Tamas Gergo Samu interviews John Helmer @bears_with
Tamas Gergo Samu conducted this interview by email earlier this month. Samu, a journalist, has been a Hungarian parliament deputy in Budapest; then an adviser to the head of the Movement for a Better Hungary (Jobbik Magyarországért Mozgalom), a key party in the parliamentary opposition bloc known as United for Hungary (EM). He left the Jobbik party two years ago, and is now an independent Bekes county councillor. The interview is to appear in Erdélyi Napló (“Transylvanian Journal”), the leading Hungarian weekly published in Cluj-Napoca, capital of the Transylvanian region of Romania.
By Thomas Röper, introduced and translated by John Helmer, Moscow @bears_with
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz (lead image, centre) and Thomas Haldenwang (extreme right) the internal security chief Scholz accepted from Angela Merkel, have pulled off a media coup in the style of the first German minister of propaganda, Joseph Goebbels (on knees).*
No German currently employed by the country’s mainstream or internet media dares to disbelieve that dawn raids last Wednesday by 3,000 armed police and troops, capturing 130 premises and arresting 25 individuals – conducted in secret in front of dozens of press photographers and reporters – was a successful strike against the German state’s internal and external enemies. The official press release by the federal prosecutor adds that another 27 individuals have been targeted but not yet captured. “In addition, premises of non-suspects are searched,” the federal government statement said.
Even the leftwing Berlin newspaper, Junge Welt, reported its conviction that the operation was “reminiscent of the 1920s: A nobleman, military personnel and a judge belonging to the AfD wanted to instigate a coup with a group of Reich citizens.”
No one in Germany is remembering the operation of June 29-July 1, 1934: that’s when Adolph Hitler, already chancellor but not yet fuhrer, with Heinrich Himmler of the SS, and Goebbels, arranged the liquidation of his critics and opponents led by Ernst Röhm, who was accused of receiving a large bribe from France to replace Hitler in a coup. Operation Hummingbird, Goebbels called it, to remove several dozen of the “politically unreliable”. The Night of the Long Knives the operation has been called ever since.
Speaking for Scholz, the German federal prosecutor’s office has announced the plotters were a terrorist organization planning to overthrow the state “through the use of military means and violence against state representatives; this also included commissioning killings.” The German Interior Minister of Scholz’s Social Democratic Party said the arrests prevented an “abyss of terrorist threat”. The Free Democratic Party in Scholz’s ruling coalition declared: “This is not about Germany at all, it is in truth about the destruction of parliamentary democracy.” The spokesman of Die Linke, the German left opposition, said the raid was “further evidence of the worrying presence of a militant, armed and internationally networked right-wing scene in Germany.”
Reported immediately by FinancialTimes, the Japanese propaganda organ in London, Scholz had struck against “the threat posed to western states by far-right extremism turbocharged by radical conspiracy theories such as QAnon”. The Washington Post uncovered experts to reassure Germans who have received Covid-19 vaccinations or who are Jewish that they are now safe from the “alleged plot to topple the German government, led by a self-styled prince, a retired paratrooper and a Berlin judge, had its roots in a murky mixture of post-war grudges, antisemitic conspiracy theories and anger over recent pandemic restrictions.”
The New York Times uncovered not only a German plot but evidence of how farsighted the New York Times itself had been in advance. “Among the items uncovered was a list containing 18 names of politicians considered enemies, possibly to be deported and executed, among them Chancellor Olaf Scholz, people familiar with the raids told The New York Times, requesting anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the investigation. This was the latest of a series of plots discovered in recent years of extremist networks preparing for a day the democratic order collapses, a day they call Day X, the subject of a New York Times podcast series last year.”
In Warsaw the Poles are laughing.
Polish officials and independent analysts in Warsaw have judged the German government operation preposterous, incompetent, unoriginal. “It reminds me of the plot in Poland in 2015,” noted Stanislas Balcerac, “where an instable academician was propped up by Polish secret service agents to prepare a false-flag plot to attack the Polish parliament – the Brunon Kwiecien affair.” The Polish media are editorialising that the Germans who have been sharply critical of the Polish government for its attempts to lift the immunity of bad judges, are now silent while the German police have just now arrested Brigit Malsack-Winkemann, who is still a judge in Berlin. “If the Poles did the same,” according to Balcerac, “there would be an immediate international outcry.”
In Moscow, Dmitry Medvedev, the former president and currently deputy secretary of the Security Council, also laughed.
“Evidently the Germans have a shortage of black pudding”, he said on his Telegram account. “Everywhere there’s only baloney. And this is a good reason to add live blood to the liver sausage of the current chancellor. Scholz clearly benefits from such a switch. He is both a cook and a diner in the meal. Naturally, they hint at a connection with the Russians. And how else? All the malicious conspiracies, world wars, devastating earthquakes, and deadly epidemics are from us. We can be proud of this even though we have not yet succeeded. We will continue to test the strength of Germany. Maybe it will become a monarchy again? But seriously, this is a clear sign of a hereditary disease of the entire management model in Germany.”
Thomas Röper ** is the only German journalist to have investigated the truth of the matter. In Germany he and his Anti-Spiegel blog, published in St. Petersburg, where he lives, are considered a propagandist for Germany’s enemies. Here’s his report.
Introduced by John Helmer, Moscow, and reported by Christopher Black, Toronto @bears_with
There will be no Russian appeal to the high Dutch courts in the case of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17.
A district court judge, Hendrik Steenhuis, ruled on November 17 to acquit one Russian and convict two other Russians and a Ukrainian, all fighting for the Donbass separatists against the Kiev regime. The four men were charged with murder in the destruction of the aircraft and deaths of its 298 passengers and crew on July 14, 2014.
The Ukrainian and Dutch case has created a new legal doctrine of “functional co-perpetration” in combat – guilt by association in civil war and wars of national liberation when one side puts the opposing side on trial, applying evidence created by secret intelligence services and heard by state agents behind closed doors. In English legal history this is known as a Star Chamber proceeding; in France, Lettre de cachet; the Yamashita doctrine in the US Supreme Court; and in Australia, a kangaroo court.
Steenhuis ruled that “Moscow”, the “Russian Federation”, and “high-ranking persons in the Russian Federation” had directed the accused men to commit war crimes. But he also judged there had been no war in eastern Ukraine; no right of self-defence on the Donetsk battlefield; and that because of their “lack of combat immunity, the suspects, like any other civilian, were not entitled to shoot at any aircraft, including a military aircraft, and thereby kill the military occupants.”
The Haagse Rechtbank reported on Thursday that no filing in the case 0909/748007-19 had been received.
This means that no Russian appeal will be presented to challenge the legality in Dutch and international law of the findings and convictions of Colonel Igor Girkin, Colonel Sergei Dubinsky, and Leonid Kharchenko. On December 1, Dutch state prosecutors had announced they would be filing no appeal in the case.
The judgement in the case has been analysed here, together with links to the court’s judgements as read out and later written down.
They concluded with the order: “To the extent permitted by law, an appeal may be lodged against this decision within fourteen days.” Counting court working days from the date the judgement was published on November 17, this deadline expired at the end of Wednesday this week, December 7.
Anatoly Kovler, a former European Court judge and founder of the Moscow law firm Kovler & Partners, supervised the legal preparations for the defence of Lieutenant-Colonel Oleg Pulatov, and instructed the two Dutch defence lawyers in court, Boudewjin van Eijck and Sabine ten Doesschate. Pulatov was acquitted in last month’s ruling.
Kovler had refused to respond to questions or make comments on the case until November 17, when Vzglyadreported him as saying: “Russia was not included in the international investigation team, although Australia and Malaysia were included only because among those killed in the crash of flight MH17 were citizens of these countries. But excuse me, where is Australia and where is the crime scene area?…Nevertheless, the court showed some objectivity and noted the lack of evidence that Russia, as a state, was involved in the commission of this catastrophe…[Kovler also points out that] the investigation included only convenient witness statements in the evidence base, ignoring information about the missile launch from the village of Amvrosiivka – the location of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. The reason for the refusal was that this zone is too far from the point where the plane disappeared from radar. This practice is called selective application of evidence. The trial must use all the evidence that the lawyers demanded to provide. Although Dutch justice is characterized by a high degree of meticulousness and scrupulousness, but in this case, apparently exceptions were made…Unfortunately, there was no such objectivity in the MH17 case.”
Kovler, the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs, and the Russian Ministry of Justice, which the Kovler firm has represented, declined to answer questions on whether the Russian side was considering an appeal in the case. The Russian Foreign Ministry said it was studying the legal documents but has said nothing since.
The Dutch Government is continuing a claim it filed in July 2020 against the Russian Government in the European Court of Human Rights, where several cases have been launched but suspended for several years.
An attempt by the European Commission to create a new international tribunal to start proceedings against Russia has also commenced. Christopher Black, a Canadian barrister and specialist in war crime tribunal law, explains.
When the US economy was in collapse in 1929, the advertising copywriters for Coca Cola were told to come up with a new slogan. The chief executive of the beverage company thought that for Coke to beat its rivals, it was necessary to persuade Americans who were desperate financially to pay five cents for a bottle of something to calm themselves down and cheer up. This is how the slogan “The Pause that Refreshes” was born (lead image, top).
General Patience, in league with the Russian Stavka (lead image, bottom), have a bottle of something similar. Calming down and cheering up are not what it’s meant to do, particularly if you have been drinking the Kool-Aid bottled in Kiev, Berlin and Washington, DC.
This is what it tastes like. Take a pause to refresh your understanding. In the conditions of this war, understand also that refresh is not the word for it.
All states give titles, awards and medals to individuals who contribute exceptionally on the battlefield, in civilian life, and also in financing elections. The British House of Lords would be empty without soldiers who saved the monarch’s throne and businessmen who paid for the prime minister’s seat.
In Russia there is a special Kremlin medal for Russians who are also foreign country citizens. It’s called the Order of Friendship, and in the Kremlin decree of 2010 it was designed to honour “special merit in strengthening peace, friendship, cooperation and mutual understanding between peoples.” Among President Vladimir Putin’s acqaintances from St. Petersburg days who have received this award, its blue and black ribbons and medal are the wife and daughter of Gennady Timchenko who were citizens of Finland at the time. That was almost ten years ago; they have returned to live in Russia.
There is another Kremlin medal for Russians who prefer to be Russian citizens and live in Russia. It is known as the Order of Merit for the Fatherland. First created by President Boris Yeltsin in 1994, there are four classes of the order, one of which was reserved for military exploits. The citation declared that the award was for “citizens for particularly outstanding services related to the strengthening of the Russian statehood, the socio-economic development of the country, research activities, the development of culture and art, outstanding sporting achievements, strengthening peace, friendship and cooperation between peoples, for a significant contribution to strengthening the country’s defense capability.”
In 1997 the French President Jacques Chirac was awarded the Fatherland medal, 1st class, “for a great personal contribution to the development of cooperation and strengthening friendship between the peoples of Russia and France.” But that award to a foreigner was exceptional. It was not legalized until November 2021, when Putin issued a decree allowing the medal to “foreign citizens and stateless persons”.
A year later, on October 10, 2022, according to the Kremlin announcement, the Fatherland medal, 4th Class, was awarded to Vasily Anisimov (lead image, right) for his “contribution to the development of physical culture and popularization of domestic sports.” On that day, Anisimov had been a Croatian citizen for more than four months, according to an official notice he filed with the British government on June 2. He had also been a resident of Switzerland for the same amount of time, although Anisimov didn’t tell the British government until September 26.
On December 3 in London, the security of wealthy Russian businessmen living abroad with dual nationality was directly threatened by the arrest of Mikhail Fridman, the Alfa Bank, mobile telephone and supermarket oligarch. Fridman holds Israeli citizenship as well as Russian, according to the Israeli press.
In a response published Monday in Moscow, Vzglyad reported: “their real assets somehow keep them connected to their homeland…Those who are connected with the banking sector or retail have showed great inertia of thinking. Despite the fact that these people own billions, they do not always have time to keep track of the change in the goalposts of world politics…It is obvious that the so-called sacred right of private property does not exist in the West. On the example of Fridman, the rest will be arithmetic: their money needs to be invested in Russia and not withdrawn to who knows where. And in no case should one believe the ‘well-meaning’ people who, smiling, convince you that they consider you an equal. No, they don’t – and Fridman has just been given understand and feel this for himself.”
During the last German administration of Ukraine, the German military and their Ukrainian allies murdered Jewish, Polish and Russian Ukrainian men, women, and children in roughly equal numbers.
In this war, the Zelensky administration is depopulating the country of its women; relocating eastern city refugees to the west; leaving the lights on in Lvov; refusing the army at the front the options of medical evacuation, retreat or surrender; and letting thieves and marauders take over the resupply lines and the rear.
The US policy of fighting the war against Russia to the last Ukrainian has this new meaning – to the last Ukrainian man.
By Olga Samofalova, introduced and translated by John Helmer, Moscow @bears_with
When Ursula von der Leyen (lead image) was nominated in 2019 to be Germany’s candidate to lead the European Commission, German politicians from her own party privately described her as too stupid and potentially too corrupt to be risked inside Germany during the political succession race to succeed Angela Merkel as Chancellor. German military sources say von der Leyen was the stupidest defence minister in German military memory.
Since the war began in February, von der Leyen did not say a true word until November 30, when she announced that Ukrainian military deaths had reached more than 100,000, and civilian fatalities more than 20,000. Within hours these numbers were removed from the published record of her speech. Von der Leyen’s admission implied the war toll of Ukrainian wounded is more than 300,000, and that the sum of military and civilian casualties has already reached half a million. Von der Leyen was confirming Russian estimates and contradicting the Kiev regime’s propaganda.
In September von der Leyen announced her support for a price cap on the international trade in exports of Russian pipeline gas and liquefied natural gas (LNG). Last month she said the European Union is “ready to go” with a price cap on Russian oil exports.
However, the European and Asian gas and oil trade is not only contradicting what von der Leyen is claiming; it is demonstrating they are profiting from her public lies. In the gas market there is new evidence that the French, Dutch and Belgian governments are allowing the purchase of record volumes of imported Russian LNG, and the re-export of this gas at a profit to other European states, including Germany. The arbitrage – that is, the profit from buying Russian LNG at the Russian selling price and then reselling it at a premium to European consumers – is so lucrative, the Chinese are diverting their contracted volumes of Russian LNG to Europe.
Olga Samofalova, the energy market analyst at Vzglyad , reported yesterday on how the markets are defeating the sanctions.
Roman Abramovich, the Russian oligarch who is under British and European Union sanctions, is lobbying in Washington for an early peace deal with the Ukraine.
According to a document Abramovich has filed through the New York law firm of Kobre & Kim, Abramovich has told the US Department of Justice (DOJ) he is being “directed” and “supervised” by the Russian government to “interface with government agencies” with the “goal of finding a diplomatic solution to end the armed conflict.”
The lawyers have been meeting US government officials on Abramovich’s “mediation” since July.
There were only two ways for Alexei Kudrin to become the president of Russia that he and the US government have always wanted.
The first was for him to become prime minister first, and for him to get the job through the back door, exactly as Vladimir Putin got it from Boris Yeltsin. The second was for him to take the job by a US-backed, regime-changing plot as Yeltsin ousted Mikhail Gorbachev.
However, after repeated attempts at the back-door option over the past decade have failed, Kudrin has come up with the second way. Last week, in a secret meeting with Putin, it was agreed Kudrin would leave his official post as Accounting Chamber chairman and become the nominal head of the Yandex group’s restructuring into a combination of state-controlled internet operations and offshore commercial businesses controlled by the group’s founding oligarch and Israel exile, Arkady Volozh.
In this second role Kudrin will be paid a very large sum of money for himself – between $335 million and $1 billion, depending on the terms of his deal with Volozh. Also, he will be free to bank large donations from wellwishers, all of whom aim to defeat Russia in the present war and replace Putin in the Kremlin.
The terms of Putin’s agreement with Kudrin include approval for a new form of control over the most powerful media and internet platform in the country for influencing domestic political campaigns for the foreseeable future.
The Kremlin has not disclosed last week’s meeting, but on November 29 it sent an official notice of Kudrin’s exit to the Federation Council. Kudrin has published by Telegram this explanation of what he is doing. “In total, I have spent about 25 years in the public sector. Now I would like to focus on large projects that are related to the development of private initiatives in a broad sense, but at the same time have a significant effect on people. Therefore, I am leaving the post of Chairman of the Accounts Chamber, and I have submitted a corresponding application to the President of the Russian Federation in accordance with the established procedure.”
No one in Russia believes that by “significant effect on people” Kudrin means to be kindlier than his rival for US sponsorship for the Kremlin job, Alexei Navalny. In all of Navalny’s years of exposing oligarch and official corruption in Russia, Kudrin has never been targeted or criticized. He has reciprocated the favour towards Navalny.
Mikhail Delyagin, the influential economist and Duma deputy, has restricted himself to observing that at the Accounting Chamber Kudrin was no more than “an accountant who protected state corruption.” “Kudrin made the work of the Accounting Chamber more systematic, more client-oriented for other branches of government. It has been the most comfortable body for interaction inside public administration [and] has never been an influential body. If the state considers corruption as a direct threat to its existence, then the Accounting Chamber will receive the order to investigate it. So far there have been no such signs.” Delyagin is unready to say what he thinks on the Yandex appointment.
Kudrin’s opponents in domestic politics don’t doubt that in leaving the Accounting Chamber for Yandex, Kudrin is not exiting from the country nor retiring from Russian politics. Instead, as Sergei Stankevich, the veteran opponent of Yeltsin, told Tsargradyesterday: “the Accounting Chamber was a politically neutral position. In the large IT corporation [Kudrin] will have more opportunities to influence political processes. And he will have more freedom in formulating his views in the public sphere. So he’s not leaving politics; instead, he’s making his comeback.”
So far not a single newspaper, television talk show, social media platform, or Duma deputy has asked why the President has agreed, and what Putin’s plan is for Yandex and for Kudrin.
For the buffer zone to achieve the demilitarization of the Ukraine, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov warned in July that military factors, not politics, will decide. “I see no reason to question what President Vladimir Putin announced on February 24, 2022, and reaffirmed a few days ago,” Lavrov said. “Our goals remain the same. And they will be met. There is a solution to this problem. The military know this.”
In case the distinction Lavrov was making between political negotiations and military operations, between soldiers and civilians, wasn’t clear enough, Maria Zakharova, the Foreign Ministry spokesman, made it the target of her irony last Thursday. In her regular briefing for reporters, Zakharova was asked to comment on US weapons supplies to the Ukraine. “Something is wrong with this world if two women are discussing Stingers, MANPADS, SAMS, and HARM anti-radar missiles,” she answered the journalist. “As a reminder, scaling up its military supplies to Kiev and directly controlling Ukrainian forces, including the provision of real-time recon data, Washington has, in fact, become a party to the conflict in Ukraine…As far as their internal dealings regarding how much money they give to whom, what particular supplies are underway, or what items they are running out of or have more of, this is not our concern. Let them decide what kind of games they want to play among themselves.”
The Kherson manoeuvre, announced by Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and General Sergei Surovikin on November 9; the electric war campaign which has followed*; and the cutoff of troops, arms and supplies by train from Kiev to the eastern front, first announced by the Russian Defense Ministry on November 24, foreshadow how the military are preparing to establish the Ukrainian Demilitarized Zone (UDZ), its depth to the west of the Dnieper River, and the cities to be included in Russian-controlled territory.
This is a future to be established by the Russian General Staff, negotiated and signed by military officers of the NATO-controlled commands in Kiev and Lvov. The outcome is an end to hostilities with an armistice that is not a peace treaty.
The model is the armistice of Panmunjom of July 27, 1953, which ended the Korean War. The terms of the armistice took two years to negotiate by US, Korean and Chinese officers. The Korean demilitarized zone (DMZ) which was the outcome was four kilometres in depth. The Ukrainian demilitarized zone (UDZ) will be up to one hundred kilometres in depth, depending on the range of the US and NATO missile and artillery weapons deployed on the Kiev side of the Dnieper. On the ground inside the UDZ there may be no electricity, no people, nothing except for the means to monitor and enforce the terms of the armistice.
For avoidance of doubt, red on the map means Russia.
