Tag: GermanEnergy

Joe Biden, a State Terrorist?

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The American President promised to bring Nord Stream to an end

From my Writing Room
Copyright © 2023 by Uwe Bahr

If it was indeed the Russians themselves who rendered the two natural gas pipelines Nord Stream 1 and 2 in the Baltic Sea south of Bornholm unusable last September – then why is the German government so reluctant to this day to release information about it? Berlin is stonewalling with a tenacity that brings the worst suspicions to the fore.

Red dot: Danish island Bornholm in the Baltic Sea. South of it, the natural gas pipelines from Russia, Nord Stream 1 and 2, were rendered unusable in September 2022 after several explosions.

Sahra Wagenknecht, a member of the Bundestag for the Left Party, has asked no fewer than three times about the circumstances of the case and received essentially the same answer to all three inquiries: The release of information of any kind was not possible for reasons of state interest – not even a committee sworn to secrecy could be provided with the facts.

This urge for secrecy naturally gives rise to the suspicion that one of Germany’s allies commissioned the blasting of the undersea lines or carried it out itself, or that Germany itself, in willing complicity with the USA, “settled” the question of restarting the pipelines once and for all.

In any case, it is striking that at the time in question in September the NATO maneuver “BALTOPS 22” under the leadership of the USA was taking place in the Baltic Sea. This also involved the “USS Kearsarge”, which was actually designed for the deployment of naval landing forces, but is also specialized in underwater operations, partly with combat swimmers. Although the warship was already a considerable distance away from Bornholm at the time of the explosions, this says nothing about the manner in which the detonations could have been set off. On the basis of various investigations, including those by Greenpeace, the only certainty seems to be that the destruction did not occur from inside the pipelines. This certainly rules out the possibility of direct Russian involvement, as there had previously been speculation in Western media about robots that could have reached the explosion site far away from Russia.

Also noteworthy is a joint press conference between Joe Biden and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz in Washington on February 7, 2022 – that is, before the Russian invasion of Ukraine took place. When asked by a journalist what the American response would be should Putin march into Ukraine, Biden gave a pinpoint answer:

“If Germany – if Russia invades, that means tanks or troops crossing the … the border of Ukraine again, then there will be, [we …] no longer a Nord Stream 2. We will bring an end to it.” The reporter asked quite specifically: “But how will you – how will you do that exactly, since the project and the control of the project is within Germany’s control?”

Answer from the President: “We will – I promise you, we’ll be able to do it.” At this point in the press conference, a few feet away from Biden, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, bound by oath to the good of the German people, responded with a broad grin.

Looking at the following excerpt of the press conference repeatedly (klick below, Biden’s response begins at minute 11 and 22 seconds in the video), I cannot avoid the following interpretation: Joe Biden’s face shows a richly superior smile, certain of victory. Apparently, he kept the promise he made to the reporter – in an act of state terrorism.

Yesterday, the first U.S. ship loaded with environmentally harmful fracking gas arrived in Wilhelmshaven on the German North Sea coast. American corporations are raking in billions from the business, while German private households, despite subsidies, have to pay a multiple of what the cheap Russian natural gas used to cost.

German President Prepares His Country for Rough Times

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From my Writing Room
Copyright © 2022 by Uwe Bahr

If Germany’s leaders decide to have their president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, give a completely unscheduled speech to the nation today to get people in the mood for “hard times for the years to come,” it’s a sure sign of how far Germany is still slipping into calamity – and beyond the coming winter.

Almost every sentence he said could be refuted – it is a disgrace how the population is made a fool of. Just one example from his speech:

“We are just leaving the era of fossil industrialization …. We are entering an age increasingly without coal, oil and gas.”

Increasingly without?

The facts paint a different picture:

Coal, a fossil fuel: At the instigation of the Green Minister of Economics, Habeck, the Saarland is currently bringing completely outdated, environmentally harmful coal-fired power plants back to the grid.

Liquefied natural gas, a fossil fuel: LNG terminals are under construction in Wilhelmshaven, Brunsbuettel, Stade and Lubmin to land the dirty fracking gas from the USA. Allegedly, the Americans earn 100 million euros with each arriving ship, paid for by the German consumer.

Oil, a fossil fuel: Chancellor Scholz was recently in Saudi Arabia (a begging US-President Biden was there before him) to ask the Saudis for higher oil production. Here, a brutal war of aggression in Yemen and human rights suddenly no longer play a role, unlike regarding Russia. The German double standards are deplorable. The Saudis, however, have so far given Biden and Scholz the middle finger: they have cut production because this allows them to obtain a higher price for oil.

Steinmeier had not even finished his speech when the news came: The inflation rate in Germany has risen to 10.4 percent.

This is not the result of the war in Ukraine, but of the insane sanctions of the West against Russia.

During the Cold War, oil and natural gas flowed steadily from the Soviet Union to the former Federal Republic and the GDR, despite all international crises, wars and ideological antagonisms. In comparison, today it looks as if the West is virtually conjuring up the discord with Russia and does not miss any opportunity to fuel it further, because this corresponds to the American doctrine of weakening Russia.

Any diplomacy to end the war has been rejected – as already proven by the rapprochement of both belligerents in March under Turkish mediation. In the subsequent negotiations in Istanbul, Kiev had agreed to abandon its aspirations to join NATO and settle for neutral status. Then, without any credible, concrete indication of reasons, the Ukrainian negotiators rejected everything at that time. They had been called off from Washington by Mr. Biden and his minions.

At that point, the Americans had long signaled that they would support Ukraine with whatever it needed against Russia. This is how proxy wars are fought.

Shameless Duplicity

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From my Writing Room
Copyright © 2022 by Uwe Bahr

This is where the duplicity of many Western politicians and one-sided reporting media becomes apparent: If that many Russians leave their homeland because of the partial mobilization and their country is the sole culprit – why doesn’t Russia prevent them from leaving? Surely this could be put into practice relatively easily by closing the borders. Why are Russian draftees apparently able to escape unimpeded – something many Americans could not do to evade having to go to the murderous war in Vietnam?

Why does the West so blatantly apply double standards? How can the American Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, accuse Russia of ignoring UN values when his own country has so shamelessly and deliberately lied about weapons of mass destruction before the same body to justify an invasion of Iraq? As an American of all people, Blinken should be blushing up to his ears when he says something like that in public.

Meanwhile, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz is touring the Gulf region these days to explore energy sources in replacement of lost Russian oil and natural gas, which has stopped flowing due to sanctions against Russia and could put Germany in even more dire straits over the winter.

The German chief diplomat’s first dialogue partner yesterday was Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince bin Salman – admittedly only after big uncle Biden from America made his first appearance there weeks ago. Anyone who actually assumes that figures like this Crown Prince including his country are less involved in crime than Putin and can even be a more reliable source of Germany’s energy shortage than Russia in the long run is playing with the safety of the German people and believes in Santa Claus. What a despicable double standard.

As a reminder, Saudi Arabia is one of the countries where Sharia law still applies, which means: oppression of women, especially when it comes to marrying off underage girls; application of inheritance and divorce laws in which a woman’s word counts for only half as much as that of a man. In the case of rape, the woman must name at least four eyewitnesses (!). Sharia also provides for punishments for theft and homosexuality, as well as for apostasy with floggings and amputations.

So, this is not just about the murder of journalist Jamal Kashoggi, which the U.S. blames on the Saudi crown prince. But the people of Germany are officially being asked to make horrendous sacrifices because of the loss of Russian energy supplies, while their chancellor is begging for replacements from countries that are not a whit better than Putin’s Russia, especially since they themselves have been and are involved in many proxy wars that are solely about their very own interests in the name of profit.

The fact that they also go over dead bodies then no longer plays a role.

European Energy Trap

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The original failure is not the energy dependence of Europeans from Russia

From my Writing Room
Copyright © 2022 by Uwe Bahr

One can imagine how the situation would be now with an American president Donald Trump. Someone in Moscow would rub their hands, and the unity in the appearance of the Europeans would hardly be as determined as it is at present. Hopefully, politicians from Brussels to Berlin and London to Paris remember in this hour that already the next president of the United States might not be a transatlantic friend like Joe Biden.

While his approval rating is dropping dangerously at home, Biden can score points abroad and improve the U.S.’s international standing. But that doesn’t sit well with many of his compatriots, who think along the lines of “America first” and thus in reality support autocratic aspirations – a dangerous path that Trump had already led the U.S. down. Biden’s increasing unpopularity is unlikely to change due to the fact that the Europeans now actually want to buy environmentally harmful fracking gas from overseas.

It is hard to understand why ludicrous sanctions exist against Russian private citizens while the real lever that helps finance Putin’s war on Ukraine is left untouched. Germany, for example – according to Robert Habeck (Alliance 90/The Greens), Federal Minister of Economics and Climate Protection, – is still dependent on Russian natural gas until mid-2024 and is using this argument as justification to continue trading with Russia. A unified and convincing policy against Putin looks different, who now wants the natural gas to be paid for in rubles. Perhaps Germany will experience its decisive showdown next week, when one of the two sides will have to relent. So far, it is hard to imagine that Putin will give in.

A loss of Russian gas supplies would have a devastating impact not only on the German economy and most private households, but also on the entire European market. For the announced gas supplies from America can only cover ten percent of Europe’s demand in the short term.

There has long been criticism that Germany and Europe have become too dependent on Russia, and now we are seeing the consequences. But Germany’s energy agreements – given the country’s long and guilt-laden history with Russia – were seen not least as a guarantee of mutual trust by building reciprocal dependencies. It was assumed that the Russians would have no interest in completely throwing themselves over with us if they themselves have advantages through economic cooperation.

The project has failed. But how to solve the world’s problems without a giant country like Russia? Russia cannot be downgraded or dissolved. Isolated, it would be a constant threat to world peace.

The long-term mistakes were not made in the energy sector, but in geostrategic matters. The West, under U.S. leadership, has not made consistent efforts since the 1990s to integrate Russia into security structures while providing security guarantees to bordering countries without integrating them into NATO and thus not cornering Russia.

From the very beginning there have been no serious efforts to transform the former Soviet Union into a partner after its disintegration. If this had happened, even in America today hardly anyone would be talking about Europeans’ energy dependence on Russia.