17/10/2022 lewrockwell.com  21 min 🇬🇧 #217326

Growing to Understand Contemporary Germany and Weep - Part Ii

By  Hans-Hermann Hoppe

October 17, 2022

Part 2

Part 2 Transcript

The war in the Ukraine is the most recent and most dramatic and violent attempt at further advancing globalization, centralization and imperialism. The outcome of which is still very uncertain. It is also the latest demonstration of global elites to show in particular Germany (but also Western Europe and the EU) who is boss. In this they are being supported by elitist German collaborators and traitors.

To start with, let me give you a short, general remark on war: In violent conflicts between individuals or rival street gangs, we can normally clearly distinguish the aggressor from the victim, aggressive violence from defensive violence, evil and guilty from good and innocent. This is impossible, however, in the case of interstate war or violence: because all states are aggressors and protection rackets, that conduct their operation, be it offensive or defensive, with means, weapons and finances stolen from their own "protected" populations - just think of Mafia gangs trying to enlarge their territory or turf, or defending and protecting themselves from such attempts by another such gang.

This leads me to the following first verdict or judgment regarding the current war: everyone, Biden, Putin, Zelensky, Johnson, Scholz, Macron, von der Leyen, etc., indeed everyone involved or entangled in the war with means or materials not his own is an evil warmonger, and they all deserve to rot in jail as accomplices to death and destruction. This in addition to their aggression committed against their own domestic resident-victims.

But this does not exclude judging or comparing the relative guilt of the warring gangs in the present war. And here I reach a rather clear verdict.

It is not Putin and his gang that aims at world domination, and that has organized coups and stationed troops in Canada or Mexico so as to encircle and pose a danger to the gang ruling the US - for that, Russia is too much of an economic lightweight. Russia was happy to keep control over what she had (and not getting increasingly dependent on neighboring, economically increasingly more powerful China).

It is the ruling gangs of the US, in cooperation with their European lapdogs that have pursued and are pursuing this goal of world domination, and that have said so. They have encircled Putin's Russia - which regards the US-EU-West as decadent and resisted the Western attempts at economic and cultural infiltration - with US (NATO) troops in its immediate vicinity.

The US and Ukraine are separated by the Atlantic Ocean and the distance between Washington DC and Kyiv is almost 8000 kilometers. On the other hand, the Ukraine is a former member of the SU and has a direct border with Russia more than 2000 kilometers long.

Incidentally, these observations should also suffice to counter the implied assertion advanced by some self-declared libertarians with their rhetorical question "wouldn't you rather live in the US or in Germany rather than Russia?" Should not our sympathy then be with the US and Germany rather than with Russia? And should we not hope then for a success of "our" side rather than of Russia, whatever "success" is supposed to mean under the present circumstances?"

Here is my brief retort: it is not Putin who is taking our property and our freedoms. And regardless of the ultimate outcome of the current war, in all likelihood it will not be Putin who will do so in the future. It is our ruling gangs that rob and enslave us, that have stepped up already now to do so, and that will most certainly clamp down on us even more if they "win," yet who would experience a major setback in their march toward totalitarian domination if they "lose".

In any case, it is hardly surprising then that Moscow would regard the expansion of the hostile gang ruling Washington all the way to Ukraine as a threat or provocation. Putin repeatedly said so and warned against any such attempts. Moscow demanded instead that the Ukraine stay neutral and not join NATO or EU. This appears eminently reasonable. Switzerland is also neutral and it is the wealthiest country in all of Europe.

But the neo-cons running the show in the US were not amenable to reason. Despite Putin's warnings, they organized a coup - one of their infamous colour revolutions - and helped install a pro-NATO-EU and anti-Russia government-gang - with the current gang-leader or front-puppet Zelensky - and they began to arm and train its military. They ignored or even secretly supported the military attacks of ultranationalist/Banderist brigades since 2014 on its two easternmost, predominately Russian speaking provinces that were seeking some sort of autonomy status (especially after Russian had been outlawed as a second official language).

Given this background, it appears absurd and devoid of any sense of proportion to declare Putin and Russia the main or even only guilty party in the current disaster, only because he fired the first shot.

Instead, the main culprit are the ruling gang in Washington: because it could have easily avoided the current slaughter and destruction by simply telling their Ukrainian lapdogs, the clown Zelensky, to accept neutrality and grant some degree of autonomy to the Donbass region.

As US lapdogs, they would have immediately relented. But the US did not do so, and even now, the US could immediately end the war, if only they told Zelensky and his gang that the war was over and all Western support would stop tomorrow.

But no, there is none of that. US-NATO did not involve itself directly in the war, after all Russia is an atomic power, and why risk American lives (especially after the recent Afghanistan disaster). Instead, they imposed the most serious, drastic economic and financial sanctions, boycotts and embargoes on Russia. They froze and expropriated Russian assets in the West, and they supplied the Ukraine with weapons so as to continue and drag out the war and prevent any peace negotiations. They let the Ukraine be destroyed and Ukrainians die and be sacrificed, as long as this would only lead to a weakening of Russian power, all the while claiming the moral high ground for themselves, of course.

The political elites all across Europe, including even supposedly neutral countries such as Switzerland and Austria, followed the US orders to the dot. They even tried to outdo each other in their eagerness to allegedly help in sending money and weapons to the Ukrainian government gang leaders, while actually having thereby ever more people killed - much as can be expected of a bunch of servile lapdogs.

As for Germany in particular: it had the closest economic ties to Russia. Russia is its main supplier of oil, gas and other raw materials. Through various pipelines, Russia and Germany are directly, physically connected. Germany is the leading foreign investor and producer-manufacturer in Russia. And so, no one was hit harder by the sanctions and embargoes imposed by the US and the EU on Russia than Germany.

Interestingly, these close German relations with Russia, in particular the German dependency on Russian oil and gas, had been based on plain economics: they were cheaper there than elsewhere, and no German party until then had anything against such relations. Now, suddenly, all this was declared a no-no, an inexcusable blunder.

And meanwhile retired Merkel, who until only a year ago had been hailed almost unanimously by the ruling elite and the mainstream media as the greatest of German politicians - if not the entire world - came suddenly under increasingly sharp attack, including from her own party leaders.

Did not the number of Russian pipelines during her term significantly increase? Did she not speak Russian and had she not met Putin many times? Did she not work for the Stasi but maybe also the KGB? And was it not she, who, with huge support, in particular of the Greens, had closed down all atomic reactors in Germany and thus increased the German energy dependency on Russia?

In any case, with the West already on the verge of economic disaster, depression and stagflation due to the unparalleled monetary expansion of the FED and the ECB, and further aggravated by the economic destruction caused by the pandemic lockdown, the stock market tanked, consumer goods prices rose at an unprecedented rate, and shortages of basic goods appeared. And the German public was told by their brilliant leaders that they had to tighten their belt and prepare for some freezing during the next winter, so as to help the Zelensky gang stay warm and keep on sacrificing their own population.

Moreover, the western measures taken against Russia had some momentous geo-political and strategic consequences.

Without doubt, the measures damaged the Russian economy, but as the world's leading energy and raw materials supplier, Russia was able to reorganize its trade routes: the flow of oil, gas, wheat, etc. was redirected in eastern and southern direction, where there were eager buyers (China, India, etc.). After all, the world outside the West is much larger than the West itself. The ruble rose against the dollar and Germany appeared to be hit much harder by the sanctions than sanctioned Russia itself.

However, from the viewpoint of the US-NATO neocon strategists, the economic damage produced, caused and done by the sanctions all across Europe, but in particular in Germany, had also some highly welcome side-effects.

True, the measures taken also had some negative economic repercussions in the US. But on balance, the economic power of Europe and the EU, and in particular of Germany, was systematically weakened relative to that of the US. The European and especially German dependency on the US was increased. One had to buy oil, gas, etc. now at much higher prices from the US instead of from Russia. And the massive military re-armament all throughout Europe, and again especially in Germany, that was prompted in tandem with the anti-Russian measures was to benefit mostly the US, as the world's leading weapons manufacturer, and the neocons best friends and supporters.

With this outcome, the US had accomplished an important geostrategic goal. For, according to a highly influential school of geopolitical thought, ranging from Halford Mackinder at the beginning of the 20th century to Brzezinski in our own time, whoever, any power or powers, that would attain domination of the Euro-Asian continent, the world's heartland, would thereby essentially, indirectly attain domination over the rest of the world also. And to prevent this from happening and to preserve the US-Anglo supremacy, then, any such power(s) had to be prevented from emerging.

And the only danger, the only potential threat in this regard to US supremacy would or could come from an alliance between Germany and Russia, which, accordingly, had to be undermined by all means.

And this, indeed, had been accomplished by the war in the Ukraine and its political fall-out. There was no danger of an alliance or cooperation between Russia and Germany (as it would be economically sensible and to mutual advantage!) anymore for the foreseeable future.

This victory for the long-standing Anglo-American alliance might also explain Johnson's extra-belligerent attitude.

Among the corrupt, brainwashed and dim-witted German political elites and the mainstream media, there has been, unsurprisingly, no recognition or awareness of any of this. And if anyone mentioned or hinted at it at all, he was denounced as a conspiracy theorist.

Instead, so as to distract, pacify and console the public from the economic hardship that they must suffer, as the consequence of Germany's taking orders and following the lead of the US, the super-top-gang-leaders, the political elite and the mainstream media in Germany have, and are, engaged, almost unison, in an open "hate Russia and everyone and everything Russian" campaign.

I had of course read and heard before of similar hate-campaigns, here or there. Historically, they are nothing new. But I had never personally experienced anything quite like this. I was shocked and disgusted about what was happening.

Russian-made products were taken off store shelfs, and Russian-named ingredients, condiments, drinks and dishes re-named. Restaurants refused serve Russians. Russian-owned properties were outed by neighbours and reported to the authorities for potential confiscation. Performances of Russian music and ballet were cancelled. Russian literature was taken off various curricula. Standing invitations to Russian athletes, artists, scholars and civic clubs and associations were revoked. The chief conductor of the Munich Philharmonic, Russian Valery Gergiev, was dismissed because he did not rush to immediately condemn Putin. And all engagements of world-famous opera singer Anna Netrebko were cancelled, because she had once said some nice things about Putin and repeatedly shaken his hand.

Just compare this to the public reaction in response to the wars conducted by Clinton, Bush, Obama or Biden.

In any case, this anti-Russian hysteria was the result of a scandalously one-sided, indeed vicious and devious, propaganda-lies spread by the German political elites and the mainstream media, with the Greens, now part of German government, in the lead.

Having once started out as some sort of make love-not-war pacifists and proponents of universal dis-armament, yet then carefully screened, selected and courted by the previously mentioned various internationalist-elitist groups (WEF, Bilderberger, etc.), the Green leadership had been turned around into the most belligerent, demented and delusional warmongers, not to be outdone by any other party. The most moderate party within the grand German choir of warmongers is the SPD.

Putin was presented in the media as a deranged despot, posing the greatest danger to world peace. His attack on the Ukraine in particular was supposed to be without any justification whatsoever. It was said to be the expression of sheer power-lust and imperialist ambitions. Rarely if ever was there any mention of the pre-history of the war. And to speak of US-NATO provocations was anathema. The Ukraine was portrayed as a completely innocent party, a virgin raped by an all-out evil Russia.

There was also no mention of the fact that, whatever one might otherwise think about the war, Ukraine was neither a member of NATO nor the EU, and hence, Russia had not started or declared war against NATO or the EU....in fact, as far as NATO and EU countries were concerned, Russia was in full compliance with all bi- or multilateral agreements and willing to fulfill all contractual obligations regarding the delivery of oil, gas, coal, etc. etc.

To the contrary: war was essentially declared by the US and its vassals against Russia, by virtue of their sanctions and embargoes and their deliveries of weapons and military equipment to the Ukraine (even disregarding the fact that no soldiers were sent).

And the economic consequences, the hardship suffered in Germany and Europe as a result of these measures, then, are exclusively the fault of the West. But no word of that.

Then: as far as the conduct of the war itself was concerned: There has never been a war without destruction, death and atrocities. And it is certainly not my intention to belittle the crimes committed by Russia. Day after day, the Western media reported about them at great length and with apparent gusto.

Yet in all of their reporting, the German media always strictly followed the narrative as told by the Ukrainian government gang, of Zelensky and his spin-doctors, and rarely if ever was the veracity of this narrative scrutinized or put in doubt, as is especially needed in any and every war.

Zelensky's claim, for instance, that Russia was engaged in some sort of genocide, was repeated over and over again in the Western media without any rebuke, although it was obviously false. If Russia had conducted its war against Ukraine in the same way as the US had conducted its war against Iraq, for instance, it could have easily bombed Kyiv, Odessa and Lemberg (Lwiw) to the ground and turned all of them into rubble, with hundreds of thousands of civilian casualties.

But unlike the US in Iraq, that did just that, Russia actually tried to minimize civilian, non-combatant casualties and restrict its attacks to military targets. Yet these attempts were greatly vitiated, undermined and counteracted by the Zelensky-gang's military orders of taking their own civilian population hostage, to be used as human shields and to withdraw to, and hide in, civilian facilities, such as schools and hospitals, for instance, so as to maximize Western outrage about Russian barbarism.

Also, Zelensky's accusation of Russian genocide committed against Ukrainians is demonstrated as being plainly absurd, because most of the combat operations took place in the Donbas region, where largely Russian is spoken and which had declared its secession from, and independence of, the Ukraine. And there, the Ukrainian army itself was busily engaged in the killing of other Ukrainians, a rather strange form of genocide.

All the while the media vilified, denounced and condemned Russia and in particular Putin. The same media in Germany (and elsewhere in the West) praised and hailed the Ukraine and Zelensky to the heavens. And that despite the fact that the very same media only a couple of years ago had presented a very different picture of them. But you can apparently always rely on the fact that most people's historical memory does not go back further than a few weeks or months.

The Ukraine was now presented as a bastion of the West and of western values. Whatever that is supposed to mean nowadays, except the adoption of the gender-, anti-racism-, anti-discrimination- and LBGQT-cult. While in fact, at best, parts of western Ukraine, which had long been part of the Austrian-Hungarian empire or of Poland, could be described as somewhat westernized.

Also that the Ukraine was ranked among the most corrupt countries in the world, however, on a par with Russia or even worse, was no longer found worth mentioning.

Nor was it found worth mentioning in the media anymore that the Ukraine was an economic basket-case. In fact, since Ukrainian independence, some 30 years ago, its economic performance had been the worst of all former Soviet republics and satellite countries. The Ukrainian GDP per capita was only about a third of Russia's. It ranked well below that of Bulgaria, the very poorhouse of the EU, and it was even surpassed by Albania. Hurrah, there was another potential client for the German paymaster.

As for the professional Jewish clown Zelensky, the media presented him as a saviour and hero, an almost Jesus-like figure. He was given almost unlimited time to show off his acting skills on western TV, at all sorts of places and occasions, including the Cannes film festival.

Most Western government-gang leaders felt obliged to set out on some sort of pilgrimage to Kyiv in order to have a selfie taken with this human wonder. Johnson, Macron, Draghi, Scholz, and on and on the list went. Indeed, in the case of some of the female pilgrims, such as Ursula von der Leyen, head of the EU-commission, and Annalena Baerbock, Germany's Green foreign minister, I had the impression that Zelensky even served them as the inspiration of some wet dreams. Yet maybe that was just what the green(horny-ish) Green Baerbock meant by conducting a "feminist foreign policy".

The real Zelensky was and is someone else entirely. This was well-known before the outbreak of the current violent conflagrations, but since then seems to have been forgotten, ignored or suppressed by the Western media.

While elected on an anti-corruption and peace-with-Russia-and-the-two-autonomy-seeking-eastern-provinces platform, in accordance with the Minsk agreements, (signed by Ukraine, Russia, Germany and France), Zelensky, up to form of a true politician, belied and betrayed his promises from the very outset.

Indeed, Zelensky's entire career, first as an actor and then as an actor-turned-politician was an exercise in corruption. His main-sponsor and puppet master being multi-billionaire Ihor Kolomoysky, a fellow Jew and one of Ukraine's most influential oligarchs and greatest beneficiaries of Ukraine's rampant corruption. In 2021 the US put him on its list of sanctioned persons and froze his US assets. He lives now in Israel.

Interestingly, Kolomoysky was also the main owner of Burisma, the Ukrainian oil-holding that paid drug-addict Hunter Biden, the son of sleepy-creepy Joe Biden, then US vice-president, the moderate monthly sum of 50K USD for doing nothing in particular but providing "connections".

As the so-called Pandora Papers, discovered in 2021, revealed, Kolomoysky had paid Zelensky over the years some 40 million USD in support of his TV career. And once Zelensky's political career had started to take off, sums in the hundreds of millions had been funneled by Kolomoysky, through various channels, into various off-shore accounts and invested in real estate in London and Miami as pay-offs to the Zelensky-clan - in the name of his brothers and the Zelensky wives.

And I bet that the good man will also take a good cut now of the billions of Western financial aid currently flowing into Ukraine.

Hence, once Zelensky's sacrificing of the Ukrainian people comes to an end, at least care has been taken of his and his family's comfortable retirement.

So much for Z's anti-corruption crusade. And as for Zelensky's love of peace and freedom, the picture does not look any better.

He did indeed make a brief attempt to pacify the Donbas region. But as soon as he encountered the hostile opposition of the various ultra-nationalist military or paramilitary bands, regiments, battalions, etc., that had been assembled in the region to fight and combat the Russia-friendly secessionists - most infamous among these bands the so-called Asow battalion (founded and funded by Kolomoysky!), that would make its last stand in the Asowstal steel factory in Mariupol, owned by anti-Russian Rinat Ahmatov, the wealthiest of all Ukrainian oligarchs - Zelensky caved in, in order to hold on to his grip on power.

Indeed, he folded these ultra-nationalist groups into the regular army and assisted them in successively infiltrating and gradually taking over the entire Ukrainian security apparatus.

As soon as the Russian invasion started, then, he prohibited all men between the age of 18 and 60 to leave the country. They were thus taken hostage and condemned to fight, whether they wanted to do so or not.

This, while the Ukrainian oligarchs remained free, of course, roaming around Europe, and all the while Russians could still freely travel abroad and take their vacations wherever they were still welcome.

Moreover, all internal opponents and opposition forces were branded as hostile Russian collaborators and silenced through threats, imprisonment or even assassination. Zelensky's predecessor as president, Petro Poroshenko, himself no friend of Russia, was accused of treason. All opposition parties were outlawed. All media daring to deviate from the official government narrative were closed down, and people showing any pro-Russian sympathies were publicly humiliated, maltreated or even killed and murdered.

So much for Jesus Zelensky.

I'm gradually coming to a conclusion now: in going on about Ukraine and Zelensky at some length, it has of course not been my purpose to white-wash Putin or excuse any of his crimes. As emphasized before, any interstate-war is a conflict of rival criminal gangs regarding "their" turf.

Rather, it was my intention to right and correct the systematic imbalance and distortion created and presented in the Western narrative concerning the present conflict.

And to demonstrate the utter depravity of the German (and not only the German) ruling elite to declare its unconditional solidarity with the ruling gang of the Ukraine and to send them as much money and weapons "as it takes". Money and weapons that are not their own, but that were stolen and confiscated from their own people, and which will have to be paid for by their own people through massive inflation and impoverishment, all the while they themselves keep on living high on the hog.

And they are sending all of this loot to a foreign criminal gang that had brought the entire disaster upon itself, or rather its population, by listening to the criminal gang running US-NATO foreign policy. A gang that - as demonstrated over and over again, in Vietnam, in Iraq, in Syria, Libya, etc. etc. - does not care one whit about the Ukrainian population and its well-being, but is only interested about the expansion and extension of its own turf and is willing to accept as many Ukrainian deaths and destruction "as it takes" to bring down or at least bleed and deadly weaken Russia as one of the only two major remaining stumbling-blocs on their march toward ultimate world domination.

Moreover, it was my intention to demonstrate how, after the cruelties committed by the ruling elites in Germany against its own population for more than two years, during the artificially manufactured or fabricated so-called covid pandemic, with still no end in sight, this very same gang, in a combination of cowardice and recklessness, has maneuvered Germany, and with it all of Europe, onto the verge of a world war III.

Even if the German government gang might not have been able to prevent the Russian invasion of the Ukraine, which is doubtful in itself, it would certainly have been able to de-escalate the current conflagrations and bring them to a much quicker end, if only it had shown a little bit of backbone vis-à-vis its US-masters and, like Orban and little Hungary, had abstained from its policy of unconditional sanctions and embargoes against Russia.

As Europe's dominant economic power, and possibly in cooperation with France, this would have stopped the currently still ongoing military-financial gravy train in Zelensky's direction from the EU and all of its members in its tracks. Zelensky and his ruling gang would likely have been quickly overthrown, even before the outbreak of the current conflict his popularity had already dropped from initially more than 70% to about 20%. Ukraine would have had to let its two eastern provinces go and recognize the Crimea as part of Russia and accept for itself the status of a neutral, de-militarized country. What in the world was so bad about that? And how in the world would that have hurt or damaged German interests?

But no, as soon as the old and tiresome song of the incomparable German historical guilt was intoned by the usual suspects in the US, and echoed in Poland and other eastern territories, any and all initial hesitancy was dropped, and the German political elites, along with the media, fell quickly into line and demonstrated or revealed their status as obedient and servile lapdogs.

And the entire parade of hirelings, dupes and knaves, fools, fakes and frauds is led by the German Greens, whose leadership features the worst characters ever in post WWII Germany to reach the political top. They are the most ignorant and the least accomplished, and yet at the same time the most self-assured, fanatic and megalomanic people ever, and hence: the most dangerous people.

Thus, Germany is led by people intent upon putting their country on a course of de-industrialization and into an intellectual stone-age, however a politically correct, climate-, race-, ethnicity- and gender-neutral new age, a world a la John Lennon, with no country, no religion and no possessions.

And these creatures are considered the most popular political leaders by the majority of the German public.

What can you say to all this? I, for one, can only weep.

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