Military Madness > Who blew up Nord Stream? ‘A lot of people know’ - Trump; Israel sends Patriot defense system to Ukraine

 

‘A lot of people know’ who blew up 

Nord Stream – Trump

The US president indicated that he does not believe claims that Russia destroyed its own pipelines

The release of gas emanating from a leak on the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline in the Baltic Sea. © Getty Images / Swedish Coast Guard

US President Donald Trump has dismissed claims that Russia was behind the 2022 sabotage of the Nord Stream gas pipelines and suggested that the true culprit is widely known – without naming names.

Speaking at a White House press event, Trump said there was no need for a formal investigation to uncover who carried out the attack, which crippled a key energy route between Russia and Western Europe.

Three of the four Nord Stream pipelines, built to deliver Russian gas to Germany and the rest of Western Europe, were damaged by blasts at the bottom of the Baltic Sea in September 2022.

On Tuesday, a correspondent for libertarian financial blog ZeroHedge, which has been admitted to White House press events under the new administration, noted that Trump had previously rejected the Western narrative that Russia blew up its own pipelines, and asked the president if he was planning to initiate a probe to find out who was actually behind the attack.

“If you can believe it, they said Russia blew it up,” Trump responded. “Well, probably if I asked certain people, they would be able to tell you without having to waste a lot of money on an investigation. But I think a lot of people know who blew it up,” he added, without elaborating.

ZeroHedge suggested that Trump’s comment meant that “based on classified intelligence he knows exactly who was behind” the destruction of Nord Stream. It also “should put the ‘Russia destroyed its own vital and economically lucrative pipeline’ storyline to rest,” the outlet insisted.

In early February 2023, veteran investigative journalist Seymour Hersh published a report claiming that then US President Joe Biden had given the order to destroy Nord Stream. According to an informed source who talked to the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, the explosives that were detonated on September 26, 2022 had been planted at the pipelines by US Navy divers a few months earlier under the cover of a NATO exercise called ‘Baltops 22’. The White House denied the report, calling it “utterly false and complete fiction.”

Senior Russian officials, including President Vladimir Putin, have previously pointed the finger at the US as the possible culprit behind the Nord Stream explosions. They have argued that Washington had the technical means to carry out the operation and stood to gain the most, considering that the attack disrupted Russian energy supplies to the EU and forced a shift to more expensive US-supplied liquefied natural gas.

Patriot defense system headed for Ukraine

as cease-fire hopes dim

By Mark Moran

Ukrainian rescuers work at the site where a rocket struck a residential building in Kyiv, Ukraine, in April, amid the ongoing Russian invasion. Russia launched a large-scale overnight attack using a combination of drones and various types of rockets. Photo by Sergey Shestak/EPA-EFE

May 4 (UPI) -- An Israel-based Patriot air defense system is being moved to Ukraine to help in its ongoing battle against a 3-year-long Russian invasion, officials announced Sunday.

The system will be sent after it is refurbished, and Western allies have said Germany and Greece could also send an additional one.

The deployment of the Patriot system is a continuation of the previous administration's commitment to send more defense weapons to Kyiv. In September, Former President Joe Biden arranged a deal with Israel to send the missile defense system to Ukraine, before Donald Trump was re-elected.

Trump administration officials said "it continues to provide equipment to Ukraine from previously authorized" agreements, The New York Times reported.

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The Trump administration has said in recent weeks that it wants an end to the war in Ukraine but the chances of a quick resolution have taken a hit in recent weeks after Russian President Vladimir Putin launched a drone attack on key Ukrainian infrastructure on the eve of a proposed cease-fire.

Kyiv media reported that four people have been killed and at least 30 more injured in a barrage of drone attacks in recent days, including 11 children.

"Air defenses shot down 69 drones, while 80 vanished from radars -- likely used as decoys to overwhelm Ukraine's defenses," the Kyiv Independent reported. "The assault was countered with electronic warfare units, aviation, anti-aircraft missile systems, and mobile fire groups."

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has said "a real cease-fire is necessary ... to bring the war to an end."

Russia is calling for a cease-fire May 9, the Independent reported.

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Old Europe has forgotten how to fight > And now it's dying a slow and pathetic death

 

The death of Old Europe: The living corpses in Brussels have forgotten how to fight for their world

Between uncontrolled migration, propagandistic ideology and self-suffocating green agenda, the EU has only itself to blame for its decline

By Constantin von Hoffmeister, a political and cultural commentator from Germany, author of the books ‘MULTIPOLARITY!’ and ‘Esoteric Trumpism’, and editor-in-chief of Arktos Publishing

eurosiberia.net

©  Getty Images/mikie11

The European Union, that grand and failing dream of technocrats, is dying. Its decline is not sudden or dramatic but a slow unraveling, a bureaucratic collapse in which every policy designed to sustain it only hastens its demise.

It starves itself on the thin gruel of ideology – open borders dissolving nations into contested spaces, green mandates suffocating industry under the weight of unattainable standards, and a moralizing anti-Russian fervor that has left it isolated and energy-dependent. Once, Europe was the center of empires, the birthplace of civilizations that shaped the world. Now, it is a patient refusing medicine, convinced that its sickness is a form of enlightenment, that its weakness is a new kind of strength. The architects of this experiment still speak in the language of unity, but the cracks in the foundation are too deep to ignore.

Immigration was the first act of self-destruction, the point at which Western Europe’s ruling class severed itself from the people it claimed to govern. The elites, intoxicated by the rhetoric of multicultural utopia, flung open the gates without consideration for cohesion, for identity, for the simple reality that societies require more than abstract ideals to function. Cities have fractured into enclaves where parallel societies thrive, where police hesitate to patrol, where the native-born learn to navigate their own streets with caution. The promise was harmony, a blending of cultures into something vibrant and new. The reality is a quiet disintegration, a thousand unspoken tensions simmering beneath the surface. Politicians continue to preach the virtues of “diversity,” but the people – those who remember what it was like to have a shared history, a common language – are beginning to revolt. The backlash is no longer confined to the fringe. It is entering the mainstream, and the establishment trembles at what it has unleashed.

Read more

 The empire returns: The new global order for the new world

Then came the green delirium, the second pillar of Western Europe’s self-annihilation. Factories shutter under the weight of environmental regulations, farmers take to the streets in protest, and the middle class is squeezed between rising energy costs and stagnant wages. The climate must be saved, the leaders insist, even if the cost is economic ruin. Germany, once the industrial powerhouse of the continent, dismantles its nuclear infrastructure in favor of unreliable wind and solar power, only to return to coal when the weather turns unfavorable. There is a madness in this, a kind of collective hysteria where dogma overrides pragmatism, where the pursuit of moral purity blinds the ruling class to the suffering of ordinary citizens.

The rest of the world watches, perplexed, as the EU willingly cripples itself for a cause that demands global cooperation – cooperation that is nowhere to be found. China builds coal plants, America drills for oil, India prioritizes growth over emissions, and the EU alone marches towards austerity, convinced that its sacrifice will inspire others. It will not.

And Russia – the great miscalculation, the strategic blunder that may yet prove fatal. Europe had a choice: to engage with Moscow as a partner, to integrate it into a stable continental order, or to treat it as an eternal adversary. It chose the latter, aligning itself fully with Washington’s confrontational stance, severing ties that had once provided cheap energy and economic stability. The pipelines are silent now, the ruble flows eastward, and Western Europe buys its gas at inflated prices from distant suppliers, enriching middlemen while its own industries struggle. Russia, spurned and sanctioned, turns to China, to India, to those willing to treat it as something other than a pariah. The Eurasian landmass is reconfiguring itself, and Europe is not at the center. The EU is on the outside, looking in, a spectator to its own irrelevance. The Atlanticists in Brussels believed they could serve two masters: their own people and Washington’s geopolitical whims. They were wrong.

In this unfolding drama, America and Russia emerge as twin pillars of Western civilization – different in temperament but united in their commitment to preserving sovereign nations against globalist dissolution. America, the last defender of the West’s entrepreneurial spirit and individual liberty, stands firm against the forces that would destroy borders and identities. Russia, keeper of traditional values and Christian heritage, guards against the cultural nihilism consuming Europe. Both understand that civilizations must defend themselves or perish; neither suffers the death wish that afflicts the Western European elites.

Read more

 Western memory of WWII is basically fan fiction

And of Western Europe? It is a ghost at the feast, clutching its empty wineglass, muttering about “norms” and “values” as the world moves on without it. The European elites still cling to their illusions, still believe in the power of rhetoric over reality. They speak of “strategic autonomy” while marching in lockstep with Washington’s wars, of “diversity” while their own cities become battlegrounds of competing identities, of “democracy” while silencing dissent with bureaucratic machinery and media censorship.

The voters sense the decay. They rebel – in France, where Marine Le Pen’s supporters grow by the day; in Italy, where Giorgia Meloni’s government rejects the EU’s dictates on immigration; in Hungary, where Viktor Orbán openly defies the liberal orthodoxy. Yet the machine grinds on, dismissing every protest as populism, every objection as fascism. The disconnect between rulers and ruled has never been wider. The elites, ensconced in their Brussels bubble, continue to govern as if the people are an inconvenience, as if democracy means compliance rather than choice. The social contract is broken, and the backlash will only intensify.

There is a cancer in Europe, and it is not the right or the left. It is the very idea that a civilization can exist without roots, that a people can be stripped of its history and still remain coherent. The EU was built on the assumption that identity was an accident, that men were interchangeable economic units, that borders were relics of a barbaric past. Now the experiment is failing. The young flee – to America, to Asia, anywhere with opportunity and dynamism. The old huddle in their apartments, watching as their neighborhoods change beyond recognition. The politicians, insulated by privilege, continue to lecture about “tolerance” and “progress,” oblivious to the rage building beneath them.

Read more

 A chihuahua that thinks it’s a lion: The decline of Britain

The great realignment is already underway. The Atlantic widens; the Eurasian landmass stirs. America and Russia, for all their rivalry, understand power in a way Western Europe has forgotten. They build, they fight, they act decisively. The EU deconstructs, hesitates, agonizes over moral dilemmas while others seize the future. The 21st century will belong to those who can face it without illusions, who can say “we” and mean something concrete, who can defend their interests without apology. Western Europe, as it exists today, is incapable of this.

Perhaps the EU will linger for years yet, a hollowed-out institution shuffling through summits and issuing directives that fewer and fewer obey. But the spirit is gone. The people feel it. The world sees it. Historians will look back on this era as the funeral of liberalism – a slow, self-inflicted demise by a thousand well-intentioned cuts. The creators of this collapse will not be remembered as visionaries but as fools, as men and women who prized ideology over survival.

And when the last bureaucrat turns out the lights in Brussels, who will mourn? Not the workers whose livelihoods vanished for the sake of carbon targets. Not the parents afraid to let their children play in streets that no longer feel like home. Not the nations that surrendered their sovereignty to a project that demanded their deconstruction. Only the living corpses of the elites will remain, muttering to each other in the ruins, still convinced of their own righteousness.

But righteousness is not enough. The world has always belonged to those who are willing to fight for it – and Old Europe has forgotten how to fight.

Politics in Europe > Far-Right wins Romanian first-round elections again; 2-Part System Dead, or, only 'mostly dead' in UK; Merz becomes Chancellor after scare

 

What will Deep State do to upset the boat this time?

Do you think they will try something fishy again?

Far-right candidate George Simion wins first round of Romanian election

By Paul Godfrey

Ultra-nationalist party Alliance for the Unity of Romanians leader George Simion speaks at a press conference Sunday outside the Parliament Palace in Bucharest, Romania. Photo by Robert Ghement/EPA-EFE

May 5 (UPI) -- Far-right candidate George Simion was declared the winner Monday in the first round of Romania's presidential election, which is being rerun after the result from a race in November was annulled amid allegations of fraud and Russian interference.

A run-off election will be held May 18 because Simion only polled 40.96% of the vote -- short of the 50% needed for an outright win. He is expected to prevail as his liberal rival, Bucharest Mayor Nicusor Dan and runner-up in Sunday's ballot, received half as many votes.

"With yesterday's historic vote, the Romanian people have spoken. It's time to be heard! It was more than a choice -- it was an act of courage, trust, and unity. It is the victory of those who truly believe in Romania -- a free, respected, sovereign country!" Simion, leader of the nationalist Alliance for the Unity of Romanians, wrote in a post on X.

"This is the dawn of a great era. Sovereign nations, freedom and common sense, not tyranny, sick ideology and endless abuses," he added in a reference to U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio's accusing Germany's government of "tyranny in disguise" after it designated the far-right Alternative for Germany party a far-right extremist organization.

Related

• European Commission starts TikTok probe over Romania elections
• U.S. denounces alleged Russian election interference in Romania
• Romanian court annuls presidential election citing Russian 'aggressive hybrid action'
• German domestic intelligence designates AfD party as a 'far-right extremist organization'

Dan beat the candidate of the Social Democratic Party-led coalition government, Crin Antonescu, into third place with the Adevarul newspaper reporting that Prime Minister Marcel Ciolacu had told close party colleagues that he is willing to resign from both the leadership of the Government and the PSD in a move that is seen as a boost for Dan's chances as the candidate of the center.

Alexandru Muraru, leader of the National Liberal Party, Romania's third-largest party, also threw his support behind Dan on Monday.

A run-off election between the pro-Russian nationalist Calin Georgescu and centrist Elena Lasconi was canceled days before it was due to take place Dec. 8. The Constitutional Court in Bucharest ruled the annulment of "the entire electoral process regarding the election of the president of Romania," citing a Russian propaganda campaign to influence the outcome in Georgescu's favor as the reason.

Declassified Romanian intelligence documents detailed a security services warning that the electoral system had been targeted by Russia in an "aggressive hybrid action" to boost the fortunes of Georgescu, a previously unknown candidate.

The intelligence concluded that Georgescu's first round victory in the ninth presidential election since the 1989 Romanian revolution, with just under 23% of the vote, was "not a natural outcome" and that a "state actor" catapulted him over Lasconi and Ciolacu with an artificially coordinated social media campaign.

That led to him being dubbed the TikTok candidate due to the blanket promotion he received on the platform from 25,000 TikTok accounts activated two weeks before the election.

The then-U.S. administration of President Joe Biden condemned the alleged Russian interference, saying Romanians must have confidence that their elections reflect the democratic will of the Romanian people "free of foreign malign influence aimed at undermining the fairness of their elections."

Simion and Georgescu were seen voting together on Sunday, with many of the latter's supporters believed to have transferred their vote to Simion.

As in November's poll, hundreds of thousands of people in Romania's global diaspora cast their votes from overseas at almost 1,000 polling stations set up in Italy, Malta, Spain, Britain, Germany, France, Belgium the Netherlands and the United States.

The BBC said Simion won the votes of more than 70% of Romanians voting in Italy, Spain and Germany.

U.K. Reform Party leader: Two-party system

is 'dead'

Or, perhaps only mostly dead!

By Mike Heuer

U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer speaks during a news conference on support for Ukraine on March 15, and on Friday said voters need to feel the benefits of his Labour Party after it lost several seats in Thursday's election. File Photo by Betty Laura Zapata/EPA-EFE

May 3 (UPI) -- Reform Party leader and Member of Parliament Nigel Farage says Thursday's elections herald the end of a two-party system in the United Kingdom.

The Reform Party is viewed as a "right-wing" organization and now is the "opposition party to this Labour government," Farage said Friday, Fox News reported.

Farage said 100 years of two-party rule over U.K. politics is "now dead" after Prime Minister Keir Starmer's Labour Party lost what many considered to be a safe seat.

The Reform Party added a fifth member of Parliament following the election, plus control of 10 local councils and two mayoral seats, the BBC reported.

There was only one parliamentary seat up for election.

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The Runcorn & Helsby district was considered a safe seat for the Labour Party, but Reform Party candidate Sarah Pochin won the election to become the Reform Party's fifth member of Parliament.

Starmer explained the loss as evidence that voters aren't yet seeing the benefits of his Labour Party-led government.

I didn't know Starmer had such a sense of humour.

Starmer's Labour Party won the general election in July after securing 412 seats and handing the Conservative Party its first election loss in 14 years, the BBC reported in July.

The Conservative and Labour parties still hold commanding numbers in the U.K. Parliament.

The Labour Party holds 403 seats in Parliament to the Conservative Party's 121. Liberal Democrats control 72 seats and Independents 14.

The Reform Party is one of 11 other political entities that hold the remaining 40 seats in Parliament.

While the numbers show the Labour Party with a large majority in Parliament and well ahead of the Conservative Party, the two long-established political parties lost seats in Thursday's election.

These seats, I believe, are county council and Mayoral seats, not parliamentary. Correct me if I'm wrong. 

The election results mean "now is the time to crank up the pace on giving people the country they are crying out for," Starmer said in an opinion piece published Friday in The Times.

What they are crying out for depends on who you are listening to. Muslim lobbies make the most noise and are heard the loudest by Labour.

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Germany’s Merz becomes chancellor on 2nd ballot after initial defeat

Friedrich Merz succeeded Tuesday in his bid to become the next German chancellor during a second vote in parliament, hours after he suffered a historic defeat in the first round.

The conservative leader had been expected to smoothly win the vote to become Germany’s 10th chancellor since World War II. No other postwar candidate for chancellor has failed to win on the first ballot.

Merz received 325 votes in the second ballot.

He needed a majority of 316 out of 630 votes but only received 310 in the first round — well short of the 328 seats held by his coalition.

Because the votes were secret ballots, it was not immediately clear — and might never be known — who had defected from Merz’s camp.

Merz’s coalition is led by his center-right Christian Democratic Union and its Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social Union. They are joined by the center-left Social Democrats led by outgoing Chancellor Olaf Scholz, who lost the national election in February.

Upon announcing the second vote, the head of the Union bloc in parliament, Jens Spahn, said, “The whole of Europe, perhaps even the whole world, is watching this second round of elections.”

Germany, the most populous member state of the 27-nation European Union, has the continent’s biggest economy and serves as a diplomatic heavyweight. The new chancellor’s in-tray would include the war in Ukraine and the Trump administration’s confrontational trade policy on top of domestic issues, such as the rise of a far-right, anti-immigrant party.

1:23

Germany’s Scholz reiterates Canadian support amid U.S. tensions: ‘We stand by Canada’s side’

If Merz had lost again

If Merz had failed to win election in the second round, the lower house of parliament — the Bundestag — would have had 14 days to elect a candidate with an absolute majority. Merz could have run repeatedly but other lawmakers could also have thrown their hat in the ring. There is no limit to the number of votes that can be held within the two-week period.

If Merz or any other candidate had failed to secure a majority within those 14 days, the constitution allows for the president to appoint the candidate who wins the most votes as chancellor, or to dissolve the Bundestag and hold a new national election.

1:57

German election: AfD party pushes to be included in coalition government

Merz’s biographer, Volker Resing, said that if Merz won in the second round, everything will be fine and people may soon forget about the first-round hiccup.

Alice Weidel, co-leader of the far-right, anti-immigrant Alternative for Germany party, slammed Merz’s failure as proof that his coalition has a “weak foundation” and called for fresh elections.

AfD is the biggest opposition party in Germany’s new parliament after it placed second in February’s elections. Despite its historic gains, it was shut out of coalition talks due to the so-called “firewall” that mainstream German political parties have upheld against cooperating with far-right parties since the end of the war.

This is for fear of history repeating itself with a Hitler-like autocrat. However, history will prove to be much worse than most Germans would believe, as Islam will rapidly become a powerhouse in German politics in the next 30 years, and nothing short of a civil war will keep little frauleins from wearing burkas in the second half of this century.

80th anniversary of World War II

Tuesday’s voting came on the eve of the 80th anniversary of Nazi Germany’s unconditional surrender in World War II. The ballots are cast in the restored Reichstag building, where graffiti left by victorious Soviet troops has been preserved at several locations.

The shadow of the war in Ukraine also loomed over Tuesday’s vote. Germany is the second-biggest supplier of military aid to Ukraine, after the United States.

Overall, Germany is the fourth largest defense spender in the world, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, which studies trends in global military expenditures. Only the U.S., China and Russia are ahead.

Germany rose to that rank thanks to an investment of 100 billion euros ($107 billion) for its armed forces, a measure passed by lawmakers in 2022.

Defense spending rose again earlier this year, when parliament loosened the nation’s strict debt rules. It’s a move that’s been closely watched by the rest of Europe as the Trump administration has threatened to pull back from its security support on the continent.

Besides ramping up defense spending, Merz’s coalition has pledged to spur economic growth, take a tougher approach to migration and catch up on long-neglected modernization..

2:03

German officials increasingly concerned about election meddling from Russia, US

Germany and the Trump administration

The U.S. administration has bashed Germany repeatedly since President Donald Trump’s inauguration in January. Trump, who has German roots, often expressed his dislike of former Chancellor Angela Merkel during his first term in office.

This time around, Trump’s lieutenants are at the forefront — tech billionaire and Trump ally Elon Musk has supported AfD for months. He hosted a chat with Weidel that he livestreamed on X earlier this year to amplify her party’s message.

Vice President JD Vance, during the Munich Security Conference in February, assailed the “firewall” and later met with Weidel, a move that German officials heavily criticized.

Last week, the German domestic intelligence service said it has classified AfD as a “right-wing extremist” organization, making it subject to greater and broader surveillance.

The decision by the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution prompted blowback from U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Vance over the weekend. Germany’s Foreign Ministry hit back at Rubio after he called on the country to drop the classification.

The domestic intelligence service’s measure does not amount to a ban of the party, which can only take place through a request by either of parliament’s two chambers or the federal government through the Federal Constitutional Court.

Merz has not commented publicly on the intelligence service’s decision.

Germany's economy

—Associated Press videojournalist Fanny Brodersen in Berlin and writer David McHugh in Frankfurt, Germany, contributed to this report.

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