Germany's Last Chance

[This was also published at OpEdNews.com. There is a German translation here and published here.]

Tucker Carlson broadcast his "conspiracy theory" that the US blew up the Nord Stream pipelines on  Oct. 3, but the video was promptly removed from YouTube, which shows that even the second most popular news host is not immune to censorship by the Truth Ministry. Fox must have received a lot of complaints from Carlson's 3 million+ viewers because most of the material was repeated in his show on Oct. 6, minus the interview with Aaron Mate (see here). Jimmy Dore picked it up on Oct. 4. 

As Carlson and Dore and any rational person immediately understood, the circumstantial evidence points clearly to the US as perpetrator.  Anthony Blinken said on Oct. 3 that the pipeline sabotage has made the US now "the leading supplier of LNG [liquified natural gas] to Europe" and, more importantly, provides "a tremendous opportunity to once and for all remove the dependence [of Europe] on Russian energy." 

The real opportunity, though Blinken does not say so explicitly, is that the protests against the sanctions and warmongering policies of the NATO countries that are (still) expected to take place this fall and winter, especially in Germany, have been deprived of their most effective argument, which was that the cheap gas supply from Russia could have been restored at the mere flick of a switch. The destruction of both Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2 has made that potential lifesaver for the European economies inviable for the foreseeable future, if not forever. What is the point in protesting if there is no realistic alternative, much less the instant solution that the opening of Nord Stream 2 and the re-opening of Nord Stream 1 would have provided?

But wait. On Oct. 3 Gazprom, the majority owner and operator of the Nord Stream pipelines, tweeted that one of the two lines comprising Nord Stream 2 was undamaged and still operable. As reported by Bloomberg on Oct. 3, this line alone could provide 27.5 billion cubic meters per year to Germany, which is about a third of the country's annual consumption. This would be less than the amount that was imported from Russia before the Ukraine war (55%), but it would certainly lessen the severity of the recession that has already started and is expected to get worse.

The offer to open Nord Stream 2 was made official on Oct. 5 by Russian Deputy Prime Minister for the Fuel-Energy Complex Alexander Novak, and was widely reported in Germany, e.g. in the Süddeutsche Zeitung:

He offered to deliver gas to Europe through this pipeline. At the same time, he demanded Russia's participation in the investigation of the sabotage.

Bloomberg – and Jimmy Dore with Aaron Mate on Oct. 6 – reported this, but otherwise the coverage has been minimal to non-existent in the US. In Germany it got more coverage, but has been totally ignored by all the political parties, including the federal government's three coalition parties (SPD, Greens, FDP), the CDU and the Linke – except the AfD.  On Oct. 4 Tino Chrupulla, the AfD co-chairman, wrote on his Facebook page (my translation):

According to the Russian Gazprom Group, it is possible to deliver through Nord Stream 2's line B "after the system has been examined in terms of integrity." The German government must respond to this offer. If a line of Nord Stream 2 can be put into operation, it must be done before winter. The other damaged lines of Nord Stream 1 and 2 must also be repaired, opened and secured around the clock as soon as possible. If the government does nothing, it feeds the suspicion that it does not want or is not allowed to have the lines repaired.

… Nord Stream is and remains an important component of German energy security and sovereignty!

Another AfD politician, Gerd Mannes, wrote on his Facebook page on Oct. 6:

Gazprom's latest statements on the possible commissioning of Nord Stream 2 should be closely examined. The damage resulting from the attack is obviously repairable. The pipeline could be used promptly and would supply Germany with gas - if desired.

But instead, the federal coalition has stuck to its ideologically motivated narrative of not buying gas from Russia on favorable terms. Numerous companies are shutting down entire branches of production or moving abroad; millions of people are dreading the winter and the next electricity and heating bills.

The government is clinging to the failed energy transition for ideological reasons and is relying on sham solutions such as the gas price cap, which will lead to further national debt and even higher inflation.

Only the AfD advocates energy security. We demand an end to senseless sanctions and the use of every opportunity to supply our country and its citizens with cheap gas. In addition, the public should not be kept in the dark about the circumstances surrounding the attack on the pipelines. The federal government must do everything possible to clarify the situation and fully inform the public.

Since I will be denounced as a "far-right extremist" for even mentioning the AfD in a positive way, I may as well add that they are the only German party clearly opposing both the sanctions against Russia and arms deliveries to Ukraine. According to a recent poll, 63% of AfD voters thought the sanctions against Russia were excessive, compared to 43, 26, 20, 9 and 2% of Linke, FDP, CDU/CSU, SPD and Green voters, resp. Another recent poll shows voters NOT in favor of delivering heavy weapons (Kampfpanzer "main battle tanks") to Ukraine as follows: AfD 89%, Linke 75%, SPD 41%, CDU 37%, FDP 33%, Greens 12%. It is clear that the "far-right" AfD, and to a significantly lesser extent the "far-left" Linke, are the leading proponents of peace, and that the Greens, once a party of peace, is now the leading proponent of war.

According to a poll taken during the week of Sept. 25-Oct. 1, Germans would vote as follows "if the election were to take place on the following Sunday, Oct. 2, 2022." The second row shows the results of the Sept. 2021 election and the approximate allocation of the 736 seats in parliament.

Sept, 2021 (%)   SPD 28, Greens 16, FDP 13, CDU/CSU 27, AfD 11, Linke 5, Other 0.5

Oct. 2, 2022 (%) SPD 18, Greens 22, FDP 7, CDU/CSU 27 AfD 14, Linke 5, Other 7

It is unlikely that any participants in this poll would have had time to react to the news of the pipeline sabotage on Sept. 26, and obviously they had not heard the news on Oct. 3 that Nord Stream 2 was operable after all. Nor could they have reacted to the strange silence of almost all the political parties to these latest developments. Given all that is at stake, namely, the entire German economy, it seems safe to assume that the one party that did react, the AfD, would be rewarded with a rush of popular support if the election were held today.

The voice of the people, however, is not so easily heard, not even in a parliamentary democracy. The next German federal election is not until the fall of 2025, and there is no provision for "regime-change" except by a "constructive vote of no confidence," which requires a majority vote in parliament. Theoretically, this would be possible if enough parliamentarians in the other parties agreed to vote with the AfD, but this is highly unlikely. On the contrary, all the other parties seem to have agreed NOT to respond to the Russian offer to supply gas through Nord Stream 2 and are determined to continue their suicidal path to deindustrialization.

This is not because Putin is "weaponising the natural gas on which Germany’s mighty industrial base relies," as The Economist opines, but because Germany is weaponising the gas against itself. After the Germans and the EU decided to buy as little oil and gas from Russia as possible to punish Putin for invading Ukraine, whereupon the Russians obliged by supplying as little oil and gas to them as possible, and after the US told their good friends the Germans to forget about their brand-new 11-billion-euro gas pipeline (Nord Stream 2), and then, just to make sure they obeyed, blew up both pipelines, which would be a casus belli under any other circumstances, and even after the Russians, despite everything, have offered them a lifeline at the last moment, the Germans, in a final paroxysm of perverse Teutonic stubbornness, are refusing to be saved. 

This was the last chance for Germany to save itself, and the world. If we all disappear in a nuclear holocaust, Germany will be as much to blame as the US. After launching the Nazi scourge in WW2, the worst war in human history, in which the Soviets lost 20 to 27 million people, after the Soviet Union voluntarily dissolved itself and allowed a defeated and divided Germany to become a whole country again and even to join NATO, after standing idly by while Ukraine ignored the Minsk accords and became a de facto NATO power with a neo-Nazi goverment that terrorized the Russian-speaking population of the Donbas, despite the urgent warnings of Russia over a period of at least 14 years (since 2008) to respect their legitimate national security concerns (for a succinct history see here), the Germans have decided that Russia is their enemy. They are, of course, obrigkeitshörig (submissive to authority) as always, following their US master, failing to notice that the doddering emperor in Washington is naked as a jaybird and that the world, if it survives, will no longer be dominated by the US hegemon but will be multipolar. They could have joined Russia, China and the Global South in creating this new world, but instead they have cast their lot with the dying US empire.