Merkel blows a hole in Washington’s Nord Stream narrative
By: Rachel Marsden
The former German chancellor has suggested a suspect and motive for the destruction of the pipeline, saying the not-so-quiet part out loud
Angela Merkel has just dropped a smoking gun into the pages of her new book.
According to ‘Freedom: Memoirs 1954-2021’, published on November 26, Berlin was
fully aware that Washington wanted to kill off Nord Stream. And that it was just
using Russia as a scapegoat to steal a massive new energy market for itself.
“The United States argued that its security interests were affected by the
building of the pipeline because its ally Germany would make itself too
dependent on Russia. In truth, I felt that the United States was mobilizing its
formidable economic and financial resources to prevent the business ventures of
other countries, even their allies,” Merkel writes.
“The United States was chiefly interested in its own economic interests, as it
wanted to export to Europe LNG obtained through fracking.”
This pretty much establishes that it was by premeditated design that Washington
leveraged the Russian military operation in Ukraine as a convenient pretext to
turn economic competitor Germany – and the EU more generally – into a vassal.
But Merkel’s successor, Chancellor Olaf Scholz, and the rest of the German and
European establishment, acted like Joe Biden was just coming to their rescue out
of benevolence when he offered to sell them LNG to replace Russian gas – which
turned out to cost several times the price, to the ongoing detriment of German
and European industry and citizenry.
Biden had stood beside Scholz at a White House podium in February 2022, talking
like a mafia boss, saying that “there will no longer be a Nord Stream 2” if
Russia enters Ukraine. Then the pipeline just mysteriously blew up in September
2022. Germany still hasn’t found those responsible, though.
Hey, how about this guy who was standing right next to your chancellor?
German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier awarded Biden the Order of Merit in
October, citing Germany’s “friendship” with the US, and telling Biden that
“under your leadership, the transatlantic alliance is stronger and our
partnership is closer than ever.” Yeah, close. Like family. Where you can help
yourself to stuff that isn’t yours and wreck it – like an entire German car
industry or a pipeline. Or where you can disapprove of a relationship – like the
one that Germany had with Russia.
Or maybe one can even do both of these things at the same time, like Miami-based
American businessman, Stephen Lynch, seems to be attempting to achieve by asking
for the US government’s approval in bidding on Nord Stream 2, majority-owned by
a subsidiary of Russia’s Gazprom, according to the Wall Street Journal. Now that
Washington’s meddling has bankrupted the pipeline project and it’s set for the
auction block, guess Lynch figures that maybe he can squeeze in between Russian
gas and Germany’s desperation for cheap supply, with Uncle Sam’s blessing.
“This is a once-in-a-generation opportunity for American and European control
over European energy supply for the rest of the fossil-fuel era,” Lynch told the
WSJ. It’s also a chance for US interests to profit from, and exert control over,
both the EU and Russia, by wedging themselves between the two like they’re a
chaperone on a teenage movie date. “I haven’t heard of Gazprom wanting to put
gas transportation infrastructure in the hands of the USA,” the Kremlin has
said, putting a damper on Lynch’s ambitions, which are perfectly aligned with
what Merkel now says has been America’s objective all along.
All these leads and Germany still hasn’t been able to nail the bad guys.
Meanwhile, its official narrative continues to unravel. Just this week, Poland’s
RMF FM News reported that researchers from the Military University of Technology
in Warsaw found traces in water samples near the Nord Stream explosion site of
TNT – trinitrotoluene – which is found in highly regulated military-grade
explosives. Not exactly the kind of stuff that any random dude can just pick up
at the local party store down the street along with other supplies for their big
Friday night brewski bonanza.
Poland has long given major side-eye to the official Western narrative as it’s
been dripping out, notably into the German and American press. As their story
goes, a bunch of rogue Ukrainian army types just decided after getting hammered
together one night in a pub to go play Aquaman in the Baltic Sea and trash Nord
Stream all on their own like it was their ex’s new boyfriend’s car. Ukrainian
leader Vladimir Zelensky and the CIA tried to stop them when they found out
about the plans, but Zelensky’s top general, Valery Zaluzhny, just ignored them…
and was then rewarded for doing so with an ambassadorship to Britain.
So where would these Ukrainian dudes have scored the military grade TNT?
Because the Western press, notably Reuters, has already reported that Ukraine
can’t produce it and that its global shortage is even a problem for making
weapons… let alone supplying random Ukrainian guys looking for a good time on a
terrorist bender after their booza-palooza.
Meanwhile, Germany has blamed Poland for the fact that Berlin authorities
haven’t been able to arrest any suspects, saying the ringleader and Ghost of the
Baltic Sea (aka the “Vladimir Z”), fled from Ukraine to Warsaw. But Polish
prosecutors say that’s Germany’s fault for not even giving the Polish border
folks a heads-up until it was too late.
Poland has also said that Germany’s story of the Ukrainian suspects renting a
boat called ‘Andromeda’ as their troublemaker trimaran is just stupid, with
Poland’s top intelligence coordination official saying on record that they’ve
found that the guys on that ship were just out for a good time and didn’t appear
to “have anything close to military or sabotage-related training.”
Poland’s prime minister, Donald Tusk, has said that Germany should just
“apologize and keep quiet” rather than trying to scapegoat Poland or some random
Ukrainian boozehounds. Immediately after the attack, the current Polish foreign
affairs minister, Radoslaw Sikorski, tweeted a widely-circulating photo of the
Nord Stream damage. “Thank you, USA,” he added.
Even some German political leaders don’t sound like they’re buying the country’s
official story. And now it seems that Merkel has just offered strong
corroborating evidence – and major political cover – for Poland and Germany to
finally agree on something.
COPYRIGHT 2024 RACHEL MARSDEN