Coffee Break: Across the Pond

Reader alert: we have embedded a video below that shows ballot shredding in the German election just passed, at the end of the opening section, It’s Not Who Votes That Counts, But Who Counts the Votes. The clip was briefly up on Twitter before all copies were taken down. We managed to download it before that happened.

To repeat our warning below: it is not clear that what is shown was the destruction of actual mailed in ballots, as opposed to a fabrication. However, the rapid purge suggests authenticity. It would otherwise be in the authorities’ interest to leave the video up, demonize it as false, and further broadcast that the clip demonstrates that efforts to discredit election integrity are fake news.

As we explain in more detail, there was certainly motive for chicanery. Both the much-demonized “populist right wing” AfD and the “populist left wing” BSW both fell just short of thresholds which would have given each a great deal more clout and greatly changed German political dynamics.

It’s Not Who Votes That Counts, But Who Counts the Votes

The German election is proving to have been riddled with irregularities, seemingly at the behest of the Uniparty, comprising of the CDU (which together with its sister party the CSU is known by the moniker: The Union) and the SPD, the old Communist party of West Germany in sensible shoes.

These are the same, tired parties that have led Germany from being a well-run, prosperous pre-unification country, that was the backbone of the EU, into becoming a faltering state. They are definitely not the coalition that Germany needs to restore German prosperity. The people wanted change, but it doesn’t look like they’ll get it. Instead they’ll have a government that is stridently advocating for an increasing involvement in the war in Ukraine.

In order to create this grand war coalition, certain things needed to be accomplished. The most important was to deny representation in the Bundestag by the BSW. The reason is that if the BSW had reached 5% of the vote they would be entitled to become part of the coalition because the 20+ seats they’d win would deny the Uniparty the seats it needed to rule alone. Given that the Bavarian CSU refused to serve in a coalition with the Greens, the BSW would be the only possible coalition partner. This would mean that there would be an anti-war faction in the government, which the ruling elites would find intolerable; particularly, as the BSW keep asking awkward questions such as these:

Translation:

We asked the Federal Government:

1. Is it true that Bundeswehr soldiers advised the Ukrainian government in Kiev without the knowledge of the German government, as revealed by research by “Business Insider”?
2. a) Since when has the Federal Government been aware of the stay of German soldiers in Kiev, according to information from Business Insider?
3. b) To what extent was Federal Chancellor Olaf Scholz involved in the information and coordination process of the stay and if not, which bodies coordinated the stay of German soldiers in and to Kyiv?
4. c) Was a corresponding request made by the NSATU staff to the Federal Ministry of Defence to deploy Bundeswehr soldiers in Kiev?
5. d) How many Bundeswehr soldiers took part in this mission in Kyiv?
6. e) As of the deadline of this inquiry, are there still members of the Bundeswehr in Ukraine as part of the NSATU or another mission to support Ukraine?
7. f) How many soldiers from other NATO countries took part in the mission?
8. g) How many of these soldiers are still on site?
9. Who gave the instructions to the German military representative in NATO headquarters in Mons, to Brigadier General Gerhard Klaffus, to stop the presence of German soldiers in Kiev?
10. a) When exactly was this decided within the Federal Government?
11. b) For what reasons did the German soldiers withdraw from this NSATU mission?

3) Were with the German soldiers staying in the country any employees of German arms companies on site (if yes, please break down by period, company and activity)?

4) Did the Bundeswehr soldiers advise the Ukrainian army on its warfare and the selection of possible war targets on the ground, If so, to what extent?

5) Did soldiers from other countries who participated in the NSATU mission take on these tasks?

6) How does the Federal Government explain that the stay of the Bundeswehr soldiers, as the “Business Insider” research suggests, took place without the knowledge of the Federal Government, in particular on the part of Defense Minister Boris Pistorius and Chancellor Olaf Scholz?

One way of ensuring that BSW would fail at the ballot box was simply to not allow registered voters, who were living overseas and who were legally entitled to vote, but hadn’t been exposed to the relentless propaganda in the German MSM, the opportunity to express their choice by not giving them any ballot papers. This was confirmed by the German Ambassador to the UK:

Note: Wahlunterlagen = Ballot Papers.

And this was further confirmed by BSW politician, Fabio De Masi. Note, Karlsruhe is the home of the Federal Constitutional Court.

Something similar happened in Moldova where the unpopular (within the country) EU-phile President’s (Maia Sandhu’s) re-election was in doubt because of potentially hostile votes coming from the significant Moldovan diaspora living in Russia. In that instance they simply restricted the number of ballot papers sent to Russia and reduced the number of polling stations (from 20 to only 2), making it difficult to cast a vote.

In Germany, there are instances under investigation where BSW votes appear to have been gifted to other parties. For example, a virtually unknown party in Aachen, “Alliance for Germany” (Bundnis Deutschland) somehow received 7.24% of the votes, while the BSW (Alliance Sarah Wagenknecht) received 0%. The scandal came to light because the people who had voted for the BSW started asking what had happened to their vote.

And this was by no means an outlier. In Brecht, the BSW also received 0% with the Bundnis Deutschland receiving 8.3% of the vote. Similar discrepancies were also found in Delmenhorst, Heidelberg, Rostock and Berlin, according to the Frankfurter Rundschau.

And the German media was on message, as evidenced by Fabio De Masi when he mentioned fake polls, by implying they had access to the election data before the polls were even closed and counting had barely got started – note the timing of the tweet – the polls closed at 6pm.

The BSW weren’t the only potential victims of these electoral irregularities. The AfD was also targeted. If they had 152 seats (in other words just 6 extra), they would have 25% of the seats and thereby obtained specific parliamentary minority rights. These include the right to set up a committee of inquiry and the right to bring an action for violation of the principle of subsidiarity. They already have enough votes to block changes to the constitution such as changes to the Debt Brake, which is a very contentious issue in Germany given their well-deserved reputation for fiscal rectitude.

Aside from deep state actions, such as skewed exit polls, there was a barrage of Anti-AfD and Anti-BSW MSM propaganda leading to activists (particularly from among Die Linke supporters, who now appear to exist only to oppose the AfD) finding reasons to invalidate ballots. One example is where the party has not named an individual candidate for a seat, so voters can only vote for the party. Although this is legal (to leave an entry blank), it is being used by poll counters as an excuse to invalid them. Here is one such instance:

Even more disturbingly, an alternative site reported that postal workers were ‘pre-screening’ ballots in order to destroy AfD votes. The video that accompanied that piece, showing the actual destruction of ballots, was disappeared from the Internet shortly afterwards. But we have a copy!

It is not clear that what is shown was the destruction of actual mailed in ballots, as opposed to a fabrication. However, the rapid purge suggests authenticity. It would otherwise be in the authorities’ interest to leave the video up, demonize it as false, and further broadcast that the clip demonstrates that efforts to discredit election integrity are fake news.

Romania Is Giving Up  on Democracy

A Demonstration of Support Took Place in Bucharest as Georgescu Is Finally Allowed to Submit His Candidacy: with pro-Georgescu protestors chanting “Ursula, don’t forget, you don’t own Romania.” However, according to the Financial Times, the “Romanian authorities intend to prevent Georgescu from participating in the Presidential elections in May”, because they intend to bring a criminal prosecution against him for “attempting to subvert the constitutional order with the help of fascist groups.” The FT went on to say: “The Russian foreign intelligence agency SVR said on Tuesday that a Romanian criminal probe, launched against Georgescu last week, was part of Europe’s ‘war on anti-establishment leaders who are open supporters of US President Donald Trump’.

STOP PRESS: Georgescu has just been banned from competing in the election

You can read more in our post earlier today, Authorities Reject Georgescu’s Presidential Candidacy, Sparking Violence In Bucharest, or on Georgescu’s official X page or

The British Government Wants To Read Your Mail

The UK has demanded that Apple hands over a decryption key for  their Advanced Data Protection (ADP) service. This service provides end to end encryption of Apple users’ mail. As the Guardian reported: “The submission also indicates that Apple would refuse to cooperate with a request, saying the company would ‘never build a backdoor’ and would rather withdraw critical safety features from the UK market”. Which it subsequently did.

However, as the Guardian also pointed out: “…the submission also points out that the IPA allows the UK government to impose requirements on companies based in other countries that apply to users globally.” From that it doesn’t appear that Apple’s removal of the ADP from UK users only will fulfill the whole of the request under the IPA.

The Investigatory Powers Act (IPA), dubbed by the press as a “Snooper’s Charter”, was rammed through Parliament by David Cameron, despite stiff opposition (and a petition signed by over 200,000 voters) as being vital to Britain’s national security. Under its provisions, the UK government can demand that user data from anywhere in the world be handed over, en clair, to the UK government upon request and a failure to do so would incur huge penalties (5% of annual turnover or £10 million, whichever is the greater). An assessment of the Act and its sweeping powers can be found here. The powers given to the Government include the following, on a worldwide basis:

• Bulk Data Collection: Allows agencies to collect large volumes of data (like internet history and phone records) to look for suspicious activity.
• Internet Connection Records (ICRs): Internet Service Providers (ISPs) must store a year’s worth of customers’ internet connection data (such as site visits).
• Interception of Communications: Agencies (e.g., MI5, MI6, GCHQ) can intercept emails, phone calls, and messages.
• Equipment Interference (Hacking): Authorities can hack into devices (computers, phones, etc.) to gather information.
• Bulk Personal Datasets (BPDs): Agencies can maintain large databases of personal information, which may include data on innocent individuals for intelligence purposes.
• Targeted Surveillance: Covers covert surveillance of individuals, including monitoring communications, with judicial approval.

It will be interesting to see if (a) Apple is penalized for leaking that the request had been made (it is an offense under the act to disclose that a request had been made) and (b) whether the Starmer Government insists on getting access to all communications throughout the world.

Why Western Politicians Believe the Ukraine War Can Still Be Won

It works like this: The Kyiv Independent has its bills paid by USAID and the Canadian Government. The US State Department/CIA/Pentagon/Victoria Nuland supply copy to the Kyiv Independent, who feel obliged to print it:

The News Editor, Chris York, is British and previously worked for the Huffington Post.

This is picked up and copied almost word for word by the European Press (note the curiously precise number of 2,030 killed – how on earth did the Ukrainian military count them, considering most of the action took place at night?):

Then the US Press copied and pasted it:

And Western Politicians, or their aides, only read Western Media, or if they’re particularly diligent they might turn to the independent Ukrainian Press for conformation; the Kyiv Independent is always a good choice.

The information they supplied was obviously suspect, which you can confirm for yourself by watching this video that shows in great detail exactly what happened on the battlefield that day.

The reason for the sudden flurry of press activity full of dubious information was, as you might expect, a distraction because on that very day they released the Ukrainian casualty figures and they were horrendous – over 900,000 losses (killed or gravely injured and unable to return to the battlefield) – this is confirmed in the video. These figures belie the belief in the West that the Ukrainian army is the largest in Europe.

It was also the day when the West demanded that the mobilization age for Ukrainian conscripts be lowered to 18 from 25. That would destroy the nation’s youth and the country’s future, especially given the minimal training the new recruits are subject to, leading to inevitable high losses. There was also more information being brought to light by military channels on the Oreshnik strike, the new alternative to a nuclear weapon against which the West has no defense.

But why would Western media outlets carry the exact same message, right down to the same wording (the above headlines were just a snapshot; other media outlets were just as repetitive in wording in their coverage of the story)?

In the UK that question is easily answered. There is an actual censorship committee, called the Defence and Security Media Advisory Committee (DSMA). This committee sends out ‘Advisories’ (i.e take down notices) to MSM outlets who are carrying material that may have a negative impact on Britain. Its mission statement reads as follows:

The aim of the DSMA-notice system is to prevent inadvertent public disclosure of information that would compromise UK military and intelligence operations and methods; or put at risk the safety of those involved in such operations; or lead to attacks that would damage the critical national infrastructure and/or endanger lives.

A definition that could be (and is) used to mean almost any topic, including using police intimidation to protect politicians from criticism or to deny voters information on how their tax pounds were being spent, even though, as the police themselves admitted, the people being harassed had actually broken no laws.

This committee has morphed from its original remit, of scanning the news outlets and demanding that certain material is removed after the event, into an organization that dictates exactly what the media can carry before it goes to press. The committee, which includes both members of the media and operatives in the security services, has a weekly meeting where they decide what stories are going to be allowed going forward and what the narrative is.

The fore-runner of the DSMA, was the D notice, which allowed the government to impose censorship and even close newspapers down and was supposed to have been dropped after WW2 but never was. Back in 1942, when the D notice was introduced, there was a vigorous debate on censorship, where Michael Foot, the then editor of the Evening Standard (the leading afternoon Newspaper in the UK) and arguably the best Labour Prime Minister we never had, gave an impassioned speech defending freedom, possibly one of his finest. You can view the debate here. It is worth watching to see how freedoms were being called on to be protected by people of principle from all sides of the political spectrum, even at the height of a World War. Something that appears seemingly impossible these days.

Europe Wants a War

From the start of the Ukraine SMO, Poland was the most vociferous in calling for the breakup of Russia into regions (shown below) that would each be magnanimously controlled by an EU country “for the benefit of the citizens of that region.” The Poles reiterated their demand during the ‘Peace Conference” in Switzerland, to which Russia was not invited. In fact, at that conference, they went further by calling for Russia to be broken up into 200 separate states. This sentiment was supported recently by Kaja Kallas who recently said that breaking Russia into smaller nations would not be a bad thing.

This was supposed to be the golden ticket to rescue the increasingly moribund economies of the European Nations. It was the perfect plan; the Ukrainians would do the fighting and the US would provide the military muscle when needed. All the Europeans had to do was impose stringent sanctions to collapse the Russian economy; plus, supplying arms and training. But now, with the Trump administration proving to be tepid towards European Security and the Ukraine military increasingly faltering, an air of desperation has crept in, leading to last weekend’s hastily convened security conference in London. Details of exactly what was discussed are under wraps but Keir Starmer ended the conference with the following ‘Coalition of the Willing’ speech outlining the steps Europe will take going forward.

These steps originally included a European “reassurance” force to patrol a ceasefire, but after realizing that 40,000 troops were hardly likely to stop Russia’s million-man army, they settled for Skyshield, which is just a no-fly zone (something that has been called for repeatedly over the course of the SMO). In this scenario, 120 NATO aircraft would protect vital installations against Russian missile attacks.

Their reasoning behind their proposal was dependent on two things: the first was that Russian aircraft have been, since the start of the SMO, wary about flying over Western Ukraine (which was true when Ukraine had a robust, Russian made, Air Defense system, but it is no longer the case now that the majority of the system has been destroyed) and secondly if the plan goes wrong, with NATO jets being shot down, which will almost certainly happen, then the Europeans imagine the US would step in under Article 5. However, Ukraine is not in NATO and Article 5 obligations do not extend to NATO members gong on safari outside their borders (see Article 6). And on top of that, Article 5 does not obligate any NATO member to step up but merely to “assist…as it deems necessary.” Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth has already made clear the US deems that sort of assistance to be unnecessary.

On top of that, even way back in 2017, Donald Trump was lukewarm about a commitment to article 5 and in any event he has recently said that he won’t come to the aid of any European country that hasn’t committed 5% of its GDP to defense. Something that they aren’t able to do for at least a decade, according to the Polish Defense Minister Władysław Kosiniak-Kamysz.

Given the realities on the ground, why do the Europeans insist that there is still a very good chance, that with their help, Russia could be beaten by Ukraine – even to the extent that European nations have been called on to reduce social spending, such as pensions, to support the war effort.

To answer that question, it is worth listening to the voice of the British Establishment, in the form of Malcolm Rifkind, a Tory Grandee who held the Foreign and Defense portfolios in the Thatcher and Major administrations. He is also a Distinguished fellow at RUSI (The Royal United Services Institute, a military and security thinktank, first set up by Lord Wellington of Waterloo fame),  a member of the Eminent Persons Panel of the OSCE (Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe) and the Chair of the Intelligence and Security Committee of Parliament, which oversees the work of the various intelligence agencies like MI6. In other words, he is plugged in at the very highest level in the security establishment. Here is how he sees the prospects for Ukraine and how he envisages a successful Western European involvement there. Essentially, what he said was that Ukraine has the largest and most battle-hardened army in Europe; so, with Europe’s help they can’t fail to win – see the intro on the video.

Meanwhile: German companies are praying for an end to the war so they can get their Russian gas back. As Bloomberg admits, “Relatively cheap energy resources from the Russian Federation were the basis for the competitiveness of German manufacturers, who are now incurring colossal losses and are forced to close factories, laying off thousands of workers.” Now they tell us.

Audi Has Closed Its Brussels Factory with a loss of 3,000 jobs. European carmakers are failing to compete in electric vehicles.

Britons Need Another Oliver Cromwell (But Without the Regicide)

The irony is that Cromwell was played here (brilliantly) by Richard Harris: who is Irish. For those who are not history buffs: Oliver Cromwell created the New Model Army and led it to victory in the civil war. After the war he had King Charles beheaded and he dissolved Parliament. He also (re-) conquered Ireland.

US Involvement in The Ukraine Goes Back A Long Way

Immediately after World War 2, the fledgling CIA started arming, training and financing Neo- Nazis (including ex-Waffen SS) led by Stephan Bandera in Western Ukraine in order to destabilize the USSR. As this 1950s Soviet era cartoon shows – the signs on the bags say (top one): ‘For Spying’ and on the other it says: ‘For Sabotage’.