Gezielt manipulierte Habecks Wirtschaftsministerium Analysen zur Versorgungssicherheit, um den Atomausstieg durchzusetzen — das belegen E-Mails, über die der Cicero berichtet. „Die Studie dient politischen Zwecken“, heißt es darin — das Ergebnis stand schon vorher fest.
Neue Enthüllungen aus dem Untersuchungsausschuss zum AKW-Aus belegen klare politische Einflussnahme durch die Bundesnetzagentur. Der Cicero berichtet über interne E-Mails der Behörde, die am Mittwoch bei einer öffentlichen Zeugenanhörung ausführlich zitiert wurden. Eigentlich sollte die Bundesnetzagentur neutral sein – die E-Mails belegen, dass die Behörde stattdessen dreist Politik machte.
Im Sommer 2022 versicherten die Politiker den Bürgern, dass es „kein Stromproblem“ gäbe und geben würde. Hinter den Kulissen sah die Einschätzung anders aus, Habecks Ministerium bereitete sich fieberhaft auf diverse Szenarien vor. Die vier Übertragungsnetzbetreiber, die für den Betrieb des deutschen Stromnetzes unter Aufsicht der Bundesnetzagentur verantwortlich sind, berechneten im Sommer 2022 in ihrer „zweiten Sonderanalyse“, ob Stromerzeugung und Netzkapazitäten im Winter ausreichen würden. Die erste Analyse war weitgehend positiv – zu positiv. Weil sich die Lage verschärfte, war klar, dass es eine zweite Berechnung mit pessimistischeren Maßstäben brauchte. Mitte Juli beauftragte Habecks Ministerium die Netzbetreiber offiziell damit.
„Die Studie dient politischen Zwecken“
Habecks damaliger Energie-Staatssekretär Patrick Graichen lud die Chefs der Netzbetreiber mehrmals zu vertraulichen Video- oder Telefonkonferenzen ein, in denen er mit ihnen über die Details diskutierte. Vertreter der Bundesnetzagentur berichteten in internen E-Mails darüber. Sie beschreiben klare, politische Einflussnahme. So schrieb ein Mitarbeiter der Behörde am 21. Juli 2022 über eine Telefonkonferenz mit den Übertragungsnetzbetreibern und Habecks Staatssekretär Patrick Graichen: „Herr Graichen eröffnete den Termin mit der Aussage, dass die Diskussion politisch aufgeladen sei, die anstehenden Analysen nicht unschuldig seien und es insbesondere um die Frage gehen solle, ob die KKW [Kernkraftwerke] Streckbetrieb machen sollten oder nicht.“ Das berichtet der Cicero.
Politisch aufgeladen war die Diskussion aber nicht automatisch – das grüne Wirtschaftsministerium trug seinen entscheidenden Teil dazu bei. Nicht nur Graichen, auch Bundeswirtschaftsminister Habeck persönlich mischte sich in den Prozess ein. So schrieb ein Abteilungsleiter im Sommer 2022 laut Cicero an eine Kollegin: „Was die Prämissen anbelangt: „Bitte nicht an den Vorgaben von Habeck versuchen etwas zu ändern. Die Studie dient politischen Zwecken, die Vorgaben spiegeln das wieder [sic].
Bitte darauf konzentrieren, dass die Vorgaben fachgerecht in nutzbare Eingangsparameter übersetzt werden. Bitte BMWK in der Diskussion darüber unterstützen, falls die ÜNB [Übertragungsnetzbetreiber, Anm. d. Red.] meckern sollten.“ Völlig offen macht die grüne Behörde klar, dass das Ergebnis schon vorab feststeht – und aus der Energiesicherheit macht man einen politischen Kuhhandel: „Als Ergebnis wäre allenfalls ein Streckbetrieb für Isar akzeptabel. Und auch das nur, wenn Bayern und andere politisch dafür etwas bezahlen“, schreibt ein Abteilungsleiter in den vorliegenden Mails.
Die Übertragungsnetzbetreiber ließen sich auf dieses Spiel nicht ein: Am Ende sprachen sie sich für einen Streckbetrieb der drei damals noch aktiven Kernkraftwerke aus, um die Gefahr von Stromausfällen zu mindern. Diese Entscheidung musste Olaf Scholz am Ende gegen den Widerstand der Grünen durchsetzen.
Stumbling fashionably late on stage, with that genuine independent rock ‘n’ roll attitude that Tavistock could never tame, Silver Bullet arrives.
This text is not particularly friendly to the uninitiated so may not be the best way of sharing.
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This Address was prepared for the Northern Ireland parliament but represents a clear summing-up, without bells and whistles, of a few central points which, if widely understood, would severely hamper the ability of those with control issues from succeeding in their ‘unification’ plans.
So much information we are bombarded with. So much unwitting consuming of Tier 2 propaganda by so many who genuinely seek the truth and the best for their children.
So many ‘leading voices’ pushing – for what ever reason – central myths that the Scorpions rely on.
So please, fire this painful to hear but ultimately kind address everywhere.
We all know how firmly many ears are clamped shut. Is it worth risking discord to speak out one more time?
“I know you may not fancy watching this, but a lot of us feel it’s an incredibly positive step towards protecting our children…
I really think if you watched it you would be glad you did, though a little shocked…”
“Have you seen Silver Bullet?”
Let’s do this people. Let’s make sure it spreads far and wide.
Some will say the production could have been slicker. Some will say this is a slick PR job made to look Lo Fi. 🙂
All the matters is the words.
Versions in many languages will follow. Please excuse a collection of emails today if you are subscribed. We also have a gentleman making a sign language version.
Not everything is in this video – but enough key things are.
The AT-AT in Star Wars was a fearsome enemy – until it became clear that its long legs were ripe for lassoing.
This push to own everything relies on utter preposterous demonstrable lies. The Climate Hoax and Disease Hoaxes are stupidly at odds with the evidence.
Here is an article on the financial aspect. Mike has often stressed the CBDC / Digital ID trap and The Great Taking.
But the control will be justified by Health and Safety.
And it’s all based on lies.
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A new bloody phase has opened up in Syria, as if it was ever possible to contemplate another one in that tormented land. Silly terms such as “moderate” are being paired with “rebels”, a coupling that can also draw scorn.
What counts as news reporting on the subject in the Western press stable adopts a threadbare approach. We read or hear almost nothing about the dominant backers in this latest round of bloodletting.
“With little warning last Wednesday, a coalition of Syrian rebels launched a rapid assault that soon seized Aleppo as well as towns in the nearby Idlib and Hama provinces,” reported NBC News, drawing its material from the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
We are told about the advances of one organisation in particular: Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), an outgrowth of Jabhat al-Nusra, a former al-Qaeda affiliate. While the urgent reporting stressed the suddenness of it all, HTS has been playing in the jihadi playground since 2017, suggesting that it is far from a neophyte organisation keen to get in on the kill.
From Al Jazeera, we get pulpier detail. HTS is the biggest group in what is dubbed Operation Deterrence of Aggression. HTS itself comprises Jabhat Fateh al-Sham, Liwa al-Haqq, Jabhat Ansar al-Din and Jaysh al-Sunna. That umbrella group is drawn from the Fateh al-Mubin operations centre, which is responsible for overseeing the broader activities of the armed opposition in northwestern Syria under the control of the Syrian Salvation Government (SSG). It is through the offices of SSG that HTS delivers essential goods while running food and welfare programs. Through that governance wing, civil documentation for some 3 million civilians, two-thirds of whom are internally displaced people, has been issued.
The group, headed by Abu Mohammed al-Jawlani, himself an al-Qaeda recruit from 2003, then of Jabhat al-Nusra, has done much since its leader fell out with Islamic State and al-Qaeda. For one, HTS has a series of goals. It purports to be an indigenous movement keen on eliminating the Assad regime, establishing Islamic rule and expelling all Iranian militias from Syrian soil. But megalomania among zealots will always out, and al-Jawlani has shown himself a convert to an even broader cause, evidenced by this remark:
“with this spirit… we will not only reach Damascus, but, Allah permitting, Jerusalem will be awaiting our arrival”.
All of these measures conform to the same Jihadi fundamentalism that would draw funding from any Western intelligence service, provided they are fighting the appropriate villain of the moment. We should also expect routine beheadings, frequent atrocities and indulgent pillaging. But no, the cognoscenti would have you believe otherwise. We are dealing, supposedly, with a different beast, calmer, wiser, and cashed-up.
For one thing, HTS is said to be largely self-sufficient, exercising a monopoly through its control of the al-Sham Bank and the oil sector through the Watad Company. It has also, in the words of Robin Yassin-Kassab, become a “greatly moderated and better organised reincarnation of Jabhat al-Nusra.” This could hardly cause cheer, but Yassin-Kassab at least admits that the group remains “an authoritarian Islamist militia” though not in the eschatological fanatical mould of its forebears. “It has a much more positive policy towards sectarian and ethnic minorities than ISIS.” Fewer beheadings, perhaps.
A fascinating omission in much commentary on these advances is Turkey’s outsized role. Turkey has been the stalking figure of much of the rebel resistance against the Assad regime, certainly over the last few years. Of late, it has tried, without much purchase, to normalise ties with Assad. In truth, such efforts stretch as far back as late 2022. The topics of concern for Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdoĝan are few: dealing with the Kurdish resistance fighters he sorely wishes to liquidate as alleged extensions of the PKK, and the Syrian refugee problem. The Syrian leader has made any rapprochement between the two states contingent on the withdrawal of Turkish forces from Syria.
With Damascus proving icily dismissive, Ankara got irate. Indeed, there is even a suggestion, if one is to believe the assessment by Ömer Özkizilcik of the Atlantic Council, that Turkey was instrumental in initially preventing the rebels from attacking as far back as seven weeks ago.
Much in the latest spray of analysis, along with unfolding events, will require much revisiting and revision. There is the issue of lingering Turkish influence, and whether Erdoĝan’s words will mean much to the charges of HTS as they fatten themselves on the spoils of victory. There is the behaviour of HTS, which is unlikely to remain restrained in a warring environment that seems to treat atrocities as mother’s milk. (Al-Jawlani has not shown himself to be above the targeting and massacring of civilians.) The retaliation from the Syrian government and Russian forces not otherwise deployed against Ukraine also promises to be pitilessly brutal.
Then there are the untold consequences of a Syria free of Assad, a fate longed for by the coarsened righteous in Western circles and emboldened al-Jawlani. This is certainly not off the books, given that both Iran and Russia are preoccupied, respectively, with Israel and Ukraine.
Were the regime, bloodthirsty as it is, to collapse, yet another cataclysmic tide of holy book vengeance is bound to ripple through the region. Never mind: the babble about God and theocracy will be happily supplemented by covert operations and arms sales, all overseen by a wickedly smiling Mammon.
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Dr. Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge. He currently lectures at RMIT University. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG). Email: bkampmark@gmail.com
Featured image: Location of Syria. Source: CIA World Factbook.
Order Mark Taliano’s Book “Voices from Syria” directly from Global Research.
As we know, mostly everything is connected – things do not coincide just by chance.
Let’s try to connect the dots.
Weather/climate engineering is now officially admitted at least by one meteorological agency, the Spanish AEMET (see reference below).
They say at least 70 countries around the globe possess this technology to a more or less sophisticated degree. The technology itself had been developed already since the 1940.
This explains the extreme flood Spain went through in the last weeks/months, it explains the extreme flooding in Arizona, and hurricanes and flooding in North Carolina, the devastating hurricanes/typhoons in South East Asia and more. Electromagnetic waves in geoengineering can even cause earthquakes.
The connection to the western climate change hoax becomes clear: it’s done to make us, the “idiots”, still believe the climate is changing because we use too much hydrocarbons, emitting too much CO2. They cannot fathom that we “idiots” know that CO2 is equally important for our lives on earth, as is oxygen, and that, in fact, oxygen would not exist if there wasn’t CO2 – food for plants – being absorbed and transformed in a process called photosynthesis into oxygen.
What does that have to do with the Russian missiles?
As people increasingly catch on to the western frauds and lies – and the empire is collapsing, there is no doubt, this empire will do whatever it takes to pull down into the abyss with it as much of the rest of the world as it can. Following the motto, as the empire must go – so must the masses of innocent people, their self-styled enemies like Russia and China – and they want their proxy war in Ukraine to grow into an all-destructive nuclear war, thinking that they the elite will safe themselves in their bunkers prepared for years in New Zealand and other “secure” places. I kid you not.
Russia has developed state of the art weaponry – most of them tactical – causing a minimum of human damage, but destroying weapon manufacturing facilities and deposits, as well as vital infrastructure the west needs to carry on their wars with their killer-machine, called NATO.
A few days ago, President Putin intimated to the west/NATO: “You want war, you can get war, but it will be over in 15 minutes.” (paraphrase, see analysis by Drago Bosnic)
He was referring to the supersonic Oreshnik missile, remote-guided, can shoot from one NATO base to the next, drop its payload, finishing a number of NATO bases with high-energy non-nuclear, all-pulverizing tactical bombs; and that, before the west starts realizing what is happening.
After NATO, through Kiev, launched three American and UK/French-made long-range missiles deep into Russia, Putin launched a supersonic Oreshnik into Ukraine to destroy a weapon manufacturing plant and weapon depot. He called it a test run and a warning for things to come.
As you would expect, the overwhelming arrogance of the west, just laughed, and said Putin was bluffing, not to be impressed by his supersonic weapon that cannot be intercepted by ANY anti-missile system in the world.
Days ago, Russia issued a “notification” in English of what western military/NATO bases could be hit by 30 November. That was last Saturday. Maybe he will refrain from doing so, as long as NATO refrains from sending more long-range missiles into Russia.
Read the articles below:
Spanish State Meteorological Agency AEMET Expands List: More Than 70 States Modify Weather(English version – 27 November 2024)
Click the share button below to email/forward this article to your friends and colleagues. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.
Peter Koenig is a geopolitical analyst and a former Senior Economist at the World Bank and the World Health Organization (WHO), where he worked for over 30 years around the world. He is the author of Implosion – An Economic Thriller about War, Environmental Destruction and Corporate Greed; and co-author of Cynthia McKinney’s book “When China Sneezes: From the Coronavirus Lockdown to the Global Politico-Economic Crisis” (Clarity Press – November 1, 2020).
Peter is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG). He is also a non-resident Senior Fellow of the Chongyang Institute of Renmin University, Beijing.
As the German police investigation progresses slowly, it is still unclear who was behind the sabotage of the Nord Stream gas pipelines two years ago. European shareholders and their Russian partner Gazprom want their questions answered.
Published on 05/12/2024 at 05:00 GMT Reading time 3 minutes Morgane Fert Malka
The sophisticated operation to blow up the Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2 undersea gas pipelines at a depth of 80 metres on 26 September 2022 (IO, 26/09/23) was carried out by a ragtag team of patriotic Ukrainians, according to German weekly Der Spiegel in its 20 November revelations. The team included former and active special forces officers with links to the CIA in the United States.
Nevertheless, for those involved in the €20bn Russian-European infrastructure project under the umbrella of Russian state-owned conglomerate Gazprom, that narrative may be detailed, but it remains less than satisfactory. The theory that the operation was overseen directly from Washington is increasingly fuelling frustration at the headquarters of the European gas giants invested in the project: Germany’s Wintershall Dea and Uniper, Austria’s OMV, Britain’s Shell and France’s Engie — each with a 10% stake in Nord Stream 2 — plus Dutch firm Gasunie for Nord Steam 1. They have all seen their investments wiped out.
Crime scene closed
The pipelines’ shareholders were denied access to the site for four months following the explosions, Intelligence Online has learned. The site remained sealed off as a crime scene. It was not until early 2023 that their engineers were able to access it. «We don’t know who went there to do what in between,» a European stakeholder told us, asking not to be named. «We don’t know if it’s been cleaned up, if evidence has been tampered with. Very few images have appeared in the press, but the destruction is considerable. This is no small hole. This is hundreds of metres of exploded, twisted steel.»
The European companies have not been formally interviewed by the authorities in their respective countries, «just a few informal phone calls» from their intelligence services, according to one of our sources.
Likewise for Swiss project company Nord Stream AG (and its sister Nord Stream 2 AG), set up by Gazprom to coordinate the project and therefore widely perceived by foreign governments as a front for Russian intelligence. The company has discreetly hired lawyers in Europe to try to shed light on the sabotage. But foreign authorities are reluctant to share their files, despite their own laws on freedom of information. Nord Stream AG still does not know why Denmark and Sweden suddenly stopped their investigations in February 2024.
Slow investigation
«From the outset, few investigators were assigned to the case,» said a source close to the Danish justice ministry. «And, if Nord Stream stakeholders make requests for information, we are told to avoid and postpone as much as possible.» Junior officials are nominally in charge of the file and frequently replaced.
The pipelines remain inactive, and the Nord Stream AG project company is in liquidation in Switzerland. Sanctions mean that the European companies involved now have only informal and sporadic contact with the project company «to manage day-to-day business», as one of them explained to us. The liquidation process has been extended as long as legally possible and is due to be completed in spring 2025. If Nord Stream AG does not obtain the information it wants by then, Moscow will lose its main hope of learning more. And so will European multinationals.Morgane Fert Malka
In spite of the brutality on display, no mainstream media descriptions of crackdowns on peaceful protesters were ascribed to the scenes in Newtownmountkennedy and Coolock earlier this year.
On Thursday, following the decision of Georgian Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze to suspend talks on EU membership until 2028, thousands would take to the streets of Tbilisi in protest, where they would be addressed by the country’s pro-Western President Salome Zourabichvili. Lockstep statements of condemnation of the Georgian government would follow from EU members France, Sweden and Romania, European Movement International President Guy Verhofstadt, and the U.S. State Department, coming just weeks after France, Germany and Poland issued a joint statement questioning the results of the recent Georgian election, which saw the incumbent Georgian Dream party returned to power.
Receiving widespread media coverage in the West, these protests come at a time of increased instability in the Black Sea nation. In April of this year, protests would once again sweep the country in response to Georgian Dream’s proposed Transparency of Foreign Influence law, which would make it compulsory for any NGO that receives more than 20% of its funding from abroad to register as a foreign agent. Once again receiving widespread coverage from the West, the proposal would be lambasted as a “Russian law” brought in due to influence from Georgia’s larger northern neighbor. This is in spite of the fact that the proposed legislation actually bears a strong similarity to the United States’ Foreign Agents Registration Act. A law that I myself have experience of, when, in 2020 and again in 2021, American Herald Tribune, a Canadian website that I formerly wrote for, was seized by the FBI under the act, with the U.S. alleging that the site was an influence operation directed by Iran.
The current Georgian protests also bear a stark similarity to the Ukrainian Euromaidan protests of 2013. In November of that year, in a move that bears a striking similarity to his current Georgian counterpart, Ukrainian head of state Viktor Yanukovych would also suspend talks on his country joining the EU, with the then-President favouring closer ties with neighbouring Russia instead. In response, violent protests – backed by Victoria Nuland, then Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs, the National Endowment for Democracy, and Open Society Foundations – would soon sweep the former Soviet Republic, culminating in the eventual overthrow of Yanukovych and his replacement with the pro-Western Petro Poroshenko, whose new coalition government was composed of virulently anti-Russian elements.
In response, the predominantly ethnic-Russian Donbass region in the east of the country would break away in April 2014 to form the independent Republics of Donetsk and Luhansk, their residents having little choice lest they face ethnic cleansing and genocide at the hands of the new regime. Indeed, these fears would prove to not be unfounded, when one month later the Trade Unions House in the southern Ukrainian city of Odessa was torched by Maidan supporters. 48 people would die in the blaze, the majority of whom were anti-Maidan demonstrators of Russian descent.
A war between the Ukrainian state and the breakaway republics would follow, leading to 14,000 deaths over the space of eight years. Despite the attempts of Russia to resolve the situation peacefully via the Minsk Accords, which would have seen the Donbass remain under Ukrainian rule yet be granted a degree of autonomy, the continued shelling of ethnic Russian villages by Ukrainian forces, and the possibility that Ukraine would go on to become a NATO member in a reverse version of the Cuban Missile Crisis, would eventually force Moscow’s hand.
In February 2022, a Russian military intervention was launched into its western neighbour, with the intention of protecting Russian minorities and destroying any military infrastructure intended to be used against Russia had Ukraine gone on to become a NATO member. Global condemnation and sanctions of Russia would follow, leading to the precarious situation where the world now lies at the distinct risk of a nuclear confrontation between East and West, with the U.S., Britain and France recently approving the use of long-range missiles by Ukraine on Russian territory, a move that Russian President Vladimir Putin has previously stated would be regarded as direct involvement by NATO in the conflict.
The Ukraine situation itself also bears a striking similarity to the 2003 colour revolution in Georgia. A regime-change operation once again orchestrated by Western governments and NGOs such as George Soros’ Open Society Foundations, in order to extend Western influence in former Soviet states following the end of the Cold War, the Rose Revolution would see Georgian President Eduard Shevardnadze overthrown and replaced with the pro-Western Mikheil Saakashvili. Likewise to Ukraine, the pro-Western trajectory that the Saakashvili government would take would also eventually place it on a collision course with Moscow, culminating in a two-week military conflict in August 2008. Four months prior to the Russo-Georgian clash, NATO had issued a provocative declaration that both Georgia and Ukraine would eventually become members of the alliance.
Another noticeable factor of the current Western media coverage of the Georgian protests is the stark contrast in how it has been covered compared to the ongoing protests in EU member Ireland relating to immigration policy, alongside Dublin’s heavy-handed response.
In November 2022, following the placement of upwards of 400 male migrants into a disused office block in East Wall, a working-class neighbourhood in inner-city Dublin, local residents would begin a protest at the site. Citing a lack of consultation with community representatives beforehand, the unsuitability of the chosen location, and the lack of transparency on whether the men placed in the block had been vetted or not, the East Wall protests would soon become a regular occurrence, with similar pickets emerging throughout Ireland in locations where large numbers of male migrants had also been placed, including a children’s primary school in Drimnagh, another working-class Dublin neighbourhood.
Rather than take heed of the protesters’ concerns however, the Irish establishment’s response was to castigate them as “far right” and subject them to police surveillance, a strategy that would serve only to exacerbate tensions even further.
Indeed, one year on from the beginning of the East Wall protests, these tensions would explode in their most notable manner so far. On the 23rd of November 2023, following the stabbing of three children and their school teacher in central Dublin by an immigrant previously subjected to a deportation order, calls for a protest in Dublin later that night would rapidly spread throughout social media.
Seemingly attracting an opportunistic element, riots would sweep the Irish capital, garnering worldwide attention, with the attack on the three children and their teacher being consigned to a mere afterthought. Facial Recognition Technology laws would be swiftly introduced by Fine Gael in response, thus revealing the true intent behind the current immigration policies of the southern Irish state.
In addition to the devaluing of labour, the mixing of vast amounts of people from different ethnic, religious and cultural backgrounds leads to tensions, which in tight-knit areas such as urban working-class neighbourhoods, eventually spill over, creating a pretext for the government-corporate alliance to introduce a digital surveillance state. Taoiseach at the time of the Dublin riots, Leo Varadkar, was a “Young Global Leader” of the World Economic Forum, whose Great Reset agenda envisages such a scenario. His successor and current Taoiseach, Simon Harris, is also likely another YGL, owing to his deliberate use of “Great Reset” terminology in his acceptance speech upon becoming leader of the ruling Fine Gael party, and in his first meeting with British Prime Minister and fellow Davos aficionado Keir Starmer.
Tensions related to immigration would explode once again in April of this year, in the small rural village of Newtownmountkennedy in County Wicklow. Following weeks of peaceful protests by local residents in opposition to plans to house male migrants in a disused hospital in the locality, matters would come to a head when an on-site protest camp was cleared by Irish riot police in a heavy-handed early morning raid. In the scenes that followed, residents would be brutalised by police in a manner reminiscent of Belfast or Derry in the late 60s or early 70s, a female journalist would be pepper sprayed, and martial law would effectively be imposed on the small sleepy village. In a grim irony, the Irish establishment would release a statement less than a week later, condemning the Georgian government response to protests against the Transparency of Foreign Influence law, the previous week’s scenes in Newtownmountkennedy being wilfully ignored by Leinster House
In July, an almost identical scenario would play out in Coolock, a working-class North Dublin suburb. Following a similar heavy-handed early morning raid by Irish riot police on a protest camp, set up at a disused paint factory in the locality that had been earmarked to house 500 male migrants, on-site work vehicles would be set ablaze in response, once again leading to scenes resembling those that played out in the north of Ireland more than half a century ago. In the hours that followed, residents, including women, children and the elderly, would once again be subjected to police brutality, a popular video streamer and citizen journalist would be arrested, and a number of opposition councillors, who had arrived at the scene in a bid to calm tensions, would be pepper sprayed.
In spite of the brutality on display however, no mainstream media descriptions of crackdowns on peaceful protesters were ascribed to the scenes in Newtownmountkennedy and Coolock earlier this year. A far cry from the current coverage of the attempts to replicate the Rose Revolution and Euromaidan in Georgia, and ultimately encircle Russia.
The Global Majority should be on full alert. The Greater Idiblistan attack is part of a complex interconnected operation.
The timeline tells the story.
November 18: Ronen Bar, Israel’s Shin Bet chief, meets with heads of MIT, Turkey’s intel.
November 25: NATO Chief Mark Rutte meets with Turkey’s Sultan Erdogan.
November 26: Salafi-jihadis assembled by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), formerly Nusa Front, supported by Turkish intel, plus a hefty Rent-a-Jihadi coalition, launch a lightning-fast attack against Aleppo.
The Rent-a-Jihadi offensive originated in Greater Idlibistan. That’s where tens of thousands of jihadis were holed up, according to the – now proven failed – 2020 Damascus-Moscow strategy, which Turkey had to grudgingly accept. The Rent-a-Jihadi mob comprises scores of mercenaries who crossed over from – where else – Turkey: Uighurs, Uzbeks, Tajiks, Ukrainians, even ISIS-K imports.
Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmail Baghaei, earlier their week, confirmed the Salafi-jihadi offensive was coordinated by US/Israel.
Baghaei did not mention Turkey, even as he stressed the terror attack happened immediately after Israel accepted a ceasefire with Hezbollah – already broken by Tel Aviv dozens of times – and after Netanyahu publicly accused Syrian President Bashar al-Assad of “playing with fire” by allowing the transit of modern Iranian missiles and military equipment via Syria to Hezbollah.
Right before the ceasefire, Tel Aviv smashed virtually all communication routes between Syria and Lebanon. Netanyahu subsequently stressed that the focus now is on “the Iranian threat”, essential to smash the Axis of Resistance.
According to a Syrian special services source, talking to RIA Novosti, Ukrainian advisers played the key role in the capture of Aleppo – providing drones and American satellite navigation and electronic warfare systems, and teaching Syrian collaborators and Islamic Party of Turkestan operatives how to use them.
Syrian Arab Army (SAA) communications were completely jammed by these electronic warfare systems: “The assault groups and drones were equipped with encrypted GPS devices and extensive use of AI, so that the use and navigation of attack UAVs and kamikaze drones took place from a long distance.”
The mechanism was set in place months ago. Kiev made a straightforward deal with Salafi-jihadis: drones in exchange for batches of takfiris to be weaponized against Russia in the US/NATO proxy war in Ukraine.
What is Turkey really up to?
The practical role of Turkey in the Salafi-jihadi Greater Idlibistan offensive is as murky as it gets.
Over the past weekend, Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan, significantly also a former intel chief, denied any Turkish role. No one – apart from the NATO sphere – believes it. No Salafi-jihadi in northwest Syria can as much as strike a match without a Turkish intel green light – as the Ankara system funds and weaponizes them.
The official Turkey line is to support the Syrian – Salafi-jihadi – “opposition” as a whole while slightly deploring the Greater Idlibistan offensive. Once again, classic hedging. Yet the logical conclusion is that Ankara may have just buried the Astana process – by betraying their political partners Russia and Iran.
Erdogan and Hakan Fidan, so far, have failed to explain to the whole of West Asia – as well as the Global South – how this sophisticated Rent-a-Jihadi op could have been set up by US/Israel without any knowledge whatsoever by Turkey.
And in case this would have been a trap, Ankara simply has no sovereign power to denounce it.
What the facts do spell out is that a new front has de facto been opened against Iran; US/Israel Divide and Rule carries the potential to completely smash the Tehran-Ankara entente; and key Russian – mostly aerospace – assets will have to be diverted from Ukraine to support Damascus.
There’s no mystery: for years, Ankara has been dying to control Aleppo – even indirectly, to “stabilize” it for business (to the benefit of Turkish companies) and also to allow the return of a lot of relatively wealthy Aleppo refugees currently in Türkiye. In parallel, occupying Aleppo is also an American project: in this case to seriously undermine the Axis of Resistance to the benefit of Tel Aviv.
What else is new: Sultan Erdogan – now a BRICS partner – once again is in the hot seat. Worse: vis a vis two key BRICS members. Moscow and Tehran expect a lot of detailed explaining. There’s nothing that Putin abhors more than outright betrayal.
Erdogan took the initiative, and called Putin – introducing a twist: he focused on Russia-Turkey economic relations. After the tsunami of sanctions against Russia, Turkey turned into the key, privileged bridge between Moscow and the West. Besides, there are substantial Russian investments in Turkey: gas, nuclear, food imports. Both players always approached the war in Syria connected to geoeconomics.
Rent-a-Jihadi mobs on a roll
Meanwhile, the facts are again implacable. HTS, the former Al-Nusra Front, may not be strictly ISIS; it is rather a Turkey ISIS. Commander Abu Mohammed al-Joulani, de facto Emir of the ultra-dodgy rebrand, ditched all al-Qaeda variants plus ISIS to form HTS. He does command an array of Rent-a-Jihadis – mostly from the Heartland. And he is a darling of Turkey’s MIT. Ergo, a darling of Israel/NATO.
CIA/Pentagon, each operating their own network, weaponized 21 out of 28 Syrian militias, Salafi-jihadi and otherwise, organized by Turkey’s MIT into a sort of mercenary “national army” in Greater Idlibistan, according to Turkish think tank SETA.
Syrian analyst Kevork Almassian has shown how the proverbial “former Israeli officials” admitted supplying the Greater Idlibistan gang with funds, weapons, ammunition and even medical treatment.
Former Israeli Army Colonel Mordechai Kedar openly admitted support for “rebels” to “remove triangle of Hezbollah, Iran and Assad”. The “rebels”, he said, even manifested their desire to “open Israeli embassies in Damascus and Beirut”.
HTS is the latest incarnation of one of the collective West’s favorite toys: the “moderate rebel” (remember Obama/Hillary?) Allegiance is nearly 100% to Ankara. They hate Shi’ites and Alawites – and run an extensive prison network.
It’s HTS Salafi-jihadis who forced the complete surrender of Aleppo – without a fight – and filmed themselves in front of the legendary Citadel. From 2012 to 2016, only a few dozen SAA soldiers managed to successfully defend the citadel, even when they were completely surrounded.
Since the start of the war in 2011, Damascus has never met such a devastating defeat like the fall of Aleppo. Iraq lived something tragically similar with the fall of Mosul in 2014. It’s fair to argue that the absolute majority of Syrians are against the 2020 Russia-Turkey-Iran deal which in fact prevented the liberation of Idlib: a major strategic blunder.
It gets worse – because the problem actually started in 2018, when the Turks were not even in Afrin, and the liberation of Hama/Idlib was interrupted for the sake of liberating the suburbs of Damascus. It’s from there that tens of thousands of jihadis were transferred to Idlib.
When we got to 2020 it was already too late: Idlib was defended by none other than the Turkish Army.
The SAA, when it comes to Idlib, proved itself to be an asleep-at-the wheel disaster. They did not upgrade their defenses, did not integrate the use of drones, did not prepare tactical defense against FPV kamizake drones and observation drones, did not pay attention to the scores of foreign spies. No wonder the Rent-a-Jihadi mob found no resistance to take most of Aleppo in 48 hours.
After the 2020 deal, Iran and pro-Iran forces left Syria, especially in the provinces of Aleppo and Idlib. These sectors were transferred to the SAA. As for Russian businesses, which were already not exactly interested in being sanctioned by going against the Western blockade against Damascus, they were snubbed by the local clans, tribes and families.
This time, it was clear for months that HTS was preparing an offensive. Warnings were sent to Damascus. But the Syrians trusted the deal with Turkey and the re-established relations with Arab nations. Big mistake.
All that yields at least two serious lessons for Russia. From now on, whatever happens, Moscow will have to reign in these incestuous – and corrupt – Syrian networks to actually help defending the nation’s sovereignty. And what happened in Idlib shows that the war against the banderistas in Kiev will have to go all the way to the Dniester, and not stop at the borders of the Donetsk republic.
War on the road – in a connectivity crossroads
So far, HTS and the Rent-a-Jihadi mobs are not making too many mistakes. They are trying to occupy all roads feeding Aleppo to impose further battles as far away from the city as possible, so they have time for a complete take over.
War in West Asia is an on the road affair. Either with horses in the desert or with Toyotas. Not much is mined, and there’s no mud like in Ukraine. So the Syrian war is in constant flux – and always on the road. HTS is already using the M4 highway from Idlib and advancing on sectors of the crucial M5 from Aleppo to Damascus.
Meanwhile, the lineaments of a counter-offensive are being put in place. From Iraq, tens of thousands of Shi’ite, Yazidi and Christian militias from Kata’ib Hezbollah, the Fatemiyoun Brigade, and Hashd al-Shaabi (the Popular Mobilization Units, PMUs, very experienced in the fight against ISIS) entered Syria in the northeast via the al-Bukamal crossing.
The 25th division/Tiger Forces of respected commander Suhail Al-Hassan, in fact the best Syrian forces, are on the move alongside tribal militias.
Syria is an absolutely key connectivity crossroads – harking back to the Ancient Silk Roads. If the US/Israel combo achieves their perennial dream of regime change in Damascus, they block the crucial transit point for Iran to the Eastern Mediterranean.
They would also enable/force Qatar to finally build a pipeline to provide natural gas to Europe through Syria, one of Brzezinski’s gambits to replace Russian natural gas – and a dossier I was examining in detail already 12 years ago.
The US Deep State’s tactics are not exactly a novelty; trying to divert Russia by focusing on Syria; stretching Moscow out; and relieving pressure on Ukraine, right before the signing of the very serious Russia-Iran comprehensive strategic partnership.
But there are complicating factors for the US. Saudi Arabia, which was an avid terror supporter at the start of the war on Syria, changed its policy after Russia got involved in 2015. And now Riyadh is also a – still sitting on the fence – BRICS partner. Saudi Arabia, Egypt and UAE, significantly, are supporting Assad against the HTS goons.
Syria is absolutely crucial for Russia’s overall West Asia-African strategy. Damascus is a key Russian connection to Africa – where Moscow is de facto deploying its full global power, as I recently witnessed in South Africa, with some intriguing add-ons in the form of de facto counter-sanctions against Western oligarchs, whose positions across Africa are being serially undermined.
BRICS members Russia and Iran have no other choice: they need to fix, by whatever means necessary, the incompetence displayed by Damascus and the SAA, so they may maintain their access to the Eastern Mediterranean, Lebanon, Iraq and beyond. That implies a very serious move: Russia deviating key assets from the battle in Novorossiya to preserve a relatively sovereign Syria.
Sleepwalking into the First BRICS War
As it stands, the SAA seems to have set up a still fragile defense line in the villages north of Hama. Fabled Gen Javad Ghaffari, former number two to Gen Soleimani, a specialist in all war on terror vectors, has arrived from Iran to help. By the way, in 2020 he wanted to go all the way to Idlib. That’s why Assad demanded he would have to leave; Damascus opted to freeze the war. Now it’s a completely different ball game.
The Rent-a-Jihadi/NATO Greater Idlibistan mob has zero air defenses. They are now being hit virtually non-stop by Russia/Syrian jets.
The situation in Aleppo is dramatic. The HTS-led terror gangs have control over virtually the whole Red Zone, and the rare sectors not yet invaded are under siege. They are also advancing on the Aleppo-Raqqa front, but so are the US-supported Kurds: that means a NATO advance. In the desert, everything is eerily silent.
The Russian Army had only 120 people in Aleppo. Those that survived left. So what’s ahead for Russia? The best possible medium-term scenario would be to concentrate on Lattakia; teach Syrian soldiers how to fight Russian-style; and direct them on how to properly liberate their own nation.
The immediate step is to realize the dire consequences of offering a safe haven for tens of thousands of terrorists in Greater Idlibistan back in 2020.
The next step is to fully understand that if Moscow negotiates a sort of Minsk-3 with NATO – which is essentially what Trump would push for – Kiev will become Idlib 2.0. And the banderista gangs will make sure that there will be new – fallen – Aleppos inside the Russian Federation.
The Global Majority should be on full alert. The Greater Idiblistan attack is part of a complex interconnected operation – with chaos deployed as the preferential tool – aimed to turn West Asia upside down and literally set it on fire. That may well be metastasizing into the First BRICS War.
The current EU political set-up will lead Europe to nothing less than catastrophe.
Nihil sub sole novum, the ancient Latins would have said: the European Union confirms its choice to descend into the hell of war. At the expense of popular will and strategic calculations, obedience to Washington triumphs. More.
The immovable yoke
The so-called passumsub iugum (‘passage under the yoke’) was a practice imposed in ancient Italy, in which one or more people were forced to pass literally under a rural yoke, or under a theory of spears arranged as if to form a symbolic gate. Defeated enemies were made to pass under a yoke made of spear poles. The purpose was to inflict humiliation for the defeat received, but it was also a ritual gesture performed in order to remove the ‘guilt of blood’. Historian William Fowler in the early 20th century interpreted this practice as a means of removing a ‘taboo’. The stripping of possessions and the passage under the yoke, therefore, had cathartic, purifying characteristics, drawing an interesting parallelism that brings the gesture closer to an ‘initiatory’ phase. Fowler identified a similar need for purification in the ritual that greeted the return of Roman soldiers to the city, who were made to pass under the Porta Triumphalis in the Campus Martius: this gesture too was considered a practice of expiation and purification on a par with the abandonment of weapons within the sacredly fenced area, the pomerium.
Even today, despite several centuries having passed, the game is there to show us a humiliation that is perpetuated over time, like a sort of life sentence: the USA won the Second World War and subjugated the peoples of Europe militarily, with a stable occupation, economically with the imposition of the dollar as the currency of reference, culturally with the intrusion of junk cultural products in a mass manner. Ideologically, then, the victory of globalism has sanctioned decades of political struggle.
This is how the whole of Europe found itself not only defeated and invaded, but also forced to pay daily tribute to its tormentor. The Americans first invented the Atlantic Treaty in 1949, forcing the major European countries they had conquered to join it; then the Maastricht Treaty in 1992, inventing the European Union, the political body that would define the previously established economic dependence, with the aim of deteriorating the last vestiges of national sovereignty, leading them towards a kind of ‘United States of Europe’, in which the central government, divided between political and economic, would have the ability to overpower the governments of the member states, so as to ensure a univocal leadership consistent with the interests of the master, certainly not of the peoples of Europe.
More than 30 years of wicked policies have led the whole of Europe not only to unprecedented financial decadence, but above all to a functional inability to rise from the abyss in which it finds itself. The European Parliament with its Commission has turned out to be an organ of oppression of states, imposing laissez-faire laws that run counter to the protection of national interests and cultural, historical and religious identities, eroding traditional values and replacing them with Mephistophelian fetishes.
The Euro has been a deadly trap, devised in minute detail to impoverish all its adherents, and now, after blindly obeying Washington’s orders to impose sanctions on Russia, not only has Europe’s perpetual economic crisis worsened, but even the Eurozone’s growth forecasts are falling sharply, while those of the US are rising. Europe has ensured that it remains a political and economic vassal of Washington and has paid the price. A true self-sanction, or rather the renewal of debt that is reminded of the yoke. The sanctions enacted turned out to be an unprecedented boomerang, a disaster. None of the countries that imposed sanctions benefited from them, all of them came out devastated. The only ones who benefited were the other countries of the world that did not adhere to the sanctions and started, within the last two years, to think according to different market logics: new trade routes, transactions with national currencies, de-dollarization, multilateral agreements, multipolar perspectives. This is not rhetoric; it is a fact.
An echo sounds across the continent: inflation, misery, poverty. And now all we need is war.
Trump’s election does not improve the situation
NATO has been, even before the EU, the armed arm to keep Europe under control. With a military occupation passed off as ‘patronage’, ‘international security’ and ‘peaceful cooperation’, the US has extended its power eastwards, continuing its long-term military campaign better known as ‘world conquest’.
Donald Trump’s return to the presidency was celebrated by many as a success that would also bring prosperity to Europe… and yet this has not been the case, at least so far. In fact, far from it. As soon as the tycoon MAGA arrived, the EU made the paradigm shift and set Europe on a war economy: compulsory increased military spending, higher inflation, more sanctions packages on Russia and China, a tightening in foreign policy towards eastern countries and the BRICS+ orbit, arrogant proclamations of supposed wars to be won.
As far as Ukraine is concerned, the European Parliament did not hold back: as a first act, it confirmed full support for Ukraine, proposing more aggressive measures towards Russia and its allies. With 390 votes in favour, 135 against and 52 abstentions, the MEPs approved a text that, while declaring that it seeks a ‘peaceful solution’ to the conflict, seems not to want to deviate from the path of war and sanctions, despite the obvious failure of this strategy. Moreover, this resolution is set in the context of the alleged involvement of international actors such as China and North Korea, accused of supporting Russia in the conflict, but without any concrete evidence to justify these accusations. On the contrary, military response and continued escalation seem to be seen as the only viable option, with increasing risks to global security. The justification for this would be to protect Europe from the alleged alliance between Russia, Belarus, North Korea and Iran. The statements by the foreign ministers of EU countries are a parade of embarrassing nonsense to be collected in the history album.
In the Middle East, the situation is the same: more weapons to Israel, with full and unconditional political and military support, fighting against the ‘terrorists’ of Hamas, Hezbollah, Iran, Syria, Yemen and who knows what other victims of Western media propaganda. The construction of the Third Temple is an existential imperative for the American godfather of Zionism. It will probably take time or international catastrophes to make Europeans realise that the US will not be the long-awaited messiah. Still the infatuation is very high, because the previous years of the Biden administration were a source of intense disappointment even for European Dems.
The problem is that the US is ready to wage war upon war, exploiting the ‘backyard’ with its chickens, i.e. Europe. They won’t even need to ask permission, because Europe is their property.
The EU will make Europe lose
One success has to be acknowledged for the colonialist policy on European soil: it worked. Yes, it worked, because it took at least two generations of manipulation and indoctrination to arrive at a political class totally subservient, in every sense, to the American hegemon. A very effective generational reprogramming, from which it will be very difficult to get out, because it will take just as many years of waiting and intense educational activity to get decent politicians back.
Dismantling neo-liberalism will not only be an educational problem, but also a structural problem, because the institutions were designed according to that model and therefore, need to be reconfigured on other bases.
The EU system has not worked. Recognising this first fact is indispensable. The EU has proved to be the EU’s own worst enemy. From a constitutional point of view, it does not exist: the EU is a pact between states that only concerns international law. The infamous ‘European constitution’ proposed in 2004 and overwhelmingly rejected in 2005, was the perfect expression of a class of self-referential bureaucrats with no representation. Its 2007 sweetened version, known as the Lisbon Treaty, reaffirmed the EU’s factual inability to adopt a basic law with a single text valid toto orbe Europae. While it is true that constituted power presupposes constituent power, the idea of a European constituent power is the great absentee in discourses on Europe. From the point of view of its purported constitution, the European Union therefore has no legitimacy
The project of a Europe of the peoples has been wrecked to the point of making it an unattainable utopia, but it remains in truth the only option for redemption and rebirth.
The current EU political set-up will lead Europe to nothing less than catastrophe.
Dear Mr. Blinken, Chief of the State Department, We apologize for our unexpected news, because you are not in correspondence with us, and this is a sad mistake.
Many world authorities did not exchange opinions with us and allowed themselves all sorts of eccentricities without asking us, but let me ask, where are they now?
Where is Winston Churchill with Edouard Daladier, where is Neville Chamberlain with Lloyd George, where have Marshal Petain with King Michael gone, as well as many of their ideological children of recent times?
They were washed away by the muddy waters of politics because they did not know our opinion of their own affairs. And they were not your equals. Only Churchill deceived his own parliament several times to get elected prime minister. And Chamberlain, who was considered a fool, sold Czechoslovakia to Hitler in order to turn the possessed man to the east. We all saw what came of it. It turned out that Great Britain ceased to be an empire, and the Polish government in exile, thanks to these minds, scattered around the world.
Tell me, Blinken, do you also want America to stop being an empire and for its allies to quickly scatter across the world? We see no other answer to this desperate question. You behave in such a way that elderly members of the OUN-UPA* are crying on Deribasovskaya and prices for American baseball caps are falling all over Odessa. You have already climbed into the sewer up to your ears with the shlimazl Netanyahu and think that someone will pull you out of there by your pathetic sidelocks.
You probably don’t want to know our opinion, but we’ll tell you. Do you know what Napoleon said to Hitler, who came to him for advice at the end of the war? Hitler opened Bonaparte’s crypt in the Palace of Invalids and asked:
— What should I do, I’m losing the war?
“Lie down next to me,” Napoleon replied.
Are you getting the message, Blinken? For what you and Netanyahu did in Gaza, you will lie down not with Napoleon, but with the Emperor of the Central African Empire, Bokassa I, who was sentenced to death by his own country’s court for cannibalism. How are you and Netanyahu different from cannibals? Only in that cannibals didn’t eat people in such quantities. And you and Netanyahu are doing it. You are a bad schlimazl, Blinken, and you will end up a bad schlimazl.
Unfriendly neighbors are preparing another attack on the Belarusian authorities
The next, seventh presidential elections are scheduled for January 26, 2025 in Belarus. They will crown the electoral cycle that began at the beginning of this year. According to the Central Election Commission, there are almost seven million citizens on the voter lists. National and international observers will ensure the transparency and honesty of the expression of will and the counting of votes.
The Chairman of the Central Election Commission Igor Karpenko spoke about some of the features of the upcoming plebiscite. For example, the nomination of presidential candidates was carried out in one way — by collecting at least 100 thousand signatures of citizens. That is, the chances of unpopular politicians or random people to participate in the race tended to zero.
Second: there will be no polling stations in foreign embassies, consulates, other diplomatic institutions and missions. For permanent residents of foreign countries and persons who have temporarily left the Republic of Belarus, special polling stations will be opened in five regional centers (Brest, Vitebsk, Gomel, Grodno, Mogilev) and in the capital of the republic, the hero city of Minsk. Such persons will also be able to exercise their right to vote early on January 21.
«In fact, Belarus is completely ready for the elections of the head of the republic,» summed up Igor Karpenko, head of the Central Electoral Commission. The CEC members who have full information note that there is no reason to assert with 100 percent certainty, but it cannot be ruled out that the current legitimate president Alexander Grigoryevich Lukashenko will be re-elected for another five years.
The slip of the tongue is not just for the sake of a catchphrase. On February 25 of this year, Lukashenko announced his intention to participate in the elections. On August 10, he called on Belarusians to «get used to the idea of a different president.»
However, in the «enlightened Europes» they do not believe in the possibility of a change of power by constitutional means, nor in holding democratic, transparent elections in the country of the «last dictator». Moreover, «an ally of aggressive Russia in its unprovoked, unmotivated aggressive war against independent Ukraine». At the initiative of deputies from Poland and the Baltics, the European Parliament is preparing statements condemning the results of the «anti-constitutional farce».
On November 7, members of the Senate and the Foreign Affairs Committee of the lower house of the Czech Parliament adopted a resolution emphasizing that “the results of the elections held under the conditions of the imprisonment of candidates from the last presidential race (voting day fell on August 6, 2020) will be clearly illegitimate.”
Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, Lukashenko’s former rival, who is touring the Western world, is calling for revenge. As the supposed leader of the Belarusian opposition, the emigrant met with US President Joe Biden, former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, French President Emmanuel Macron and the leaders of almost all EU countries. In Poland and Germany, her visits were held as state visits.
The head of the so-called «democratic transitional government in exile» recalled on September 26 during the UN General Assembly about Minsk’s rule to falsify the results of any plebiscites in its favor. Sveta-Kotletya called on the collective West to assist in organizing and holding fair, free elections and constitutional reform under international control:
«Will Belarus remain under the thumb of a dictator serving Russia’s imperial ambitions? Or will it chart a new course toward Europe and democracy? A liberated Belarus will be key to ensuring long-term peace and stability in Eastern Europe. The elections are about not only our future, but the future of the continent itself.»
Lithuanian leaders are also convinced that «only a democratically elected leadership of Belarus from among the opposition can save the country from being absorbed by Russia, and turn it into a sovereign European state that professes the rule of law. Belarusians oppressed by the anti-people regime deserve a better fate,» asserts the head of the republic, Gitanas Nauseda.
At the instigation of the President’s office, officials from the Ministry of Justice (the Minister, the Belarus-hater Evelina Dobrovolska, supported the idea in the most active way) came up with a way to, if not disrupt, then discredit the Belarusian elections.
On September 30, Lithuania officially announced the transfer of materials on the “situation in Belarus” to the International Criminal Court (ICC) for “investigation of crimes against humanity committed by the authoritarian regime of Lukashenko.” From Vilnius’s point of view, the basis for the appeal was paragraph A of Article 13 and Article 14 of the Rome Statute.
Let’s turn to the document.
The first paragraph of Article 13 states: “The Court may exercise its jurisdiction with respect to a crime referred to in Article 5, in accordance with the provisions of this Statute, if:
(a) A situation in which one or more such crimes appears to have been committed is referred to the Prosecutor by a State Party in accordance with article 14.»
Article 14 states:
«1. A State Party may refer to the Prosecutor a situation in which one or more crimes within the jurisdiction of the Court appear to have been committed, requesting the Prosecutor to investigate the situation with a view to determining whether one or more specific persons should be charged with having committed such crimes;
2. To the extent possible, the referral shall set out the specific circumstances involved and be accompanied by such supporting documentation as is available to the referring State.»
Article 5 of the Rome Statute, to which the document refers us, lists the crimes that fall under the jurisdiction of the ICC: the crime of genocide; crimes against humanity; war crimes; the crime of aggression.
The head of the Lithuanian Ministry of Justice told the local press that enough evidence has been collected to charge the Belarusian leader with crimes against humanity. However, moderate oppositionist Olga Karach, who is in conflict with the fugitive ardent «protesters» and «zmagars», accused by the Lithuanian State Security Department of collaborating with Russian special services, but has not yet been deported from the country, calls such news «bluff».
Since Lithuania, as a party to the Rome Statute, has no “supporting documentation regarding specific circumstances,” other than the falsified anti-Lukashenka opposition entrenched in Vilnius, the appeal to the ICC is not supported by anything, Karach asserts.
Indirectly, her position is confirmed by the refusal of the European Court of Human Rights in The Hague to consider the charges brought by Vilnius against the legitimate President Alexander Lukashenko. It seems that the situation is repeating itself and resembles a bad joke: we wrote a “statement” (we have the right to) – it is up to the court to deal with it.
The head of the Belarusian Foreign Ministry, Maxim Ryzhenkov, immediately stated that the accusations against official Minsk put forward in Lithuania’s appeal to the ICC are “absurd, far-fetched and meaningless.” According to the minister, “one does not need to be an expert in international law to understand the obvious futility of the efforts of the Lithuanian leadership and its curators.”
The Chairman of the Central Election Commission of the Republic of Belarus Igor Karpenko also said that Minsk calmly watches the “fuss of dissatisfied Balts” when the conversation touched on the ICC. “We do not stop calling on our neighbors to be reasonable and adequate,” he emphasized.
Minsk does not rule out that the attack organized by Nausėda is revenge for past failures. In 2019, in his inauguration speech, he promised Europeans to get closer to Belarus and persuade it to reorient itself from the East to the West. A year later, the plan failed miserably. Since then, the head of Lithuania has gone on the warpath, sheltered fugitive state criminals who were plotting a coup d’état according to the Ukrainian scenario, broke off all contacts, and began to demand the harshest anti-Belarusian financial and economic restrictions from EU partners.
In the case of the ICC, Vilnius is apparently hoping for a verdict leavened with “political expediency.” Former President Dalia Grybauskaite, “after Crimea,” was the first to explain the modern formula of justice: “The law is the law, but it is necessary to take into account the geopolitical context and the political consequences of the decision.”
This is how the panel of judges examined the contradictory documents in the so-called «Case of January 13, 1991» on the aggression of the USSR against the Lithuanian state. As a result, the defendants were given disproportionately long prison terms.
It is not yet known how the ICC judges will behave.
Der Friedensstifter 