For the preservation of peace, freedom and prosperity, one thing is needed: liberation of Europe from the USA, Werner Rügemer writes.
After the founding chancellor of the U.S.-enforced separate state of the Federal Republic of Germany, Konrad Adenauer, and the chancellor of reunification, Helmut Kohl, now on April 17, 2023 Angela Merkel has been awarded the highest honor of the German state: Grand Cross of the Order of Merit. Only chancellors of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) are honored in this way. Social Democratic chancellors such as Willy Brandt are considered dissenters: they may not be honored.
Contribution to the “national interest of the U.S.”
A more important prize was awarded to Germany’s permanent chancellor and CDU chairwoman, who held office from 2005 to 2021, a few years earlier: in 2011, U.S. President Barack Obama awarded her the Presidential Medal of Freedom in Washington. This U.S. medal of freedom is awarded to men, and sometimes women, for their contribution “to the security and national interest of the United States.” In other words, not for their contribution to the security and national interest of, say, Germany or Europe.
Merkel had distinguished herself, among other things, by unconditionally and passionately advocating the U.S. war against Iraq under President George W. Bush in 2002. Then Social Democratic Chancellor Schröder/SPD and Foreign Minister Joseph Fischer/Greens did not believe the U.S. fake that Iraqi President Hussein had weapons of mass destruction and was ready to use them, including against Israel. Schröder refused to participate directly in the war on behalf of Germany.
With Jesus for the U.S. war in Iraq
On the other hand, Merkel, as head of the CDU parliamentary group, railed against Schröder in the Bundestag on Sept. 13, 2002: “You have destroyed international trust in Germany…. You are playing on people’s fears and feelings…. This unilateral action is damaging Germany as an export nation… Germany as the largest country in Europe has a responsibility.”
The liar Bush, on the other hand, Merkel praised with reference to Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount as the real “peacemaker,” as abstruse as that was. But the corporate-funded CDU and FDP parties applauded frenetically.
In November 2005, she became Chancellor, and already on January 13, 2006, she paid her respects to Bush in Washington and supported the war in Iraq. The fact that this war had been justified with lies — that was worth nothing to the Christian preacher of the mount, just as little as the devastation, deaths and failed states in Afghanistan and other U.S.-led wars.
Brzezinski: Schäuble and Kohl must go!
The leading presidential advisor in the USA, Zbigniew Brzezinski, had publicly justified the new phase of the U.S. global strategy in 1997 after the end of socialism: “Eurasia is the largest continent on earth and geopolitically axial. It stretches from Lisbon to Vladivostok. Above all, Europe is America’s indispensable geopolitical bridgehead on the Eurasian continent…. (therefore) with each expansion of Europe’s scope, the United States’ direct sphere of influence expands as well.” And for domination of Eurasia from Lisbon to Vladivostok, he said, Ukraine is the key state.
However, Brzezinski said, Europe is weakening itself through its sprawling social policies, “an extremely burdensome social system that weakens economic power…. Left to themselves, Europeans run the risk of being completely absorbed by their social problems.” The U.S. needs to change that, Brzezinski said.
And, above all, he said, something still needs to be changed: With the current CDU parliamentary group leader Wolfgang Schäuble and CDU Chancellor Helmut Kohl, Germany is a “geopolitical no-man’s land”: with them, Germany is no longer “the Western bulwark against the East,” but a Central European power of order that aligns itself equally with the East and the West. Thus, “Europe would lose its function as a Eurasian bridgehead for American power” and its “expansion into the Eurasian continent.” Therefore, Brzezinski concluded, “a massive impulse from the U.S. side is needed.”
Somehow the “impulse” came, from several known and unknown accomplices. For example, the “Zeitung für Deutschland,” the most direct U.S. media lobbyist from Frankfurt, gave prominent space to the aspiring Angela Merkel, expiating her FDJ youth sin, to criticize the bribable Kohl, and the bribable Schäuble was included. Otherwise, the FAZ did not take it so seriously with the entrepreneurial permanent corruption of these parties. But now it fit. Merkel became CDU chairwoman, then CDU parliamentary group chairwoman, then CDU chancellor.
AFRICOM: U.S. drone killings from Germany
Since the early 2000s, the U.S. has intensified its military activities in Africa under the banner of anti-terrorism. They built a few dozen formal and informal military bases. It also included U.S. military logistics, such as for the Iraq War.
The U.S. wanted to establish a supreme command center in Africa for this purpose. U.S. President Bush pushed the project. But all 56 African states rejected it. Bush looked for a way out: Which NATO country could host the command center? All governments declined. All but one.
Bush supporter Merkel came to the rescue, in the interest of U.S. national security. In 2008, the United States Africa Command (AFRICOM) was established in Germany, in Stuttgart-Möhringen. U.S. military bases in Italy and Germany are also included.
This location in Germany was still considered provisional — the African nation of Liberia applied. But it was too small and insecure for Big Brother. In 2013, the Bush successor, the friendly grinning Obama, who shortly before had honored Merkel for her contribution to U.S. national security, decided: AFRICOM remains in Stuttgart. So — following the practice reinforced by Obama — from Germany, U.S. drones kill people without trial on another continent. From here, Libya was destroyed and turned into a dangerous failed state.
BlackRock lobbyist in the chancellor’s office
From 2011 until the end of her chancellorship in 2021, Lars-Hendrik Röller was Merkel’s top economic and financial adviser. She brought the son of the former Dresdner Bank chief into the chancellor’s office as head of the economics and finance department.
Under Schröder and his program to “unbundle Deutschland AG,” U.S. private equity investors had become active in Germany starting around 2000, buying up the best, unlisted German mid-sized companies. Siemens Nixdorf, Demag (industrial cranes) and Grohe (bathroom fixtures) were among the better known. In rows, the “locusts” also bought hundreds of thousands of public apartments, at knockdown prices.
The “locusts” had come under Schröder, then under Merkel and Röller came the premier league of U.S. investors. BlackRock, Vanguard, State Street & Co. became the leading shareholder groups in the DAX and MDAX companies, including, for example, in the largest “German” armaments group, Rheinmetall. And BlackRock & Co are now also the leading shareholders in the largest “German” housing corporations: Vonovia, Deutsche Wohnen, LEG, etc., driving up rents and utility costs. Too much welfare state is a European disease, Brzezinski had already proclaimed.
The high profits of the most important companies in Germany, even in times of crisis, as during the Corona pandemic, have since flowed abroad, especially to the USA. With the end of Merkel’s chancellorship, her advisor Röller also left the chancellery — he moved where? To BlackRock, of course. And BlackRock-Röller also advises CDU politician Ursula von der Leyen, the EU Commission president.
Women in Merkel’s Germany: working poverty and pension poverty
Federal President Steinmeier praised the award of the Cross of Merit: Merkel had made “female power” a matter of course.
But what has Merkel as a powerful woman achieved with her “female power”? She has made the majority of women in Germany poorer. She has exacerbated the labor injustice legalized by the four Hartz laws. She has made Schröder’s “largest low-wage sector in Europe” even larger in Germany. And it had to meet Brzezinski’s criticism of the geostrategically crippling, oversized welfare state.
Mini-jobs, involuntary and forced part-time and temporary work, as well as subcontracted work were increasingly passed on to women. To this end, their predicaments as mothers and as single parents were and are being exploited. Under Merkel, the statutory minimum wage was postponed as long as possible against the proposals of trade unions and the left, also in comparison with the EU, and was not introduced until 2015. It was set at a low level and is not paid or undermined in millions of cases due to a lack of control. This also affects women in particular. And that continues in the pension. Merkel-Germany: This is working poverty and pension poverty for the majority of women, more than before.
Promoting women: Only for management positions
But for women in leadership positions — that’s what Merkel advocated. She was happy to show her patriarchally protected billionaire friends Friede Springer (largest german media group Springer) and Liz Mohn (largesteuropean TV and consulting group Bertessmann). Likewise, at the Women20 Summit in Berlin, she joined Christine Lagarde (head of the European Central Bank) and Ivanka Trump (daughter of U.S. President Trump) in promoting the rise of women as entrepreneurs. The chancellor was only too happy to be praised by the leading-media-fitted german feminist Alice Schwarzer, as a good “female power” that now finally existed in Germany.
Under Merkel, two laws were passed to promote women in the workforce. But that only affects women in management positions.
Since 2016, the law for equal participation of women and men in management
positions in the private and public sectors has been in force: this is to ensure that the quota of women on supervisory boards is at least 30 percent. However, the law only applies to 105 large companies. In other words, the law does not apply to 99.99 percent of all companies.
In 2021, the Second Leadership Positions Act was passed: There should also be at least one woman on the boards of listed companies and companies subject to co-determination with more than 2,000 employees in a three-person board. In addition, such women will be allowed to take a baby break after the birth of a child. However, the law only applies to 66 companies.
European Union-wide labor migration
When it came to dismantling the welfare state and increasing private profits, the ardent model European Merkel also undermined EU requirements, with gentle pressure from the BDI, BDA and her CDU economic council.
For example, the EU stipulates: Temporary workers must be paid the same — equal pay. But the Merkel majority decided: equal pay can be cancelled out by a collective agreement with a (mostly “Christian”) trade union. And in the first nine months of employment, equal pay does not apply either. Women and especially migrant women put up with this, involuntarily. Merkel’s Germany is at the forefront of injustice in the EU when it comes to the unfair, lower pay of women.
Under Merkel, the exploitation of migrant workers from Eastern Europe has been expanded and intensified. The meat company Tönnies thus became the largest in Europe. Meat corporations from Denmark and the Netherlands set up branches in Merkel’s Germany. For construction, asparagus harvesting, home care, trucking, security services, millions of low-wage workers from impoverished Eastern European EU states commuted and still commute to Germany, legally and also illegally, incidentally also from the non-EU states of Georgia and Ukraine.
Germany: “The Brothel of Europe”
In 2002, the Schröder-Fischer government had quite modernly recognized and liberalized sex work as normal work with the Prostitution Act. But the majority of sex workers, including sex workers, remained in illegality: human trafficking, mafiotic structures, forced prostitution with mostly poor young women from poor new EU countries like Romania, Bulgaria and also from outside, for example from Kosovo and Ukraine, increasingly also with refugees. Germany developed into the central location of (low-cost) prostitution in Europe.
In 2017, under Merkel, the Prostitute Protection Act was finally passed: Brothels must be licensed, prostitutes must register: All remained virtually without effect.
In the last year before the pandemic, 40,000 prostitutes were registered — in the illegal dark world of Merkel’s Germany, at least half a million people continued to engage in prostitution, illegally. Of course, brothel and other prostitution operators then received Corona aid: System-relevant.
The multiple populist “We Germans are all doing well”
Merkel has by no means wanted all this and the further damage to security, sovereignty, freedom, prosperity of Germany and especially the working population directly.
Wanted and pushed by others: The U.S. government, NATO, the constantly swelling number of mostly U.S. government consultants under Merkel (McKinsey, Accenture, Freshfields, Price Waterhouse Coopers, Scholz & Friends, and many more), the leading U.S. shareholders in the major corporations, and not least the U.S. intelligence services, by which the Chancellor herself also allowed herself and her cabinet colleagues to be investigated without resistance.
Merkel posed as environmental chancellor. After the Fukushima disaster, she campaigned for the shutdown of nuclear power plants — but the necessary replacement energy was not procured. In the European Union, she pushed through particularly high pollutant emissions as permissible for her favorites, the luxury SUV manufacturers. Likewise with the streams of refugees caused by the U.S. wars, from Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria: Merkel acted as a do-gooder and, after a telephone conversation with her friend Obama, let the refugees in — but the necessary permanent precautions were not taken. So the bad refugees are allowed to drown in the sea and the good refugees are invited and cared for.
Nudging
President Steinmeier praised Merkel, saying she had risen without any role models or networks at all. This appearance was useful. But, of course, the opposite was true.
Merkel’s task was to implement the decisions prepared by others in CDU and government policy, as a strong woman and alone, with the help of the endlessly unwound prayer wheel “We are all doing well in Germany.” That was and is much more conducive to the capitalists than the directness of Merkel’s competitor Friedrich Merz with his open motto (at that time, anyway, no longer): “Dare more capitalism”. Merz became a directly paid BlackRock lobbyist — but Merkel’s rope-a-dope was in the Chancellor’s Office, which was constantly expanded in personnel under Merkel. She quietly and invisibly let BlackRock into Germany through the Chancellor’s Office.
Her invisible network also included U.S. government advisers. They had worked on the question for Obama: How do I imperceptibly steer the possibly worried electorate?
Nudging was the name of the method, which had been brought to maturity in particular by Cass Sunstein: not speaking the truth, not calling the capitalists by name, but remaining nice and general, now and then giving the imperceptibly fleeced electoral donkeys a gentle nudge and smiling at the same time. As a woman who casually used her character traits that had been favorably formed in the Christian patriarchy, Merkel was able to increase her “female power” even more with nudging. Thus she served the modernized patriarchy of Bush, Obama, and BlackRock CEO Laurence Fink & Co. She was able to play this off well at home, for example, against the consumptive-corrupt predecessor patriarch Helmut Kohl.
Feminist foreign policy
So Merkel had not only learned feminist domestic politics with systemic impoverishment of the majority of women and pensioners. Merkel also practiced feminist foreign policy far earlier than the current German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock/Greens. And this is known to be organically compatible with the promotion of right-wing forces and of patriarchs and oligarchs worldwide.
This was not only due to the fact that Merkel received the friendly sponsorship grant of the World Economic Forum almost 20 years before Baerbock. The ideologists in Davos developed a good nose: Who could work for and with us? Success came, in both cases, quite independently of each other and, of course, not only because of that.
Merkel became capable of governing with young “female power” for U.S.-led capitalism, also in global and military dimensions. Which “defense” minister in the EU states is not a woman yet? Which head of the European Central Bank, the European Commission is not yet part of the “female power” so praised by Steinmeier?
Eastward expansion beyond EU and NATO
Merkel, as the “most powerful woman in Europe,” praised especially in the U.S., promoted the simultaneous eastward expansion of the EU and NATO. Right-wing, even ultra-right, nationalist, fundamentalist governments as in the Baltic States, in Hungary, in Poland, in Croatia were promoted: They were as receptive to Western corporations as they were to anti-Russian attitudes and agitation. They became majority members of the Merkel-CDU-led European People’s Party, just like the Italian right-wing populist Berlusconi.
Thus, since 2009, Merkel, in consultation with U.S. President Obama and with the EU Commission, initiated the “Eastern Partnership”: This involved six states that had formerly belonged to the Soviet Union and now seemed particularly suitable for anti-Russian strategies. They were and are not yet members of the EU and NATO. But they were and are now to be brought closer to both with gentle nudges, slowly, but at the same time already open to Western corporations and, if possible, for joint maneuvers with NATO.
Moldova, Georgia and not least Ukraine were and are among these states. As is well known, the Konrad Adenauer Foundation, which is highly subsidized by the Merkel state, has been heavily involved in Ukraine at least since the Maidan coup in 2014, albeit in a subordinate position. Its last important service to “U.S. national interests” was, as is well known, the Minsk Agreement — Merkel as leading figure -, which enabled U.S.-sponsored Ukraine to arm itself with the largest army in Europe.
From Adenauer to Merkel
Adenauer secured and covered the separate state FRG as a new U.S. bastion in Europe against “Russia”, with the anti-Russian and anti-communist potential inherited from the Nazi regime.
Kohl secured and covered the takeover of the ex-GDR into the FRG, with the help of the U.S. advisors in the Treuhand agency.
Merkel secured and covered the expanded U.S. global strategy, especially against Russia.
The U.S. nuclear first-strike doctrine accepted by Adenauer, renewed by Obama, makes nuclear war possible — in Europe.
The U.S. pushed the narrative after WW2 that it had liberated Europe from fascism. But for the preservation of peace, freedom and prosperity, one thing is needed now at the latest: liberation of Europe from the USA.