by Peter Löcke //
You have little idea about geopolitics and international law? Neither do I. Actually, you only need to memorize two sentences to achieve expert status. We are at war with Russia. But we are not a party to the war. You see a contradiction in that? Then you're not an expert.
At the beginning of last week, Chancellor Olaf Scholz toured the German media to announce the liberation of the leopards. At last. It's about time. This was the jubilant tenor of the tweeting German politicians. This is the jubilant tenor of the headlines in the gazettes. And no and no again! Neither Germany nor NATO will become a party to the war. Really not. This message absolutely had to be conveyed to the people.
At almost the same time, on January 24, 2023, Annalena Baerbock will give a speech to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe in Strasbourg. Afterwards, the German Foreign Minister will answer questions from MEPs. One of them is Christopher Chope. And Baerbock delivers as usual in her answer to the British Conservative.
"We are fighting a war against Russia and not against each other."
Since then I've been preoccupied with one question. Is this woman stupid, dangerous or both? I'll come back to that. I often find the reactions to a scandal just as exciting as the scandal itself. This is also the case here. Baerbock's quote went viral on that very Tuesday, worldwide. Only not in Germany. There was a great silence there. Why? My hypothesis is this: Presumably dozens of employees were sitting in Germany's editorial and official offices, slapping their foreheads with the flat of their hands to solve the following task: How do we save the German foreign minister's butt this time?
After Baerbock's announcement that she didn't care about her own voters, after Baerbock's publicly expressed fear of popular uprisings in Germany, after several other malmots - how do we save the German Foreign Minister's butt this time? After a delay of around 24 hours, late on Wednesday, the standard answer was presented by the Foreign Office and the leading German media. BILD right of first refusal. The answer was "Same as always." I summarize the creative articles.
Baerbock has simply slipped a little. And this slippage must now be straightened out. What the German Foreign Minister said, she actually meant quite differently. The danger lies not in the statement itself, but in the fact that it benefits Kremlin propaganda. And anyway: criticism comes mainly from the right. Desired message? Anyone who criticizes the German Foreign Minister is an AfD member, a Putin supporter or both. So far so primitive. So far so normal. Same procedure as every scandal. One particular justification for Baerbock's latest lapse did amuse me. The sentence in question was uttered in English and in free speech. I hereby affirm on oath: You could wake me up at three o'clock in the morning, drowsy or drunk, and still this sentence would never cross my lips. No matter in which of the three languages available to me.
So be it. Perhaps the German Foreign Minister really can only be judged for sentences that she reads off a piece of paper or a teleprompter. In other words, for speeches written by others. So I took a look at Baerbock's speech to the Parliamentary Assembly and read it through. Here the English original as video. Here the official German translation.
The lecture was full of pathos and emotionally charged. Elie Wiesel, a survivor of the Holocaust, was quoted, as was Konrad Adenauer. There was also a touching story about a 16-year-old girl from Kharkiv who can no longer go to school and drinks hot tea with Baerbock in sub-zero temperatures. The girl had tears in her eyes. Who would disagree with a crying child? Nobody. Call me cynical. But I immediately thought of the incubator lie. One of NATO's many war-inducing lies in its history. Many of them can even be found on Wikipedia. I really stumbled over another sentence.
"Neutrality was not an option."
Taking on a neutral role was therefore never considered. Why? Because this is about good versus evil. The somewhat free official translation is:
"That is why we could not be neutral in the face of the Russian war. We had to make a choice - between injustice and justice, oppression and freedom. Between taking sides with the aggressor and taking sides with the victims - victims like the teenagers in Kharkiv. And that's exactly what we did."
Is Baerbock stupid or dangerous? In my opinion, she is both. The last battle between good and evil, injustice and justice, oppression and freedom, started in 2001. There was supposedly no option then either. Who actually won this battle for democracy? There is one small difference, in case Baerbock is not the only one who thinks the whole thing is a sandbox game. This war and the war on terror differ in one respect.
The supposed bad guy in the sandpit has the opportunity to blow up the whole playground.
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15 Responses
Unfortunately, it is often the stupid ones who are the most dangerous! Every day I think to myself that this woman, who is so obviously completely incompetent and unsuitable for ANY ministerial office, is still in office. Someone who has done so much damage in such a short time should have been removed from office long ago. But in Germany, as we all know, everything always takes a little longer than elsewhere. See ex-Defense Minister Lambrecht.
Thanks to Dr. Roland Aßmann for the open letter to the Minister of Justice Buschmann. I suspect that the letter will not reach its addressee and, if it does, that the Ministry of Justice will not take a serious look at the contents.
The comments by G. Hamsinger and Fred Kluge, among others, probably express what many people in Germany think about these and other politicians - unfortunately mostly only in private.
It shows how badly this country needs reform. Politicians must be held accountable for their gross negligence. Flowery promises like those made at the inauguration are not enough. Nor more laws, but legal texts that are unambiguous for everyone and apply to everyone. In this context, I refer to the Basic Law 2030 by Carlos A. Gebauer and the proposal with Article 38 on politicians' liability (see also https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x-KVcNFJXzE).
A. Gebauer quotes, among others, the Hungarian author Arthur Köstler (1935) "... funeral processions passed under my window in Kharkov every day. Not a single word about the local famine, about epidemics, about the extinction of entire villages. You got the feeling of a dreamlike unreality. The newspapers seemed to speak of a completely different country that had no contact whatsoever with the daily life we led, and it was the same with the radio.
There is no question in my mind that this woman's stupidity, obliviousness to history and lack of self-reflection cannot be surpassed. Alone! What does that say about all those in this country who still can't and won't see that? THESE are the people we have to live and survive with. That's what leaves me speechless and has uprooted me in this society.
I feel exactly the same way as you do.
Many thanks for the links to the source, in the spirit of https://clubderklarenworte.de/quellenstudium! Of course I called them both up and watched the recording until the facial expressions vividly underlined the minister's enjoyment of the joking passages - as one does as a war party. Or is it? That was still early, only the fourth paragraph in the German transcript. From then on, I preferred to read so as not to be distracted from the content. In paragraph eleven, I had my own Löcke experience: "Hand on heart - when we were not yet members of parliament and politicians, many of us must have confused the Council of Europe with the European Council at some point." reads another humorous passage. It's funny: for me, it's the other way around: as a "not yet MEP", I can tell the difference between the two even at three in the morning, but as an MEP it could be different "at some point" ...
I read faster as I went along, skimming more and more at the end. Many associations guided my thoughts, there is too much one could say about this text. Three examples will suffice. Right in paragraph twelve it says: "I believe that younger people [...] are incredibly lucky to have spent their entire lives in times of peace [...]." Times of peace? Really now? When I was very young, there was already Vietnam, on the other side of the world, but inevitable. Then came the great generation of European peace lovers around Brandt, Kreisky, Palme and many others, with whom I grew up until Gorbachev completed their work. Later, when Annalena reached my old age, the nearby vacation destination of Yugoslavia sank into war and NATO bombed Serbia. Everyone knows what followed, much closer than Vietnam at the time, so I'll spare you the details.
Secondly, somewhere in the middle it says: "President Putin wants to push Europe back into a past dominated by power politics." Power politics! How right she is! That gives me a real gut feeling. Only they say that Putin is reacting. And obviously very unintentionally, because many of those affected in the war zone are thinking: damn, eight years too late! We now know who was actually conducting power politics. Also thanks to Poroshenko, Merkel, Hollande, many others such as the US ambassador to Switzerland Scott Miller and, most recently, Boris Johnson.
After all, the European Court of Human Rights is mentioned no less than twenty-one times in the text. Wow! That just led me to https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Europ%C3%A4ischer_Gerichtshof_f%C3%BCr_Menschenrechte#Anh%C3%A4ngige_Verfahren. Where I added the last column and made the table sortable - which takes experience and, above all, a little time. Russia now sits inconspicuously in the midfield alongside Switzerland, the Czech Republic and Italy. Turkey and Romania in particular were condemned relatively often, as was Ukraine. Germany, on the other hand, almost stands out as the poster boy - while I can't help but think of the political prisoner Michael Ballweg in Stammheim terror prison! And of course Julian Assange in the corresponding British Bellmarsh, the https://hpd.de/artikel/schweigen-zum-fall-assange-20320 makes an illuminating comparison with Alexei Navalny.
No stone is left standing on another in my old intellectual world: Could it be that power politics is also at work in this honorable body? -
The laws, the law are still there and will always be there. You can see that from the fact that people are still acting in secret. People shy away from the light of day. Democracy is not forbidden. That is crucial. We are not a banana republic just because some people pretend we are. I am convinced that the whole WHO madness will be brought to an end by a functioning Federal Constitutional Court. We will see how far we have to sink into chaos and agony before then. At some point there will be a comeback, no matter what some people come up with. When you listen to Harari, you think, is this in the spirit of democracy, of declared human and civil rights? Anyone can read up on this and make up their own mind, it's about time. And all those who believe that things are not going so well in continental Europe should rest assured that many people agree with them. I was at the big demonstration in Brussels a year ago, there were a lot of young people there from France, Benelux, Germany and even, if I remember correctly, from Poland, and I realized that the truth is unstoppable. Toothpaste is not going back into the tube. We should exercise our right to voice our concerns about the government policy that is taking place, because it is our right, and some say our duty. In my experience, there is a large section of the population that feels unease and doubt when their thoughts touch on politics and the media. That is where the potential for new majorities lies. As I said, we live in a democracy, nobody bites this thread.
Postscript: And the supposed one will also blow it up! What's stopping him so far? The proximity to the scene of retribution. The decades-long friendship of convenience with the German nation that will last until the beginning of 2022. Finally, his own nature, which is inclined towards peaceful coexistence. However, if Germany's political leadership doesn't refrain from continuing to hammer in the sting, the pain will overshadow sentences 2 to 4 and it will come to sentence 1 of my postscript to the article. I would like nothing more than to be wrong here.
Three excerpts from an open letter to Justice Minister Marco Buschmann and the FDP leadership (original letter available to CdkW):
"Dear Mr. Buschmann, dear Free Democrats,
When I look at this situation https://www.nachdenkseiten.de/?p=92952 The following questions arise for me when I look at the verdict of the Berlin peace activist Heiner B.: Is Germany still a constitutional state with a free and democratic basic order or is it already an autocracy with sham democratic legitimization with members of parliament predominantly defined by the parties instead of the voters (see discussion on electoral law reform), without freedom of expression and without an independent judiciary? Or are we already under undeclared martial law? After all, our unfortunate Foreign Minister recently mentioned succinctly in Strasbourg that "we are at war with Russia" (see https://www.msn.com/de-de/nachrichten/politik/baerbock-irritiert-mit-aussage-in-stra%C3%9Fburg-moskau-fordert-kl%C3%A4rung/ar-AA16NdaR?ocid=msedgntp&cvid=c79d7f5137fb44208660f5f04eaea137). Is a declaration of war in a public speech actually unpunishable? Or have we already reached the point, as we did twice in the 20th century, where the powerful are above law and order? It seems that we only have weak or even non-specialist* ministers as pawns of internationally active arms and climate protection lobbyists (see the following report in DIE ZEIT: https://www.zeit.de/2022/25/hal-harvey-lobbyist-klima-elektromobilitaet) as well as an SPD interior minister who can hardly be called a democrat and various leading politicians of the traffic light coalition who openly sympathize with the violent left-wing extremist spectrum (according to our laws, coercion and trespassing also constitute violence or breaking the law). In this climate, in which the applicable law is gradually being dissolved and replaced by the law of the more powerful and louder, it is no longer surprising that the Federal Constitutional Court has made the wrong decisions."
…..
"The conflict between East and West, falsely referred to as the "cold war", was only a cold war for a short time after 1945. After that it was hot, even very hot. A trail of devastation runs through many countries, many of which, like us, trusted the great powers to protect them. Not only did countless people die in this brutal state of permanent aggression by the superpowers or blocs, quite a few were burned alive by the use of napalm, flamethrowers and similar brutal weapons. Therefore, for me, all those who are fueling this undeclared war of the superpowers are war criminals and should be treated as such. The fact that Julian Assange has instead been deprived of his freedom for years for his commitment against this war and for opening people's eyes to the atrocities and how relentlessly and stupidly this war is being waged in the language of the military waging it (see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KiPjNPwFgEg) fulfills its own criminal offense of a crime against humanity, if not against humanity. Because Julian Assange is a global hero of peace and therefore also my hero."
…..
"The leadership of the FDP is not only endangering itself, you and AMSZ in particular must deal with that with yourselves and your family, you are endangering us all. You are playing a dangerous game that not only I increasingly perceive as Russian roulette (see the ZDF documentary "Putin and the bomb" - s. https://www.zdf.de/dokumentation/zdfzoom/zdfzoom-ukraine-russland-putin-krieg-atombombe-100.html. Survival as a "game of chance" (original quote from the ZDF documentary) is something I cannot, will not and will never accept as a family man.
If you have even a little bit of the courage that a Free Democrat should actually call his own and that Stefan Naas, René Rock and Christian Lindner recently invoked loudly and extensively in Wiesbaden, then start an initiative to punish all those who have fueled and encouraged this conflict between the superpowers since 1945 and thus caused countless innocent victims, however unpromising and unrealistic that may be. These undoubtedly include Putin and Lavrov, but also all the politicians who have fueled this conflict between the superpowers by arming and starting wars in Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, South America and Africa, as well as in Ukraine. However, this logically includes politicians from both the West and the East, but also from Ukraine and the particularly aggressive states of the former Eastern bloc. Because these are the real war criminals and not Heiner B., the victim of a justice system that could have acted in the same or a similar way in the period from 1933 to 45 or the aforementioned Julian Assange.
When I watched the report from the Bundestag last night on the Tagesschau about contemporary witnesses of the Nazi regime, I don't believe that many members of parliament understood what happened back then and what lessons could actually be drawn from this unspeakable time. Because if they had understood, they would stand for a different German state much further away from armament, arms exports and senseless wars as well as state repression of its citizens. They would be united in demanding the punishment of all war criminals and warmongers, not just those responsible in Russia. On a broad front, the MPs seem to have suppressed Article 1 of the Basic Law and are no longer capable of any recognizable self-reflection. There is no other explanation for the broad applause for the decision to supply weapons to a war zone and thus fuel the escalating hot war in Ukraine as the last stage of the so-called cold war (see https://www.msn.com/de-de/nachrichten/politik/die-katastrophe/ar-AA16JKgr?ocid=winp2fptaskbarhover&cvid=f66e06459f8d489bbf565675180a84de ) - Excerpt from this t-online report: "The hall is clapping, the mood in the Bundestag is good. Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD) has decided to deliver Leopard tanks to Ukraine. For many in the Bundestag, this is a long-awaited liberating blow. The FDP, the Greens, the CDU - they have long been pushing for more support for Ukraine, especially with weapons."
…..
January 28, 2023
Baerbock is a woman without the capacity for self-control and self-reflection and without any judgment about the outside world due to a lack of knowledge and experience. According to Kant, stupidity is the usual expression for a lack of judgment and in this respect the woman is really and truly stupid. However, this is now common knowledge among the governments of the world and in this respect she poses no real danger. I don't think there is any foreign minister or head of government left who would voluntarily want to be seen with this woman and talked to by her.
At the age of 76, I've already experienced a lot in the Foreign Ministry. When I think of Schmidt, Genscher or Maas, Bearbock shouldn't even be making coffee for these gentlemen. It doesn't look any better with her buddy Habeck. I think this will be the last term of office for the Green idiots.
Heiko Maas was an unparalleled joke. On a par with Baerbock. How can you compare Maas with Schmidt or Genscher?
I know, I'm repeating myself. The list of Baerbock's obscenities gets longer every day and yet there are a significant number of people in Germany who think it's great and an even larger number of people who will vote for the Greens again. That is the real drama.
I don't think it fits right now. Nevertheless, I would like to make you think with the following joke.
In view of the various political systems, if a person were to describe their work at the end of their life, a communist would probably say "I was able to do what I wanted throughout my life, but never what I wanted."
A capitalist, a person of Western values, would probably say, "I could do what I wanted all my life, but never what I should."
A European, one whose life is regulated by the state through rigid laws, would probably say, "I couldn't really do what I wanted all my life, and certainly not what I should."
Good article. Unfortunately, it will achieve nothing. The Baerböcke and Haböcke, the "Germany, you lousy piece of shit" Roths and hypocritical philanthropists like Katrin Göring-E. have taken power and will not relinquish it until this stupid country is destroyed. They are helped in this by the many knife murderers from Islamistan who are lured here, pitied for their murderous outbursts and placed in psychiatric wards. Of course, the many German Nazis are to blame for everything ... and now Putin too. I would rather emigrate from this deeply sick country yesterday than tomorrow, but I am too old and too poor to do so. Instead, I have contracted chronic gastritis out of sheer rage.
For heaven's sake, Ms. Moser - don't get so angry about the actions and inactions of this cucumber troupe; try to severely limit your media consumption or leave it alone for a while - gastritis is too much of an "honor" for these political clowns. Rejoice
of beautiful things for the eyes and ears that are often free of charge ... music, nature, animals and contact with balanced, cheerful people.
Perhaps over-the-counter tablets from the pharmacy..... I'll give you the PZN no. 11173 206 All the best!