https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KDpRBXEQkhk

Stalin Biographer EXPOSES Ukraine-War Lies | Dr. Geoff Roberts

Today I’m talking to Dr. Geoffrey Roberts, an Emeritus Professor form the University College Cork, in Ireland.

Geoff is a British historian, biographer, and political commentator, a specialist in Russian and Soviet foreign and military policy, and an expert on Stalin and the Second World War. His most recent work is the book titled “Stalin's Library: A Dictator and his Books.”

Geoff is one of the critical western historians who also dears to speak his mind when it comes the War in Ukraine, something that he has been critisized for strongly. So, today we want to discuss Ukraine and academic Freedom in the West.

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YOURDEMOCRACY.NET RECORDS HISTORY AS IT SHOULD BE — NOT AS THE WESTERN MEDIA WRONGLY REPORTS IT.

         Gus Leonisky

         POLITICAL CARTOONIST SINCE 1951.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hcdOppvG_3U

Russian President Vladimir Putin on April 15 interacted with Maksim Zhilnikov, a German Citizen with a Russian wife. Watch Putin's reaction after Zhilnikov asks for Russian citizenship.

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How much longer will we Germans tolerate the lies and deceit of our politicians?

Germany after the manipulation of the Basic Law by the CDU/CSU, SPD and Greens

     by Ewald Wetekamp, Stockach (DE)

What was that again, what caused the traffic light coalition in Germany to fail early on? Yes, that’s right, the FDP opposed the billion-euro debt-financed Germany Fund, which the then Minister of Economic Affairs Robert Habeck wanted to set up in order to achieve his climate targets. This led to a vote of confidence in Chancellor Scholz. After Chancellor Scholz faced the vote of confidence in parliament, parliament withdrew its confidence in him. This meant that elections had prematurely to be held in Germany. Germany has now voted. The CDU/CSU received the most votes. They celebrated their victory, despite the fact that this result was the second worst for the CDU/CSU since the Federal Republic of Germany was founded. Their lead candidate, Friedrich Merz, promised a lot before the election. One of the key promises was adherence to the debt brake. The debt brake, anchored in the Basic Law, would not be touched. Because of the so-called “firewall” against the AfD, which Merz also invoked, he approached the SPD to forge a coalition agreement with them.

Where is trustworthiness, good faith?

But now what almost always happens in Western democracies has happened: What do my election promises matter to me? Mr Merz very soon said that he would campaign for the debt brake to be lifted. What had happened virtually overnight? What are Mr Merz’s reasons for this step, which is naturally supported by his future coalition partner, the SPD, the chancellor maker? According to Mr Merz, Germany needs a special fund of 500 billion euros to repair and further expand its infrastructure. Another stepchild is the Bundeswehr. Its condition is worrying. It is not in a position to fulfil its mission of national defence. This applies to both equipment and personnel. In order to remedy this, the debt brake for armaments should be suspended. A further 500 billion has been targeted for this, an amount that can be increased indefinitely by lifting the debt brake.

The unnecessary dilemma of the chancellor candidate

Chancellor candidate Merz is in a dilemma. His vote base is very weak. He needs the votes of the SPD for his chancellorship. But now he has got himself into even greater difficulties without need. Still in the previous legislative period, Merz wanted to get an amendment to the Basic Law through parliament. An amendment to the Basic Law requires a two-thirds majority. To this however, Mr Merz also needed the votes of the Greens. But that did not bother Mr Merz. The earlier “Never with the Greens” in the shortest time turned into a hundred-billion-euro gift to the Greens. During the reading of the new law in the Bundestag, another “gift” was added to the Greens: The fixation of the green climate targets in the Basic Law. It can be seen as a novelty that party-political targets are included in the Basic Law. Such formulations have no place there. They are subject to the implementing laws that are passed in parliament. The Green parliamentary group rejoiced. Without any effort on their part, they had achieved more than at the time of the traffic light coalition. And this was only possible because they tipped the scales, i.e. without these blackmailed concessions to the Greens, Mr Merz would lack precisely these decisive votes for the amendment to the Basic Law. What a despicable haggling! The voter can indeed not be treated more disrespectfully. The voters’ vote went in a completely different direction.
  The sum for both items reach the dizzying amount of almost one trillion euros. It is to be paid for by the taxpayer. Such a mountain of debt drives up interest rates and inflation. What already requires an incredible effort in good economic times can no longer be achieved in times of deindustrialisation, the exodus of companies, the slump in the SME sector and rising private insolvencies. This project particularly affects the central issue of the financial constitution. This is not being discussed. It is no coincidence that a Russian newspaper mockingly ran the headline: “BlackRock becomes chancellor!”

No two-thirds majority in the new Bundestag

The debt brake is enshrined in the Basic Law. If it is to be cancelled, a two-thirds majority is required. The amendment to the Basic Law had to be done in a hurry, not on the merits, but because the parliamentary term was coming to an end. To have an amendment to the Basic Law made during this transitional period by a government that has been voted out of office, initiated by the leader of the opposition in the German Bundestag, cannot be surpassed in terms of disrespect for the democratic legitimacy of the new Bundestag; it is a shabby trick. This has not been common practice up to now. Critics argue that if the old parliament were to legislate after the election, the new MPs’ right to make decisions would be violated. The principle of democratic legitimisation basically demands that all decisions that can be postponed are left to the new Bundestag.
  The SPD, the Greens and the CDU/CSU have now argued that the proposed amendment to the Basic Law is an urgent decision that cannot be postponed because we are facing an emergency of exceptional proportions. For this reason, the amendment to the Basic Law must be passed during this parliamentary term. Later on, those responsible will probably speak of a “white lie”. In view of the fact that the CDU/CSU, SPD and the Greens no longer have a two-thirds majority in the newly elected Bundestag, this is in fact a lie and deception.

Corruption all along the line

The CDU/CSU had to buy the necessary two-thirds majority in the current parliament with unbelievable concessions to the SPD and Greens. Merz did this and is once again acting against the will of the voters. As if trust had not been eroded and abused enough, the final act of voter mockery was the nomination of the miserably failed former German Foreign Minister Baerbock as the future President of the UN General Assembly. The respected top diplomat Helga Schmid, who was actually the candidate for this position, has lost out.
  Following the vote in the Bundesrat on the proposed amendment to the Basic Law, including all special funds and the abolition of the debt brake in order to push ahead with armaments, it took just 24 hours for Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier to sign the law. One might have expected something different from his function as one of the supreme protectors of the Basic Law. But the separation of powers has been eroding in Germany for a very long time. This was also evident when the Federal Constitutional Court was called upon. Urgent applications to prevent the bill were not accepted and the amendment to the Basic Law was waved through. No wonder, since the highest court in Germany is a politically composed body in which party affiliation or party proximity often carry more weight than constitutional juridical skills. All of this destroys the trust of voters, and not just CDU/CSU voters. The Sunday trend, surveyed from 17 to 21 March 2025, already shows clear signs: The CDU/CSU and SPD lose one per cent, the AfD gains one per cent.
  The voters were counting on a change of policy, and that with the election of Merz as candidate for chancellor. They are being deceived across the board. Because in this case, everything will continue as before. The chosen policy change is denied. Germany is sinking into a swamp of debt, is blatantly losing economic power and is losing its function as the economic engine of the EU.

War drums in Germany and throughout the EU

The highly stylised climate crisis was staged with sharp polarisation. During the pandemic, people’s fears were fuelled to the point of hysteria. In both cases, science abdicated or was elevated to a kind of new religion. Not facts, but the right attitude and the right belief were postulated and often enforced. The intensification of social antagonism during this period seems to have paved the way for the war hysteria practised in the Bundestag. The danger that, in their view, emanates from Putin’s Russia has been grotesquely exploited for the sake of all the demands made by the CDU, the SPD and the Green Party that are causing almost a trillion euros of debt.
  It all seems to have been well prepared. Baerbock blathered on about Germany being at war with Russia. Manfred Weber, CSU politician, party and parliamentary group leader of the EPP in the European Parliament, calls for a change in our thinking in Europe to “war readiness”. German aid organisations are being advised by the Bundeswehr to prepare for war. In Cologne, there are already plans to turn an underground car park into an intensive care unit in the event of a disaster or war. Rheinmetall, an armaments manufacturer in Germany, is considering taking over disused VW plants such as the one in Osnabrück for the production of tanks. The shares of Rheinmetall and other defence companies are skyrocketing. Rheinmetall CEO Armin Papperger speaks of a super economic cycle in the defence industry. Former German Foreign Minister and Green Partypolitician Joseph Fischer argues in favour of the reintroduction of compulsory military service for men and women. The European Union adopted an ambitious defence programme at its spring summit. By 2030, 800 billion euros are to be invested in strengthening Europe’s military. Germany must contribute 25 per cent of this sum. That is another 200 billion.

What is it all about?

Are all these calls and statements just a distraction from all the domestic political emergencies in Germany or the EU, of which we do indeed have an unmanageable number? Or is this about the continuation of old geostrategic plans that have been pursued time and again by Anglo-American elites?

What else can happen?

Good faith is the cornerstone of every society. No politically organised society can do without. The power-seeking force is a corrosive poison that is trying to spread its effects to all people through propagandistic war hysteria. It is to be hoped that this course is doomed to failure. The new Bundestag has just been constituted and the coalition agreement has not yet been finalised. The chancellor has not yet been elected and the cabinet has not yet been appointed. Only time until Easter will tell whether this will happen. Friedrich Merz’s statement at the readers’ conference of the “Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung” on 21 March 2025 shows that the outcome could be completely different: “If we don’t succeed [meaning the coalition agreement], my career will be over anyway at a time when I can deal with it”. And then what?

Germany in 2025

Holding up the Basic Law at demonstrations was penalised. Criticism of politicians was turned into a criminal offence as delegitimization of the state. This often led to house searches in the early hours of the morning. But a blatant breach of an election promise resulting in an unbelievable debt for German citizens for generations to come, with wilful disregard for the democratic legitimacy of the newly elected Bundestag, has so far remained without consequences for the lying politician. •

https://www.zeit-fragen.ch/en/archives/2025/nr-8-1-april-2025/wie-lange-dulden-wir-deutschen-noch-den-lug-und-trug-unserer-politiker-deutschland-nach-der-grundgesetz-manipulation-durch-cdu/csu-spd-und-gruene

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YOURDEMOCRACY.NET RECORDS HISTORY AS IT SHOULD BE — NOT AS THE WESTERN MEDIA WRONGLY REPORTS IT.

         Gus Leonisky

         POLITICAL CARTOONIST SINCE 1951.

German parliament excludes Russia from ceremony marking victory over the Nazis
Peter Schwarz

The German Parliament (Bundestag) has excluded the ambassadors of Russia and Belarus from the main commemoration of the 80th anniversary of the end of the Second World War on May 8. The parliamentary administration based its decision on a recommendation from the Foreign Ministry led by Green Party politician Annalena Baerbock.

The Foreign Ministry handout, which was also sent to Germany’s federal states, districts and local authorities, advises against inviting representatives of the two countries to all commemorative events in Germany. If they appear unannounced, the organizers should “make use of their proprietary rights” and expel them from the premises.

Under international law, Russia is the successor state to the Soviet Union, which bore the brunt of the fight against the Nazis. Around 10 million Soviet soldiers died in the Second World War. In the Battle of Berlin alone, which forced the Nazi regime to surrender unconditionally, 170,000 soldiers lost their lives and a further 500,000 were injured. In addition, there were at least another 15 million civilian Soviet victims who were shot, gassed and starved by the Nazis because they were Jews or communists, or because they stood in the way of the Nazis’ expansionist plans.

There is hardly anyone among Russia’s 144 million inhabitants who did not lose close relatives to the Nazi terror or in the fight against it. The 28-month siege of Leningrad alone claimed the lives of 1.1 million inhabitants of the Russian metropolis. But now the representatives of this country are to be excluded from all commemorative events, not only in the Bundestag, but also in cemeteries where tens of thousands of fallen Soviet soldiers rest.

Russia’s exclusion is such an obvious provocation that it was met with incomprehension even by local politicians from the governing parties. For example, the 71-year-old Russian ambassador Sergei Netshaev appeared at the memorial service in Seelow, where 33,000 Red Army soldiers fell in the largest battle of the Second World War on German soil. Despite pressure from Berlin, the local politicians in charge refused to kick him out.

Sina Schönbrunn, Social Democrat (SPD) member of the Brandenburg state parliament, told public broadcaster ARD: “I can’t uninvite someone who wants to commemorate his fellow countrymen here. I can’t understand that. That’s not diplomacy.” Christian Democrat (CDU) district councillor Friedemann Hanke commented: “80 years is a round anniversary. I can’t start from today and say that I don’t appreciate what happened back then.” Incidentally, they work very closely with the Russian embassy on issues relating to war graves, he added.

The Foreign Ministry justified its provocation by claiming that Russia could “instrumentalize the commemorative events and improperly link them to its war of aggression against Ukraine.” What an outrageous lie! If anyone is instrumentalizing the commemorative events for war purposes, it is the German government and Baerbock’s Foreign Ministry. They are excluding representatives of Russia from the commemorative events because they are reviving Hitler’s great power politics and are again waging war against Russia.

With the exception of the American government, no other government has invested such large sums in the war in Ukraine as the German government. German tanks, missiles and grenades are once again killing Russian soldiers, and Ukrainian troops are being trained in Germany for the war against Russia.

Berlin has reacted with panic to the Trump administration’s efforts to agree to a ceasefire with Moscow. It is mobilizing all available means to keep the war going, even though the Ukrainian army is being bled dry and is on the defensive. In a few years’ time, the German Armed Forces (Bundeswehr) is to be “war-ready” in order to win an armed confrontation with Russia. To this end, the Bundestag has approved a war fund of €1 trillion with the votes of the CDU/Christian Social Union (CSU), SPD and Greens. The representatives of the Left Party in the Bundesrat (the upper house) also agreed.

This gigantic rearmament programme has nothing to do with “defence,” as the official propaganda claims. Rather, the aims are to continue the economic and political expansion to the east, which has come to a standstill with the Ukraine war, to inflict a military defeat on Russia, to break up the huge country, and to exploit its raw material reserves and other riches. These are the same goals that Wilhelm II pursued in the First World War and Hitler in the Second World War.

This is the reason why Russia is being banned from the commemorations of the end of the Second World War and why history is systematically rewritten. The cynical approach of the German government is demonstrated by the fact that it is welcoming representatives of the Ukrainian government to the commemorative events with open arms.

Among the 28 million victims of the German war of extermination were millions from Ukraine, one of the main theaters of the war. They died because they fought in the Red Army, because they were citizens of the Soviet Union or because they were exterminated as Jews.

Volodymyr Zelensky’s regime, on the other hand, is based on a completely different tradition. It venerates Nazi collaborators who fought on the side of the German Wehrmacht and took part in its crimes, erects monuments to them and has streets renamed after them. Andrij Melnyk, for example, who represented Ukraine in Germany as ambassador for many years, is a fanatical admirer of the fascist Stepan Bandera, whose Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) was drenched in the blood of tens of thousands of communists, Jews and Poles.

German universities are also systematically developing a new historical narrative that trivializes the crimes of the Nazis and declares the Soviet Union to be partly responsible for the Second World War. The WSWS recently published a detailed critique of the exhibition “Rift through Europe,” which spreads this historical lie and is also intended to serve as a framework for school lessons via the Federal Agency for Civic Education.

This development goes hand in hand with statements by leading CDU/CSU politicians and candidates for ministerial posts in the new government—including Jens Spahn, Johann Wadephul and Mathias Middelberg—advocating normalizing relations with the AfD and dealing with it “as with any other opposition party.” The far-right party, whose honorary chairman Alexander Gauland plays down Nazi rule as a speck of “bird shit” in over 1,000 years of glorious German history, is teeming with Nazi admirers.

A month ago, we wrote in the article “German parliament agrees to €1 trillion for war”:

The real purpose of the gigantic armaments package is to transform Germany back into a major military power that can free itself from American control, dominate Europe and take on other great powers—Russia, China and the US—in the battle for the violent redivision of the world. Eighty years after the capitulation of Hitler’s Wehrmacht (Army), German militarism is throwing off the last shackles that were imposed on it because of its war crimes.

The provocative exclusion of Russia from the commemorative events marking the end of the Second World War confirms this assessment. It must be firmly rejected.

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2025/04/18/c9c4-a18.html

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YOURDEMOCRACY.NET RECORDS HISTORY AS IT SHOULD BE — NOT AS THE WESTERN MEDIA WRONGLY REPORTS IT.

         Gus Leonisky

         POLITICAL CARTOONIST SINCE 1951.

A German bakery has dusted off Nazi-era molds to produce Easter sugar bunnies crafted in military-themed shapes. Critics argue that this incident underscores the country’s troubling departure from its pacifist ideals.

The once popular ‘Zuckerhasen’ (sugar bunnies) are a traditional confection in Germany dating back to the 18th century.

For this Easter season, Cafe Lieb in Tubingen, Baden-Wurttemberg decided to showcase long-forgotten versions during a two-day sale, according to media reports this week. The molds feature bunnies operating military hardware such as tanks and cannons – shapes deemed inappropriate since World War II.

Owner Hermann Leimgruber dismissed concerns over the controversial nature of selling military-themed Easter symbols, telling SWR, “My God, it’s part of our history. Back then, children received a bunny in a tank for Easter.” Master confectioner Ulrich Buob noted that older generations recall receiving these treats as children and now purchase them as souvenirs.

Critics find the candies troubling, arguing that they trivialize militarism and the tragic legacy of Nazism. A column published by Berliner Zeitung on Wednesday condemned what it called “Panzerhasen” (armored bunnies) as indicative of the current political climate in Germany and the broader EU.

”Now, there is even open discussion about the reintroduction of conscription, which for decades was considered a relic of the Cold War” in Germany, it stated. It added that dissenters are branded as “lumpen pacifists” or sympathizers of Russian President Vladimir Putin, saying this is “precisely the problem.”

The EU plans to invest hundreds of billions of euros to expand the militaries and weapons production of member states, justifying the measures as preparation for a likely conflict with Russia. Moscow denies that it has any aggressive intentions and views the plans – backed by incoming German Chancellor Friedrich Merz – as a continuation of the policies that ignited the Ukraine conflict, which Russia views as a NATO proxy war currently fueled by the EU and UK.

https://www.rt.com/news/615947-german-easter-bunnies-nazi/

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YOURDEMOCRACY.NET RECORDS HISTORY AS IT SHOULD BE — NOT AS THE WESTERN MEDIA WRONGLY REPORTS IT.

         Gus Leonisky

         POLITICAL CARTOONIST SINCE 1951.