A Berlin court judge has dismissed a charge of threatening public order by a speech by Heinrich Buecker (lead image, left) last year for which he has been prosecuted for “publicly approving a crime of aggression”. Buecker is a well-known Berlin anti-war activist and critic of the German government’s war against Russia in the Ukraine. His speech was given in a Berlin park last June 22 on the 81st anniversary of the German invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941.
In a 90-minute courtroom session on April 27, guarded by five armed police, Judge Marieluis Brinkmann (right) of the Tiergarten District Court of Berlin (at rear of lead image) interrupted and stopped Buecker testifying in what the judge dismissed as “a history lesson”; refused to accept from his defence lawyer mainstream German media publications and Bundestag reports as evidence that Buecker’s opinions had been circulating widely in public before he spoke at the Berlin rally; and would not allow legal argument on Article 5, the free speech provision of the German constitution known as the Basic Law.
Instead, Judge Brinkmann ruled that an earlier conviction and fine for Buecker in the Tiergarten District Court in January should be dismissed because his speech had been a private one in front of Buecker’s “fans”, not a public speech at all.
This is a new interpretation of law for which there is no German constitutional precedent. Article 5 draws no distinction between private and public speech; or the size of the audiences which are covered by the constitution; “every person,” the text says, “shall have the right freely to express and disseminate his opinions in speech, writing and pictures, and to inform himself without hindrance from generally accessible sources.”
The Berlin judge also broke German court precedent and judicial practice by announcing in her ruling a finding of fact and law about which she had refused to allow any evidence or argument to be presented and tested in court. In the Ukraine, she announced, Russia is waging a “war of aggression in violation of international law.”
In her ruling the judge signalled that the German authorities want to prevent the Buecker case from becoming a rallying cause for free speech advocates across the country. “They want the issue to go away as quickly as possible,” Buecker said. “They realize it’s becoming too public.”
First, the news from the front as George Eliason reports on his tour this week of the civilian destruction and mass grave sites at Popasnaya, Kremennaya, and Severodonetsk in the Lugansk region. Then from the federal court in Worcester, Massachusetts, a Department of Justice document making fresh revelations in the John Teixeira case that hint at a plea bargain which the US media are covering up. And then from Canada’s west coast, guest Chris “Gorilla Radio” Cook on what the US has already made of Canada, and what will happen when the Ukrainian diaspora faces the capitulation of the regime in Kiev and Lvov.
The war and US war sanctions have reversed the destruction of the Russian farm economy forced during the 1990s by the US “reformers” in the Yeltsin administration led by the recently exiled Anatoly Chubais.
Now, however, under government orders for self-sufficiency in food production, protection from US biochemical warfare against the Russian food chain, and revival of Soviet seed breeding centres, the American, German, French and Dutch agro-industry exporters which have profited in Russia for thirty years are being locked out.
Not only in Russia and in the Ukraine – the Axis faces long-term competition in Europe, Asia and Africa in the future.
“We are defeating the Americans and Germans on the battlefield,” observes a veteran farm industry source in Moscow. “We are going to do the same on the farm field. Do you remember what Nikita Sergeyevich [Khrushchev] said a long time ago – ‘we will bury you’. And you have been saying that’s what you are going to do to us.”
Once upon a time, one of the leading literary figures in the UK defended Russian culture by staging a play in a London theatre in 1920 and again in 1926. J.M. (James) Barrie, famous then and now as the creator of Peter Pan, was the playwright; the play he wrote was called “The Truth about Russian Dancers”.
Not one Englishman or Scotsman (for that was Barrie’s race) dares to do such a thing today.
Barrie’s play followed after the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 and the attempts by the British government in military operations, economic sanctions, and propaganda to attack the new Kremlin regime, kill Vladimir Lenin, and replace the Red government. These military operations didn’t end until the British army withdrew from Russia in September 1920, five months after Barrie’s play had concluded its popular stage run.
According to his script, the fantasy and beauty Barrie characterised as the Russianness of Karissima, the heroine of the play, and her company of dancers is pitted against the unimaginativeness and rigid conformity of the British. And so it is today – that is, if you believe in Barrie, Peter Pan, and their lost boys.
Late on Friday evening in New York, early Saturday morning in Moscow, the New York Times published a report by well-known mouthpieces for US and British intelligence on the Pentagon Papers.
This reveals fresh evidence of what the TNT War of the Worlds broadcast last week reported was the way John Teixeira, the alleged leaker of ten secret briefing papers on the Ukraine war from the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, was profiled by the Pentagon and over nine months of 2022 targeted in an official operation to disclose military secrets, which became public knowledge on April 6.
In this operation, Teixeira was the patsy for a Pentagon attack on Washington, Kiev and other allied officials who are planning to launch a Ukrainian counter-offensive against Russian forces. This, the Pentagon Papers reveal, risks not only Russian defeat of the Ukrainians on the battlefield, but also the destruction of US military dominance in Europe and the international credibility of the North Atlantic Treaty (NATO) alliance.
The report by Aric Toler of Bellingcat, Julian Barnes, and Malachy Browne of the newspaper, is headlined “Airman Shares Sensitive Intelligence More Widely and for Longer than Previously Known.” With Toler’s and Barnes’ long record for fabricating and promoting Ukrainian Secret Service (SBU), British Secret Intelligence Service (MI6), and Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) source lies, the article means the opposite of its conclusion: “The additional information raises questions about why authorities did not discover the leaks sooner”. This is the alibi of the official leakers – they didn’t fail to discover the leaks later, they launched them from the start.
The Bellingcat group and New York Times now reveal that Teixeira began leaking “sensitive” information in “February 2022, soon after the invasion of Ukraine”. Sensitive means not classified.
The reporters also call the leaks “secret intelligence on the Russian war effort” but they repeat this consisted of “posts containing the sensitive information” and “classified documents”. No direct evidence of what the reporters claim they “reviewed” has been published, neither their classification codes nor other document records. “While it appears that the user [Teixeira] likely posted pictures of some documents, those have since been deleted from the chat group.” In other words, the reporters are claiming they have seen “detailed written accounts” – written by Teixeira. How and from what source the Bellingcat group got this evidence is being kept secret still. How the group knows what Teixeira allegedly wrote and what is or was classified secret, they don’t say.
The reporters also reveal that Teixeira claimed to his chat group of adolescent gamers in September 2022 that he “usually worked with GCHQ [General Government Communications Headquarters] people when I’m looking at foreign countries.” This is now a hint that it was the British signals agency who detected what Teixeira was doing and, according to the standard intelligence-sharing practice, alerted the US counterpart National Security Agency, which then alerted the US Air Force commanding Teixeira’s unit and other agencies. This Pentagon the Pentagon– that’s now the hint that it was the British who first spotted what Teixeira was doing, alerted the CIA and Pentagon. If the latter didn’t know it already.
The reporters did not contact GCHQ directly to ask what they knew, when they knew it, and what they relayed to Washington. Instead, they say questioned the British Embassy in Washington where, they report, “a spokeswoman…declined to comment.”
If this was the sequence of events, it would represent significant mitigating evidence for Teixeira, as well as the legal defence of entrapment when he goes to court on charges of espionage. For the time being, the federal magistrate judge in the Boston proceeding has postponed the plea and bail hearing scheduled for Teixeira on April 19 to allow his defence attorneys time to review the evidence and prepare.
The attorneys are also likely to argue that the indictment of Teixeira under the Espionage Act, 3 requires proof of “intent or reason to believe that the information is to be used to the injury of the United States, or to the advantage of any foreign nation.”
The New York Timespublication has identified Teixeira’s lawyer as a Boston public defender named Joshua Hanye. Hanye is a highly experienced, 19-year veteran of criminal prosecutions. For Hanye to be vetted and obtain the security clearances required for him to see the top-secret codeword documents alleged in evidence against Teixeira will requires weeks, if not months. For the time being, he has entered no plea in court, and he refuses to speak with the Bellingcat group.
If Teixeira and Hanye are suspicious that Bellingcat and the New York Times are working for the government against him, there is reason in the published report itself. Toler, Barnes and Browne claim that “the Times found an online receipt in Airman Teixeira’s name” for the purchase of an antique rifle. This indicates the reporters have had access to official evidence taken from Teixeira’s personal computer. This is not open-source journalism; this access means government authorization to Toler of Bellingcat for access to prosecution evidence.
Accordingly, in this case everything Bellingcat and the New York Times say should be taken down and used in evidence against them.
In the history of the privatization of Russia’s industrial polluters no oligarch has been dirtier, penalized more often, and avoided court and state regulators more regularly than the steel, coke and coal producer, Igor Zyuzin. No one has more faithfully and profitably lobbied for Zyuzin’s benefit in parliament and government than Alexander Shokhin (lead image, right).
Their successful collaboration at prevailing over the declared pollution policies of President Vladimir Putin, the regional governors, and the federal anti-pollution agency Rospriradnadzor (RPN), have been reported since 2017. Zyuzin’s record, including his concealment of his profits abroad through the New York Stock Exchange, the New York Times, and the Financial Times, has been documented for much longer.
In the most recent tale about Zyuzin and Shokhin a month ago, it was reported that a state bank was planning to nationalize Zyuzin’s assets through a bankruptcy court case, and that he and Shokhin were appealing for Kremlin help to stave off that outcome, in part by relieving the group of its pollution liabilities.
Until now, Zyuzin has always seen off the bank court claims, with Shokhin’s help. In this new report, published yesterday by the Moscow business daily Vedomosti – no longer owned by the Financial Times and Wall Street Journal — the overwhelming majority of the parliament’s deputies have had no qualms voting approval in a first reading several months ago of another Zyuzin bailout, despite the evidence on their desks that a strong faction of government ministers, agencies and banks want to put a stop to Zyuzin. This faction proposed to State Duma deputies that they vote on much tougher measures this week.
There are limitations in the way the Vedomosti reporter, Nadezhda Sintsova, can compose and can publish this story. But Russian readers know how to read between the lines. Compared to the coverage of Zyuzin’s business in the New York and London papers, the Russian text has meaning in the lines, even more between them. The American and British reporting has printed falsehood on the lines, and corruption between them.
The title of an op-ed piece by a Moscow academic, published this week in Vzglyad, bellwether of Russian security analysts, requires reading between the lines. Every Russian knows how to do this since the tsar’s chancellery posted bulletins outside the Winter Palace on how well the Russian Navy was doing in battles against the Japanese at Port Arthur in 1904.
Neither the gap nor the remedy has been the point of any communiqué issued from the regular meetings of the Kremlin Security Council, nor has it been discussed publicly in the state media, including the Valdai Club.
The Vzglyad headline refers to the one international conflict on which President Vladimir Putin has said so little since the start of his term, and done so much – this is Israel’s war against Palestine.
The gap was made visible once by the General Staff; that was in September 2018 after the Israel Air Force caused the shoot-down in Syria of a Russian Ilyushin-20M electronic reconnaissance aircraft (lead image), and the killing of all fifteen crewmen on board. At that time the Russian military expressed a loss of confidence which had not been seen in public since President Boris Yeltsin countermanded orders for Russian military aid to Serbia under NATO bombing between March and June 1999, dismissing Prime Minister Yevgeny Primakov on the US demand.
Read the first report of the evidence in the Il-20 case on September 18, 2018, and the second report on September 24, 2018. The third report two months later revealed what happened after Putin had what the Kremlin spokesman called “a short talk” with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Paris on November 11, 2018. The next day, the Security Council notice of November 12 reported Putin had “informed the permanent members of the Security Council about several of his brief meetings on the sidelines of the events in Paris.”
Four and a half years have elapsed since then. The Vzglyad headline of April 17 means there is a policy, and there is pressing reason of state to change it now. Inside the text, the point is expressed by its author more tentatively. “Perhaps it’s time to change the approach somewhat? After all, it no longer fully corresponds to both the changed regional situation and Russian national interests.”
There’s one way of winning a war while keeping the home fires burning as normally as possible; and another way of losing a war while keeping the home fires burning as normally as possible.
The first way is to stock up on champagne, as they are doing in Moscow.
The second way is Washington’s: that’s to send armoured units, combat uniformed police, and media reporters in helicopters to a village to capture a boy in his night shorts. You already know all there is to see – if not to know — about the second. Here is what to know in addition.
In Moscow, the news just in, according to Tass, is that “in the first quarter of 2023, the production of champagne in Russia increased by 14.4% to 2.5 million decalitres relative to the indicator of 2022”. Also, “the government did not support the idea of posting a warning on every bottle, on ‘Alcohol is your enemy!’”
In this war, Russians know exactly who and what the main enemy is, as they keep telling the domestic pollsters. It’s the US.
The sound out of Washington from the Pentagon Papers is what is known in the medical profession as a death rattle. This is what happens when an emperor makes a lethal or suicidal mistake; dies at the hands of his praetorian guard; and is replaced by the military candidate.
In ancient Rome the process started with the murder of the Emperor Caligula (lead image, left) and his replacement by Claudius from 41 to 54 AD. As Claudius predicted, it would get worse. From 238 AD there were fourteen “barracks emperors” in just thirty-three years. After that there were ghost emperors – the real power was in the Roman army. But the power of the army was shrinking smaller and smaller geographically as it ran out of arms to extract tribute and enforce its tax-paying protectorate until ultimately it could not protect itself.
The history means the empire doesn’t die quite as quickly as the emperor.
What the Pentagon Papers mean is that that the US is heading for military rule. An incumbent or a candidate without the endorsement of the Joint Chiefs of Staff cannot win or keep his power. This form of military rule is not so much to save the empire from the Russians in Europe and the Chinese in Asia – the US Army, Navy and Air Force are already losing both of those wars. They have leaked their warnings to a hapless boy at an airbase on Cape Cod in order to cut their losses and save themselves to fight another day.
Accordingly, the Pentagon Papers signal the start of their fight to the end of the caligulists at the State Department like Antony Blinken (right) and Victoria Nuland (centre), and the so-called neocon (horse for president) faction in the Democratic Party.
This also means that the alternative US military voices whom you see on Youtube – Colonel Douglas McGregor, Lieutenant Colonel Anthony Shaffer, Major Scott Ritter and also CIA veterans like Philip Giraldi, Larry Johnson, and Ray McGovern – they too are trying to save the US empire. They aren’t pro-Russian or pro-Chinese. They don’t want to see the US forces defeated so comprehensively that none of the allies will agree to pay the bill to be protected.
