© Global Look Press / Keystone Press Agency / Michael KappelerFILE PHOTO: Angela Merkel.
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.
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