Coup Attempt in Caracas

 

CARACAS/BERLIN (Own report) – Serious allegations are being raised against a partner cooperating with Germany’s Friedrich Naumann Foundation (FDP) in the context of an attempted putsch: The US Bloomberg news agency has reported that opposition officers had planned to storm the presidential palace in Caracas, capture President Nicolás Maduro and stop the May 20 presidential elections. The conspiracy was discovered and several putschists were arrested in mid-May. According to Venezuela’s military prosecutor’s investigations, an opposition politician María Corina Machado was involved in the attempted coup. Machado, who is said to be very popular within the military, denies the allegations. She is the leader of the “Vente Venezuela” party, which joined the “RELIAL” network last fall. The network was initiated and is backed by the Friedrich Naumann Foundation (FDP) and includes several parties who, in the past, have overthrown or attempted to overthrow democratically elected governments, for example in Honduras (2009) and in Paraguay (2012).

Europe’s ‘Underground’ Army

 

To many, Europe today is a military weakling. It has looked this way before—only to shock the world with its strength.

One nation is working “behind the scenes” to bring European armies together. It is swallowing entire armies, and bringing foreign soldiers under its control, without firing a shot.

And this is rarely reported in Western media.

This nation is quietly building a massive new military power in Europe.

Talks in the Chancellery

BERLIN/CARACAS (Own report) – Chancellor Merkel will meet one of Venezuela’s leading government opposition politicians today in the Chancellery. Julio Borges, who, according to reports, supported the 2002 putsch attempt in Caracas, will discuss the political development in Venezuela with the chancellor. Fierce power struggles are being waged in that country. The opposition, mainly composed of representatives of the traditional wealthy elites, has ties to Western powers und is also supported by Berlin. With its operational assistance, for example in advising Borges’ Primero Justícia (Justice First) party in “political communication,” the CDU-affiliated Konrad Adenauer Foundation has been playing a special role. Primero Justícia had also participated in the 2002-attempted putsch. Berlin is pursuing an approach similar to that used in other Latin American countries, wherein it regularly supports the traditional elites. This resembles the German authorities’ interventions in the run-up to the putsch in Ukraine.

Future of Iraq

WASHINGTON/BERLIN/BAGHDAD (Own report) – A strategy paper prepared by the US Atlantic Council think tank – with the assistance of Germany’s CDU-affiliated Konrad Adenauer Foundation – is proposing measures for Western powers to take to insure their continued influence in Iraq following the fall of Mosul. According to the paper, published a few days ago, US military forces should remain in Iraq for the foreseeable future, train and equip Iraqi forces to prevent IS from regrouping and recovering after its expected defeat. To push back Iran’s influence, measures should also be taken to help the country’s economic development. In Baghdad, a government “strongly inclined to cooperate closely with the United States” is needed, the paper states, and calls for US allies – particularly European countries – to engage in Iraq to “tackle sensitive areas in which the United States is not seen as neutral.” Berlin is already using this opportunity to build its own base of influence in Iraq and is supporting the reconstruction of towns recaptured from the IS. Insuring western control of Iraq is considered all the more urgent, since Russia could successfully obtain major influence in Damascus following the anticipated end of the Syrian war.

Ascending and Descending Powers

BERLIN/WASHINGTON (Own report) – While Sigmar Gabriel was making his first official visit as Germany’s Foreign Minister to Washington last week, the dispute over Washington’s likely ambassador to the European Union was escalating. The candidate for that post in Brussels, Ted Malloch, does not rule out the collapse of the euro in the 18 months to come. He also conceives of a possible dismantling – or even collapse – of the European Union and has announced that Washington will negotiate more with individual countries, than with Brussels. This could lead to a further accentuation of the existing rifts in the EU. Thus, Berlin is trying hard to prevent Malloch’s nomination. The leaders of several European Parliamentary groups are demanding that his accreditation be blocked – until recently, an unimaginable affront. At the same time, Berlin seeks to position itself as the corrective counterpart to Trump’s Washington in the escalating transatlantic power struggle. Last week in Washington, Foreign Minister Gabriel staged an unprecedented appearance as headmaster on the subject of democracy and human rights. Some members of the German establishment are expecting the EU’s ascent parallel to the United States’ descent on the world stage.

Christianity is Rattling: “Lights Out” in Germany

• The fall of German Christianity leaves an emptiness that seems likely to be filled by a more multicultural and Islamic society. Germany today houses Europe’s largest Muslim community.
• Christians in Germany, Die Welt reports, will become a minority in 20 years.
• The falling birth rate will remove a piece of Germany larger than the former communist East Germany. It will result in a demographic loss equivalent to the population of Berlin, Hamburg, Munich, Cologne and Frankfurt combined.
• The German army just spent 428 million euros on various operations relating to migrants during the past year. It has been the costliest mission within German borders that the army of the Federal Republic of Germany has ever undertaken.
• In the decades after WWII, Germans have turned into hard-core pacifists, enjoying their role on the sidelines of global conflicts. The army was then turned into a humanitarian organization.

“Contemporary historians … right now, have failed to find a single historical example of a society that became secularised and maintained its birth rate over subsequent centuries,” the former UK chief Rabbi, Jonathan Sacks, recently argued.

Fundamental Readjustment

BERLIN (Own report) – Just a few days before the NATO summit opens in Poland’s capital Warsaw, German think tanks are not only pushing for stationing combat troops at Russia’s borders but even for the expansion of the West’s nuclear arsenal. A “revision” of NATO’s “nuclear strategy” is “urgently needed,” because, vis à vis Moscow, for a “credible deterrence” a “nuclear component” is necessary, explained the CDU-affiliated Konrad Adenauer Foundation. The German government’s main military policy think tank, the Federal College for Security Studies (BAKS) is also calling for the transatlantic alliance to reach a “new strategic nuclear consensus,” to contain Russia, the “anti-western power.” The implementation of the missile defense system in NATO’s eastern European member countries is also explained with Moscow’s alleged “aggressivity” and the derived need for “deterrence.” The western military alliance demonstrates its “political capability to take action” against Russia, by its “close involvement” of the formally neutral countries Sweden and Finland “in NATO processes,” according to the author. Besides, both think tanks admit their commitment to militaristic “global crisis management.” According to the Adenauer Foundation, NATO must be able to address and “neutralize threats wherever they arise.” The think tank explicitly considers the “flow of migrants” in this category.

Pope Francis: Europe’s Top Unifier

Caption: Pope Francis waves as he delivers a message from the central balcony of St Peter’s Basilica on Dec. 25, 2015. (Franco Origlia/Getty Images)

 

Europe’s prestigious Charlemagne Prize for promoting unity goes to the pope—an important sign of what’s to come.

…

That news will come as no surprise to those familiar with theTrumpet.com. For years we have said that the Catholic Church must play a powerful role in European unity.

The European Common Market has “so far … been unable to bring about full political union,” wrote Herbert W. Armstrong in his book The United States and Britain in Prophecy. “This will be made possible by the ‘good offices’ of the Vatican, who alone can be the symbol of unity to which they can look.”

Few see the signs of the Vatican playing this role, so far. Many of Europe’s modern leaders are from Europe’s very secular, multicultural left. But now, as Europe is becoming increasingly desperate for unity—with the euro, the border-free Schengen zone, and even the European Union itself under threat—we’re seeing more signs that it will look to the Vatican.

Not Only Against Russia

BERLIN (Own report) – Bundeswehr circles are calling for German military activities to be extended in the Indian Ocean. According to an analysis by three political scientists at the Bundeswehr University in Munich, the ocean linking Eastern Africa, Southeast Asia and Australia is the most important sea for global trade. It will replace the Atlantic, to become the most important “Ocean of the 21st Century.” Germany, therefore, must become more active – militarily as well, beginning, for example, with joint maneuvers with the bordering countries. Until now, Germany only has a permanent presence in Djibouti, in the western Indian Ocean, which is seen as insufficient. This plea for opening a parallel theater of conflict alongside the power struggle with Russia, dovetails with existing German activities, for example, the reinforced arms buildup of the East and Southeast Asian rivals of the People’s Republic of China. As has now been confirmed in the new Arms Exports Report, published in the middle of this week, Germany’s arms export policies have already begun to focus on East and Southeast Asia. Four countries from these regions are among the top ten customers of German military hardware, but only two NATO member countries.

The Elite Wants More

BERLIN (Own report) – The CDU and Green party-affiliated foundations have been holding conferences with prominent experts to continue Germany’s campaign by elite circles to promote a more aggressive German global policy. Ultimately, a “public discussion of the security policy’s soft and hard factors” must take place, insisted the head of the Policy Department of the German Defense Ministry, Monday at a conference held by the Konrad Adenauer Foundation. At the Heinrich Boell Foundation, just shortly before, the audience was told that “a ‘pacifist Sonderweg'” (special path) cannot “be permitted.” Germany must finally “come out of the comfort zone.” According to the reader published by the Heinrich Boell Foundation, it must be “accepted that it may become necessary to take action outside the current international legal framework.” The reader calls for the creation of a “national security bureau” within the chancellery, patterned after the US-American “National Security Council,” and to significantly “upgrade” the “equipment of Germany’s intelligence services.” Decisions on foreign military missions should, thereby, be structurally facilitated.

Modernize Russia

BERLIN/MOSCOW (Own report) – The derogatory German campaign against Russia and its President Vladimir Putin has persisted even after the Olympic Games have opened. The campaign is not only aimed at mobilizing German public opinion; it seeks to also further incite the emerging Russian middle strata against their government. These middle strata are gaining in strength and are seen as a potential leverage for Western influence in Moscow since the 2011 and 2012 mass demonstrations against the current President Vladimir Putin. German government advisors are proposing that Berlin establish new channels of influence through contacts to oppositional milieus of these middle strata. The German government is not only exploiting liberal but also national chauvinist circles of the opposition – just as it does in the Ukraine, where it also relies on the fascist milieu’s potential for protest. A Russian opposition leader, who is popular in Berlin, refers to natives of the Caucasus as “cockroaches” and recommends the pistol as the means for dealing with them. He is praised as an “anti-corruption expert” in German media reports on the Sochi Olympic Games.

Integration Rivalry with Moscow

KIEV/BERLIN (Own report) – Because the German government-backed attempt to overthrow the government in Kiev has not taken place, foreign policy experts in Berlin are now discussing cautious changes of course in Germany’s policy toward the Ukraine. Retrospective analyses are now admitting that, had the Ukraine signed the EU Association Agreement, serious economic and social damage would have been inflicted on that country. The foreign policy establishment continues to assert that Berlin should bring the Ukraine into its sphere of hegemonic influence. This therefore places Berlin in an “integration rivalry with Moscow.” To integrate the Ukraine, new proposals call for either bypassing elite circles by fostering contacts to “civil society” or by compelling integration with targeted economic interventions. In any case, the rightwing extremist Svoboda Party has been able to enhance its position within the protest movement during the recent demonstrations. It could benefit from the cooperation also with German diplomats during the agitation against the current Ukrainian government.

Our Man in Kiev

It’s been well known for some time now that Vitali Klitschko has been a propaganda tool, through use of popularity, of Germany (through the EU) to help wrestle the Ukraine away from Russia. It’s still uncertain how the situation will end up, but the fight is far from over. People think the end of World War I and World War II ended the rivalry, but it couldn’t be any farther from the truth.

See also: Round Two: EU Grooming Klitschko to Lead Ukraine (Spiegel Online)

KIEV/BERLIN (Own report) – According to press reports, the German government would like to have boxing champion Vitali Klitschko run for president and bring him to power in the Ukraine. It would like to enhance the popularity of the opposition’s politician by staging, for example, joint public appearances with the German foreign minister. For this purpose, a meeting is also planned for Klitschko with Chancellor Merkel at the next EU summit in mid-December. The Konrad Adenauer Foundation is, in fact, not only massively supporting Klitschko and his UDAR party. According to a CDU politician, the UDAR Party was founded in 2010 on the direct orders of the CDU foundation. Reports on the foundation’s activities for the development of Klitschko’s party give an indication of how Germans are influencing the Ukraine’s domestic affairs via UDAR. Berlin’s use of Poland in its policy toward the Ukraine is also increasing. Berlin and Warsaw are cooperating with the Ukrainian ultra right-wing Svoboda (“Liberty”) party, which stands in the tradition of Nazi collaborators, who massacred 100,000 Christian and Jewish Poles during WW II.

New German Coalition to Pursue European Army

Germany lays out its ambitions for the next four years, including a plan to ‘strive for an ever closer associate of European forces, which can evolve into a parliamentary European army.’

Germany wants to create a new European army, according to one of the latest documents to come out of its coalition agreement. The coalition paper on foreign affairs and defense, published November 19 and approved by the coalition panel led by German Chancellor Angela Merkel, calls for Germany to face “up to its international responsibilities” and “stand ready if contributions to the resolution of crises and conflicts are expected.”

The paper explains that in order to “be prepared for the mission of the future,” the EU must work together. Wherever “useful and possible” there should be “a sharing of national military capabilities in the EU … as well as … a greater division of labor,” the report said—adding that the same thing applies to NATO.

But its most striking statement was: “We strive for an ever closer association of European forces, which can evolve into a parliament-controlled European army.”

Germany Outlines New Strategy for a European Army

German plans include forming a combined air force with the Netherlands and the Czech Republic.

Rather than create a European army all at once, Germany should focus on building it bit by bit, according to a paper published this month by the Konrad Adenauer Foundation (KAF). Germany should develop “islands of cooperation”—small groups of countries whose militaries work together—that can be used as “building blocks” of a pan-European military power, it wrote.

To dedicated Trumpet readers, this should sound very familiar. It is exactly what we described Germany doing in the August print edition of the Trumpet. Now you can read it in black and white, from a think tank that describes itself as “closely associated with the Christian Democratic Union of Germany (CDU)”—the party of Angela Merkel.

As noted in the August article, persuading all 28 nations of the EU to sign over their sovereignty and merge their armies into one force has been taking far too long. Germany wants results now.