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There never was an effective “Secret Operation” to ensure that an act of sabotage of Nord Stream would be “untraceable to the United States”.
The project had been discussed behind closed doors in 2021 as outlined by Seymour Hersh, but the actual planning of this so-called “secret operation” started in December 2021 extending to its execution in June 2022 and the actual sabotage on September 26-27, 2023. (see map below).
Timeline
In late December 2021, National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan convened what was described as “a newly formed task force” (Joint Chiefs of Staff, CIA, State Department, and Treasury) pertaining to Russia’s War preparations.
While we are not privy to the conversations in the Oval Office between President Joe Biden and Germany’s Chancellor Olaf Scholz, the public declarations of both Biden and Scholz at the February 7, 2022 White House Press Conference confirm the following:
The “Secret Operation” was no longer Secret,
The Decision was made Public,
There was a de facto “bilateral understanding” between U.S. President Biden and Germany’s Chancellor Scholz to proceed with the act of sabotage of Nord Stream 2.
The Biden-Scholz White House Press Conference:
On February 7, 2022: White House Press Conference: President Biden together with Germany’s Chancellor Olaf Scholz (who was on an official visit to the U.S)
The questions were addressed to both President Biden and Chancellor Scholz:
Andrea (Reuters) Q Thank you, Mr. President. And thank you, Chancellor Scholz. Mr. President, I have wanted to ask you about this Nord Stream project that you’ve long opposed. You didn’t mention it just now by name, nor did Chancellor Scholz. Did you receive assurances from Chancellor Scholz today that Germany will, in fact, pull the plug on this project if Russia invades Ukraine? And did you discuss what the definition of “invasion” could be?
PRESIDENT BIDEN: The first question first. If Germany — if Russia invades — that means tanks or troops crossing the — the border of Ukraine again — then therewill no be no longer a Nord Stream 2.We will bring an end to it.
Q But how will you — how will you do that exactly, since the project and control of the project is within Germany’s control?
Chancellor Olaf Scholz responds to Reuter’s journalist pertaining to Biden’s decision to “pull the plug” on Nord Stream 2:
Andreas (Reuters) Q [to Chancellor Scholz] And will you commit today — will you commit today to turning off and pulling the plug on Nord Stream 2? You didn’t mention it, and you haven’t mentioned it.
CHANCELLOR SCHOLZ: As I’ve already said, we are acting together, we are absolutely united, and we will not be taking different steps. We will do the same steps, and they will be very, very hard to Russia, and they should understand. (emphasis added)
His answer is unequivocal. He endorses Biden’s decision to bomb Nord Stream, while avoiding to address the substance of the Reuter’s journalist question: i.e “within the control of Germany” of which he is the head of government.
“Secret Operation” Foreclosed
Secret operation? It has become a talking point by numerous analysts.
It should be understood that as of the February 7th 2022 White Press Conference, at which both the US President and Germany’s Chancellor publicly confirmed their intent to blow up Nord Stream, the so-called “Secret Operation” was foreclosed.
Has Germany become a “Semicolony” of the United States?
Chancellor Scholz fully abides by Washington’s demands, acting as a political proxy. “We will not be taking different steps”, he says.
Olaf Scholz was fully aware that this act of sabotage against Nord Stream had been envisaged by the US, to the detriment of more than 400 million Europeans.
Scholz’s statements at the Press Conference suggest that this was a Joint Decision.
Video Interview: Michel Chossudovsky and Caroline Mailloux
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Chancellor Olaf Scholz Gives “The Green Light” to Joe Biden
Biden’s Press Conference statement supported by Germany’s Chancellor Scholz, invalidates the notion that a so-called “secret operation” was unfolding, and that the US attack would be “untraceable”.
This was not a blunder on the part of Joe Biden. It was a political decision by the president and his political entourage including Nuland to make known that a U.S. act of sabotage against Nord Stream was envisaged (with the support of Germany’s government).
Biden’s public statement de facto acknowledges that the planned sabotage operation would be “traceable to the White House”.
Biden’s statement was formulated with the endorsement of Germany’s Chancellor Scholz several months before the so-called secret act of sabotage was carried out in June 2022.
Several analysts and journalists have pondered as to “who was responsible for the sabotage”. This is a nonsensical exercise.
The answer is obvious. POTUS, The President of the United States with the full endorsement of Germany’s Chancellor Olaf Scholz, who granted “the green light” for the implementation of the act of sabotage against Germany and the European Union.
Michel Chossudovsky, February 19, 2023
Below is the White House Press Conference in Full
The original source of this article is Global Research and Lux Media
Chancellor Olaf Scholz announces that 14 Leopard 2 tanks will be delivered to Ukraine alongside a new supplies package.
The German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, next to a Leopard 2 main battle tank, during a visit to the Bundeswehr army training centre, 17 October 2022 (AFP).
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz vowed to deliver 14 Leopard 2 battle tanks to Ukraine, government spokesperson Steffen Hebestreit told reporters on Wednesday.
Hebestreit explained that “On Wednesday, Chancellor Olaf Scholz announced in the cabinet that Germany would further increase its military support for Ukraine,” adding that “the federal government had decided to provide the Ukrainian armed forces with Leopard 2 main battle tanks.”
According to the spokesperson, the objective, now, is to ” quickly raise two tank battalions with Leopard 2 tanks for Ukraine.” This will happen over two stages. First, “Germany will provide a company of 14 Leopard 2 A6 tanks from the stocks of the Bundeswehr.”
Then, Germany’s European partners will deliver Leopard 2 tanks to Ukraine while Germany will offer a new package for the anti-Russia war. The package will include ammunition, system maintenance, and assistance in logistics, Hebestreit stated
German’s decision to send the Leapord tanks to Ukraine stems from talks with the country’s European and International partners, given that significant consequences will follow such a decision.
In turn, the Russian Embassy in Germany cautioned that “this extremely dangerous decision shifts the Ukrainian conflict to a new level of standoff,” adding that “Berlin’s choice to supply tanks to Kiev means the final rejection of Germany’s historical responsibility to the Russian people.”
Earlier on Tuesday, US media reported that US President Joe Biden is set to announce the delivery of 30-50 Abrams tanks to Ukraine as soon as Wednesday.
According to Antonov, a decision to transfer to Kiev M1 Abrams is made, and American tanks “without any doubt” will be destroyed along with “all other samples of NATO military equipment.”
“If the United States decides to supply tanks, it will be impossible to justify such step using arguments about ‘defensive weapons.’ This would be another blatant provocation against the Russian Federation. No one should have illusions about who is the real aggressor in the current conflict,” he said in a statement.
The ambassador added that the US is trying to inflict strategic defeat on Russia and “gives ‘green light’ to use of American assistance for attacks on the Crimea.”
This reaffirmed Russia’s argument, according to the ambassador, that Ukraine and the West want neither peace nor diplomacy.
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“Donbass… after the snow”… What is the story of the expected attack in the spring?
“Donbass… after the snow”… What is the story of the expected attack in the spring? (Part 2)
Northern Europe, as far south as northern Italy, is now in the grip of a wave of icy cold (no doubt, the result of global warming). As a result, observers are expecting the Russian winter offensive in the Ukraine to start all the sooner, though nobody knows when. This month or next? Maybe a dramatic entry from Belarus, cutting off NATO supplies? Nobody knows. For the moment, Allied forces are content to grind down the undersupplied and freezing Kiev regime conscripts and mercenaries in situ, hoping that perhaps they will simply surrender en masse, despite the regime’s guns poking in their backs. Conditions are such that this could happen with very few Russian losses. There is no hurry. Over 500,000 Allied soldiers and 500 winter camouflage tanks are waiting for their moment to move in and denazify the Ukraine. They will wait for the right moment.
Introduction: The Liberation of Europe
Russia could no longer allow a hostile, US-controlled, NATO-armed and soon-to-be-nuclear Ukraine to exist. Therefore, it is being liberated. It should have happened long before, but Russia was much too weak to do so before. When the Zelensky regime falls, billions of dollars of Western arms and supplies will fall into Russian hands. The Kiev regime’s Western-incurred indebtedness to the West for arms and supplies over the last nearly nine years will be cancelled. US-exploited Kiev regime territory, 40% of the whole, will be taken back without compensation. This will be a small measure of compensation for the destruction that the US and its European vassals, including the Minsk I and Minsk II liars of Germany and France, have caused in the Ukraine, especially in the much-tried Donbass.
Apart from completing the liberation of the four provinces that it has taken back so far, Russia may also take back four more Russian-speaking provinces, those of Kharkov, Dnepropetrovsk, Nikolaev and Odessa, so joining up with Russian Transdnestria. A coup in Kiev could take place, as the remnants of the Kiev Army collapse and the new Ukraine could then even become a Russian ally, like Belarus, part of the Union State. Whether the five far western provinces of the present Ukraine remain with the new Ukraine, or three of them return to Poland, and one each to Hungary and Romania, remains to be seen. It will all depend on what Russia allows. After this, the whole fragile Western European domino set, hastily stood up by the US-run NATO and its political wing the EU, could begin to tumble. Moldova, Romania, Bulgaria and Hungary, the last three liberated from NATO and the EU, could be offered cheap gas, like NATO-tormented Serbia, with Montenegro and Macedonia. With their US puppet elites removed by their peoples, all these countries could become allies of Russia, recovering their independence after EU serfdom and NATO oppression.
We recall that the old Soviet ‘Eastern bloc’ failed precisely because, like the EU, it took away the independence of such nations. However, the centralising straitjacket of the Soviet world has gone and it will not come back. The same alliance with Russia, but keeping independence, could eventually take place in NATO-, EU- and US-elite-freed Greece and Cyprus. Then the three Baltics and even Finland could also become Russian allies, like the new Ukraine, energy supplied by Russia, their Russian minorities at last granted basic human rights. After this, first Austria, Italy, Germany and then the other countries in Western Europe will have to take important decisions about their futures: survival by negotiation with Moscow, or slow national suicide? The choice may seem obvious, but it must be their choice. Let us look at the current tendencies in the three main countries of Western Europe, Germany, France and the UK, to gauge what direction we may well be heading in.
Germany: The Struggle to Restore Your Own Country
On 7 December the German media announced the arrest of twenty-five ‘far-right extremists’ for plotting to overthrow the Federal government. Translated, this means that the US-run German government arrested twenty-five patriots who wanted to restore freedom in Germany. Interestingly, these patriots included a member of German royalty and a former member of the German Parliament or Bundestag. In a statement, the German federal prosecutor’s office stated that an estimated fifty people were suspected of being a ‘violent’ part of a broad-based movement called ‘Citizens of the Empire’ (Reichsbürger), with a total membership of 12,000. In any other country, there would be no problem with the existence of patriotism. But in US-run Germany, any patriotic movement is instantly dubbed ‘Neo-Nazi’, ‘pro-Hitler’ or ‘anti-democratic’, which is just propaganda code for pro-sovereignty, pro-German and pro-freedom.
The arrested were intending to overthrow the Federal puppet government which must swear allegiance to the US, and replace it with an independent German government. The freedom-fighters reject the US-imposed institutions of Woke-Fascist Federal Germany (there is nothing so intolerant as liberalism). German prosecutors named Heinrich XIII, Prince Reuss, a descendant of the House of Reuss, former rulers of parts of eastern Germany, as one of the group’s leaders. Interestingly, it was said that Prince Heinrich had sought (but not obtained) the involvement of Russian representatives in the alleged scheme. Another suspect is Birgit Malsack-Winkemann, who was a member of the Bundestag, representing the Alternative for Germany (AfD) Party, from 2017 to 2021. Since the beginning of this year, she had been working as a judge in the Berlin District court.
In 2017 the Alternative for Germany (AfD) Party became the first patriotic party to win seats in the Germany Parliament for nearly 60 years. This so upset the German serfs of the pyramid scheme run by the feudal US con-tricksters that in March 2021 the Party was placed under surveillance by the Germany secret service for trying to liberate Germany from American tutelage. Although the resistance movement has been defeated for now, we feel that though this is a lost battle, it is not a lost war. More battles will come, as German patriots struggling to decolonise their country and seek to find and eventually find freedom. Germany is Western Europe’s largest and strongest nation and also its barometer. When all is well there, all goes well elsewhere, all falls into place. Can Germany at last throw off the US yoke, expelling foreign troops, commemorating the 500,000 victims of the Anglo-American bomb genocide of German civilians of 1940-1945 and perhaps eventually become a Royal Confederation of Sovereign German States? It has to come. Freedom beckons.
France: The Revolt of the People
France was where Absolutism was invented with Louis XIV (+ 1715), ‘the Sun King’. He is alleged to have said, ‘l’Etat, c’est moi’ – ‘The State is me’, with the result that a bloody Revolution was born in France. For extremes always breed extremes and so the French Revolution bred the absolutist Emperor Napoleon. Since then, France has been ruled by absolutists, president-kings or president-emperors. Their slogan ‘the State is me’, although still true, has meant that each has only had the right to absolute power for a few years (the only fruit of the Revolution – a shortened and not a lifetime or hereditary period in power). Since 1944, after a long series of corrupt post-war governments, of which De Gaulle’s was by far the least noxious, because De Gaulle actually loved France more than money (just as Putin loves Russia more than money), it is now Macron, the Rothschild candidate, who is the current King of France. France is in effect ruled by a President by Divine right and Macron is known as ‘the Pharoah’. However, he is not the first Pharoah, as Mitterrand (1916-1996), who lived in the Presidential palace, his wife in one wing and his favourite mistress in the other, was the first. He even built a masonic pyramid of 666 panes of glass, providing the entry into the Temple of Knowledge, the Louvre Palace.
From last year I remember a conversation with a Paris taxi driver, when I had to get to the old Russian Cathedral quickly with heavy suitcases. The taxi-driver was a typical French African, from Cameroun. Seeing that I was a priest, in no uncertain terms he told me colourfully with his African-French accent how the hated Macron was either a fag, ‘un pédé’, or else he had a pretty young thing on the side. After all, how could a normal man go to bed with a woman twenty-five years older than himself? (Macron married one of his schoolteachers, nearly the same age as his mother; some say the ueber-botoxed lady in question should be tried for female pedophilia, since Macron is said to have been under age when they first conjoined). The African driver’s views on covid and French State compulsory vaccination were just as forthright as his views on gays. I quote him because his view of the world displays the very serious disconnect between the sophisticate Macron-style elite and the actual French grassroots. Actually, he sounded just like a Moscow taxi-driver.
Et justement (I don’t know how you say that in English), Macron is opposed by the people, protesting as the Yellow Vests, the popular but brutalised French Resistance. The French elite is fearful because the French people are revolt-prone (frondeurs). This is why the French State has a permanent special force of riot-police (the C.R.S., founded in 1944 and directly replacing the SS, for long retaining much the same management and much the same uniform) to suppress the revolts of ‘the peasants’. On top of that, the French State is fearful because at the last French election in April 2022 a nationalist government under Marine Le Pen could have got elected. This would have challenged not just the whole French State, but also the EU bureaucratic machine, which largely depends on the French model. If the French people defeat the French elite, the EU bureaucracy knows that the French people will come to power and that since the French are against the EU, then the whole Brussels fantasy will fall. (And the bureaucrats will lose their handsomely-paid jobs plus privileges and generous pensions). It is the whole top-down French and EU Establishment ideology which is being challenged in France. Who will win? I don’t know, but there is only one phrase to describe the situation: Fragile for the elite.
The UK: Disunity Before Freedom
The UK finds itself in a far more precarious position even than Germany and France. The latter have only been forced to support the US for three generations. Until that they were independent. However, the British elite was at the origin of the American evil, and consciously and forcefully cultivated it from 1914 on and still does so. The fact that the US/UK language is basically the same language means that the Americans have immense power in the UK, even to the extent that the modern English language is littered with unconscious Americanisms. A lot of British people are nearly as obese as a lot of Americans, dress like Americans and their children sing American songs with an American accent. The nearly 60 million people who live in the remnants of the real England are on the verge of losing their identity. The notorious Establishment BBC mouthpiece and the State-supporting British tabloids manipulate the uneducated minds of tens of millions. Many are so brainwashed that as a result there is no opposition movement to the British Establishment, no parallel to the French ‘Yellow Vests’.
The problem is that a majority of UK citizens, especially in England, have over the centuries been ‘Establishmentised’, that is, co-opted onto the anti-English British Establishment and made to feel the advantages (?) in terms of finance and prestige of being on the British side. With the British Establishment side become a poodle to the American elite, UK citizens are now being Americanised and made to feel the advantages (?) in terms of finance and prestige of being on the American side. They have been so passivised that many Continental Europeans ask if, instead of blood, the British have tea in their veins. However, in 2022 more and more have come to see that the ‘advantages’ of being on the British/American side are remarkably thin. All the more so, as the divisive Brexit did not bring the restoration of sovereignty and recovery of borders, as promised by the New-York born Johnson, but instead brought the UK the honorary feudal position of being the 51st State of the USA. A broad-based national resistance movement has yet to appear in England. However, there is hope on the Celtic fringe. Certainly, in Scotland, North Wales and parts of Ireland, there is resistance through their national parties, the Scottish National and Welsh National Parties and Sinn Fein in Ireland, though are all seriously undermined by Wokeism.
The British Establishment-invented United Kingdom is today a Disunited Kingdom (DK). Quite soon, probably within a generation, there will be four independent countries in the Isles of the North Atlantic (IONA): England, (a reunited) Ireland, Scotland and Wales. For it is precisely in untieing the sinister tangle of knots that form the present imposed ‘unity’ and the coming of disunity that real unity may come. This will not be a political unity, but a unity of interest. The Four to-be Sovereign Nations of the British Isles and Ireland have a great deal in common in terms of shared geography, history and culture. Sadly, all that they have in common has been overshadowed by the oppressive, centralised State Establishment. This has been fixed in the Norman-British capital of London with its all-powerful Zionist City, for nearly a thousand years. This oppression is symbolised by the foreign Royal Family. The English lost their own Royal Family and the rest of the national elite after the last English King of England, Edmund Ironside, was murdered in 1016. Since then the monarchs have all been foreigners – Danish, Norman, French, Welsh, Scottish, Dutch, German. None has had the interests of the Four Nations at heart, because all have been aliens, many of whom could not even speak English and whose hearts have been elsewhere. Nevertheless, the hope for a serious search for identity and then a real national awakening in England and the Three Nations remains.
Conclusion: The Long Walk to Freedom
The battles for freedom from oppression in the three most powerful and populous countries of Western Europe, two in Continental Europe, one an offshore archipelago, a bit like Americanised Japan on the other side of Northern Eurasia, are under way. For the moment the huge weight of centuries-old oppression, suppression and repression would seem to make the victory of their zombified peoples in any of those battles impossible. And yet it seems to us that, ironically, it is precisely that weight which oppresses the peoples in the three quite different contexts that will ensure victory. Too much is too much – the revolts of peoples whose national identities have been oppressed, suppressed and repressed so heavily and for so long are coming. The sovereignty of Germany, France and the Four Nations has to be restored and the minorities who have realised it in each of them are growing. More and more are realising that restoration can only come once they have freed themselves from the elites which feed off one another. And those elites depend entirely on the alien US elite, which stands behind them all and pulls all their strings.
Today the UK is strike-bound as a result of salaries not keeping up with record-high inflation, which has been almost wholly caused by the anti-Russian and anti-freedom ‘sanctions’ imposed by the Establishment elite. Some there say that the UK event of 2022, the death of Queen Elizabeth II at the age of 96, was the result of her meeting Liz Truss two days earlier and realising what her country had come to. (A popular UK joke says that there is now proof that nobody is brainless – Liz Truss is the exception that proves the rule). Elizabeth’s son, King Charles, has had eggs thrown at him. (Remember how he cheated on Diana?). No-one, even the most devoted Republican, would ever have contemplated throwing eggs at his mother. Then there is the scandalous Harry, Duke of California, completely besotted by and under the heel of his American actress wife, who apparently is ‘black’. (Are the wokeists who call this woman, who appears to be a sun-tanned white woman, ‘black’ perhaps simply colour-blind?). Perhaps, just as France declares a new Republic whenever it undergoes a serious crisis (it is now on its Fifth), the UK, or rather England, as that is what it is actually about, will yet declare that it has a new Dynasty, which is what happens there whenever it has a serious crisis. In any case, Queen Elizabeth II was definitely the end of something: Goodbye, House of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha-Windsor? Hello, English Royal House – Ironside II?
The Franco-German tandem which has essentially been running Continental Western Europe since the Schumann Declaration in 1950 is in trouble too. Sovereignist Germany wants to be Germany again and Sovereignist France wants to be France again. It is the power-grasping US that will not allow either. However, once the US has been discredited by losing its war in the Ukraine, then all will become possible in Europe, just as all became possible in Asia, once the US had been thrown out of it. (There the US now holds on only to the occupied coastal strip of Palestine, the southern tip of the Korean peninsula and offshore Japan, Taiwan and Singapore). We are heading towards a new Western Europe, true, not in a straight line, but in the tortuous zigzags of lies of such grandchildren of Nazis as Ursula von der Luegen. What Germany and France end up doing will pattern and determine the actions of all Western Europe, that is of the EU 27 plus the UK, Switzerland, Norway and Iceland, the European 31. It is our contention that a settlement with Russia, forming the Moscow-Berlin-Paris-London axis, which is what should have happened in 1914, is the only thing that can save the European 31 from serfdom to US feudalism. Now, the Kiev regime has a political slogan: ‘The Ukraine is Europe’. This is meaningless, as Russia is also Europe and there is no Non-Russian Europe without Russian-speaking Europe. They are two halves of a whole, each with a similar area of some five million square kilometres. The European 31 has a choice to make: Live under the transatlantic jackboot, stamped on its face from 3,000 miles away, or choose liberation and sovereignty. The latter means living as good neighbours with local, Russian-speaking Europe and the rest of Eurasia, where geographically, historically and culturally Europe already is and always has been.
Perhaps the maxim of the Brazilian thinker José Luís Fiori that “expansionism and war are two essential parts of the machine that produces power and wealth in the interstate system” has never been so pertinent and seems to be confirmed at the exact historical moment we are witnessing.
The extraordinary events that resulted from the Russian intervention in Ukraine, which began on February 24, leave indelible marks and confirm some of the perceptions that have already been mentioned in other articles by us.
The western-led international order is clearly being questioned in its hierarchy of power, and the war in Ukraine is a clear symptom of this questioning.
What really causes astonishment, however, is the perception that this war aims at something much bigger than it might seem at first sight, because it would not be a regional war, but a war of global proportions: a hegemonic war.
The paradigm shift represented by the Russian intervention in Ukraine consolidates, therefore, the path of a new international system, more fragmented, and where Western power is weakened. In this scenario, the tectonic plates of the international system are slowly moving in the face of the new, and unprecedented, world that is unfolding.
Therefore, like it or not, the elites of countries like Brazil, so subservient to the security strategy of the United States, are being pushed towards a consensual solution in the direction of the Eurasian experience through the BRICS. In this way, the brazilian military, so reactionary and obedient to Washington, is facing a new world, apparently already understood by the diplomatic tradition of “Itamaraty”, and even by the powerful Brazilian agrobusiness lobby.
In the opposite direction, the blindness of the European elites causes astonishment by feeding a game that plunges Europe back into what it has always been: the great stage of military interstate competition of the last 500 years.
Therefore, taking this terrible premise into consideration, the armistice that made possible the creation of the European Union, as well as the common currency, would have been a mere interregnum of peace, until the next war.
Retaking its tragic place in the classical international system, Europe is once again the scene of the old theater of death, and the maxim that “peace is almost always a truce which lasts for the time imposed by the expansive compulsion of the winners, and the need for revenge of the losers,” has never been more apposite.
In this context, the german humiliation represented by the American veto of the Nord Stream II gas pipeline is paradigmatic. On February 7, in the middle of the White House, and even before the Russian intervention in Ukraine, Joe Biden publicly disavows the newly appointed german chancellor Olaf Scholz, stating categorically that the Nord Stream II pipeline would be stopped.
This attitude could be considered the trigger for Russian intervention and the opening of Pandora’s Box for the new world that is opening. Besides representing, in symbolic terms, the humiliation of Germany as a sovereign country, it consolidates the definitive “Coup d’Etat” in the European integration project.
With Ukrainian president Vladimir Zelensky being a kind of spokesman of a script written in Washington – or, who knows, Hollywood – the repeated attacks on European leaders who have worked so hard for the normalization of Russian-European Union relations, as is the case of the recent attack on former chancellor Angela Merkel, indicate that the instruments of fourth generation war, already used by the United States in other regions of the planet, are intensifying in the heart of the western alliance.
Not only the maintenance, but the deepening of the continuous and unlimited reproduction and expansion of the American military empire is a reality that became even clearer after the first Russian tank entered Ukrainian territory, even if this meant destabilizing, or even destroying, old and loyal allies.
In this sense, the old premise carried by many scholars of the “realist” school of International Relations, as well as by great thinkers of the World System, that the concentration of global power in a single state would be an essential condition for lasting world peace, falls to the ground.
The “Hyperpower Paradox” is confirmed as a slap in the face of the enormous theoretical consensus developed since the mid-1970s of the last century.
In other words, since the first minute of the US bombing of Iraq in 1991, which followed the 48 military interventions of the 1990s, and the 24 interventions in the first two decades of the 21st century – which in turn culminated in 100,000 bombings around the globe – the International System is immersed in a somber process of permanent, or infinite, war, which contradicts the Kantian utopia of perpetual peace reflected in the idea of hegemonic stability.
Thus, it was a mistake to consider that the unipolar global power that emerged with the victory in the cold war could exercise its hegemony in the name of peace and global stability, assuming, therefore, a responsible leadership and in the name of a great global governance.
On the contrary, what we have witnessed over the last 30 years is the escalation of interstate competition, with the reaction of other states to the insane and inconsequential process of power expansion carried out by the American military empire.
As a result, we find ourselves before a world that seemed to belong only to the history books; where the national interests of the great powers return with the force that, as it turns out, they never stopped having, but were only dormant.
This new (old) geopolitics of nations, therefore, leaves its clearest mark with what Russia imposes in its intervention in Ukraine: contesting the primacy that only westerners have the legitimacy to impose their will through war.
This is the novelty that shakes the structures of the International System.
In the face of this imminent war of global proportions, resulting from the Russian challenge and the intensification of the arms race – with the alarming return of Germany and Japan to the game – we are inexorably heading for a deepening of the interstate systemic chaos, as well as the escalation of systemic social conflict, particularly in Europe.
As in other moments in the history of the World System, Europe is once again the nerve center of the global power struggle. And as in other tragic moments in history, the behavior of European leaders is once again irrational; in the midst of a negative-sum game. The Europeans lose.
Fabio Reis Vianna, lives in Rio de Janeiro, is a bachelor of laws (LL.B), MA student in International Relations at the University of Évora (Portugal), writer and geopolitical analyst. He currently maintains a column on international politics at the centennial Brazilian newspaper Monitor Mercantil.
Ross [00:00:29] Welcome to Renegade Inc. Whatever the outcome in Ukraine, one thing is for sure the economic reverberations will be felt by everyone for years to come as the world divides between the West and a rapidly reshaping Eurasia.
Ross [00:00:49] Michael Hudson, always a pleasure to have you on the programme, welcome to Renegade Inc.
Michael Hudson [00:00:53] Thank you for inviting me.
Ross [00:00:55] Michael, sanctions, sanctions, sanctions is all we hear now. We’re sanctioning people. The West sanction people back to the Stone Age. What are the unintended consequences of sanctions?
Michael Hudson [00:01:05] Well, one is to serve very much like a protective tariff on the sanctioned country. For instance, when America made sanctions on European trade with Russia, Lithuania dutifully stopped exporting cheese to Russia. Well, the result is that Russia set up its own cheese’s sector, and now it’s self-sufficient in cheese. If you sanction a country, you force it to become more self-reliant and across the board, from agriculture to dairy products to technology, Russia is forced to become more self-reliant and at the same time to depend much more on trade with China for the things that it is still not self-reliant in. So America is bringing about exactly the opposite of what it intended. It’s hopeless to somehow isolate Russia and then be able to go after China without Russia. And instead, what it’s doing is integrating the Eurasian core, Russia and China, exactly the policy that Henry Kissinger warned against going all the way back to Mackinder a century ago that said, Eurasia is the world island, Russia and China could be the whole world centre. That’s what the fight is all about. Well, American sanctions are driving Russia and China together, and America has gone to China and said, Please don’t support Russia. It most recently, on Monday, March 14, Jake Sullivan came out and told China, we will sanction countries that break our sanctions against Russia. And basically, China said, fine. You know, we’ll just break off all the trade between East and West now and the East, Eurasia is pretty much self-sufficient. The West is not self-sufficient since it began to industrialise, and it’s heavily dependent on Russia for not only oil and gas, but palladium and many raw materials. So the sanctions are ending up driving a wedge between the European countries.
Ross [00:03:31] Don’t people who apply these sanctions think this through? Are they so short-sighted they don’t understand that these sanctions are going to build further capacity within Russia, push Russia further towards China, make that economic alliance concrete and, ultimately, you’re not going to be able to keep the lights on in in Europe? All the while underestimating the fact that from a food security point of view – take the U.K., for instance, a net importer of food – not appreciating the fact that, for instance, Russia/Ukraine, they create twenty five percent, a quarter, of all wheat annually. The estimation this year is one hundred and two million tonnes Russia and Ukraine, wheat. Don’t people realise that there’s going to be a massive knock on effect?
Michael Hudson [00:04:23] Yes, they do realise it. Yes, they’ve thought it all through. I worked with these people for more than 50 years.
Ross [00:04:31] Who are these people?
Michael Hudson [00:04:32] The neocons, basically, the people who are in charge of U.S. foreign policy? Victoria Nuland and her husband, Robert Kagan, the people that President Biden has appointed all around him, from Blinken to Sullivan and right down the line. They are basically urging people around the New American Century. They’re the people who said America can run the whole world and create its own reality. And yes, they know that this is going to cause enormous problems for Germany. They know that not only will it block the energy that Germany and Italy and other countries in Europe need through their oil and gas, but also it’ll block the use of gas for fertiliser, upping their fertiliser production and decreasing their food production. They look at this and they say, How can America gain from all of this? There’s always a way of gaining what something looks to be bad. Well, one way they’ll gain is oil prices are going way up. And that benefits the United States whose foreign policy is based very largely on oil and gas. The oil industry controls most of the world’s oil trade, and that explains a lot of the US diplomacy. This is a fight to lock the world energy trade into control by U.S. companies, excluding not only Iran and Venezuela, but also excluding Russia.
Ross [00:06:16] So as Europe pushes towards more and more green and renewable energy and this for the Americans they must think it’s a dreadful scenario insofar as they can’t sell the oil as Europe becomes or wants to become more self-sufficient. So ultimately, and Britain net zero, whatever that means. But but going down the renewables path, going down the solar path takes America’s dependency or dependency on America out the game, doesn’t it?
Michael Hudson [00:06:49] This is exactly the point that the European public has not realised. While most of the European public wants to prevent global warming and prevent carbon into the atmosphere, U.S. foreign policy is based on increasing, and even accelerating, global warming, accelerating carbon emissions because that’s the oil trade. Suppose that Europe got its way. Suppose if the Greens got what they wanted and Germany and Europe were completely dependent on solar energy panels, on wind energy and to some extent, on nuclear power, perhaps? Well, if they were completely self-sufficient in energy without oil or gas or coal, America would lose the primary lever. It has over the ability to turn off the power and electricity and oil of any country that didn’t follow U.S. diplomatic direction.
Ross [00:07:48] So when we take your analysis here and we think about how the sanctions are going to build capacity, push Russia and China together, when we start to look at sort of piggy in the middle, if you like the EU, when we’re thinking about America, the EU has had a sort of abusive relationship with the Americans for quite some time now, hasn’t it?
Michael Hudson [00:08:06] Well, that’s that’s true in the sense that EU foreign policy has basically been turned over to NATO. So instead of European voters and politicians making their policy, they’ve relinquished European foreign policy to NATO, which is really an arm of the US military. So yes, Europe has had a decent relationship with the United States diplomatically by saying yes, yes, please or yes, thank you by not being independent. Of course, if it were independent, the relationship would not be so friendly and decent.
Ross [00:08:46] So for countries that are net importers of food, need to keep the lights on, need heating and need cheap oil. How does this pan out? What does it look like for the UK? What does it look like for the EU?
Michael Hudson [00:08:59] Well, Vice President, Kamala Harris the other day said to Americans, Yes, life is going to be much more expensive. Our oil prices are going up and squeezing families. But think of the poor Ukrainian babies that we’re saving. So take it on the chin for the Ukrainian babies. So basically the United States is presenting horror stories of the Ukraine and saying, if you don’t willingly suffer now by isolating Russia, then Russia is going to roll over you with tanks just like it rolled over Central Europe after World War Two. I mean, it’s waving the flag of Russian aggression, as if Russia or any country in today’s world has an army that’s able to invade any other industrial nation. All military can do today of any country is bomb and kill other populations and industrial centres. No nation is able to occupy or rollover any industrial country. And the United States keeps trying to promote this mythology that we’re still in the world of 1945. And that world ended really with the Vietnam War when the military draft ended. And no country is able to have a military draft to raise the army with necessary to fight to invade. Russia can’t do it any more than Europe or the United States could do it. So all the United States can do is wave warnings about how awful Russia is and somehow convince Europe to follow the US position. But most of all, it doesn’t really have to. Europe doesn’t really have a voice, and this is what the complaint by Putin and Foreign Secretary Lavrov have been saying. They say that Europe is just following the United States and it doesn’t matter what the European people want or what European politicians want. The United States is so deeply in control that they really don’t have much of a choice.
Ross [00:11:15] When does the consumer start to feel this? When does the European or British consumer start to feel the pinch when these sanctions are enacted? And what does that look like?
Michael Hudson [00:11:25] Well, it depends on how fast the sanctions work. The United States said Well, in another year and a half, we’ll be able to provide Europe with liquefied natural gas. Well, the problem is, first of all, they’re not the ports to handle the liquefied natural gas to go into Europe. Secondly, there are not enough ships and tankers to carry all of this gas to Europe. So unless there are very warm winters, Europe is not going to have a very easy time for the next few years. And that’s only for oil and gas. It’s dependent on raw materials that Russia produces. For instance, palladium is necessary for catalytic converters. Titanium is necessary to make the screws that are especially used on aeroplanes that are strong enough not to buckle and break when winds go up and down and when they’re full. Russia even produces the neon and the crypton that are necessary for making some kind of electronic uses and also for many components that go into computers and information technology. There’s a whole range of exports that Europe is highly dependent on, and the United States has provided Putin with a whole list of these exports, saying, Well, OK, we’re going to fight against Europe buying your oil and gas but you can certainly sell us your heavy oil that we need since we’re not buying it from Venezuela. We certainly need the following list of critical materials that we need, like helium and crypton. These are our pressure points. Please don’t press on them. Well, you can imagine what Putin and his advisers are saying. Thank you for giving us this list of the pressure points that you’re exempting from the trade sanctions. I think if you really want a break in the unilateral, unipolar world, I think we should break now and see whether you really want to get along without trading.
Ross [00:13:51] Michael Hudson, welcome back, second half, Renegade Inc. Wonderful to have you. In that first half we followed the money, if you like. We talked about sanctions and the unintended consequences. I just want to pull back a little further if we can and just talk about the sort of tectonic shifts that are going on in the world. I spoke to somebody from Russia recently and what he said was very straightforward. He said, now what we have to do is begin to learn to live without the West. Do you think that that sentiment is proliferating across Russia now? Is that the mindset?
Michael Hudson [00:14:22] Well, if you read President Putin’s speeches, that’s exactly what’s happening. And Secretary Lavrov has voiced exactly the same feeling. There’s almost a disgust with the West and a feeling from Putin, Lavrov and the other Russian spokesmen, how could we everhave hoped to have an integration with Europe after 1991? Europe really was not on our side at all, and we didn’t realise that Europe is really part of the U.S. diplomatic sphere. It’s like all of Europe is now backing the attack on Russia. The best to do is reorient our economy towards China, Asia and Eurasia and become our own self-sufficient, independent centre
Ross [00:15:15] De-dollarisation and the amassing of plenty of gold by both the Russians and the Chinese. Just talk us through that.
Michael Hudson [00:15:21] Well, Ross, you asked in the first half of this interview how has American sanctions worked against it? I should have mentioned what you just mentioned, the dollar. The United States just grabbed all of Russia’s foreign exchange reserves, just as England a few months ago grabbed all of Venezuela’s gold that was held in the Bank of England when Venezuela tried to spend this gold on buying medical supplies to cope with the COVID virus. So basically, the United States have said, if any foreign country holds its reserves in the United States or accounts in U.S. banks. If a country in the global south tries to pay its foreign debt by holding its reserves in US banks in order to be the paying agent on the interest on its foreign debt. And if that foreign country does something we don’t like, like trade with Russia or permit more labour unionisation or try to become independent in food, we’re just going to do what we did to Venezuela, what we did to Iran when we grabbed its foreign exchange reserves or what we did to Russia. And that means that other countries all of a sudden see what they thought was their flight to security, what they thought was their most secure savings, their holdings in U.S. banks, US treasury bill, all of a sudden, is holding them hostage and is a high risk. Even the Financial Times of London has been writing about this, saying, how can the United States that was getting a free ride off the dollar standard for the last 50 years, ever since 1971, when foreign countries held dollars instead of gold and basically holding dollars means you buy U.S. Treasury bonds to finance the US budget deficit and the balance of payments deficit. How can the United States kill the goose that’s giving it the free ride? Well, the answer is that other countries can only move into gold and there’s an alternative to the dollar because that’s something that all the countries of the world have agreed upon is an asset, not a liability. If you hold any foreign currency, that currency is a liability of a foreign country, and if you hold gold, it’s a pure asset. There’s no country that can cancel it, the Americans can’t cancel Russia’s gold supply that’s held in Russia, although it can grab Russian gold supply if it were to hold it in the New York Federal Reserve Bank or the Bank of England. So other countries are not only moving to gold, Germany is bringing its gold back from New York, the Federal Reserve, in aeroplanes back to Germany, so it’ll have its own gold just in case German politicians would do something the United States didn’t like and the United States would simply grab Germany’s gold. The United States sanctions, and it’s especially it’s grabbing on foreign reserve, has started a war that is dividing the world between the West and Eurasia.
Ross [00:18:40] A technical part to all of this because let’s face it, it is an information war and it’s also an economic war. Is it the FIRE sector that you point out – the financial, insurance and real estate sector. Is it that they want to continue the exorbitant privilege of credit creation, because ultimately, if you think about gold, there’s no counterparty risk. Gold is gold and it has been for millennia. Far from being a barbarous relic, by the way now, people are starting to realise the intrinsic value, especially as crypto falls apart. Can you just talk a little bit about this, the FIRE sector wanting the exorbitant privilege of creating credit?
Michael Hudson [00:19:19] This is really what the new world division and global fracture is all about. You’re right, Ross. If you look at after World War One, the American fight against Soviet communism, was basically a fight of industrial capitalism against the threat of socialism. But after 1991, and especially in the last two decades, America deindustrialised. So the fight is not by industrial capitalism against countries pushing their labour up. It’s a fight of neoliberalism against industrial capitalism or socialism abroad. It’s against industrial capitalism evolving into socialism. It’s a belief that, well, now that America’s be industrialised, how is it going to control the world economy? Well, it’ll control it through a financial means by being the creditor and foreign countries debt payments to America will enable it to make its military payments abroad and finance its trade deficit. But also, America’s purchase of key natural resources will give it natural resources when its purchase of takeover of real estate is going to essentially make the United States the landlord class and monopoly class, that mediaeval Europe had to hold the rest of the population in serfdom. That basically is the American strategy of neoliberalism fighting against countries that reject privatisation and financialization of their economy, and specifically financialization under the control of U.S. banks, U.S. private capital and allied satellite banks and capital from England or France or Germany. This is exactly the fight. Will banking and finance control the world economy or will other countries try to build up their own economies through labour and tangible capital formation?
Ross [00:21:27] Where do you stand on that? And I’m only asking you to predict the future, Michael. How do you think this plays out? Because the way you’ve depicted it is the rent seekers, the neoliberal rent seekers on one hand, and there are value creators on the other. And by the way, those two things don’t sit very well together, as we know. How does that play out?
Michael Hudson [00:21:51] Even though the United States is the largest debtor economy in the world, it’s a creditor vis-a-vis the global south and other countries and it uses its creditor position to take over their natural resources, real estate, oil and gas, mineral rights and public utilities and natural monopolies and that are being privatised in government infrastructure. It’s becoming basically the landlord monopoly class of the entire world. That’s the U.S. strategy, and that’s the key to why the world is fracturing globally. And in the past, the global south countries were unable to fight against this tendency in the 70s and 80s with the Vendome conference on. But now that China and Russia threatened to be a self-sufficient core in Eurasia, this is the great threat to the American dream of becoming a landlord and financier of the world.
Ross [00:22:50] How do you think this pans out?
Michael Hudson [00:22:52] Well, the question is whether the United States is if we can control the world, who wants to live in a world like that, let’s blow it up. The question is whether the United States will actually go to war. The only lever that it has left is to drop bombs and to destroy and make the world look like Ukraine. So from the U.S. point of view, Europe’s future and Eurasia’s future is the Ukraine. Look at what we will do to you if you don’t follow our policy. America has just moved al Qaeda very heavily in the Ukraine to sort of repeat in Ukraine and Europe what it was doing in Syria and Libya. And the United States says this is what we can do. What are you going to do about it? Do you really want to fight. But the rest of the world, certainly China and Russia says, Well, we’re ready to fight. So there is no telling what you. And it comes down to personalities. Putin has said, well, do we really want to live in a world without Russia? If the United States is to attack us, we might as well end the world. The United States says, Do we really want to live in a world that we can’t control? If we’re not completely in control, we feel very insecure and we’re going to blow up the world. So you have this countervailing position in a world where all the arms control has been dismantled by the United States in the last few years. The United States has withdrawn from all of the agreements that Russia and China have tried to promote. And Europe is standing by and apparently is willing to be the sacrificial lamb in all of this as Ukraine is being the sacrificial lamb. So the United States and Russia say, let’s fight to the last European. And Russia initially didn’t want that because it was hoping that Europe and Russia would have a mutual gain in trade and investment relationships. But now it doesn’t feel that way. And there may be a proxy war between the United States over the European economy, not necessarily bombing Europe, but trade sanctions, energy sanctions, the kind of disruption that Europe is going to be seeing in the next year is if it loses Russian oil and gas and minerals and also, I think Chinese exports.
Ross [00:25:25] Is there a moment where cooler heads prevail and suddenly the West and other places realise that they’re dependent from a food security point of view, from an energy security point of view that we are dependent? And is there a moment at that point that you can thaw a frozen conflict by saying, actually, if we both meet, we just take a step toward each other, actually, we can do something in a collaborative way? Now I get what you’ve said throughout the rest of the programme, and I give this a percentage possibility of about three percent, but isn’t there a strategy to say, actually, we’ve had all the grandstanding, we’ve had all the brinksmanship, we should now sit around the table and try and work something out?
Michael Hudson [00:26:03] I don’t see any cooler heads in the United States. The surprising thing is that here it’s the right wing channel, the Republican Fox Channel, is the only channel that’s taking the anti-war stand and is saying we shouldn’t be at war in Ukraine. It’s the only channel that’s talking about here is how Russia sees the world. Do we really want to take a one sided perspective or do we want to see the actual dynamics at work? So it was the Republicans and the right wing that is now primarily against the NATO war in the Ukraine. The left wing seems to be all for it, but the left wing of the Democratic Party is in office and I don’t see any cooler heads in the Democratic Party at all. And I’ve known many of these people for many decades, and they are willing to go to war for a death. There are still back in the world of World War Two when the fight was against the Nazis and anti-Semitism. They’re still living in a kind of mythology world, not in the real world. And the thought that the world can come to an end either doesn’t have a reality to them or as Herman Cain said, Well, somebody is going to survive.
Ross [00:27:29] Michael Hudson always a pleasure, a great insight. And, you know, it’s just refreshing to hear. Thank you very much for your time.
Michael Hudson [00:27:38] Well, thank you very much for having me, Ross.
And then, last Friday, right before the start of the Year of the Metal Ox, came the bombshell, delivered with customary aplomb by Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov.
In an interview with popular talk show host Vladimir Solovyov – with the full transcript published by the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs – Lavrov said Moscow “must be ready” for a possible “break with the European Union.”
The ominous break would be a direct result of new EU sanctions, particularly those “that create risks for our economy, including in the most sensitive areas.” And then, the Sun Tzu-style clincher: “If you want peace, prepare for war.”
Kremlin spokesperson Dmitri Peskov, afterwards, made sure to explain that Lavrov was taken out of context: the media, predictably, had seized on a “sensational” headline.
So Lavrov’s full, nuanced answer to a question about rocky EU-Russia relations must be carefully examined:
“We believe we would be ready for this. We are neighbors. Speaking collectively, they are our largest trade and investment partner. Many EU companies operate here; there are hundreds or even thousands of joint ventures. When a business benefits both sides, we will continue. I am sure that we have become fully self-sufficient in the defense sphere. We must also attain the same position in the economy to be able to act accordingly if we see again (we have seen this more than once) that sanctions are imposed in a sphere where they can create risks for our economy, including in the most sensitive areas such as the supply of component parts. We don’t want to be isolated from the world, but we must be prepared for this. If you want peace, prepare for war.”
It’s quite clear that Lavrov is not stating that Russia will unilaterally cut off relations with the EU. The ball is actually in the EU’s court: Moscow is stating that it will not exercise a first-strike option to break relations with the Brussels eurocracy. And that in itself would also be quite different from breaking relations with any of the 27 EU member-states.
The context Peskov referred to is also clear: EU envoy Josep Borrell, after his disastrous trip to Moscow, had raised the issue that Brussels was weighing the imposition of further sanctions. Lavrov’s response was clearly designed to drum some sense into the thick heads of the European Commission (EC), run by notoriously incompetent former German defense minister Ursula von der Leyen and her foreign policy “chief” Borrell.
Earlier this week, Peskov was forced to come back incisively to the volcanic saga: “Regrettably, Brussels keeps talking about sanctions, so does the United States with maniacal persistency. This is something we will never welcome. It is something that we do not like at all.”
Talk about diplomatic euphemism.
So the stage is set for a raucous – to say the least – meeting of EU foreign ministers next Monday, where they will discuss – what else? – possible new sanctions. Those most probably would include travel bans and asset freezes on selected Russians, including people very close to the Kremlin, blamed by the EU to be responsible for the jailing earlier this month of right-wing blogger and convicted fraudster (a scam against Yves Rocher) Alexei Navalny.
The overwhelming majority of Russians see Navalny – with a popularity rate of 2% at best – as a lowly, expendable NATO asset. The meeting next week will pave the way for the summit of member state leaders at the end of March, where the EU could – and that’s the operative word – formally approve new sanctions. That would require a unanimous decision by the EU’s 27 member states.
As it stands, apart from the stridently Russophobic usual suspects – Poland and the Baltics – it doesn’t appear Brussels is aiming to shoot itself in the back.
Remember Leibniz
EU observers obviously have not been observing how Moscow’s pragmatic view of Brussels has evolved in the past few years.
Russia-EU trade will continue, no matter what. The EU badly needs Russian energy; and Russia is willing to sell it, oil and gas, pipelines and all. That’s strictly business. If the EU doesn’t want it – for a basket of reasons – no problem: Russia is developing a steady stream of businesses, energy included, all across East Asia.
The always relevant Valdai Discussion Club, a Moscow-based think tank, for instance, is carefully tracking the trade aspect of the Russia-China strategic partnership:
“US policy will continue to seek a split between China and Russia. Europe remains an important partner for Moscow and Beijing. The situation in Central Asia is stable, but it requires the building up of Russian-Chinese cooperation.”
Putin, laterally, also weighed in on the EU-Russia saga, which is a subtext of that perennial battle between Russia and the West: “As soon as we began to stabilize, to get back to our feet – the policy of deterrence followed immediately… And as we grew stronger, this policy of deterrence was being conducted more and more intensely.”
Peter Spengler also called attention to Leibniz’s Novissima Sinica, and particularly to an essay by Manfred von Boetticher on Leibniz and Russia, represented by Tsar Peter the Great, in which the role of Russia as a bridge between Europe and China is emphasized.
Even though Leibniz, in the end, never met Peter the Great, we learn that “it was always Leibniz’s goal to get practical application for his theoretical findings. Throughout his life, he was looking for a ‘great potentate’ who was open to modern ideas and with whose help he could realize his ideas of a better world. In the age of absolutism, this seemed to be the most promising perspective for a scholar for whom the progress of science and technology as well as the improvement of education and economic conditions were urgent goals.”
“Tsar Peter, who was as powerful as he was open to all new plans and whose personality fascinated him anyway, must therefore have been an extraordinarily interesting contact for Leibniz. Since Western Europe had come into closer contact with China through the Jesuit mission and Leibniz had recognized the importance of the millennia-old Chinese culture, he also saw in Russia the natural link between the European and Chinese cultural spheres, the center of a future synthesis between the Orient and the Occident. With the emerging upheavals in the Russian Empire, his hopes seemed to be fulfilled: Full of expectation, he followed the changes in Russia, as they were emerging under Peter I.”
Yet to evoke Leibniz at this stage is to dream of heavenly spheres. The pedestrian geopolitical reality is that the EU is an Atlanticist institution – de facto subordinated to NATO. Lavrov might want to behave like a Daoist monk, or even pull a Leibniz, but it’s hard when you’re forced to deal with a bunch of dummies.
It’s all about sovereignty
Rabid Atlanticists argue that non-entity Navalny is directly related to Nord Stream 2. Nonsense: Navalny was built (italics mine) by the usual suspects as a battering ram to undermine Nord Stream 2.
The reason is that the pipeline will consolidate Berlin at the core of the EU’s energy policy. And that will be a major factor in the EU’s overall foreign policy – with Germany, at least in theory, exercising more autonomy in relation to the US.
So here’s the “dirty” secret: it’s all a matter of sovereignty. Every geopolitical and geoeconomic player knows who does not want a closer Germany-Russia entente.
Now imagine a hegemonic Germany in Europe forging closer trade and investment ties with not only Russia but also China (and that’s the other “secret” inbuilt in the EU-China trade-investment deal).
So whoever is lodged in the White House, there’s nothing else to expect from the US Deep State apart from the “maniacal” push towards perennial, accumulated sanctions.
The ball is actually in Berlin’s court, much more than in the court of eurocratic nightmare Brussels, where everyone’s future priority amounts to receiving their full, fat retirement pensions tax-free.
Berlin’s strategic priority is more exports – within the EU and most of all to Asia. German industrialists and the business classes know exactly what Nord Stream 2 represents: increasingly assertive German sovereignty guiding the heart of the EU, which translates as increased EU sovereignty.
An immensely significant sign has been recently delivered by Berlin with the approval granted for imports of the Sputnik vaccine.
Is Musil’s sense of possibility already in play? It’s too early to tell. The hegemon has unleashed a no-holds-barred hybrid war against Russia since 2014. This war may not be kinetic; roughly, it’s 70% financial and 30% infowar.
A more sovereign Germany closer to Russia and China may be the straw that breaks the hegemon’s back.
On Friday, February 5, the last hurdle in the way of an international investigation into war crimes committed in occupied Palestine has been removed, as the International Criminal Court in the Hague has finally approved the Prosecutor’s request to open legal proceedings regarding war crimes in the occupied Palestinian territories, including Gaza.
“Pre-Trial Chamber I of the International Criminal Court .. decided, by majority, that the Court’s territorial jurisdiction in the Situation in Palestine, a State party to the ICC Rome Statute, extends to the territories occupied by Israel since 1967, namely Gaza and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem,” the ICC said in a press release that was made available to international media, including The Palestine Chronicle.
After years of haggling, the ICC had resolved in December 2019 that, “there is a reasonable basis to proceed with an investigation into the situation in Palestine, pursuant to Article 53(1) of the Statute.”
Article 53(1) merely describes the procedural steps that often lead, or do not lead, to an investigation by the Court.
That Article is satisfied when the amount of evidence provided to the Court is so convincing that it leaves the ICC with no other option but to move forward with an investigation.
Indeed, Bensouda had already declared late last year that she was,
“satisfied that (i) war crimes have been or are being committed in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip… (ii) potential cases arising from the situation would be admissible; and (iii) there are no substantial reasons to believe that an investigation would not serve the interests of justice.”
The Reactions
The decision, then, has angered Israel and its Western allies, who insisted that the ICC has no jurisdiction, since Palestine, they alleged, is not an independent state.
As soon as Bensouda made her decision, although, after much delay, the US administration swiftly moved to block the Court’s attempt at holding Israeli officials accountable. On June 11, US President Donald Trump signed an executive order slapping sanctions on members of the global judicial body, citing the ICC’s investigations of US war crimes in Afghanistan and Israeli war crimes in Palestine.
In an historic irony, Germany, which had to answer to numerous war crimes committed by the Nazi regime during World War II, stepped in to serve as the main defender of Israel at the ICC and to shield accused Israeli war criminals from legal and moral accountability.
Germany, among others, then argued that the ICC had no legal authority to discuss Israeli war crimes in the occupied territories. These efforts, however, eventually amounted to nil.
Dr. Triestino Mariniello, member of the legal team for Gaza victims at the ICC, told Palestine Chronicle TV:
“There are at least eight countries that are openly against an investigation of the Palestinian situation. Germany is one. Some of the others came as a surprise, to be honest, for at least four other countries, Uganda, Brazil, Czech Republic, and Hungary had explicitly recognized that Palestine is a State under international law, yet are now submitting statements before the ICC Pre-Trial Chamber saying that this is not true anymore.”
The Pre-Trial Chamber
Consequently, Bensouda referred the matter to the ICC Pre-Trial Chamber, requesting a “ruling on the scope of the Court’s territorial jurisdiction in the Situation in the State of Palestine”.
The pre-trial chamber consists of judges that authorize the opening of investigations. Customarily once the Prosecutor decides to consider an investigation, she has to inform the Pre-Trial Chamber of her decision.
According to the Rome Statute, Article 56(b),
“… the Pre-Trial Chamber may, upon request of the Prosecutor, take such measures as may be necessary to ensure the efficiency and integrity of the proceedings and, in particular, to protect the rights of the defence.”
According to Dr. Mariniello:
“This request to the Pre-Trial Chamber was not necessary, for a simple reason: because the situation is being referred by the State of Palestine. So, when a State party refers a situation to the Prosecutor, the Prosecutor does not need authorization by the Pre-Trial Chamber.”
The Court’s Jurisdiction
The State of Palestine became a signatory of the Rome Statute in January 2015. By accepting the jurisdiction of the Court, Palestine became a State Party.
The Pre-Trial Chamber 1 reiterated that Palestine is a State Party, therefore the Court has jurisdiction over its territory. Dr. Mariniello told The Palestine Chronicle: “The Pre-trial Chamber did not only recognize that Palestine is a State, they also stated that the Court’s jurisdiction extends to the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and Gaza. What we feared was a further fragmentation of the Palestinian territory” but, according to the ruling, this was not the case.
A Victory
“It is a landmark decision since all the comments expressed by the legal team representing the Gaza victims have been approved. Therefore, they rejected all the arguments by civil society organizations or even states who were trying to persuade the Court that Palestine is not a State,” Dr. Mariniello added.
Professor Richard Falk, Former UN Special Rapporteur on Palestinian human rights, told Palestine Chronicle TV that the ICC investigation is a “breakthrough”.
“It’s a breakthrough even to consider the investigation, let alone the indictment and the prosecution of either Israelis or Americans that was put on the agenda of the ICC, which led to a pushback by these governments … Israel has denounced the Court as if it is improper to examine any State that claims the matter of geopolitical impunity. So you have a core denial of the rule of law.”
The Narrow Scope
Professor Falk elaborated,
“The scope of the investigation is something that is ill-defined, so it is a matter of political discretion,” Professor. Falk said, adding that “the Court takes a position that needs to be cautious about delimiting its jurisdiction and, therefore, it tries to narrow the scope of what it is prepared to investigate. I don’t agree with this view … but it does represent the fact that the ICC, like the UN itself, is subject to immense geopolitical pressure”.
The legal representatives of the ‘Palestinian Victims Residents of the Gaza Strip’ had expressed their concern on behalf of the victims regarding “the ostensibly narrow scope of the investigation into the crimes suffered by the Palestinian victims of this situation.”
The ‘narrow scope of the investigation’ has thus far excluded such serious crimes as Crimes Against Humanity. According to the Gaza legal team, the killing of hundreds and wounding of thousands of unarmed protesters participating in the ‘Great March of Return’ is a crime against humanity that must also be investigated.
The ICC’s jurisdiction, of course, goes beyond Bensouda’s decision to investigate ‘war crimes’ only.
Article 5 of the Rome Statute – the founding document of the ICC – extends the Court’s jurisdiction to investigate the following “serious crimes”:
(a) The Crime of Genocide
(b) Crimes Against Humanity
(c) War Crimes
(d) The Crime of Aggression
It should come as no surprise that Israel is qualified to be investigated on all four points and that the nature of Israeli crimes against Palestinians often tends to constitute a mixture of two or more of these points simultaneously.
That in mind, according to Mariniello,
“The scope of the investigation is not binding for the future. The Prosecutor can decide, at any moment, to include other crimes. We hope it will happen because, otherwise, many victims will never get justice.”
What Now
Mariniello told The Palestine Chronicle,
“Now, the hard work starts for the legal representatives of the ‘Palestinian Victims Residents of the Gaza Strip’, we cannot lower the guard. We need to work so that the ICC Prosecutor can identify the people responsible for international crimes and their criminal behavior as soon as possible.”
The Prosecutor
The decision that there were sufficient elements to investigate war crimes committed in the Occupied Palestinian Territories was taken by ICC Prosecutor, Fatou Bensouda, who is currently nearing the end of her term.
A new prosecutor should be elected soon.
(Managing Editor of The Palestine Chronicle, Romana Rubeo, composed this report)
The Israeli newspaper Haaretz has run a fascinating long report this week offering a disturbing snapshot of the political climate rapidly emerging across Europe on the issue of antisemitism. The article documents a kind of cultural, political and intellectual reign of terror in Germany since the parliament passed a resolution last year equating support for non-violent boycotts of Israel – in solidarity with Palestinians oppressed by Israel – with antisemitism.
The article concerns Germany but anyone reading it will see very strong parallels with what is happening in other European countries, especially the UK and France.
The same European leaders who a few years ago marched in Paris shouting “Je suis Charlie” – upholding the inalienable free speech rights of white Europeans to offend Muslims by insulting and ridiculing their Prophet – are now queuing up to outlaw free speech when it is directed against Israel, a state that refuses to end its belligerent occupation of Palestinian land. European leaders have repeatedly shown they are all too ready to crush the free speech of Palestinians, and those in solidarity with them, to avoid offending sections of the Jewish community.
The situation reduces to this: European Muslims have no right to take offense at insults about a religion they identify with, but European Jews have every right to take offense at criticism of an aggressive Middle Eastern state they identify with. Seen another way, the perverse secular priorities of European mainstream culture now place the sanctity of a militarized state, Israel, above the sanctity of a religion with a billion followers.
Guilt by Association
This isn’t even a double standard. I can’t find a word in the dictionary that conveys the scale and degree of hypocrisy and bad faith involved.
If the American Jewish scholar Norman Finkelstein wrote a follow-up to his impassioned book The Holocaust Industry – on the cynical use of the Holocaust to enrich and empower a Jewish organizational establishment at the expense of the Holocaust’s actual survivors – he might be tempted to title it The Antisemitism Industry.
In the current climate in Europe, one that rejects any critical thinking in relation to broad areas of public life, that observation alone would enough to have one denounced as an antisemite. Which is why the Haaretz article – far braver than anything you will read in a UK or US newspaper – makes no bones about what is happening in Germany. It calls it a “witch-hunt”. That is Haaretz’s way of saying that antisemitism has been politicized and weaponized – a self-evident conclusion that will currently get you expelled from the British Labour party, even if you are Jewish.
The Haaretz story highlights two important developments in the way antisemitism has been, in the words of intellectuals and cultural leaders cited by the newspaper, “instrumentalized” in Germany.
Jewish organizations and their allies in Germany, as Haaretz reports, are openly weaponizing antisemitism not only to damage the reputation of Israel’s harsher critics but also to force out of the public and cultural domain – through a kind of “antisemitism guilt by association” – anyone who dares to entertain criticism of Israel.
Cultural associations, festivals, universities, Jewish research centers, political think-tanks, museums, and libraries are being forced to scrutinize the past of those they wish to invite in case some minor transgression against Israel can be exploited by local Jewish organizations. That has created a toxic, politically paranoid atmosphere that inevitably kills trust and creativity.
But the psychosis runs deeper still. Israel, and anything related to it, has become such a combustible subject – one that can ruin careers in an instant – that most political, academic and cultural figures in Germany now choose to avoid it entirely. Israel, as its supporters intended, is rapidly becoming untouchable.
A case study noted by Haaretz is Peter Schäfer, a respected professor of ancient Judaism and Christianity studies who was forced to resign as director of Berlin’s Jewish Museum last year. Schäfer’s crime, in the eyes of Germany’s Jewish establishment, was that he staged an exhibition on Jerusalem that recognized the city’s three religious traditions, including a Muslim one.
He was immediately accused of promoting “historical distortions” and denounced as “anti-Israel”. A reporter for Israel’s right-wing Jerusalem Post, which has been actively colluding with the Israeli government to smear critics of Israel, contacted Schäfer with a series of inciteful emails. The questions included “Did you learn the wrong lesson from the Holocaust?” and “Israeli experts told me you disseminate antisemitism – is that true?”
Schäfer observes:
“The accusation of antisemitism is a club that allows one to deal a death blow, and political elements who have an interest in this are using it, without a doubt… The museum staff gradually entered a state of panic. Then of course we also started to do background checks. Increasingly it poisoned the atmosphere and our work.”
Another prominent victim of these Jewish organizations tells Haaretz:
“Sometimes one thinks, ‘To go to that conference?’ ‘To invite this colleague?’ Afterward, it means that for three weeks, I’ll have to cope with a shitstorm, whereas I need the time for other things that I get paid for as a lecturer. There is a type of ‘anticipatory obedience’ or ‘prior self-censorship.’”
Ringing off the Hook
There is nothing unusual about what is happening in Germany. Jewish organizations are stirring up these “shitstorms” – designed to paralyze political and cultural life for anyone who engages in even the mildest criticism of Israel – at the highest levels of government. Don’t believe me? Here is Barack Obama explaining in his recent autobiography his efforts as US president to curb Israel’s expansion of its illegal settlements. Early on, he was warned to back off or face the wrath of the Israel lobby:
“Members of both parties worried about crossing the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). Those who criticized Israeli policy too loudly risked being tagged as ‘anti-Israel’ (and possibly anti-Semitic) and confronted with a well-funded opponent in the next election.”
Corbyn, it seems, has found an unlikely ally in former US President Obama. In his new autobiography, he writes of the Israel lobby's power: 'Those who criticized Israeli policy too loudly risked being tagged as "anti-Israel" (and possibly anti-Semitic)' https://t.co/tKmy8q3Cws
When Obama went ahead anyway in 2009 and proposed a modest freeze on Israel’s illegal settlements:
“The White House phones started ringing off the hook, as members of my national security team fielded calls from reporters, leaders of American Jewish organizations, prominent supporters, and members of Congress, all wondering why we were picking on Israel … this sort of pressure continued for much of 2009.”
He observes further:
“The noise orchestrated by Netanyahu had the intended effect of gobbling up our time, putting us on the defensive, and reminding me that normal policy differences with an Israeli prime minister – even one who presided over a fragile coalition government – exacted a political cost that didn’t exist when I dealt with the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Japan, Canada, or any of our other closest allies.”
Doubtless, Obama dare not put down in writing his full thoughts about Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu or the US lobbyists who worked on his behalf. But Obama’s remarks do show that, even a US president, supposedly the single most powerful person on the planet, ended up blanching in the face of this kind of relentless assault. For lesser mortals, the price is likely to be far graver.
No Free Speech on Israel
It was this same mobilization of Jewish organizational pressure – orchestrated, as Obama notes, by Israel and its partisans in the US and Europe – that ended up dominating Jeremy Corbyn’s five years as the leader of Britain’s leftwing Labour party, recasting a well-known anti-racism activist almost overnight as an antisemite.
It is the reason why his successor, Sir Keir Starmer, has outsourced part of Labour’s organizational oversight on Jewish and Israel-related matters to the very conservative Board of Deputies of British Jews, as given expression in Starmer’s signing up to the Board’s “10 Pledges”.
It is part of the reason why Starmer recently suspended Corbyn from the party, and then defied the membership’s demands that he be properly reinstated, after Corbyn expressed concerns about the way antisemitism allegations had been “overstated for political reasons” to damage him and Labour. (The rightwing Starmer, it should be noted, was also happy to use antisemitism as a pretext to eradicate the socialist agenda Corbyn had tried to revive in Labour.) It is why Starmer has imposed a blanket ban on constituency parties discussing Corbyn’s suspension. And it is why Labour’s shadow education secretary has joined the ruling Conservative party in threatening to strip universities of their funding if they allow free speech about Israel on campus.
Disturbing to learn from this article that Labour backs threatening funding to universities to bully them into adopting the IHRA re-definition of antisemitism – a definition that protects Israel from criticism and would ban most forms of solidarity with Palestinians on campus
But the Haaretz article raises another issue critical to understanding how Israel and the Jewish establishment in Europe are politicizing antisemitism to protect Israel from criticism. The potential Achilles’ heel of their campaign are Jewish dissidents, those who break with the supposed “Jewish community” line and create a space for others – whether Palestinians or other non-Jews – to criticize Israel. These Jewish dissenters risk serving as a reminder that trenchant criticism of Israel should not result in one being tarred an antisemite.
Leading Palestinians warn: 'The fight against antisemitism has been increasingly instrumentalised by the Israeli government and its supporters in an effort to delegitimise the Palestinian cause and silence defenders of Palestinian rights' https://t.co/Shu1Z7XYM1
Israel and Jewish organizations, however, have made it their task to erode that idea by promoting a distinction – an antisemitic one, at that – between two types of Jews: good Jews (loyal to Israel), and bad Jews (disloyal to Israel).
Haaretz reports that officials in Germany, such as Felix Klein, the country’s antisemitism commissioner, and Josef Schuster, president of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, are being allowed to define not only who is an antisemite, typically using support for Israel as the yardstick, but are also determining who are good Jews – those politically like them – and who are bad Jews – those who disagree with them.
Despite Germany’s horrific recent history of Jew-hatred, the German government, local authorities, the media, universities and cultural institutions have been encouraged by figures like Klein and Schuster to hound German Jews, even Israeli Jews living and working in Germany, from the country’s public and cultural space.
When, for example, a group of Israeli Jewish academics in Berlin held a series of online discussions about Zionism last year on the website of their art school, an Israeli reporter soon broke the story of a “scandal” involving boycott supporters receiving funding from the German government. Hours later the art school had pulled down the site, while the German education ministry issued a statement clarifying that it had provided no funding. The Israeli embassy officially declared the discussions held by these Israelis as “antisemitic”, and a German foundation that documents antisemitism added the group to the list of antisemitic incidents it records.
Described as ‘Kapos’
So repressive has the cultural and political atmosphere grown in Germany that there has been a small backlash among cultural leaders. Some have dared to publish a letter protesting against the role of Klein, the antisemitism commissioner. Haaretz reports:
“The antisemitism czar, the letter charged, is working ‘in synergy with the Israeli government’ in an effort ‘to discredit and silence opponents of Israel’s policies’ and is abetting the ‘instrumentalization’ that undermines the true struggle against antisemitism.
Figures like Klein have been so focused on tackling criticism of Israel from the left, including the Jewish left, that they have barely noted the “acute danger Jews in Germany face due to the surge in far-right antisemitism”, the letter argues.
Again, the same picture can be seen across Europe. In the UK, the opposition Labour party, which should be a safe space for those leading the anti-racism struggle, is purging itself of Jews critical of Israel and using antisemitism smears against prominent anti-racists, especially from other oppressed minorities.
Extraordinarily, Naomi Wimborne-Idrissi, one of the founders of Jewish Voice for Labour, which supports Corbyn, recently found herself suspended by Starmer’s Labour. She had just appeared in a moving video in which she explained the ways antisemitism was being used by Jewish organizations to smear Jewish left-wingers like herself as “traitors” and “kapos” – an incendiary term of abuse, as Wimborne-Idrissi points out, that refers to “a Jewish inmate of a concentration camp who collaborated with the [Nazi] authorities, people who collaborated in the annihilation of their own people”.
In suspending her, Starmer effectively endorsed this campaign by the UK’s Jewish establishment of incitement against, and vilification of, left-wing Jews.
The aggressive purge of Jews from the Labour Party under the repressive rule of @Keir_Starmer marches on.
I haven't seen a sustained campaign of overt anti-Semitism quite like the effort of Labour centrists to create lists of Good Jews & Bad Jews and purge the latter. https://t.co/wVwnu47QJP
Earlier, Marc Wadsworth, a distinguished black anti-racism campaigner, found himself similarly suspended by Labour when he exposed the efforts of Ruth Smeeth, then a Labour MP and a former Jewish official in the Israel lobby group BICOM, to recruit the media to her campaign smearing political opponents on the left as antisemites.
In keeping with the rapid erosion of critical thinking in civil society organizations designed to uphold basic freedoms, Smeeth was recently appointed director of the prestigious free speech organization Index on Censorship. There she can now work on suppressing criticism of Israel – and attack “bad Jews” – under cover of fighting censorship. In the new, inverted reality, censorship refers not to the smearing and silencing of a “bad Jew” like Wimborne-Idrissi, but to criticism of Israel over its human rights abuses, which supposedly “censors” the identification of “good Jews” with Israel – now often seen as the crime of “causing offense”.
Ok, we've now officially moved from Alice Through the Looking Glass into the Twilight Zone.
Ruth Smeeth, ex-Israel lobbyist for Bicom and a key player in outlawing solidarity for Palestinians in the Labour party, is the new CEO of free speech group Index on Censorship! https://t.co/UmHXbTQETS
The Haaretz article helps to contextualize Europe’s current antisemitism “witch-hunt”, which targets anyone who criticizes Israel or stands in solidarity with oppressed Palestinians, or associates with such people. It is an expansion of the earlier campaign by the Jewish establishment against “the wrong kind of Jew”, as identified by Finkelstein in The Holocaust Industry. But this time Jewish organizations are playing a much higher-stakes, and more dangerous, political game.
Haaretz rightly fears that the Jewish leadership in Europe is not only silencing ordinary Jews but degrading the meaning – the shock value – of antisemitism through the very act of politicizing it. Jewish organizations risk alienating the European left, which has historically stood with them against Jew-hatred from the right. European anti-racists suddenly find themselves equated with, and smeared as, fledgling neo-Nazis.
If those who support human rights and demand an end to the oppression of Palestinians find themselves labeled antisemitic, it will become ever harder to distinguish between bogus (weaponized) “antisemitism” on the left and real Jew-hatred from the right. The antisemitism smearers – and their fellow travelers like Keir Starmer – are likely to end up suffering their very own “boy who cried wolf” syndrome.
Or as Haaretz notes:
“The issue that is bothering the critics of the Bundestag [German parliament] resolution is whether the extension of the concept of antisemitism to encompass criticism of Israel is not actually adversely affecting the battle against antisemitism. The argument is that the ease with which the accusation is leveled could have the effect of eroding the concept itself.”
The Antisemitism Industry
It is worth noting the shared features of the new Antisemitism Industry and Finkelstein’s earlier discussions of the Holocaust Industry.
In his book, Finkelstein identifies the “wrong Jews” as people like his mother, who survived a Nazi death camp as the rest of her family perished. These surviving Jews, Finkelstein argues, were valued by the Holocaust Industry only in so far as they served as a promotional tool for the Jewish establishment to accumulate more wealth and cultural and political status. Otherwise, the victims were ignored because the actual Holocaust’s message – in contrast to the Jewish leadership’s representation of it – was universal: that we must oppose and fight all forms of racism because they lead to persecution and genocide.
Instead, the Holocaust Industry promoted a particularist, self-interested lesson that the Holocaust proves Jews are uniquely oppressed and that they, therefore, deserve a unique solution: a state, Israel, that must be given unique leeway by western states to commit crimes in violation of international law. The Holocaust Industry – very much to be distinguished from the real events of the Holocaust – is deeply entwined in, and rationalized by, the perpetuation of the racialist, colonial project of Israel.
In the case of the Antisemitism Industry, the “wrong Jew” surfaces again. This time the witch-hunt targets Jewish left-wingers, Jews critical of Israel, Jews opposed to the occupation, and Jews who support a boycott of the illegal settlements or of Israel itself. Again, the problem with these “bad Jews” is that they allude to a universal lesson, one that says Palestinians have at least as much right to self-determination, to dignity and security, in their historic homeland as Jewish immigrants who fled European persecution.
Keir Starmer needs to listen to the 'proudly pro-Israel' Americans for Peace Now. They reject the IHRA definition for 'weaponising' antisemitism and allowing 'McCarthyite witch hunts' of Israel critics. Only those living in a 'black hole' could support it https://t.co/mNCj0LqCky
In contrast to the “bad Jews”, the Antisemitism Industry demands that a particularist conclusion be drawn about Israel – just as a particularist conclusion was earlier drawn by the Holocaust Industry. It says that to deny Jews a state is to leave them defenceless against the eternal virus of antisemitism. In this conception, the Holocaust may be uniquely abhorrent but it is far from unique. Non-Jews, given the right circumstances, are only too capable of carrying out another Holocaust. Jews must therefore always be protected, always on guard, always have their weapons (or in Israel’s case, its nuclear bombs) to hand.
‘Get out of Jail’ Card
This view, of course, seeks to ignore, or marginalize, other victims of the Holocaust – Romanies, communists, gays – and other kinds of racism. It needs to create a hierarchy of racisms, a competition between them, in which hatred of Jews is at the pinnacle. This is how we arrived at an absurdity: that anti-Zionism – misrepresented as the rejection of a refuge for Jews, rather than the reality that it rejects an ethnic, colonial state oppressing Palestinians – is the same as antisemitism.
Extraordinarily, as the Haaretz article clarifies, German officials are oppressing “bad Jews”, at the instigation of Jewish organizations, to prevent, as they see it, the re-emergence of the far-right and neo-Nazis. The criticisms of Israel made by the “bad Jew” are thereby not just dismissed as ideologically unsound or delusions but become proof that these Jews are colluding with, or at least nourishing, the Jew-haters.
In this way, Germany, the UK and much of Europe have come to justify the exclusion of the “wrong Jew” – those who uphold universal principles for the benefit of all – from the public space. Which, of course, is exactly what Israel wants, because, rooted as it is in an ideology of ethnic exclusivity as a “Jewish state”, it necessarily rejects universal ethics.
What we see here is an illustration of a principle at the heart of Israel’s state ideology of Zionism: Israel needs antisemitism. Israel would quite literally have to invent antisemitism if it did not exist.
This is not hyperbole. The idea that the “virus of antisemitism” lies semi-dormant in every non-Jew waiting for a chance to overwhelm its host is the essential rationale for Israel. If the Holocaust was an exceptional historical event, if antisemitism was an ancient racism that in its modern incarnation followed the patterns of prejudice and hatred familiar in all racisms, from anti-black bigotry to Islamophobia, Israel would be not only redundant but an abomination – because it has been set up to dispossess and abuse another group, the Palestinians.
Antisemitism is Israel’s “get out of jail” card. Antisemitism serves to absolve Israel of the racism it structurally embodies and that would be impossible to overlook were Israel deprived of the misdirection weaponized antisemitism provides.
An Empty Space
The Haaretz article provides a genuine service by not only reminding us that “bad Jews” exist but in coming to their defense – something that European media is no longer willing to do. To defend “bad Jews” like Naomi Wimborne-Idrissi is to be contaminated with the same taint of antisemitism that justified the ejection of these Jews from the public space.
Haaretz records the effort of a few brave cultural institutions in Germany to protest, to hold the line, against this new McCarthyism. Their stand may fail. If it does, you may never become aware of it.
The fraudulent 'Labour antisemitism' controversy has empowered the most thuggish elements in the organised British Jewish community.
Case in point: the Campaign Against Antisemitism effectively calls for Professor David Feldman to keep quiet or be sacked. https://t.co/QWvNg84c2E
Once, the “bad Jews” have been smeared into silence, as Palestinians and those who stand in solidarity with them largely have been already; when social media has de-platformed critics of Israel as Jew-haters; when the media and political parties enforce this silence so absolutely they no longer need to smear anyone as an antisemite because these “antisemites” have been disappeared; when the Jewish “community” speaks with one voice because its other voices have been eliminated; when the censorship is complete, you will not know it.
There will be no record of what was lost. There will be simply an empty space, a blank slate, where discussions of Israel’s crimes against Palestinians once existed. What you will hear instead is only what Israel and its partisans want you to hear. Your ignorance will be blissfully complete.
– Jonathan Cook won the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism. His books include “Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East” (Pluto Press) and “Disappearing Palestine: Israel’s Experiments in Human Despair” (Zed Books). Visit his website www.jonathan-cook.net. He contributed this article to The Palestine Chronicle.
Brussels (EU and European NATO Headquarters) – On 21 October 2020, the German Press Agency (dpa) reports that Germany pledges NATO soldiers for possible Covid-19 operations: “German soldiers could be sent on crisis missions to other NATO and partner countries during the second wave of the Corona pandemic. As a spokesman for the Ministry of Defense confirmed, the German government has promised NATO support for its “Allied Hand” emergency plan. According to this plan, medical personnel, pioneers and experts from the force would be made available for foreign missions to counter nuclear, biological or chemical hazards as required. The contingency plan is to be activated, for example, if a collapse of the health care system is imminent in allied or NATO partner countries due to very high infection rates and the affected state asks for support.”
In clear text, this means that German soldiers may be deployed on covid-related “crisis missions” to other NATO partners. Covid-restrictions and related government oppression and tyranny may lead to massive civil unrest, and German soldiers, alias German NATO soldiers, along with soldiers form other NATO countries, could help the local governments suffocate such potential people upheavals, applying military force. Live bullets and killing, if “necessary”.
In some European countries, covid-unrests already clearly visible, i.e., Slovenia, Czech Republic, Poland, Hungary, Spain – and of course, in the very Germany. Civil and societal unrest is also boiling hot in France, currently one of the most repressive regimes in the western world.
All these countries were told and brainwashed into believing they live in a “democracy” – and in a democracy what is happening to them could and should never happen. They were never asked. Their governments didn’t even bother telling them that these “measures” were for their own good. Now, they are even being told by people like Boris Johnson, British PM, not to hope to go back to “normal”. There will be no more normal as we knew it, he literally said. Instead, there will be a Great Reset.
Thereby he is aping the words of Klaus Schwab, the founder and CEO of the World Economic Forum (WEF), who just published (July 2020) a book, called “Covid-19 – The Great Reset”. The book is available on Amazon (where else!), and I highly recommend reading it, not for Schwab to get richer, but for you and us the people to know what “their” plan is. Only if we know what the plan is, we may stop it – if we organize in solidarity and resist.
There is no “democracy”, there has never been. The EU is one of the least democratic institutions there is. But, yet, we are being indoctrinated with this huge lie, we are living in a democracy. It is covid that finally brings this abject global deceit to light.
And our lie-prone politicians and their bought mainstream media, continue to praise our western beautiful democracy, while deviating our attention from the truth, by bashing wester-made enemies, like China, Russia, Iran, Venezuela, Cuba, Syria, North Korea – and others, just so we are blinded at home, but are told with false-propaganda that all these other countries are evil. They are evil, because they do not believe in our western greed-economy. The media does a very successful firing up of “cognitive dissonance’ – we know something is not right, but our feverish want for remaining in our comfort zone, makes us believe that we are well protected by our “elected” masters – and those, for example, in the east, who may follow another life philosophy than is ours which is made up of greed and violence – are evil.
An interesting poll, made public today in Switzerland shows that on average more than two thirds of the EU population thinks negatively about China and Russia. Why? China and Russia have never done anything harmful to Europe, to the contrary – they have offered truthful cooperation, against coerced collaboration, US-style. So, the question “Why?” is answered with the corporate paid brainwash-media.
Is this “democracy”? – Is this democratic thinking? Do these people realize that their brains have been captured years ago by a consumer-comfort propaganda and gradually converted into a submissive slave-behavior that still believes in “democracy”? —–
The German people have not been asked whether they agree sending German troops to other countries, nor whether they should participate in NATO exercises. The truce that is in force for Germany since the end of WWII, allows no foreign intervention by German military. In fact, no formal Peace Agreement has (yet) been signed between Germany and the winning powers. The armistice accord contains a clause that dictates that Germany ought to never undertake any actions that go against the interests of the United States. This would explain, at least in part, why the German Government bends backwards over to please Washington.
But most of the Germans are oblivious to this fact. On purpose. Because “democracy” would dictate the ethical: let the public know. Get a public debate going about the autonomy and sovereignty that Germany currently has and that she – and her people – deserve.
The decision of using German troops as NATO soldiers in other countries has nothing to do with “democracy”. It goes against the grains of democracy. Is Germany under a “covid emergency law”, which would be similar to Martial Law? As is France, Switzerland, Spain, the UK? If so, have the people been properly informed?
Switzerland has just recently extended her Covid Emergency Law until the end of 2021 – and then what? It could easily be extended again, as it was now. The law was rammed through a right-wing congress, regardless of political parties, congress men and women largely agreed. No questions asked. The people were never consulted.
Now a People’s Referendum (a privilege the Swiss still have) that would ban this so-called “Notrecht” (emergency Law), is under way. But by the time enough signatures will be assembled and the referendum will be “allowed” by the Government to be presented to the public for a vote, it may be too late to change the drastic measures that were implemented under the quasi-Martial Law.
That’s “democracy”, or is it?
France under Mr. Macron, a Rothschild gnome, has reimposed a State of Health Emergency and introduced curfews, a ban on weddings and being out in the streets is permitted only with special permits. This as the result of a “sudden and spectacular acceleration” in the spread of the coronavirus, Jean Castex, the Prime Minister said, justifying this audacious draconian measure. He added that the national COVID-19 incidence rate over the past ten days had jumped from 107 to 190 cases per 100,000 population with “particularly alarming levels” in some large cities. But who checks the figures, the statistics, how they are assembled? Nobody.
That’s “democracy”? – For disobedience fines are €135 for first offenders, rising to as much as €7,500 — and a six-month prison term. Well, is this dictatorship or what?
It is far away from “democracy” – that’s for sure. Especially if we know what covid really is – namely nothing more than closely similar to a regular flu. This is according to Anthony Fauci, chief of NIAID / NIH of the US, when he writes peer-reviewed articles in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM), like “Covid-19 – Navigating the Uncharted” …. “the overall clinical consequences of Covid-19 may ultimately be more akin to those of a severe seasonal influenza (which has a case fatality rate of approximately 0.1%) or a pandemic influenza (similar to those in 1957 and 1968) rather than a disease similar to SARS or MERS, which have had case fatality rates of 9 to 10% and 36%, respectively.” (https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/nejme2002387).
When Fauci speaks to the media – in countless interviews to mainstream TV – he uses the usual fear-mongering narrative of the deadliness of the corona virus.
This shows, that there is clearly a different agenda behind covid than controlling the “Pandemic”, but rather controlling the people. We ought to wake up. It’s too late to talk about reinstating “democracy”. Truth is, we never had democracy. And now we have to fight for our sheer survival as human beings. Trust me.
“Democracy” is but a wishful slogan. Democracy in today’s world certainly doesn’t exist. It never did. Not even in ancient Greece it worked, where the term was invented some 2500 years ago by well-off, but admittedly well-thinking philosophers. Democracy was always for the educated, for the fortunate and wealthy – but it never played out in truth to all of the people – to what the term in its original translation meant and means. As soon as the term democracy is given to politicians as a concept of ruling a nation to be applied, the meaning of “democracy” is vandalized into “the people choose, but the elite decides”. It is the same as of this day. Democracy is derived from the ancient Greek “demokratia,” literally meaning that power belongs to the people. It never did; and even less so today.
“The power belonging to the people” was and is conceded to the people, always to the extent that the controlling elite deems appropriate. If the people want to take over what’s theirs, the controlling elite brings out controlling forces and plays the propaganda game, misinformation, manipulated truth and outright lies. This was the case then and is practiced today in even more sophisticated ways.
Today, deceit is not just applied as the ruling elite sees fit and for personal gains, it is manufactured by algorithms, actually by Artificial Intelligence. Today’s elections, particularly in the west, are decided by oligarch or deep state-controlled algorithms. The voters play an alibi role. Not more. There is hardly any election in the (western) world which is not ultimately controlled and decided by the United States. ——
Back to the non-democratic European Union. It is using NATO troops for urban warfare, if you will. There is a not-much-talked about German / NATO military base in the small “Land” (State) of Saxony-Anhalt, not far from Hamburg. According to the German online journal “Pivot Area” (https://www.pivotarea.eu/2017/10/26/german-armed-forces-open-part-of-their-new-urban-warfare-training-city/), the urban warfare military base in “Schnöggersburg is being built since 2012. It should be finished by the end of 2020. By then it will consist of more than 500 buildings stretched over 6.25 square kilometers. The so called „urban agglomeration“, as the Bundeswehr (German Armed Forces) labeled its training ground, has a whole city infrastructure – i.e. a canalization (water supply and sewerage), an underground (metro) line, a train station, an industrial park, as well as a sport stadium, slums, residential areas and a high-rise district. The German MoD (Ministry of Defense) planned to invest 140 million Euros into the project (by completion, it will likely be considerably more). According to lieutenant-general Frank Leidenberger, head of the land forces innovation-department, the last decade shows the clear trend, that „warfare moves from the field to the cities.“ Therefore Schnöggersburg should give the German armed forces a supreme training ground for state of the art operations in urban scenarios. Leidenberger says also that the Bundeswehr considers its new high training city as a strategic resource to push the framework of nation concept with partner armies.”
The key phrase is “the framework of nation concept with partner armies.” That’s where NATO comes in.
How many Germans have been democratically informed about this Monster Project? It clearly indicates that urban social unrest, on massive scale, was already foreseen way before 2012 – probably around the time that the Global Great Reset started taking form, decades ago, in the criminal heads of the all-controlling Deep Dark State; those that started this new phase of societal digitization with 9/11 in 2001, curiously also the beginning of a new western calendar landmark, the Third Millennium. Starting with 9/11, the western empire and its minions went downhill. And the East started rising.
The downhill slide will undoubtedly mean the end of the empire. But on the way there, all the most mischievous powers will be used to enslave the population, digitally and with AI, algorithms. Since this Deep Dark State has also eugenicists in its core, a massive population reduction is also part of the plan.
Monetary digitization is likewise part of the plan. In fact, it is already well under preparation, as an element of WEF’s Great Reset, or as the IMF calls it, The Great Reformation. The IMF (and the World Bank), both controlled by the US Treasury, are planning a so-called Bretton Woods 2.0, a Reset of the monetary system, where eventually the western dollar economy would be replaced by a digital crypto-currency, in which selected western currency may partake. The role of gold in it, is not clear, nor is the role of the de facto strongest currency, the Chinese Yuan.
If this as of yet hypothetical new IMF-BIS controlled crypto-currency materializes, it would most likely wipe out all US debt and make lines of credit available – perhaps in the hundreds of trillions of dollars equivalent – to help bail-out small central banks of poorer, highly indebted countries. (see also https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y_cL7Sv5Daw).
Would these countries’ debt base just balloon out of proportion with the new IMF-BIS bail-outs, or would they simply (have to) concede their national asset base to the IMF-BIS managed Global monster fund – to be able to limp along in “lockstep” and poverty, according to the Masters’ rules, is not clear.
In any case, be prepared, there is much to come, if, We, the People, allow the Covid-19 induced Great Reset to move forward. It is increasingly clear that covid is nothing more than an instrument for a much grander plan, The Great Reset. – the Great Reset is the antidote to “democracy”. It is a further demolition of any hope towards a “democracy”.
Fortunately, there is China, also with a new digital (crypto?) currency, in test phase, under preparation – eventually to be rolled out for international payment use, as an alternative to the dollar economy, or the new IMF-BIS treacherous US Treasury controlled crypto-currency. In contrast, the digital yuan is meant as a peaceful means of trading among equals in view of a more balanced multi-polar world. Yes, this despite the negative wester thinking about China. The Tao life philosophy that the west doesn’t want to know or understand, is not confrontational, not even when constantly confronted by the aggressive west.
In the meantime, to escape the new monetary tyranny (from fiat dollars to fiat-fiat crypto), countries could simply retake their sovereignty, take back their national central banks, heir national currencies and start producing for local markets with local public banks and with local debt – as much as possible towards a state of self-sufficiency, with cross-border trading in local currencies. If this happens, the IMF-BIS controlled crypto currency will bite the dust.
Peter Koenig is an economist and geopolitical analyst. He is also a water resources and environmental specialist. He worked for over 30 years with the World Bank and the World Health Organization around the world in the fields of environment and water. He lectures at universities in the US, Europe and South America. He writes regularly for online journals such as Global Research; ICH; New Eastern Outlook (NEO) and more. He is the author of Implosion – An Economic Thriller about War, Environmental Destruction and Corporate Greed – fiction based on facts and on 30 years of World Bank experience around the globe. He is also a co-author of The World Order and Revolution! – Essays from the Resistance. Peter Koenig is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization.
Venezuela is again the shining light of Democracy – pushing ahead with the 6 December National Assembly (NA) elections – despite the endless challenges of covid – of sanctions, of embargos, of confiscation of foreign assets, and even of a totally illicit blockage of reserve currencies – Venezuela’s gold – naturally in the world’s protectorate of international financial fraud, The City of London.
This unique drive for democracy against all odds succeeds to a great degree thanks to President Maduro, who relentlessly resists not only the attempts against his life, but the lies and vilifications about Venezuela from most of the western world, led, of course, by the United States, followed closely by the European Union which, it seems, dominated by NATO, can’t break loose from being at Washington’s bidding.
It is sad to see European states – hands and minds still dripping of colonial blood, not being able to break the stranglehold of their genocidal past – and step onto a new plate, into a new history – fighting for justice and human rights. An example how far from this eye-opening conscientious awakening Europe is, was again demonstrated today by the EU Commission’s call to “sanction” Russia for the totally unproven Navalny poisoning, by stopping the almost completed Nord Stream 2 German-Russian gas pipeline project.
Never mind the absurdity, that Germany and the EU are punishing themselves, not only because alternative badly needed gas supplies will be considerably more expensive – and god forbid – may be coming from US fracking sources. In other words, the EU would approve of an environmental disaster. Many of EU member countries are by their Constitution barred from using fracking gas or oil.
And again, the EU vassalhood – to call it what it is – refused President Maduro’s invitation to observe the December 6 elections. Mr. Maduro went out of his way to invite all the important opinion makers to come and observe the fairness of the elections, including the UN and the Europeans. The latter prefer not to see the correctness with their own eyes, but being able to criticize what they have not seen. There is no darker blindness than that emanating from not wanting to see.
And that of course only, because the European leaders (sic) – all shoe-ins by an international deep state elite – will do whatever it takes to preserve as long as possible the unsustainable – an unfettered, neoliberal no holds barred capitalism. The WEF (World Economic Forum) calls it best: The Great Reset – the upwards reorganization of assets. After the very elite-made global covid hoax has destroyed and continues to devastate most of what was the world economy, what gave work and food to billions of people – people are dwelling in the gutters with nothing left – no health care, no shelter, no food – no hope. The latter is the killer.
Venezuela is the antidote to this western usurping approach to civilization – what’s left of it. Venezuela pursues justice and fights for equality. By the way, Venezuela is in the honorable company of Cuba, Syria, Iran, Russia and China. The US, alias the west, cannot tolerate an example of ethics in its hegemonic orbit. Western allies – united under the boot of NATO – pretend freedom is their cause, while their own people suffer from unfathomable injustice every day – poverty and famine of children is skyrocketing in the Global North, the so-called developed or industrialized world – the bankers world, the world of those who indebt the Global South into dependence, into the Global North’s neo-colonies.
Venezuela, on the contrary, aims at eradicating poverty famine and misery – and that despite her constant strangulation by Washington and their western allies, and even by some of what should be their Latin Brothers, the Lima Group, formed in August 2017 in Lima, Peru (12 members as of December 2019: Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Mexico, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Guyana, Saint Lucia, Bolivia and Haiti).
Imagine – how much pressure these Lima Group countries are under to accuse, boycott, denigrate and speak out in international fora against their fellow Latin Americans of Venezuela. Once upon a time there was a United Latin America – united under the leadership of Venezuela’s Simon Bolivar. With the onset of the British Empire’s transatlantic move of its power center to become the United States of America, the southern part of the America’s became what recent US Presidents called “our backyard” – ready to be usurped in any way possible, mostly in the form of military dictatorships and lately by Washington-induced coups against democratically elected heads of states.
However, the spirit of Simon Bolivar, El Libertador, lives on. Together with Nicolas Maduro’s tenacious will for freedom, for autonomy, for full sovereignty for Venezuelans, their use and destiny over natural resources, may prevail and influence upcoming elections in Bolivia (October 2020), Chile (October 2020 referendum on whether a new Constitution ought to be drafted, replacing the one dating back to Pinochet), Brazil (municipal election in November 2020) and Ecuador (general elections in February 2021).
Venezuela’s overarching strength by solidarity and endless fight for justice and Human Rights, brought the opposition to its knees. The right-wing Washington supported opposition, led by self-nominated “president” Juan Guaidó, boycotted past elections, so as not to show their weakness vis-à-vis the rest of the world. Now, perhaps the real head of opposition, Henrique Capriles, is changing tactics. Realizing that the only way to have any say in the political arena of Venezuela is by participating in it, he is calling for participation in the 6 December National Assembly elections.
President Maduro has always invited participation of the opposition in elections and will welcome their presence for the December 2020 NA elections too. Because Democracy is at the heart of Chavismo, the very socialist thought being carried forward – steadily, without wavering, by President Maduro and his Government. – Viva! Venezuela’s Democracy – a shining light for the Americas and for the world.
Peter Koenig is an economist and geopolitical analyst. He is also a water resources and environmental specialist. He worked for over 30 years with the World Bank and the World Health Organization around the world in the fields of environment and water. He lectures at universities in the US, Europe and South America. He writes regularly for online journals such as Global Research; ICH; New Eastern Outlook (NEO) and more. He is the author of Implosion – An Economic Thriller about War, Environmental Destruction and Corporate Greed – fiction based on facts and on 30 years of World Bank experience around the globe. He is also a co-author of The World Order and Revolution! – Essays from the Resistance. Peter Koenig is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization.
Original German description in English: Trump had “threatened” for a long time and now actually wants to withdraw 10,000 US soldiers from Germany. German armaments spending is too low, the US president rumbles, the United States is no longer willing to “provide our security”. The German defense minister, Kramp-Karrenbauer, pleads guilty that it would be a lot of effort to upgrade. Unfortunately, that’s really true: it increased the military budget in 2019 by a whopping ten percent to just under 50 billion euros compared to the previous year. And despite Corona, not a single project was canceled, on the contrary: even in the current economic stimulus package, hardly noticed by the public, an additional 10 billion euros were hidden for armament. No other country in the top 15 in the world has seen such a sharp increase in arms spending. To be dictated by Trump, to waste more and more money on tanks and war equipment, what a fatal mistake! A sovereign German government would respond to Trump: Hey, Mr. President, great idea of this deduction, but please don’t just bring 10,000 soldiers home, but the whole contingent right away. And above all: take the US nuclear weapons with you, we don’t need them here at all! However, the deduction should really be a deduction, and not a move to Poland and thus even closer to the Russian border, as Trump apparently plans to do. So instead of letting the US and NATO drive expensive armaments projects such as the procurement of nuclear weapons-capable US fighters, the German federal government should have the backbone to defend our sovereignty and stand up to Trump. Why it is absurd to expect our security from a country that is the most aggressive military power in the world and demonstrates every day that it does not care about European and German interests? I will talk about this in the video.
بنظرة موضوعيّة في تقييم قرار الحكومة الاتحاديّة الألمانيّة، الذي اتخذته يوم 29/4/2020، بإعلان حزب الله منظمة إرهابية وحظر نشاطاته على أراضيها، نستطيع التأكيد على مجموعة من القضايا، المتعلقة بالخلفية التاريخية لهذا القرار، والإضاءة على دور الأنظمة الرجعية العربية، في تسهيل اتخاذه.
وأهمّ هذه القضايا هي التالية:
أولاً: إنّ ألمانيا الاتحادية دولة محتلة، من قبل الولايات المتحدة وبريطانيا وفرنسا، منذ نهاية الحرب العالمية الثانية، ولا زالت محتلة عسكرياً، على الرغم من إقامة نظام حكم “ديمقراطي” وحكومة ألمانية ودمجها في منظمة حلف شمال الأطلسي، لتغطية وشرعنة احتلالها.
ثانياً: إنّ هذا القرار ليس إلا تعبيراً عن سياسة التبعية الكاملة، لكلّ من حَكَمَ ألمانيا الاتحادية بعد الحرب العالمية الثانية، للولايات المتحدة والدوائر الصهيونية العالمية. خاصة أن الحزب الحاكم حالياً، الحزب الديمقراطي المسيحي، بزعامة المستشارة أنغيلا ميركل، هو الحزب نفسه الذي كان يقود البلاد سنة 1952، الذي كان يتزعّمه كونراد أديناور آنذاك، والذي وقع اتفاقية التعويضات مع “إسرائيل” ومجلس المطالب اليهودية Jewish Claims Councle (وهو منظمة صهيونية عالمية تدّعي تمثيل اليهود “ضحايا النازية”، بتاريخ 10/9/1952 في لوكسمبورغ.
تلك الاتفاقية التي أطلق عليها اسم: اتفاقيّة لوكسمبورغ بين ألمانيا الاتحادية و”إسرائيل” والتي التزمت ألمانيا، بموجبها بدفع تعويضات للكيان الصهيوني بقيمة ثلاثة مليارات ونصف المليار مارك ألماني. ثم شكلت هذه الاتفاقيّة قاعدة ثابتة، لابتزاز حكومات تل أبيب لحكومة ألمانيا الاتحادية، التي واصلت تلبية الطلبات المالية الإسرائيلية، بحيث وصل مجموع ما دفعته ألمانيا للكيان الغاصب سنة 2007 مبلغ خمسة وعشرين مليار يورو. ثم ارتفع المبلغ سنة 2018 الى أربعة وسبعين مليار يورو.
ثالثاً: وهنا تجب الإشارة الى انّ أولى المليارات الألمانية التي دفعت للكيان الصهيوني قد استخدمت في هدفين:
الأول: هو تمويل شراء مفاعل ديمونا النووي من فرنسا وتدريب الكوادر الإسرائيلية في المجال النووي. ايّ انّ ألمانيا الاتحادية هي مَن مكَّنَ “إسرائيل” من امتلاك قدرات نووية وهي نفسها التي تتهم إيران زوراً وبهتاناً بمحاولات امتلاك أسلحة نووية.
الثاني: تمويل صفقات سلاح وتجهيزات عسكرية ألمانية وبريطانية وفرنسية، لصالح الجيش الإسرائيلي، وذلك لتحديث تسليح هذا الجيش، حيث اشترت “إسرائيل “العديد من الدبابات البريطانية الحديثة (آنذاك) من طراز سينتوريون Centuriun وبدأت بعقد صفقات للتزود بطائرات ميستير Mystere وسوبرميستير الفرنسية المقاتلة النفاثة (شركة داسو الفرنسية)، هذا الى جانب قيام حكومة ألمانيا الاتحادية، بتحديث أسطول آليات النقل العسكرية الإسرائيلية كاملاً، فور توقيع الاتفاقية المُشار اليها أعلاه. الأمر الذي لا يمكن اعتباره إلا مشاركة ألمانية مباشرة، عبر تمويل صفقات السلاح، في العدوان الثلاثيّ على مصر سنة 1956 وكذلك في العدوان الاسرائيلي على الدول العربية سنة 1967.
ذلك العدوان الذي نفذته عصابات تل أبيب انطلاقاً من قاعدة الحرب الخاطفة، الهتلرية الألمانية، معتمدة على سلاح جوّ فعّال امتلك أحدث المقاتلات الفرنسية وسلاح مدرّعات حديثاً وفعالاً شكلت الدبابات البريطانية الحديثة (آنذاك) عموده الفقري. وكلها أسلحة مموّلة من حكومة ألمانيا الاتحادية.
رابعاً: كما يجب على المرء، عند تقييم القرار الألماني باعتبار حزب الله منظمة إرهابية، أن لا ينسى انّ حكومة ألمانيا الاتحادية (الديمقراطية المسيحية كما هي الحكومة الحاليّة)، برئاسة المستشار لودفيغ إيرهارد (Ludwig Erhard)، هي التي اعترفت بـ “إسرائيل” وأقامت معها علاقات ديبلوماسية كاملة بتاريخ 12/5/1965، على الرغم من معارضة وزارة الخارجية الألمانية لذلك القرار في حينه. وهو ما شجّع حكومة الاحتلال آنذاك، وبعد أن كانت قد استكملت تجهيز جيش الاحتلال الإسرائيلي بأحدث الأسلحة الغربية المموّلة من حكومة ألمانيا الاتحادية، على تنفيذ عدوانها الواسع على الدول العربية واحتلال بقية فلسطين وأراضٍ من مصر وسورية.
وهذا يعني انّ حكومة ألمانيا الاتحادية، بقرارها المشؤوم الذي اتخذ قبل أيام، إنما نفذت قراراً أميركياً صهيونياً بمعاقبة حزب الله، على قتاله قوات الاحتلال الإسرائيلي في جنوب لبنان حتى الهزيمة النهائية وانسحابه غير المشروط من الأراضي اللبنانية سنة 2000 وهزيمة جيش الاحتلال نفسه للمرة الثانية عندما اعتدى على لبنان في تموز 2006، وكذلك معاقبة الحزب على المشاركة الفعّالة في قتال داعش وهزيمته في سورية والعراق ولبنان بشكل خاص. أيّ أنّ حكومة المستشارة ميركل هي شريكة، من الدرجة الأولى، للولايات المتحدة بالمناورة بالإرهابيين واستغلال وجودهم ونشاطهم المدعوم غربياً لتحقيق أهدافٍ سياسية كان للحزب دور مركزي في منع تحقيقها (الأهداف السياسية الغربية).
خامساً: وبما أنّ الشيء بالشيء يُذكر، فلا بدّ من الربط، بشكل موضوعي، بين هذه الخطوة الألمانيّة المدانة بشدة وبين العديد من الخطوات والسياسات العربية الخليجية على وجه الخصوص والتي شجّعت حكومة ألمانيا المحتلة على اتخاذ قرار كهذا بدلاً من أن تتصدّى لسياسات شيطنة كلّ من يعمل على مقاومة مشاريع الاحتلال والهيمنة على العالم العربي ومقدراته. كما لا بدّ من التذكير بالدور التخريبي لهذه الأنظمة الخليجية التابعة عملياً للاستعمار والصهيونية، منذ أن تمّ توكيلها الحكم في الجزيرة العربية، وهو الدور الذي يتواصل اليوم في العمل على تغيير العقيدة الوطنية العربية، ليس فقط في دول الجزيرة العربية وإنما في كلّ الدول العربية، عبر أعلامها المتصهين والمسموم، سواء المرئي والمقروء أو ذلك الافتراضيّ.
هذا التخريب، الذي تمارسه دول البترودولار في الجزيرة العربية، والذي يعمل من دون توقف وبإمكانيّات ماليّة هائلة، والهادف الى اختراع عدو وهمي للأمة العربية، اسمه إيران، إنما هو نفسه مَن يتحمّل حجم المسؤولية الألمانية نفسه في اتخاذ هذا القرار، خاصة أنّ حزب الله يقاتل الإرهاب ولا يموّله ويقدّم له كلّ أنواع الدعم، كما تفعل الحكومة الألمانيّة وحكومات ممالك النفط العربية الآيلة الى الانقراض قريباً، وهو ما يعني أنّ الحكومة الألمانية ومعها الولايات المتحدة الأميركية و”إسرائيل” وممالك النفط العربية تعمل على تحقيق الهدف نفسه، المتمثل في تدمير الدولة الوطنية العربية وتعزيز دور دويلة الاحتلال الاسرائيلي، من خلال محاربة كلّ من يدعم القضية الفلسطينية كحزب الله اللبناني والجمهورية الإسلامية الإيرانية.
سادساً: ولعلّ من المفيد أيضاً تذكير المستشارة الألمانية وحكومتها أن هذه السياسات، المتبعة من قبلهما، والتي هي انعكاس للتبعية العبودية للولايات المتحدة الأميركية والدوائر الصهيونية العالمية لا يمكن أن تؤدّي إلا الى خلق المزيد من التطرف، في المجتمع الألماني، كما هو حاصل حالياً، حيث يسيطر الحزب اليميني المتطرف (عملياً نازيون جدد رغم انخراطه في العملية الانتخابية في ألمانيا)، والمسمّى: المبادرة من أجل ألمانيا (Alternative für Deutschland (AfD حيث يسيطر هذا الحزب على 89 مقعداً من أصل 620 مقعداً في البرلمان الحالي.
كما لا بدّ من تذكير المستشارة ميركل بأنّ عليها وحكومتها منع شبكات الإرهاب النازي الجديد، وحظر نشاطها في ألمانيا، كالشبكة، التي تسمى شبكة ميلبيتس Milbitz، وهي شبكة نازيين جدد تملك معسكرات للتدريب على الأسلحة، في منطقة رودولشتات Saalfeld – Rudolstadt، وسط ألمانيا، والتي نفذت العديد من الاعتداءات المسلحة على أماكن إقامة المهاجرين وطالبي اللجوء السياسي. وهي شبكات لا تتعرّض حتى لأيّ مضايقات، من قبل حكومة ميركل، حتى يومنا هذا.
ولعلّ الفضيحة الكبرى، التي تفجّرت في ألمانيا، على أثر انكشاف قيام قائد جهاز المخابرات الداخلية الألماني (Bundesamts für Verfassungsschutz)، هانس غِيورغ ماسين Hans- George Maaßen، بعقد اجتماعات تنسيقية مع الناطقة باسم الحزب اليميني الألماني المتطرف، / مبادرة من أجل ألمانيا/، واسمها فراوكي بيتري Frauke Petry، واستقالته من وظيفته إثر ذلك.
اذن انها الحكومات الرجعية، التي تؤمّن الغطاء للعناصر المتطرفه والإرهابيين ورؤساء تلك الحكومات، كالمستشارة ميركل، هي الجهة المسؤولة عن انتشار الإرهاب في بلادها وبقية أنحاء العالم وليس حزب الله، الذي يحارب داعش والنصرة في كلّ أنحاء منطقة غرب آسيا، ولا الجمهورية الاسلامية الإيرانية التي تقوم بالدور نفسه وتتعرّض للتشويه والتهديد والحصار والعقوبات والاغتيالات، والتي كان آخرها اغتيال الجنرال قاسم سليماني، الذي قاد جبهة حلف المقاومة في حربها ضد الإرهاب في العالم العربي.
سابعاً: وعليه، فإنّ على المستشارة الألمانية، وغيرها من الروساء ورؤساء الحكومات الأوروبيين، الإقلاع عن ممارسة السياسات الخاطئة نفسها، التابعة لواشنطن ودوائر الصهيونيّة العالمية فيها، والتي أثبتت عجزها، أو امتناعها، حتى عن تقديم ايّ دعم طبي او صحي للدول الأوروبية في مواجهة وباء كورونا. الأمر الذي يحتم على ألمانيا، وهي الاقتصاد الرائد في أوروبا، أن تعود الى سياسة “ريال بوليتيك” (Realpolitik) التي أرسى قواعدها المستشار الألماني السابق، الاشتراكي الديمقرطي ڤيللي براندت، كسياسة عمل الممكن (في التعامل مع الخصم/ آنذاك الاتحاد السوفياتيّ وألمانيا الديمقرطية)، ولا بأس بتذكيرها بمرتكزات سياسة أوتو فون بيسمارك، Otto von Bismarck، مؤسس ألمانيا الموحدة في الثلث الأخير من القرن التاسع عشر، وما أقامه من تحالفات لم تكن تخطر على بال.
ثامناً: وفي الختام نطرح على المستشارة ميركل سؤال: ماذا ستتوقع عندما ستأتي لحظة التصويت على عروض شركة سيمينس الألمانيّة في البرلمان اللبناني؟ هل بإمكانك تجنّب فيتو نواب حزب الله وحلفائه الذين يشكلون الأكثرية البرلمانية الحاكمة؟ وماذا سيكون موقف شركة سيمنس إذا ما ربحت مشروع الكهرباء في لبنان، هل ستمنعها حكومة المستشارة ميركل من تنفيذ إقامة شبكات الكهرباء في المناطق التي تسمّى بالمناطق الشيعيّة في لبنان لأنها البيئة الحاضنة للحزب والمقاومة مثلاً؟
هل اتهام أكثر من ثلث الشعب اللبناني بالإرهاب هو سياسة واقعية تخدم المستقبل والعلاقات الدوليّة المبنيّة على الاحترام المتبادل والمصالح المشتركة!؟ ام انّ لذلك مساراً آخر تعرفه المستشارة ميركل ولا تستطيع سلوكه بسبب الضغوط الأميركية الصهيونية!؟
إنّ السياسة البناءة والديناميكية تتطلب من السيدة ميركل ان ترسل قائد جهاز مخابراتها الخارجية الى لبنان فوراً ليتفاهم مع قيادة حزب الله ويحاول إصلاح ما أفسده وزير الداخلية الألماني، الذي اتخذ القرار المتعلق بحزب الله، لعله يجد مخرجاً من أزمة لا تفيد ألمانيا قطعاً، ولن تؤثر في مسيرة حزب الله واستراتيجيته، التي دأبت على قطع دابر الإرهاب، وتأمين السلام والاستقرار في “الشرق الأوسط” والذي بدونه لن يكون هناك أيّ تطور إيجابي وستبقى المنطقة فريسة للكثير من التصعيد والتوترات الاقتصادية والسياسية والأمنية، وربما العسكرية التي ستفضي ليس في وقت بعيد الى زوال الكيان الصهيوني الذي يحظى بدعم ألمانيا الاتحادية وسيد البيت الأبيض وأذنابه في الجزيرة العربية.
إنهم قد يرونه بعيداً، لكننا نراه قريباً، لذلك وجبت العبرة، والحذر كلّ الحذر من ابتلاع الطعم الأميركي، يا ميركل!
The Zionist entity’s Mossad spy agency is reportedly behind Germany’s recent decision to blacklist Lebanon’s resistance movement Hezbollah.
Berlin on Thursday designated Hezbollah as a “terrorist organization,” banned all its activities in the European country and ordered raids on sites police claimed were linked to the movement.
Citing unnamed Zionist officials, ‘Israeli’ Channel 12 news reported Saturday that the Mossad had provided Germans with information on Hezbollah’s activities on its soil.
The spy agency, the television said, had carried out a months-long delicate operation to assess the movement’s operations in Germany and presented its findings to German intelligence and law agencies.
“The move is the result of many months of work with all parties in Germany. The heads of services were required to present explicit evidence and legal proof… linking the organization to significant ‘terrorist’ activity, and that is what we did,” one official claimed.
According to the official, head of the German intelligence organization BND Bruno Kahl is a close friend of Mossad.
Berlin has been a longtime backer of the Zionist entity, providing billions of dollars in aid enabling the occupation of Palestine in the name of reparations for Jewish persecution by the Nazi Germany.
On Thursday, the Tel Aviv regime was effusive in its praise of Germany, with its foreign minister Yisrael Katz hailing the blacklisting as a “very important decision”.
Zionist Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also welcomed the decision, calling on “all peace-loving countries” to follow Germany’s lead.
UPROOTED PALESTINIANS: SALAM ALQUDS ALAYKUM 