France and the EU could survive without Russian oil and gas. For the U.S. and Britain to demand that Berlin make definitive statements about cancelling Nord Stream 2 is a form of coercion and blackmail. Operation Overlord II.

But the infernal danger is that Washington and London are pushing Europe and the world towards the abyss of a nuclear with Russia. That’s how demonic the failing Anglo-American imperium is.

Despite the worldwide boycott movement against awarding the 1936 Olympics to Berlin, they finally took place, bigger and more brilliant than ever before. Dictator Hitler stood with them in the summit of his international recognition.

The crimes of Hitler’s government were internationally known since the beginning of 1933. They began immediately after the seizure of power in January 1933 with the arrest and murder of political opponents and their incarceration in concentration camps. This mainly affected communists, social democrats and other leftists. All parties except the NSDAP were banned. After May 1, 1933, the trade unions were smashed and expropriated.

The Nazis excluded Jews, Sinti and leftists from sports clubs. The two Jewish sports associations, Maccabi and Schild – they had about 350 member clubs in Germany in 1935 with a total of 40,000 members – were no longer allowed to use sports facilities. It was also clear that there should be no Jews on the German Olympic team.

Alternative Games in Barcelona

In 1931, two years before Hitler came to power, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) had awarded the 1936 Olympics to Germany – Winter and Summer Games.

In 1933, after Hitler came to power, only two governments drew consequences: the Soviet government and the Republican government elected in Spain in 1931. For 1936, they prepared the second People’s Olympics in Barcelona with workers’ sports federations from 17 countries; the first People’s Olympics had taken place here in 1931. But when the 2,000 participants arrived in July 1936, the fascist coup of General Francisco Franco began, supported by supplies from U.S. corporations such as Texaco, General Motors and Chrysler – despite the neutrality decided by the U.S. Congress.

Sports federations from several European countries called for a boycott of the Berlin Olympics. The largest athletic association at the time, Amateur Athletic Union (AAU) in the U.S., under President Jeremiah Mahoney, also called for the boycott.

Alternative Jewish Games in New York and Tel Aviv

In May 1933, Rabbi Stephen Wise organized demonstrations in New York with the American Jewish Congress. The AAU organized a World Festival of Workers’ Athletes there. It was supported by Jewish civic leaders, including New York Mayor Fiorello La Guardia, New York State Governor Herbert Lehman, and the Jewish Labor Committee and the Anti-Nazi League. But the major Jewish organizations American Jewish Committee and B’nai B’rith held back on criticizing the Nazis. On August 15 and 16, 1936, the World Festival in New York drew only 400 participants.

In 1935, the second Jewish sports games, the Maccabiad, had taken place in Tel Aviv, with 1,350 participants from 27 countries. Most of the athletes, however, did not return to their home countries because of the advance of fascism in Europe – in Spain, Hungary, Austria, and Poland, for example.

Alternative Winter Spartaics in Norway

In Norway, leftist organizations put on a Winter Spartakiade in 1936, with athletes from the Soviet Union, Sweden, and Finland. But the world press, such as the New York Times, reported only from the simultaneous Winter Olympics in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany.

In Austria, six of the eight Jewish athletes, including swimming champion Judith Deutsch, refused to participate in the Berlin Games: They were banned for life; Judith Deutsch emigrated to Tel Aviv as late as 1936.

But there were several Jewish U.S. stars, such as weightlifter David Mayer and Samuel Balter of the winning basketball team, and sprinters Samuel Staller and Marty Glickman, who wanted to be in Berlin. Harold Abrahams, a Jewish gold medalist in the 100 meters at the 1924 Games in Paris, lobbied for Berlin as president of the British Athletic Association along with Defense Minister Thomas Inskip.

The IOC: Nobles, Generals, Entrepreneurs

The organizers of the traditional games proved more powerful. Berlin became the venue.

The 1936 International Olympic Committee (IOC) included princes from the monarchies of Denmark, Japan, and Liechtenstein. Colonels, generals, field marshals, and grand admirals came from Germany, Italy, Poland, South Africa, Yugoslavia, and the Netherlands.

Both IOC members from the United States were entrepreneurs – Chicago construction tycoon Avery Brundage and real estate speculator William Garland. From France came Marquis de Polignac, head of the Pommery & Greno champagne cellars. From Germany came Karl Ritter von Halt, a member of the board of the Deutsche Bank, a member of the NSDAP and of the SS circle of friends Heinrich Himmler who was fond of donations. From Sweden came Sigfrid Edström, head of the electronics company ASEA.

The noblemen and their families, such as the British IOC members Clarence Napier Bruce, 3rd Baron Aberdare of Duffryn (=Lord Aberdare) and the 6th Marquess of Exeter (=Lord Burghley), were furthermore not only owners of large estates, but were also involved in companies. This was also the case with Baron Henri de Baillet-Latour, the president of the IOC; he belonged to one of the ten richest families in Belgium, which held shares in the largest bank, Société Générale, and other companies.

Decision mainly by the U.S.

The IOC and National Olympic Committees stifled the boycott movements. Quick commitments for the Games came from the fascist Axis powers of Italy and Japan, as well as from the fascist-friendly ruled states of Finland, Poland, Hungary, South Africa, Portugal, Romania, and Austria.

The 1932 Los Angeles Olympics had set new standards because of the number of participants, the records, the size of the stadium and the other modern sports facilities. The participation or non-participation of the successful sporting nation of the United States – “the world’s greatest sporting powerhouse ” – would determine the significance of the 1936 Games.

The president of the American Olympic Committee (AOC) was Avery Brundage. His company owed its rise to government contracts during World War 1. He was the largest developer and real estate investor in Chicago. He had skyscrapers, luxury apartments and hotels built, including a manufacturing plant for Ford.

President of the U.S. Olympic Committee: ardent anti-Semite

Brundage admired Hitler and showed himself to be an avowed anti-Semite: “No Jews are allowed in my club in Chicago either. ” He saw the boycott movement as a “Jewish-Communist conspiracy. ” IOC President Baillet-Latour also supported Brundage’s anti-Semitism: “Jews usually start shouting before they have a real reason to do so,” he wrote to Brundage.

At the initiative of IOC President Baillet-Latour, Brundage was elected to the IOC. His U.S. colleague on the IOC, Charles Sherill, a brigadier general in World War 1, a lawyer in New York, and U.S. ambassador to Argentina and Turkey, was enthusiastic about fascism. In the New York Times on March 4, 1933, Sherrill, like other U.S. industrialists, praised Hitler as the best German politician. Likewise, Sherill had previously hailed Mussolini as the new statesman who could restore order in Europe with his system in place of the incompetent democracy.

Hitler Bribes the Founder of the Olympic Games

To keep the founder of the Olympic Games and honorary president of the IOC, Pierre de Coubertin in line, Hitler granted him an “honorary gift” of 10,000 Reichsmarks (about $100,000 today) shortly before the opening of the Games. Hitler had already offered him a life pension in 1935 if he supported the hosting of the Games in Berlin.

Swedish IOC members also played an important role in favor of Berlin. Clarence von Rosen, royal equerry married to a wealthy U.S. industrialist’s daughter, was in-law to Herman Goering’s wife Carin. Brother Eric von Rosen founded Sweden’s fascist movement, and Clarence joined in.13 The second Swedish IOC member was Sigfrid Edström: the head of the Swedish electronics company ASEA did good business with the German Reich.

Churchill for Berlin

Two British IOC members, Lords Aberdare and Burghley, also lobbied for Berlin. Sir Noel Curtis Bennet, who was in favor of boycott, found no support.14 Winston Churchill appeased: communism is worse than Hitler!

French Champagne King for Berlin

After the German Wehrmacht occupied the demilitarized Rhineland in March 1936, French sports officials called for a boycott of the Summer Games, including Marc Bellin de Coteau, president of the International Hockey Federation (HIF), and Jules Rimet, president of the International Federation of Association Football (FIFA). For France, however, IOC member and champagne king Marquis de Polignac tipped the scales. France’s ambassador in Berlin, André Francois-Poncet, a lobbyist for French heavy industry, had already enthusiastically welcomed the Winter Games in Garmisch-Partenkirchen.

Apartheid General for Berlin

Henry Nourse also had nothing against the Nazi regime, on the contrary. The IOC member from South Africa had distinguished himself as a lieutenant-colonel in the British colonial army under General Lord Kitchener during the Boer War (1899-1902): In concentration camps, Burian families and locals were starved to death, scorched earth tactics applied, and killing was indiscriminate. Nourse became the owner of South African gold and coal mines, where he was able to exploit blacks with state help – even before the formal legalization of apartheid after World War II.

None of them were swayed by the crimes of the Nazi regime, nor by the Nuremberg Race Laws passed in 1935, nor by Nazi Germany’s military support for Franco’s coup in the weeks leading up to the Games.

Mass enthusiasm and elite luxury

The Winter Games in the Alpine resort of Garmisch-Partenkirchen took place undisturbed from February 6 to 16, 1936, while the Summer Games were held in Berlin from August 1 to 16, 1936.

At first, the Nazi newspapers Der Stürmer and the Völkischer Beobachter had agitated against Negroes and Jews, who had no place at the Olympics. But at the Winter Games in the Bavarian town of Garmisch-Partenkirchen, just as in Berlin, all signs with “For Jews forbidden” were removed, the demonized “Negro music” jazz was briefly permitted, and swastika flags waved cosmopolitanly to the international audience.

Token Jews

The U.S. member of the IOC, Charles Sherill, recommended to Hitler in two personal meetings how a few token Jews on the German Olympic team might reassure the international public. The Nazis followed Sherill’s recommendation: two “half-Jews” were added to the German team as token jews: In addition to ice hockey star Rudi Ball, it was fencer Helene Mayer: outwardly she resembled the ideal image of the blond Aryan woman and lived in the USA. At the award ceremony, she gave the Hitler salute in the stadium.

The newly built Olympic Stadium with 100,000 seats – modeled on the equally large stadium for the 1932 Games in Los Angeles – was the largest in Europe. It was surrounded by a huge parade ground, an Olympic village, spacious sports facilities for the various disciplines and with art exhibitions.

Richard Strauss, Evangelical Church, Leni Riefenstahl, Coca Cola …

In 1936, the Nazis invented the torch relay from ancient Greek Olympia across Europe, which has been customary since then. 3075 runners carried the torch through five countries to Berlin. The final runner was only found after three rounds of judging: Running style, physique and posture, hair and eye color as well as political attitude – everything had to be right.

The world-famous composer Richard Strauss created the Olympic anthem. Hitler’s sculptor Arno Breker contributed the sculptures of naked Aryan athletes: The Winner, The Decathlete. The Protestant Church held the opening mass for the IOC in the Berlin Cathedral. The light domes of Hitler’s favorite architect Albert Speer, developed for the NDSAP party rallies, also shone above the stadium.

Fanfares accompanied Hitler’s arrival, fights and award ceremonies. For the first time, competitions were televised. Corporations like Coca Cola appeared as sponsors. The IOC commissioned Hitler’s favorite director Leni Riefenstahl to make the official Olympic film, which was also made with the help of motorized cameras – including underwater cameras – that were new at the time.

Goebbels: “Italian Night” on Aryanized Property

Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels and Field Marshal Hermann Göring vied for the favor of celebrities with lavish parties. Goebbels had an “Italian night” organized on his Aryanized property on Berlin’s Pfaueninsel (Isle of peacocks ).

Goering invited guests to his Prussian palace. At any one time, 1,000 guests were invited: Kings, European nobility, the diplomatic corps, the IOC, officials from the SS, NSDAP and the ministries, stars of stage and film, medal winners. Fireworks, dances with costumes from the ancient and Victorian eras were offered, fighter-bomber ace Ernst Udet showed his stunt tricks.

New York Times, Daily Express, Kölnische Zeitung

Hitler had declared that the games “strengthen the bonds of peace between nations. ” It was not only the German bourgeois media that were on Hitler’s course.

Thus the Kölnische Zeitung (It is still in the subtitle of the Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger, the present successor newspaper) wrote: “The greatest celebration that the new Germany is giving to all the peace-loving peoples of the world.” The Anglo-Saxon press, which shaped “world opinion,” also chimed in: “Greatest sports show in history” (New York Times), “wonderful change in the thinking of the German people” (Daily Express, London).

Avery Brundage fulfills all of Hitler’s wishes

Already at its meeting in the Hotel Adlon at the beginning of the Games on August 1, 1936, the IOC decided: the Games for 1940 would be awarded to Tokyo – regardless of Japan’s imperialist expansion in Korea, China and Taiwan. In 1939, the IOC awarded the Winter Games to Germany again. Brundage and the IOC fulfilled all of Hitler’s wishes.

Because of the excellent, also economic relations with the USA, Hitler’s Germany wanted to present itself in Washington by a considerably enlarged embassy: None other than the contractor Brundage was to get the contract for the new building in Washington.

Roosevelt dismissed Ambassador Critical of the Nazis

In 1938, after the Games, the Roosevelt administration replaced its previous ambassador to Berlin, William Dodd, who had been critical of the Nazis, with Hugh Wilson, a Hitler admirer. The latter berated U.S. media as “Jewish-controlled” for occasionally being too critical of Germany’s treatment of Jews in the meantime.

Wilson, on the other hand, praised the Hitler government for working toward a “better future.” Hitler had “brought his people out of moral and economic despair and led them to pride and prosperity. ”

Churchill reiterated his appreciation of Hitler: “One can dislike Hitler and yet admire his patriotic achievement,” Churchill wrote in 1937. The dogged anti-Communist then worried whether Hitler might adopt the wrong tactics toward “Russia” and remain unsuccessful: “Will Hitler make the same mistake as Napoleon? ”

Churchill’s fear came true. Fighting and war in the same direction continued and continues to this day.

This is precisely what Washington fears most: cracks appearing in its presumed leadership of European allies. The U.S.-led pressure campaign against Russia over Ukraine has been dangerously stoked up to the hilt to the point where a catastrophic war in Europe could be ignited.

And the Europeans are getting nervous about Uncle Sam’s recklessness. Nerves are fraying and with that, the hallowed “unity” – meaning U.S. hegemony – is coming undone.

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz hosted French President Emmanuel Macron in Berlin this week where both leaders called for European dialogue with Russia to deescalate the Ukraine crisis. Their announcement was a veiled repudiation of Washington’s confrontational stance towards Moscow.

Media reports say France and Germany are alarmed by Washington’s characterization of “imminent” war in Ukraine from an alleged Russian military invasion. Moscow has repeatedly and vehemently denied it has any invasion plans or plans to attack anyone. Somebody is lying and as each day passes without an invasion by Russia materializing the questions turn to Washington and what its agenda is.

There is growing wariness the Americans are pushing the tensions to a dangerous degree that is out of proportion to diplomatic efforts. Even the Americans don’t seem to understand their own suicidal tendency.

Notably, too, Berlin has refused to consider endorsing the American and British idea of imposing more extreme economic sanctions on Russia, such as cancelling the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline or removing Russia from international banking mechanisms. The latter move would harm Europe as much as Russia.

The Scholz administration has also held steadfast against supplying NATO weapons to Ukraine.

Meanwhile, the Biden administration and NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg have been “working overtime” to project an image of unity among the U.S. and its European allies. That intense effort speaks of the tacit anxiety that the transatlantic alliance is not as robust or unified as is being projected. The anxiety is particularly acute for Washington because its position of dominance over European allies depends on its unquestioned authority.

President Biden claims he has spoken to every NATO ally and “we’re all on the same page” with regard to the situation in Ukraine and tensions with Russia. Biden asserts this week that there is “total unanimity” among the U.S. and its allies. The American president’s assertion is more wishful thinking than reality. There is not unanimity, as the French and German leaders are indicating.

An unlikely slap in the face came from the Kiev regime in Ukraine. Its president, Vladimir Zelensky, as well as other senior defense officials did a U-turn this week when they rebutted the U.S. claims that a Russian invasion was imminent. Kiev was rankled by Washington and London’s decision to pull out diplomatic staff from their embassies. Those moves were seen as alarmist and causing undue instability.

Evidently, the Americans and their ever-servile British patsy are going too far in fomenting tensions over Ukraine. Even the normally Russophobic Kiev regime has become concerned that Washington and London are precipitating an armed conflict with Russia.

More cracks undermining the U.S. leadership came from Croatian President Zoran Milanovic whose country is a member of NATO. He condemned the escalation in tensions and said Croatia would not take part in any conflict. He said: “If there is an escalation, we will withdraw everyone to the last Croatian military.”

Presciently, the Croatian president commented on the impasse: “It has nothing to do with Ukraine or Russia, it has to do with the dynamics of the U.S.’ domestic policy.”

Still another blow to the overwrought American leadership was the resignation of the German top naval commander, Vice Admiral Kay-Achim Schoenbach, after he labelled the U.S. claims of a Russian invasion of Ukraine as “nonsense”. Washington was apoplectic at the German snub to its presumed authority.

The crisis over Ukraine has taken on a madcap rush to the abyss of all-out war against Russia. President Biden even remarked grimly this week that such a war “would change the world”. That’s a clueless understatement; it would probably end the world given the nuclear powers involved.

Nevertheless, there are logical, if reprehensible, political motives behind the irrational slide towards disaster.

First of all, there is the historic American strategic objective of sabotaging energy and other normal trade between Europe and Russia. Washington’s Cold War strategy of thwarting any normalization of relations between Western Europe and Russia is as active today as it ever was during the past eight decades since the end of World War II. A particular prize for Washington is to displace Russia as the premier gas and oil supplier to Europe with its own hydrocarbons and in that way prop up the petrodollar system which in turn is crucial for preserving the U.S. dollar as a universal currency.

Having the U.S.-led NATO bloc on military alert is also a critical boon for the American weapons industry that is the beating heart of dysfunctional U.S. capitalism.

But there are also shorter-term petty political reasons for why Ukraine and Russia have blown up into such a crucible in recent months.

An Associated Press report this week revealed more than intended with the headline: “Biden’s big test… Proving he can rally allies against Putin”.

The AP report states the U.S. president is facing a “major test of the twin pillars of Biden’s 2020 candidacy that he could get things done competently at home and restore America’s standing in the world after Donald Trump’s volatile four years in the White House.”

When newly inaugurated President Biden crowed about “America is back” what he yearned for was to be able to show American voters that under his watch Uncle Sam was once again respected around the world.

Biden’s domestic promises have so far turned decidedly pear-shaped and his poll ratings are languishing from failure to revamp U.S. society. All the more then that this lame-duck president is trying to salvage his image as a strong leader among allies towards cut-out foreign enemies like Russia.

The crisis in Ukraine is being driven by systematic failure in U.S. politics and its bankrupt oligarchic capitalist economy. Some of that is strategic as in Cold War-style objectives. Some of it is down to petty domestic politics. The world is being pushed to a dangerous precipice in order to satisfy American political needs.

Fatally for the U.S. empire, however, there is a palpable sense that the world is realizing the price for American hegemony and vanity is criminally insane as the Ukraine debacle demonstrates amply. Hence the cracks are opening up under Uncle Sam’s fragile grip on both leadership and reality.

American imperial propagandists will argue that the splintering in transatlantic unity is just what Moscow has been seeking. Perhaps that is so. But the primary cause is due to Washington’s own inherent failing power and its hegemonic mania.

By Joe LAURIA

Vice-Admiral Kay-Achim Schönbach, the head of the German navy, has resigned after saying talk of a Russian invasion of Ukraine was “nonsense” and that Russia was merely seeking “respect” for its security concerns in Europe.

“It is easy to give him the respect he really demands – and probably also deserves,” Schönbach told a meeting of a think tank in New Delhi on Friday.

“My minister asked me what does Russia really want?” the vice-admiral said.

“Is Russia really interested in having a small, tiny strip of Ukrainian soil to integrate into their country? No. This is nonsense. I think Putin is putting pressure on it because he knows he can do it. And he splits the European Union. But what he really wants is respect. He wants on a high-level, respect. And my God, giving someone respect is low cost, even no cost. So if I were asked, it is easy to give him the respect he really demands – and probably also deserves. Russia is an old country. Russia is an important country.”

Schönbach also acknowledged that “the Crimean peninsula is gone. It will never come back. This is a fact.” That contradicted NATO’s official position.

German navy chief resigns over Ukraine & Putin comments
–
Germany’s Navy chief, vice-admiral Kay-Achim Schönbach, has vacated his post on Saturday evening – just a day after he said that Crimea “will never come back”, and that Putin and Russia “deserve respect.” pic.twitter.com/nB2Ew3v5EZ

— Ben Schaack (@BuyingStrength) January 22, 2022

On Saturday, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba called in Germany’s ambassador in Kiev to protest “the categorical unacceptability” of Schönbach’s remarks.

After a likely rebuke from the German Defense Ministry, Schönbach resigned on Saturday, saying he wanted “to avoid any more damage being done to the German navy and above all, to the German federal republic.” The German defense ministry accepted Schönbach’s resignation with “immediate effect,” saying his remarks did not represent Germany’s official position.

However, Germany has continued its refusal to allow German weapons to be shipped to Ukraine, ostensibly to help defend Ukraine from Russia, but very likely to arm Kiev for an offensive against the east of the country. “Weapons deliveries would not be helpful at the moment – that is the consensus within the government,” German Defense Minister Christine Lambrecht said on Saturday.

That led Kubela to condemn Germany, saying on twitter that “the German partners must stop undermining unity with such words and actions and encouraging Vladimir Putin to launch a new attack on Ukraine.” Calling Germany “partners” seems to reveal Ukraine’s thinking that it considers itself a de facto member of NATO.

Russia is seeking legally-binding agreements with the U.S. and NATO that would create a new European security arrangement, rolling back NATO’s expansion to Russia’s borders, keeping Ukraine out of the Western alliance and preventing long-range U.S. missiles from being deployed there.

Accompanying these demands have been Russian troop deployments in the vicinity of the Ukraine border, which the U.S. and its NATO partners are portraying not as a negotiating tactic but evidence of an “imminent” Russian invasion.

Anglo-American Intentions

Macron leaving European Parliament last Wednesday. (European Parliament)

Germany appears to be joining France in trying to lower the temperature and put the breaks on an Anglo-American rush to war. In an address to the European Parliament on Wednesday, French President Emmanuel Macron appeared to show Russia the kind of respect Schönbach was talking about. He said:

“Europe needs to build a collective security order on our continent. Our continent’s security requires a strategic reinforcement of our Europe as a power of peace, a balancing power, particularly in its dialogue with Russia. I have been advocating this dialogue for several years. It is not optional, for our history and our geography are stubborn, both for ourselves and for Russia. For security in our continent, which is indivisible. We need this dialogue…. What we need to build is a European order founded on principles and rules to which we have committed, and which we established not against or without Russia, but with Russia.”

The dissension by the German admiral and the French president to the U.S. position highlights the war hysteria being stirred up daily over Ukraine as a mostly Anglo-American endeavor.

Britain has begun playing an increasing role with the United States in preparing its populations for war, reminiscent of the lead-up to the 2003 U.S-U.K. invasion of Iraq.

On Saturday, the British Foreign Office said Russia is planning to “install a pro-Russian leader in Kyiv as it considers whether to invade and occupy Ukraine.”

The Foreign Office named several Ukrainian politicians it said Russia was considering. “The information being released today shines a light on the extent of Russian activity designed to subvert Ukraine, and is an insight into Kremlin thinking,” Foreign Secretary Liz Truss said in a statement.

The Russian foreign ministry reacted swiftly. “The misinformation spread by the British Foreign Office is another evidence that these are the NATO countries, led by the Anglo-Saxons, that are escalating tensions around Ukraine. We call on the British Foreign Office to stop provocative activities, stop spreading nonsense …,” a foreign ministry spokesman told TASS.

The Ukrainian people already installed a pro-Russian leader through the ballot box, Viktor Yanukovych. He was overthrown in an actual U.S.-backed coup in Ukraine in 2014, leading to the continuing crisis.

Britain produced no evidence to back up its claim (though it was prominently spread by Western media), unlike the evidence that was produced of the U.S. coup in Kiev. It came in the form of a leaked telephone call between then U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs Victoria Nuland and the then U.S. ambassador to Ukraine in which they discussed who the new Ukrainian leader would be, weeks before the coup happened.

Britain has released no such intercepts to back its allegation.

via @NYTimes You mean the way the voters did legally before the coup? This is the Nuland story in reverse, except without the evidence. https://t.co/6GkWvIY9fz

— Joe Lauria (@unjoe) January 22, 2022

Spreading Fear of World War

But Britain has gone a step further. It is spreading alarm that the standoff can lead to a world war. Truss, the British foreign secretary, traveled as far as Australia to raise fears that China might join the war by attacking Taiwan if Russia “invaded” Ukraine.

An interview she gave to The Sydney Morning Herald, under the headline: “Aggressors working together: UK’s Truss warns China could follow Russia into war,” began:

“China could use a Russian invasion of Ukraine as an opportunity to launch aggression of its own in the Indo-Pacific, British Foreign Secretary Liz Truss has warned. ‘I don’t think we can rule that out,” Ms Truss said. … “Russia is working more closely with China than it ever has. Aggressors are working in concert and I think it’s incumbent on countries like ours to work together.’”

Former Australian Prime Minister Paul Keating, trying to inject a measure of sobriety into the debate, wrote:

“Remarks by the British Foreign Secretary Liz Truss that China could engage in military aggression in the Pacific, encouraged by Russia’s contingent moves against Ukraine, are nothing short of demented. Not simply irrational, demented. …

The underlying story is the government’s desperate promotion of Britain as a strategic partner of Australia in a policy of containment of China. The reality is Britain does not add up to a row of beans when it comes to East Asia. Britain took its main battle fleet out of East Asia in 1904 and finally packed it in with its ‘East of Suez’ policy in the 1970s. And it has never been back.

Britain suffers delusions of grandeur and relevance deprivation. But there they were at Admiralty House kidding the rest of us that their ‘co-operation’ added up to some viable policy. Australia’s great Foreign ‘non minister’, Marise Payne, supported by the increasingly strident Defence Minister Peter Dutton, standing beside the British Foreign Secretary looking wistfully for Britain’s lost worlds of the 19th and 20th centuries. Really.”

Meanwhile, the Americans and Russians continue to talk past each other over the crisis. Russia demanded the round of diplomacy calling for a new security arrangement in Europe, while U.S. and British leaders and their loyal media think the talks are only about preventing what they alone say is an imminent Russian invasion of Ukraine.

consortiumnews.com

How did Germany manage to exist for more than 70 years without a queer commissioner? Many may be forgiven for not having pondered this question, especially during a pandemic which has decimated the civil rights of a third of the population.

Sven Lehmann, Member of the Green Party, has announced that he wants to make Germany a pioneer in the fight against discrimination against transgender, homosexual and other sexual minorities. “Everyone should be able to live freely, safely and with equal rights,” he declared on Wednesday. Except of course the unvaccinated.

The federal government appointed the Green politician as the first commissioner for the acceptance of sexual and gender diversity. The new government will in future “pursue a progressive queer policy and also align family policy with the social reality of different types of families,” Lehmann announced. The SPD, Greens and FDP had already announced this plan in the coalition agreement.

The fact that nothing like this has ever existed, apparently weighed heavily on some.

“The protection of people on the basis of their sexual and gender identity must be ensured in the Basic Law and the fundamental rights of trans, inter and non-binary people must finally be fully enforced.” That is why Lehmann is planning a national action plan to protect “queer” people together with the Federal Ministry for Family Affairs.

In addition to their diets, federal government officials receive an allowance of around 43 000 euros per year. Lehmann sits in the German Bundestag for the Cologne constituency.

Female crash test dummies or just female dummies?

Germany has been busy cancelling itself proactively: In October last year, Hamburg’s deputy mayor called for “gender-neutral mobility”. The Green politician wanted crash tests in the auto industry to be carried out with female dummies in the future. This already raised the question: When will dummies for transgender people, non-binary people and people defining themselves as queer follow?

Deputy mayor Fegebank demanded that “female” dummies be used. Because although women drive almost only half of the average kilometres covered by men, about half of all road accident victims are female, as the Merkur reported.

The reason for this is not bad female drivers but that new cars are tested with “male” crash test dummies that have a standardised height of 1,75 metres and a weight of 78 kilograms.

Cars are less safe for mostly small and less heavy women, who have to push the seat forward to reach the clutch or the brake, for example, than for the “average man”, who is considered the template for the dummy, according to Fegebank, and female crash test dummies are to be introduced in the Hanseatic city to ensure “gender-neutral mobility”.

According to the Green politician, car manufacturing and accident research should address the differentiated requirements of women, men, old and young people as well as people with disabilities. She said dummies that are equal to the “prototype man” should be crashed as soon as possible.

These “protective” measures from a leftwing coalition in power are deemed necessary in a country which experiences more political violence categorized as “left” than comparable acts from the right spectrum. This has emerged from a response by the federal government to a small question from the AfD parliamentary group, which asked about politically motivated acts of violence.

According to the information, from January to September 2021 there were exactly 836 left-wing politically motivated violent crimes, the majority of which were physical, and 715 right-wing political violent crimes.

Some 94 violent crimes are to be assigned to the phenomenon of “foreign ideology” and 40 to the area of ​​”religious ideology”, a further 786 are not to be assigned at all.

A total of 2471 politically motivated acts of violence were counted from January to September. Leftwing violence is clearly on the rise: According to the government, 3 365 acts in this crime area were recorded in 2020 as a whole, while in 2019 there were 2 832 cases registered.

Conspiracy theories?

Unwanted political, historical, philosophical and scientific interpretations are dismissed by German politicians and the mass media fully in the grip of mass formation psychosis as “conspiracy theories”. They seem to come from the “edge of society”, where, according to the semi-official version, all sorts of dubious thoughts are exchanged.

In truth, it’s the other way around: the most powerful conspiracy theories come from above. Hollywood promotes them, the BBC and CNN, and German politicians and media are trotting out the same fantasies as their Anglo-Saxon “diversity” role models.

The fact that Corona will mutate and thus become less dangerous and that the pandemic will end as soon as a less dangerous variant prevails and infects the population, is currently considered a dangerous “conspiracy theory” repeated by incorrigible opponents of vaccination. They are blocked on YouTube, Facebook and Twitter.

But this is exactly what Isabella Eckerle, the head of the Center for Viral Diseases at Geneva University Hospital – an eminent virologist – said in the first half of December 2021.

According to German Health Minister, a 2G-Plus rule must apply to access to cafes and restaurants. “Gastronomy is a problem area. You often sit for hours without a mask,” said Lauterbach told RTL on Thursday evening. Many people infected each other with the Omicron virus in these establishments, he said.

Omicron is believed to be even less deadly than flu. But according to Lauterbach, “this assessment is a misconception”. He could not resist the temptation to spread more panic adding that “of the unvaccinated, many will die“.

Lauterbach is the most popular politician in Germany. Surveyed by the opinion research institute infratest dimap for ARD, 66 percent of those surveyed said they were satisfied with the fear monger, ahead of Chancellor Olaf Scholz (60 percent).

It is worth remembering that Germany has already required medical grade masks and N95’s with extremely high compliance, and nevertheless suffered significantly more deaths than Sweden for all of 2021.

As The Experts move the goalposts to surgical or N95 masks, it’s worth remembering that Germany has already required medical grade masks and N95’s with extremely high compliance, and reported significantly more deaths than Sweden for all of 2021

They are literally always wrong pic.twitter.com/3jc2nlFOZX

— IM (@ianmSC) January 5, 2022

freewestmedia.com