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the prostitution of germany as the brothel of europe.....
For the preservation of peace, freedom and prosperity, one thing is needed: liberation of Europe from the USA, Werner Rügemer writes.
After the founding chancellor of the U.S.-enforced separate state of the Federal Republic of Germany, Konrad Adenauer, and the chancellor of reunification, Helmut Kohl, now on April 17, 2023 Angela Merkel has been awarded the highest honor of the German state: Grand Cross of the Order of Merit. Only chancellors of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) are honored in this way. Social Democratic chancellors such as Willy Brandt are considered dissenters: they may not be honored.
Contribution to the “national interest of the U.S.”
A more important prize was awarded to Germany’s permanent chancellor and CDU chairwoman, who held office from 2005 to 2021, a few years earlier: in 2011, U.S. President Barack Obama awarded her the Presidential Medal of Freedom in Washington. This U.S. medal of freedom is awarded to men, and sometimes women, for their contribution “to the security and national interest of the United States.” In other words, not for their contribution to the security and national interest of, say, Germany or Europe.
Merkel had distinguished herself, among other things, by unconditionally and passionately advocating the U.S. war against Iraq under President George W. Bush in 2002. Then Social Democratic Chancellor Schröder/SPD and Foreign Minister Joseph Fischer/Greens did not believe the U.S. fake that Iraqi President Hussein had weapons of mass destruction and was ready to use them, including against Israel. Schröder refused to participate directly in the war on behalf of Germany.
With Jesus for the U.S. war in Iraq
On the other hand, Merkel, as head of the CDU parliamentary group, railed against Schröder in the Bundestag on Sept. 13, 2002: “You have destroyed international trust in Germany…. You are playing on people’s fears and feelings…. This unilateral action is damaging Germany as an export nation… Germany as the largest country in Europe has a responsibility.”
The liar Bush, on the other hand, Merkel praised with reference to Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount as the real “peacemaker,” as abstruse as that was. But the corporate-funded CDU and FDP parties applauded frenetically.
In November 2005, she became Chancellor, and already on January 13, 2006, she paid her respects to Bush in Washington and supported the war in Iraq. The fact that this war had been justified with lies — that was worth nothing to the Christian preacher of the mount, just as little as the devastation, deaths and failed states in Afghanistan and other U.S.-led wars.
Brzezinski: Schäuble and Kohl must go!
The leading presidential advisor in the USA, Zbigniew Brzezinski, had publicly justified the new phase of the U.S. global strategy in 1997 after the end of socialism: “Eurasia is the largest continent on earth and geopolitically axial. It stretches from Lisbon to Vladivostok. Above all, Europe is America’s indispensable geopolitical bridgehead on the Eurasian continent…. (therefore) with each expansion of Europe’s scope, the United States’ direct sphere of influence expands as well.” And for domination of Eurasia from Lisbon to Vladivostok, he said, Ukraine is the key state.
However, Brzezinski said, Europe is weakening itself through its sprawling social policies, “an extremely burdensome social system that weakens economic power…. Left to themselves, Europeans run the risk of being completely absorbed by their social problems.” The U.S. needs to change that, Brzezinski said.
And, above all, he said, something still needs to be changed: With the current CDU parliamentary group leader Wolfgang Schäuble and CDU Chancellor Helmut Kohl, Germany is a “geopolitical no-man’s land”: with them, Germany is no longer “the Western bulwark against the East,” but a Central European power of order that aligns itself equally with the East and the West. Thus, “Europe would lose its function as a Eurasian bridgehead for American power” and its “expansion into the Eurasian continent.” Therefore, Brzezinski concluded, “a massive impulse from the U.S. side is needed.”
Somehow the “impulse” came, from several known and unknown accomplices. For example, the “Zeitung für Deutschland,” the most direct U.S. media lobbyist from Frankfurt, gave prominent space to the aspiring Angela Merkel, expiating her FDJ youth sin, to criticize the bribable Kohl, and the bribable Schäuble was included. Otherwise, the FAZ did not take it so seriously with the entrepreneurial permanent corruption of these parties. But now it fit. Merkel became CDU chairwoman, then CDU parliamentary group chairwoman, then CDU chancellor.
AFRICOM: U.S. drone killings from Germany
Since the early 2000s, the U.S. has intensified its military activities in Africa under the banner of anti-terrorism. They built a few dozen formal and informal military bases. It also included U.S. military logistics, such as for the Iraq War.
The U.S. wanted to establish a supreme command center in Africa for this purpose. U.S. President Bush pushed the project. But all 56 African states rejected it. Bush looked for a way out: Which NATO country could host the command center? All governments declined. All but one.
Bush supporter Merkel came to the rescue, in the interest of U.S. national security. In 2008, the United States Africa Command (AFRICOM) was established in Germany, in Stuttgart-Möhringen. U.S. military bases in Italy and Germany are also included.
This location in Germany was still considered provisional — the African nation of Liberia applied. But it was too small and insecure for Big Brother. In 2013, the Bush successor, the friendly grinning Obama, who shortly before had honored Merkel for her contribution to U.S. national security, decided: AFRICOM remains in Stuttgart. So — following the practice reinforced by Obama — from Germany, U.S. drones kill people without trial on another continent. From here, Libya was destroyed and turned into a dangerous failed state.
BlackRock lobbyist in the chancellor’s office
From 2011 until the end of her chancellorship in 2021, Lars-Hendrik Röller was Merkel’s top economic and financial adviser. She brought the son of the former Dresdner Bank chief into the chancellor’s office as head of the economics and finance department.
Under Schröder and his program to “unbundle Deutschland AG,” U.S. private equity investors had become active in Germany starting around 2000, buying up the best, unlisted German mid-sized companies. Siemens Nixdorf, Demag (industrial cranes) and Grohe (bathroom fixtures) were among the better known. In rows, the “locusts” also bought hundreds of thousands of public apartments, at knockdown prices.
The “locusts” had come under Schröder, then under Merkel and Röller came the premier league of U.S. investors. BlackRock, Vanguard, State Street & Co. became the leading shareholder groups in the DAX and MDAX companies, including, for example, in the largest “German” armaments group, Rheinmetall. And BlackRock & Co are now also the leading shareholders in the largest “German” housing corporations: Vonovia, Deutsche Wohnen, LEG, etc., driving up rents and utility costs. Too much welfare state is a European disease, Brzezinski had already proclaimed.
The high profits of the most important companies in Germany, even in times of crisis, as during the Corona pandemic, have since flowed abroad, especially to the USA. With the end of Merkel’s chancellorship, her advisor Röller also left the chancellery — he moved where? To BlackRock, of course. And BlackRock-Röller also advises CDU politician Ursula von der Leyen, the EU Commission president.
Women in Merkel’s Germany: working poverty and pension poverty
Federal President Steinmeier praised the award of the Cross of Merit: Merkel had made “female power” a matter of course.
But what has Merkel as a powerful woman achieved with her “female power”? She has made the majority of women in Germany poorer. She has exacerbated the labor injustice legalized by the four Hartz laws. She has made Schröder’s “largest low-wage sector in Europe” even larger in Germany. And it had to meet Brzezinski’s criticism of the geostrategically crippling, oversized welfare state.
Mini-jobs, involuntary and forced part-time and temporary work, as well as subcontracted work were increasingly passed on to women. To this end, their predicaments as mothers and as single parents were and are being exploited. Under Merkel, the statutory minimum wage was postponed as long as possible against the proposals of trade unions and the left, also in comparison with the EU, and was not introduced until 2015. It was set at a low level and is not paid or undermined in millions of cases due to a lack of control. This also affects women in particular. And that continues in the pension. Merkel-Germany: This is working poverty and pension poverty for the majority of women, more than before.
Promoting women: Only for management positions
But for women in leadership positions — that’s what Merkel advocated. She was happy to show her patriarchally protected billionaire friends Friede Springer (largest german media group Springer) and Liz Mohn (largesteuropean TV and consulting group Bertessmann). Likewise, at the Women20 Summit in Berlin, she joined Christine Lagarde (head of the European Central Bank) and Ivanka Trump (daughter of U.S. President Trump) in promoting the rise of women as entrepreneurs. The chancellor was only too happy to be praised by the leading-media-fitted german feminist Alice Schwarzer, as a good “female power” that now finally existed in Germany.
Under Merkel, two laws were passed to promote women in the workforce. But that only affects women in management positions.
Since 2016, the law for equal participation of women and men in management
positions in the private and public sectors has been in force: this is to ensure that the quota of women on supervisory boards is at least 30 percent. However, the law only applies to 105 large companies. In other words, the law does not apply to 99.99 percent of all companies.
In 2021, the Second Leadership Positions Act was passed: There should also be at least one woman on the boards of listed companies and companies subject to co-determination with more than 2,000 employees in a three-person board. In addition, such women will be allowed to take a baby break after the birth of a child. However, the law only applies to 66 companies.
European Union-wide labor migration
When it came to dismantling the welfare state and increasing private profits, the ardent model European Merkel also undermined EU requirements, with gentle pressure from the BDI, BDA and her CDU economic council.
For example, the EU stipulates: Temporary workers must be paid the same — equal pay. But the Merkel majority decided: equal pay can be cancelled out by a collective agreement with a (mostly “Christian”) trade union. And in the first nine months of employment, equal pay does not apply either. Women and especially migrant women put up with this, involuntarily. Merkel’s Germany is at the forefront of injustice in the EU when it comes to the unfair, lower pay of women.
Under Merkel, the exploitation of migrant workers from Eastern Europe has been expanded and intensified. The meat company Tönnies thus became the largest in Europe. Meat corporations from Denmark and the Netherlands set up branches in Merkel’s Germany. For construction, asparagus harvesting, home care, trucking, security services, millions of low-wage workers from impoverished Eastern European EU states commuted and still commute to Germany, legally and also illegally, incidentally also from the non-EU states of Georgia and Ukraine.
Germany: “The Brothel of Europe”
In 2002, the Schröder-Fischer government had quite modernly recognized and liberalized sex work as normal work with the Prostitution Act. But the majority of sex workers, including sex workers, remained in illegality: human trafficking, mafiotic structures, forced prostitution with mostly poor young women from poor new EU countries like Romania, Bulgaria and also from outside, for example from Kosovo and Ukraine, increasingly also with refugees. Germany developed into the central location of (low-cost) prostitution in Europe.
In 2017, under Merkel, the Prostitute Protection Act was finally passed: Brothels must be licensed, prostitutes must register: All remained virtually without effect.
In the last year before the pandemic, 40,000 prostitutes were registered — in the illegal dark world of Merkel’s Germany, at least half a million people continued to engage in prostitution, illegally. Of course, brothel and other prostitution operators then received Corona aid: System-relevant.
The multiple populist “We Germans are all doing well”
Merkel has by no means wanted all this and the further damage to security, sovereignty, freedom, prosperity of Germany and especially the working population directly.
Wanted and pushed by others: The U.S. government, NATO, the constantly swelling number of mostly U.S. government consultants under Merkel (McKinsey, Accenture, Freshfields, Price Waterhouse Coopers, Scholz & Friends, and many more), the leading U.S. shareholders in the major corporations, and not least the U.S. intelligence services, by which the Chancellor herself also allowed herself and her cabinet colleagues to be investigated without resistance.
Merkel posed as environmental chancellor. After the Fukushima disaster, she campaigned for the shutdown of nuclear power plants — but the necessary replacement energy was not procured. In the European Union, she pushed through particularly high pollutant emissions as permissible for her favorites, the luxury SUV manufacturers. Likewise with the streams of refugees caused by the U.S. wars, from Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria: Merkel acted as a do-gooder and, after a telephone conversation with her friend Obama, let the refugees in — but the necessary permanent precautions were not taken. So the bad refugees are allowed to drown in the sea and the good refugees are invited and cared for.
Nudging
President Steinmeier praised Merkel, saying she had risen without any role models or networks at all. This appearance was useful. But, of course, the opposite was true.
Merkel’s task was to implement the decisions prepared by others in CDU and government policy, as a strong woman and alone, with the help of the endlessly unwound prayer wheel “We are all doing well in Germany.” That was and is much more conducive to the capitalists than the directness of Merkel’s competitor Friedrich Merz with his open motto (at that time, anyway, no longer): “Dare more capitalism”. Merz became a directly paid BlackRock lobbyist — but Merkel’s rope-a-dope was in the Chancellor’s Office, which was constantly expanded in personnel under Merkel. She quietly and invisibly let BlackRock into Germany through the Chancellor’s Office.
Her invisible network also included U.S. government advisers. They had worked on the question for Obama: How do I imperceptibly steer the possibly worried electorate?
Nudging was the name of the method, which had been brought to maturity in particular by Cass Sunstein: not speaking the truth, not calling the capitalists by name, but remaining nice and general, now and then giving the imperceptibly fleeced electoral donkeys a gentle nudge and smiling at the same time. As a woman who casually used her character traits that had been favorably formed in the Christian patriarchy, Merkel was able to increase her “female power” even more with nudging. Thus she served the modernized patriarchy of Bush, Obama, and BlackRock CEO Laurence Fink & Co. She was able to play this off well at home, for example, against the consumptive-corrupt predecessor patriarch Helmut Kohl.
Feminist foreign policy
So Merkel had not only learned feminist domestic politics with systemic impoverishment of the majority of women and pensioners. Merkel also practiced feminist foreign policy far earlier than the current German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock/Greens. And this is known to be organically compatible with the promotion of right-wing forces and of patriarchs and oligarchs worldwide.
This was not only due to the fact that Merkel received the friendly sponsorship grant of the World Economic Forum almost 20 years before Baerbock. The ideologists in Davos developed a good nose: Who could work for and with us? Success came, in both cases, quite independently of each other and, of course, not only because of that.
Merkel became capable of governing with young “female power” for U.S.-led capitalism, also in global and military dimensions. Which “defense” minister in the EU states is not a woman yet? Which head of the European Central Bank, the European Commission is not yet part of the “female power” so praised by Steinmeier?
Eastward expansion beyond EU and NATO
Merkel, as the “most powerful woman in Europe,” praised especially in the U.S., promoted the simultaneous eastward expansion of the EU and NATO. Right-wing, even ultra-right, nationalist, fundamentalist governments as in the Baltic States, in Hungary, in Poland, in Croatia were promoted: They were as receptive to Western corporations as they were to anti-Russian attitudes and agitation. They became majority members of the Merkel-CDU-led European People’s Party, just like the Italian right-wing populist Berlusconi.
Thus, since 2009, Merkel, in consultation with U.S. President Obama and with the EU Commission, initiated the “Eastern Partnership”: This involved six states that had formerly belonged to the Soviet Union and now seemed particularly suitable for anti-Russian strategies. They were and are not yet members of the EU and NATO. But they were and are now to be brought closer to both with gentle nudges, slowly, but at the same time already open to Western corporations and, if possible, for joint maneuvers with NATO.
Moldova, Georgia and not least Ukraine were and are among these states. As is well known, the Konrad Adenauer Foundation, which is highly subsidized by the Merkel state, has been heavily involved in Ukraine at least since the Maidan coup in 2014, albeit in a subordinate position. Its last important service to “U.S. national interests” was, as is well known, the Minsk Agreement — Merkel as leading figure -, which enabled U.S.-sponsored Ukraine to arm itself with the largest army in Europe.
From Adenauer to Merkel
Adenauer secured and covered the separate state FRG as a new U.S. bastion in Europe against “Russia”, with the anti-Russian and anti-communist potential inherited from the Nazi regime.
Kohl secured and covered the takeover of the ex-GDR into the FRG, with the help of the U.S. advisors in the Treuhand agency.
Merkel secured and covered the expanded U.S. global strategy, especially against Russia.
The U.S. nuclear first-strike doctrine accepted by Adenauer, renewed by Obama, makes nuclear war possible — in Europe.
The U.S. pushed the narrative after WW2 that it had liberated Europe from fascism. But for the preservation of peace, freedom and prosperity, one thing is needed now at the latest: liberation of Europe from the USA.
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- By Gus Leonisky at 26 Apr 2023 - 11:23am
- Gus Leonisky's blog
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a kick up the arse....
by Karl-Jürgen Muller
The other day I read that 196 of the battle tanks (out of 293) that Western governments have already delivered or are in the process of delivering to Ukraine are from Germany1 — we can add German-made combat tanks from other states authorized for export by the German government. It was at this moment that an inescapable question arose again. How is it possible that a German government is able to wage a new war against Russia, in the front line, without having been attacked or even threatened!
This, 80 years after a war of extermination against the peoples of the Soviet Union waged with extreme brutality and 80 years after Stalingrad and Kursk. Participate in this war through the Ukrainian people whose soldiers give their lives by the tens of thousands for a battle that brings nothing to Germany, except death and destruction. It is a war in which human beings who share the same history and who have lived together in peace for decades fight each other.
No "change of era"Many share the view that the Western war against Russia is being waged by the United States, that the European states are nothing more than pressured vassals and that they are (rather reluctantly) participating in this war against Russia. against their own interests.
I think we have to put this point of view into perspective. For Central European countries like Poland and the Baltic countries, the anti-Russian reflex is obvious. Their current governments are obviously following the path of war. In this context, a question arises: Has the German government also gone over to the escalation of German great power politics and thus to war – in its own interests? And would this be the famous "change of era", a policy which, it must be admitted, has taken shape step by step since the "reunification" of Germany with its "Republic of Berlin" - in the years of the former Federal Republic?
Here are some key words on this subject:
Germany's warlike great power policy for more than 30 yearsCertainly, it is never the Germans as a whole who answer for these facts nor the German elites in power as a whole. Chancellor Kohl, Chancellor Schroeder and a large part of the SPD, for example, did not bet on confrontation with Russia, but on the economic (and political) advantages of a good relationship with this country and its government. Such interests also existed in the German economy. But in the long run, weren't these just secondary routes?
Warlords in Berlin – and their ladiesIn fact, attempts to convince the German government with arguments did not bear fruit either. These arguments mostly go in the direction that Russia is waging a war to defend the Russians and Russia against a Ukraine made belligerent and above all against an aggressive West and that those in charge in Ukraine would establish step by step – even before February 24, 2024 – a extreme nationalist dictatorship that has nothing to do with 'freedom', 'rule of law' and 'democracy'3. Because the real warlords and ladies do not only live in Washington, there are also some in Berlin. The Second World War has already shown that fascist regimes are used to wage war. The anti-Bolshevism of Hitler was not just a German affair. Under new constellations, history repeats itself.
PrejudicesThis time, German policy managed to avoid a two-front war as it was in the First and Second World Wars. She managed to make a large part of the German population believe (with the help of massive disinformation and propaganda) that we were helping a small country attacked for no reason ("without provocation") fighting for nothing else than a life in freedom and democracy for its peaceful citizens; all this against an overpowered and dictatorial aggressor despising the people. In this narrative, we actually want nothing more than peace, we want to avoid any escalation, but we are faced with the need to do everything so that the "aggressor" loses his "brutal war of aggression". (which boils down to "making peace with ever more weapons").
The fact that this disinformation and propaganda can have an impact on many people in Germany is also linked to the old, deep-seated prejudices against Russia and Russians that are widely exploited in our country – much more strongly in its western part than in the East. The many voices raised against the war in the eastern part of Germany, and which hardly come from “extremists”, show that the clocks work differently in the East (see box).
Are there life-saving prospects?The 8 2023 April, RT FROM as : " Why the West deserves a punch in the face ". Faced with this, in the West and especially in Germany, millions of demonstrators would have to actively line up behind a call like that of the Berlin peace conference which demanded “Dialogue instead of arms – peace with Russia” (see page 6). But the time to realize such a move is running out.
The question of Germany's role in Europe is of paramount importance. The oft-raised claim that Europe must break away from the United States and follow an independent path in world politics can only make sense if that independent path is defined as the path of international law, equal rights of all States and peoples, of cooperation and peace. In this regard, very critical questions should be asked of German politics over the past 30 years. These questions are also addressed to other European states. They arise in particular in Germany since the latter arrogates to itself the "leadership" in this Europe EU which shows no proof of sensitivity towards the other European States, at least since the financial crisis of 2008. Many still remember the Finance Minister Steinbrück and his 2009 blunder which consisted in threatening, in front of the cameras, Switzerland to send him "the cavalry", as well as German diktats in the euro crisis since 2010 (in the style of a Volker Kauder, chairman of the CDU/CSU parliamentary group in the German Bundestag, who said with satisfaction in 2011: These days […] German is spoken in Europe ").
In this context, in all likelihood, German conditions must undergo a fundamental transformation; otherwise Europe, even the one that has gotten rid of the diktat of the United States, will never be able to transform itself into a promoter of peace, a role that would suit it better than the one it currently plays.
source: Horizons and Debates
SEE ALSO:
https://www.zeit-fragen.ch/en/archives/2023/nr-7-4-april-2023/wir-steuern-auf-eine-grosse-bereinigungskrise-zu
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FREE JULIAN ASSANGE NOW....
goosetepping.....
By Patrick Lawrence / Original to ScheerPost
ZURICH—Am I the only American to travel overseas and feel embarrassed by the conduct of the diplomats Washington sends abroad to speak for our republic? It is pretty strange to find yourself, an ordinary citizen, apologizing for the intrusive, cajoling, bullying, badgering and otherwise crude utterances of this or that ambassador in this or that nation. But such is the state of things as the late-phase imperium fields its elbows-out undiplomats—a term I borrow from the Swiss, who suffer one as we speak.
Scott Miller, the Biden regime’s ambassador to Bern for a little more than a year, is indeed a doozy in this line. In his often-demonstrated view, he is in Switzerland to tell the Swiss what to do. At the moment, Miller is all over this nation for not signing on as a participant in Washington’s proxy war against Russia in Ukraine—pressuring ministers, denigrating those who question the wisdom of the war, offending the Swiss in speeches and newspaper interviews. It is a one-man assault on Switzerland’s long, long tradition of neutrality, waged in the manner of an imperial proconsul disciplining an errant province. Swiss commentators question why the Federal Department of Foreign Affairs, the FDFA, has not expelled this tone-deaf ignoramus.
We should pay attention to people such as Miller and what they get up to, even if they rarely make headlines in our corporate media. It is now nearly lost to history, but Europeans were effectively force-marched—and occasionally bribed at leadership level—into following the Americans as they instigated and waged Cold War I. This is exactly what the State Department is doing once again. It behooves us to watch this process in real time so the realities of Cold War II are not so easily obscured.
According to the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations, in effect since 1961, diplomats are barred from intervening in the internal affairs of host countries. The State Department lately displays as much concern for this U.N.–sponsored accord as it does for international law altogether: Little to none, you find when you watch these men and women at close range.
Support our Independent Journalism — Donate Today!SUBSCRIBE TO PATREONDONATE ON PAYPALI do not know when these breaches of etiquette and indeed law started, but at this point illegal diplomatic interventions into the politics and policies of others are the U.S. Foreign Service’s anti–Convention convention. These coercions are key, let us not miss, to the Biden regime’s concerted campaign to divide the world once again into confrontational blocs and erase all traces of principled neutrality. The Finns have succumbed and just joined NATO. We can put the Swedes in the same file. Now it is the Swiss and their neutrality in international affairs who take the heat. This is the thing about the liberal imperialists: They cannot tolerate deviation from their illiberal orthodoxies. It was George W. Bush who famously told the world “You’re either with us or with the terrorists.” American liberals deployed as diplomats cannot get enough of the thought.
If you want to talk about the decline of diplomacy into crudely asserted demands that host countries conform to the wishes of other powers, you have to start with Andriy Melnyk, the blunt instrument representing Ukraine in Berlin until mid–2022, when even the Zelensky regime, never short of adolescently offensive behavior, found him too much to take. Melnyk thought nothing of calling German ministers “fucking assholes” if they questioned the wisdom of arming Ukraine, and openly celebrating Stepan Bandera, the Russophobic murderer of Jews, who allied with the Third Reich before and during World War II.
For sheer vulgarity Melnyk is nonpareil. I miss the guy, honestly. American diplomats effect a more polished veneer, but they are every bit Melnyk’s match if the metric is self-righteous presumption that what Washington wants others to do is what others should do.
You saw what was coming when Mike Pompeo, Trump’s secretary of state, named Richard Grenell ambassador to Berlin in 2018. Among Grenell’s choicer acts was to threaten German companies with sanctions—publicly, we’re talking about—if they participated in the Nord Stream 2 pipeline project, which, as Seymour Hersh has thoroughly and persuasively reported, and whose reporting has not been substantively contradicted, the Biden regime destroyed in a covert operation last year. By then he had dressed down Angela Merkel for opening the Federal Republic’s door to Syrian refugees in 2015. His broader mission, Grenell declared, was to encourage rightist European leaders: Sebastian Kurz, the right-wing populist serving as Austria’s chancellor during Grenell’s time, was “a rock star” in the American ambassador’s book.
You can call this many things, but diplomacy is not among them. I call it a measure of Washington’s loss of interest in dialogue, negotiation, compromise—altogether an understanding of other countries and their interests. It is the diplomacy of no diplomacy, as I have remarked elsewhere. Diplomats are effectively the guardians of trust among nations: Proper statecraft requires they should be competent to talk even to, or most of all, adversaries. But the policy cliques in Washington now prove indifferent to trust, even among allies, in favor of supine obeisance.
The world darkens in many ways. This collapse of traditional statecraft is a certain marker of our not-so-gradual descent into a barbarism that ought to worry all of us.
We come to the case of Ambassador Miller, who arrived in Bern as the Biden regime’s appointee in January 2022.
With increasing alacrity in recent months, he has taken it upon himself to cajole Switzerland to drop its policy of neutrality and begin sending Swiss-made arms to Ukraine while lifting a ban on other nations’ re-export of Swiss matériel to the Kyiv regime.
It is a fool’s errand on the very face of it. I would say trying to persuade the Swiss to abandon their neutrality is the equivalent of telling Americans to put aside the Declaration of Independence, except that the neutrality principle goes much further back in Swiss history. The Congress of Vienna formally guaranteed neutral status for the Confoederatio Helvetica, the nation’s official name, when it fashioned a new European order in 1815. By then the Swiss had considered themselves neutral in international affairs since sometime in the late Middle Ages.
But who cares about all that? Who cares that the Swiss pride themselves on what they have accomplished by way of their neutral role in world affairs—not least but not only during and after World War II? Who cares that Switzerland, because it is formally neutral, has represented American interests in Cuba since 1961 and in Iran since the 1979 revolution? Who cares that Geneva is a city that survives, apart from the watches, on its dedication to mediation, the site of too many negotiations to count?
Not Ambassador Miller.
Surely under orders from the Blinken State Department, Miller has been boisterously hammering the Swiss in speeches and public forums to lift their longstanding stipulation that countries purchasing Swiss-made arms cannot re-export them, along with its determination that it will not sell weaponry to countries at war. It is in part a measure of the Biden regime’s desperation that the Swiss, whose armaments industry’s exports come to all of $900 million yearly, is suddenly essential to saving Ukraine from defeat.
The Swiss are nothing like essential. The thought is ridiculous. The larger point, in my view, is far more insidious. It is to eliminate all thought of neutrality among nations in the (undeclared but obvious) name of the Biden regime’s intent to get everyone on side for a nice, long, profitable new Cold War.
On his arrival, Miller was quick to berate Swiss officials who questioned the sense of the sanctions regime the U.S. and the European Union have imposed on Russia. The Swiss government, reluctantly and controversially, went along with the sanctions that followed the outbreak of hostilities last year, but Miller has been pressing Bern not merely to sequester more funds deposited by Russian oligarchs, but to confiscate them so that they can be sent to Kyiv to finance the eventual reconstruction of Ukraine.
Confiscation of this kind is straight-out illegal—something that matters not at all to the U.S. but matters greatly to Switzerland. When two journalists from Neue Zürcher Zeitung, the big Zurich daily, asked him about this in an interview a few weeks ago, Miller retreated into the cotton-wool language Americans routinely get from public figures. “This requires international dialogue,” Miller replied. “We assume we will find a way.”
In other words: We insist you breach international law, and worry not. We do it all the time.
When the Neue Zürcher Zeitung correspondents pointed out that Swiss President Alain Berset had recently defended Swiss neutrality and called for early negotiations to end the war, Miller replied, “Anyone can call for negotiations.”
Nice. American diplomacy at its best. Or at its typical worst these days.
It is a matter of record that Miller has imposed himself into ministerial deliberations on the sanctions and arms-sales questions, boasting at one point that senior FDFA officials “know what we expect.” But it was a remark Miller made during the Neue Zürcher Zeitung interview that has landed Miller in seriously bad odor among the Swiss. “In a way, NATO is a donut,” he said with exquisite insensitivity, “and Switzerland is the hole in the middle.”
I loved the outrage that followed. He has called Switzerland “nothing in the middle of a greasy American confection,” Roger Kōppel, a populist member of the National Council, the lower house of the legislature, exclaimed. “Bern should have reprimanded him immediately.”
It should have but it didn’t. The only constituencies sympathetic to Miller’s obnoxious importunings are sectors of the business community who stand to profit were Switzerland to abandon its neutrality to please the Americans and the political factions allied with them. Miller will stay, but there is no way under the sun that the vast majority of Switzerland’s nine million people would accept so fundamental a change in policy—and, indeed, in national identity.
This leads me to a larger point. Miller can bang on all he likes about his commitment to democracy, but his conduct since arriving in Bern is measure enough that he doesn’t give a tinker’s damn about Swiss democracy–an impressive direct democracy–when it impedes Washington’s imperial pursuits. Do not tell me you are shocked, please: American diplomats no longer represent Americans abroad. They represent American elites to other nations’ elites.
Miller is 43 and arrived with his partner without one day’s experience in statecraft. Together they were and may remain major donors to the Democratic Party, giving the appearance that they bought the Bern appointment–a common practice since at least the Reagan years. Scott Miller is an example of the cost of such practices to our institutions in terms of competence.
The war against neutrality—and effectively sovereignty and self-determination—goes on. Last week Le Temps, the leading Geneva daily, reported that German Chancellor Olaf Scholz accosted Berset during the latter’s visit to Berlin with the demand that the Swiss “take uncomfortable but correct decisions” on neutrality, arms sales, and the Ukraine question. “We hope certain things will get done,” Scholz added with all the subtlety of… Scott Miller.
Certain things will not get done. The Americans are not going to win this one, no matter how many obsequious Olaf Scholzs prevail on the Swiss in their behalf. Berset wasted no time making this clear in Berlin.
I loved the response of Benedict Neff, a commentator at Neue Zürcher Zeitung, after Miller’s hole-in-the-donut remark. Diplomats such as Miller “take a considerable risk,” he wrote. “When their public rebukes are too high-handed, they trigger irritated reactions. The undiplomats are therefore useful in prompting critical reflections on one’s policies and giving them a clearer direction.”
This is not as it always turns out with the Europeans—Scholz being proof enough of the point—but it is as it should be, and as one hopes it will come to be.
READ MORE:
https://scheerpost.com/2023/04/25/patrick-lawrence-force-marching-the-europeans/
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Missiles & Drones in the Ukraine War - Ray McGovern
MEANWHILE:
German authorities on Thursday opened a “betrayal of secrets” probe into a newspaper report about a possible visit of Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky, which quoted an unnamed source within the Berlin police.
Berlin Police Chief Barbara Slowik denounced the anonymous official as “damaging the reputation of the Berlin police in such a shameful way,” at home and internationally.
“The fact that newspaper headlines are given higher priority than the reliability of the Berlin police and the trust placed in us is in no way tolerable,” Slowik said, adding that she has asked the state police to investigate the case as “betrayal of [official] secrets.”
Police did not name the outlet in which the unnamed official was quoted, but the French news agency AFP identified it as Berliner Zeitung. The story allegedly contained “classified details” of the security operation being planned to safeguard the Ukrainian leader.
“At no time did the Berlin police officially provide any information that endangered the state visit,”the department said in a statement, explaining that their press office “only confirmed the impending operation in response to inquiries based on previous media reports.”
Berliner Zeitung had reported on Wednesday that police were preparing for a visit by Zelensky in mid-May. The Ukrainian leader was in Helsinki at the time. On Thursday, he resurfaced in the Netherlands, as part of his European tour to drum up support in the conflict against Russia.
Zelensky’s already twitchy security has been elevated after Wednesday morning’s drone attack on the Kremlin. Moscow declared it a “premeditated terrorist action” and an attempted assassination of Russian President Vladimir Putin, warning Kiev that it “reserves the right to retaliate in a manner, place and time of our choosing.”
Ukraine has denied any knowledge or participation in the attack, just as it had with the attacks on the Crimean Bridge, or the assassinations of blogger Vladlen Tatarsky and journalist Darya Dugina. The Ukrainian postal service quickly issued a stamp design showing the Kremlin in flames, however.
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https://www.rt.com/news/575794-berlin-police-zelensky-visit/
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