RoyBatty
08-31-2009, 09:46 AM
Here's a typical example of BBC reporting. Unfortunately citizens in the UK are being taxed to pay for it.
Russia strengthens ties with Germany
Germany's September elections have focussed attention on the country's strategic energy partnership with Russia, but as international affairs writer William Horsley discusses, other countries are nervous about those unpredictable ties with Moscow.
Merkel's message at Sochi was that bilateral ties were back on track
Chancellor Angela Merkel had an important message for German voters and the outside world when she met Russia's President Dmitry Medvedev on 14 August in Sochi.
The message was that just one year after Russian forces seized two parts of the territory of its neighbour Georgia, the "strategic partnership" between Germany and Russia was back on track and getting stronger.
EDIT: Those "two parts" have not been part of Georgia since the time that the Soviet Union broke up in the same way that Georgia doesn't form part of the Soviet Union anymore. How could Russia "seize" something that doesn't exist? :confused:
Those two territories have been independent of Georgia since the time when Gamzakhurdia (Former Georgian leader and Saakashvili's spiritual ancestor) attempted to ethnically cleanse the territories of non-Georgians. Why does the BBC engage in subtle historical revisionism and why do they fail to point this out?
Mrs Merkel's message is popular at home and could help her get re-elected for another four years. But it troubles some of Germany's neighbours.
Germany has long called for a single foreign policy among European countries, for their common good.
Now it is accused of putting its own interests first, at the expense of nations in Eastern Europe which fear they might again fall under the shadow of a domineering Russia.
EDIT:
The EU is dominated by two countries namely France and Germany. There are too many EU countries who appear to believe that somebody put them in charge of it. When Germany (the country who effectively bankrolls most of the EU and who is its economic engine) speaks of a single foreign policy, it obviously means a single foreign policy on its own terms, not the terms of the USA, UK, Poland or the Baltics.
But the economic inter-dependence of Germany and Russia already goes deep.
And both major German political parties - Mrs Merkel's Christian Democrats and the Social Democrats led by Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier - make clear there is no turning back from a close embrace of Russia.
Ailing shipyards
Germany is Russia's largest foreign investor and trade partner.
Russia values Germany as the biggest customer for its gas, and now sees it as an influential advocate for its interests in the West.
In Sochi the German chancellor and Russian president unveiled plans for closer collaboration.
They include a joint venture to create a world leader in building nuclear power plants, and state-backed export credits to lift German industry out of its downturn and help struggling Russian firms through the credit crunch.
Russia was invited to step in to rescue the Opel car firm
Russia was invited to step in to rescue ailing German shipyards, a memory chip plant and the Opel car firm.
The two leaders will also set up a joint energy agency with wide powers to improve security of supplies and energy efficiency.
It confirmed, Russia's policy of favouring Germany, exemplified by the controversial Nord Stream pipeline project to take Russian gas under the Baltic Sea to a terminal on the German coast, bypassing transit states like Ukraine and Poland.
EDIT:
What's the "controversy" about?
Perhaps the fact that the US/UK, Ukraine, Poland and Balts will lose the ability to easily interrupt fuel supplies to Europe, blackmail Russia and cause hardship for EU consumers and bad PR for Russia?
A sad day indeed for the BBC and its oligarch owners if NordStream does get built.
Richest fields
Nord Stream has a German political champion in the former chancellor, Gerhard Schroeder.
The project now seems assured of completion despite bitter opposition from Poland and other northern states, which see it as part of a strategy by Russia's state monopoly Gazprom to gain a stranglehold on vital energy supplies to Europe.
EDIT:
What "stranglehold" on energy supplies? There's a capitalist free market system in place for energy trading. Europe and Germany are free to buy from and trade in goods and energy from whom they wish. Nobody is forcing them into dealing exclusively with Gazprom.
Poland itself has proposed on numerous occasions that energy pipelines from Russia to Germany be built across its own territory. That doesn't sound like a country who is "bitterly opposed" to Russian energy transit to Europe or "Gazprom's stranglehold on energy supply to Europe". It sounds more like a country bitterly opposed at
- losing out on energy transit fees
- losing out on the ability to blackmail Russia and Europe through cutoff of supplies as Ukraine currently does, every time Washington tells them to stir up trouble.
Nord Stream seems assured of completion despite bitter opposition
Russia has rewarded the firms involved with rights to develop some of the richest gas fields in Siberia.
EDIT:
Elements in Sweden and Finland are still trying to delay and derail Nord Stream, presumably under orders from the USA.
Some critics object that big bilateral deals by Germany and other countries undermine the EU's efforts to develop an open and transparent European market in energy.
EDIT:
Nobody is preventing Europe from sourcing energy from anywhere.
But German leaders say their closeness with Russia benefits the whole of Europe.
And Russia has toned down its hostility to the EU-backed rival Nabucco pipeline project, to carry gas from the Caspian region westwards bypassing Russian territory, since Germany showed interest in it.
Hostile actions
But energy is now a vital security concern for all, and Poland and its neighbours in Eastern Europe say Russia's favouritism to Germany contrasts with its bullying tactics towards states that are less compliant or useful to Moscow.
EDIT:
What "bullying"? Countries either cooperate with one another or they don't. Unlike certain NATO countries Russia doesn't go around starting wars every year.
They cite hostile actions like the 2007 cyber-attack on Estonia's computer networks,
EDIT:
The BBC's implied accusation is that the Russian State attacked Estonia's computer networks.
This was never proven. A number of experts interviewed on the topic were of the opinion that Russian based hacker groups were more likely responsible, ie, Internet Partizans.
this year's cut-off of gas to the main Ukrainian pipeline,
EDIT:
The BBC's implied accusation is that Russia cut off gas to Ukraine AND EUROPE while in fact it halted deliveries to the domestic Ukrainian market only while UKRAINE then cut off and stole EU bound supplies.
As usual the BBC are quite adept at telling half-truths to suit their agenda.
and trade embargoes on countries that refused to do Russia's bidding.
EDIT:
Like the US, UK and EU does to countries who refuse to do their bidding perhaps? :rolleyes:
And last year's war in Georgia showed that Russia again poses a real military threat to Europe, said Constanze Stelzenmueller of the German Marshall Fund of the United States.
EDIT:
Here we get start getting to the bottom. Apparently, after much plotting in dark rooms, Russia now wants to attack Europe because, after all, Europe is such a prize and Russia plans to revive the Soviet Union by incorporating the EU into it blah blah blah. The BBC are insane.
Since Constanze Stelzenmueller works for this US "thinktank", she's obviously being paid to produce "Marshall Fund" propaganda. This organisation exists to promote US / EU ties. It views countries outside the US or EU as either potential prey or predators.
Last year's war in Georgia showed Russia's military strength
EDIT:
Scaremongering by BBC and Marshall Fund. It simply showed that the US negro trained Georgian Banana Army were obviously not serious fighters. They preferred to pose for pictures dressed up like "serious fighters" though. This is unlike some of the other ethnic groups in the Caucasus, for example the Chechens, who are serious fighters. Georgia was not a test for "Russian military strength, it was merely the dispersal of trigger happy clowns on a shooting picnic.
She cast doubt on Germany's willingness to use its influence to stand up to Moscow when necessary.
EDIT:
What are these "necessary to stand up" opportunities she's talking about?
- When the US Administration doesn't get its way in the EU?
- When Ukraine loses an opportunity to blackmail the EU and Russia by cutting off energy supplies?
- When Saakashvili has his a** handed to him for causing trouble?
- Perhaps the second Chechen War..... the "International Community" should have prevented it so that the poor darlings could be free and learn to love the USA and EU?
:confused:
Indeed, senior Russian officials have thanked Germany for helping them achieve some of their key foreign policy goals, such as blocking Georgia and Ukraine's prospects of early membership of the Nato alliance, and averting serious damage to Russia's relations with the EU as a result of last summer's Georgian conflict.
EDIT:
What is Ukraine doing trying to join NATO since every known public poll has shown that the majority of Ukrainians are opposed to it?
Why are the US coercing Ukraine (via their hugely unpopular President) into joining NATO with such enthusiasm?
What is NATO supposed to offer Ukraine?
Protection against what exactly?
Maybe Crimean Tatars?
Maybe Gypsies?
Why are the Westerners so keen on expanding NATO to Russia's borders and to encircle it with NATO bases?
Who are really being the hostile party?
The response of major European powers to that war was attacked as spineless by two leaders of the 1989 democratic revolutions in Eastern Europe, former Polish president Lech Walesa of Poland and former Czech president Vaclav Havel.
They called on US President Barack Obama to renew America's commitment to the region's security, and not to allow "wrong concessions" to Russia.
EDIT:
The USA is situated on the other side of the Atlantic.
What business is the Caucasus of the USA?
What business is the Caucasus of the EU for that matter?
Lech and the Czech have their own agendas. Why are they presented as the moral arbiters of what is right and wrong?
But last year, when British Foreign Secretary David Miliband called for "the widest possible coalition" against Russian aggression in Georgia, his call fell mostly on deaf ears.
EDIT:
- Nobody (even in the UK) takes Milliband seriously.
- It's widely known that Saakashvili (with NATO connivance, encouragement, funding and arming) started the war yet the UK Govt and its mouthpiece the BBC presents it as "Russian aggression". Bizarre.
Best of all, immediately after the initial attack by Georgia, Russia called an emergency UN Security Council session and urged the members (including Germany) to get Saakashvili to halt his attack. They refused, citing a number of vague reasons for "not interfering". Only after Russia responded militarily to the Georgian attack did the NATO countries amongst the Security Council suddenly call for a "halt of hostilities".
This proves that the attack was pre-meditated with Western encouragement and that only after the outcome was certain to be a defeat for Georgia the NATO countries demanded an end to hostilities.
Article from 8 August 2008
The Security Council had met for several hours overnight at Moscow's request but failed to agree on a Russian statement that would have called on Georgian troops and their separatist foes to renounce the use of force.
http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5hpNRP9ysixHH3P9izLJRjYT1ATkA
For now, Europe seems bound to follow where Germany leads.
This has always been the case and will continue to be the case in the future. Why is it such a surprise?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/8229150.stm
Russia strengthens ties with Germany
Germany's September elections have focussed attention on the country's strategic energy partnership with Russia, but as international affairs writer William Horsley discusses, other countries are nervous about those unpredictable ties with Moscow.
Merkel's message at Sochi was that bilateral ties were back on track
Chancellor Angela Merkel had an important message for German voters and the outside world when she met Russia's President Dmitry Medvedev on 14 August in Sochi.
The message was that just one year after Russian forces seized two parts of the territory of its neighbour Georgia, the "strategic partnership" between Germany and Russia was back on track and getting stronger.
EDIT: Those "two parts" have not been part of Georgia since the time that the Soviet Union broke up in the same way that Georgia doesn't form part of the Soviet Union anymore. How could Russia "seize" something that doesn't exist? :confused:
Those two territories have been independent of Georgia since the time when Gamzakhurdia (Former Georgian leader and Saakashvili's spiritual ancestor) attempted to ethnically cleanse the territories of non-Georgians. Why does the BBC engage in subtle historical revisionism and why do they fail to point this out?
Mrs Merkel's message is popular at home and could help her get re-elected for another four years. But it troubles some of Germany's neighbours.
Germany has long called for a single foreign policy among European countries, for their common good.
Now it is accused of putting its own interests first, at the expense of nations in Eastern Europe which fear they might again fall under the shadow of a domineering Russia.
EDIT:
The EU is dominated by two countries namely France and Germany. There are too many EU countries who appear to believe that somebody put them in charge of it. When Germany (the country who effectively bankrolls most of the EU and who is its economic engine) speaks of a single foreign policy, it obviously means a single foreign policy on its own terms, not the terms of the USA, UK, Poland or the Baltics.
But the economic inter-dependence of Germany and Russia already goes deep.
And both major German political parties - Mrs Merkel's Christian Democrats and the Social Democrats led by Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier - make clear there is no turning back from a close embrace of Russia.
Ailing shipyards
Germany is Russia's largest foreign investor and trade partner.
Russia values Germany as the biggest customer for its gas, and now sees it as an influential advocate for its interests in the West.
In Sochi the German chancellor and Russian president unveiled plans for closer collaboration.
They include a joint venture to create a world leader in building nuclear power plants, and state-backed export credits to lift German industry out of its downturn and help struggling Russian firms through the credit crunch.
Russia was invited to step in to rescue the Opel car firm
Russia was invited to step in to rescue ailing German shipyards, a memory chip plant and the Opel car firm.
The two leaders will also set up a joint energy agency with wide powers to improve security of supplies and energy efficiency.
It confirmed, Russia's policy of favouring Germany, exemplified by the controversial Nord Stream pipeline project to take Russian gas under the Baltic Sea to a terminal on the German coast, bypassing transit states like Ukraine and Poland.
EDIT:
What's the "controversy" about?
Perhaps the fact that the US/UK, Ukraine, Poland and Balts will lose the ability to easily interrupt fuel supplies to Europe, blackmail Russia and cause hardship for EU consumers and bad PR for Russia?
A sad day indeed for the BBC and its oligarch owners if NordStream does get built.
Richest fields
Nord Stream has a German political champion in the former chancellor, Gerhard Schroeder.
The project now seems assured of completion despite bitter opposition from Poland and other northern states, which see it as part of a strategy by Russia's state monopoly Gazprom to gain a stranglehold on vital energy supplies to Europe.
EDIT:
What "stranglehold" on energy supplies? There's a capitalist free market system in place for energy trading. Europe and Germany are free to buy from and trade in goods and energy from whom they wish. Nobody is forcing them into dealing exclusively with Gazprom.
Poland itself has proposed on numerous occasions that energy pipelines from Russia to Germany be built across its own territory. That doesn't sound like a country who is "bitterly opposed" to Russian energy transit to Europe or "Gazprom's stranglehold on energy supply to Europe". It sounds more like a country bitterly opposed at
- losing out on energy transit fees
- losing out on the ability to blackmail Russia and Europe through cutoff of supplies as Ukraine currently does, every time Washington tells them to stir up trouble.
Nord Stream seems assured of completion despite bitter opposition
Russia has rewarded the firms involved with rights to develop some of the richest gas fields in Siberia.
EDIT:
Elements in Sweden and Finland are still trying to delay and derail Nord Stream, presumably under orders from the USA.
Some critics object that big bilateral deals by Germany and other countries undermine the EU's efforts to develop an open and transparent European market in energy.
EDIT:
Nobody is preventing Europe from sourcing energy from anywhere.
But German leaders say their closeness with Russia benefits the whole of Europe.
And Russia has toned down its hostility to the EU-backed rival Nabucco pipeline project, to carry gas from the Caspian region westwards bypassing Russian territory, since Germany showed interest in it.
Hostile actions
But energy is now a vital security concern for all, and Poland and its neighbours in Eastern Europe say Russia's favouritism to Germany contrasts with its bullying tactics towards states that are less compliant or useful to Moscow.
EDIT:
What "bullying"? Countries either cooperate with one another or they don't. Unlike certain NATO countries Russia doesn't go around starting wars every year.
They cite hostile actions like the 2007 cyber-attack on Estonia's computer networks,
EDIT:
The BBC's implied accusation is that the Russian State attacked Estonia's computer networks.
This was never proven. A number of experts interviewed on the topic were of the opinion that Russian based hacker groups were more likely responsible, ie, Internet Partizans.
this year's cut-off of gas to the main Ukrainian pipeline,
EDIT:
The BBC's implied accusation is that Russia cut off gas to Ukraine AND EUROPE while in fact it halted deliveries to the domestic Ukrainian market only while UKRAINE then cut off and stole EU bound supplies.
As usual the BBC are quite adept at telling half-truths to suit their agenda.
and trade embargoes on countries that refused to do Russia's bidding.
EDIT:
Like the US, UK and EU does to countries who refuse to do their bidding perhaps? :rolleyes:
And last year's war in Georgia showed that Russia again poses a real military threat to Europe, said Constanze Stelzenmueller of the German Marshall Fund of the United States.
EDIT:
Here we get start getting to the bottom. Apparently, after much plotting in dark rooms, Russia now wants to attack Europe because, after all, Europe is such a prize and Russia plans to revive the Soviet Union by incorporating the EU into it blah blah blah. The BBC are insane.
Since Constanze Stelzenmueller works for this US "thinktank", she's obviously being paid to produce "Marshall Fund" propaganda. This organisation exists to promote US / EU ties. It views countries outside the US or EU as either potential prey or predators.
Last year's war in Georgia showed Russia's military strength
EDIT:
Scaremongering by BBC and Marshall Fund. It simply showed that the US negro trained Georgian Banana Army were obviously not serious fighters. They preferred to pose for pictures dressed up like "serious fighters" though. This is unlike some of the other ethnic groups in the Caucasus, for example the Chechens, who are serious fighters. Georgia was not a test for "Russian military strength, it was merely the dispersal of trigger happy clowns on a shooting picnic.
She cast doubt on Germany's willingness to use its influence to stand up to Moscow when necessary.
EDIT:
What are these "necessary to stand up" opportunities she's talking about?
- When the US Administration doesn't get its way in the EU?
- When Ukraine loses an opportunity to blackmail the EU and Russia by cutting off energy supplies?
- When Saakashvili has his a** handed to him for causing trouble?
- Perhaps the second Chechen War..... the "International Community" should have prevented it so that the poor darlings could be free and learn to love the USA and EU?
:confused:
Indeed, senior Russian officials have thanked Germany for helping them achieve some of their key foreign policy goals, such as blocking Georgia and Ukraine's prospects of early membership of the Nato alliance, and averting serious damage to Russia's relations with the EU as a result of last summer's Georgian conflict.
EDIT:
What is Ukraine doing trying to join NATO since every known public poll has shown that the majority of Ukrainians are opposed to it?
Why are the US coercing Ukraine (via their hugely unpopular President) into joining NATO with such enthusiasm?
What is NATO supposed to offer Ukraine?
Protection against what exactly?
Maybe Crimean Tatars?
Maybe Gypsies?
Why are the Westerners so keen on expanding NATO to Russia's borders and to encircle it with NATO bases?
Who are really being the hostile party?
The response of major European powers to that war was attacked as spineless by two leaders of the 1989 democratic revolutions in Eastern Europe, former Polish president Lech Walesa of Poland and former Czech president Vaclav Havel.
They called on US President Barack Obama to renew America's commitment to the region's security, and not to allow "wrong concessions" to Russia.
EDIT:
The USA is situated on the other side of the Atlantic.
What business is the Caucasus of the USA?
What business is the Caucasus of the EU for that matter?
Lech and the Czech have their own agendas. Why are they presented as the moral arbiters of what is right and wrong?
But last year, when British Foreign Secretary David Miliband called for "the widest possible coalition" against Russian aggression in Georgia, his call fell mostly on deaf ears.
EDIT:
- Nobody (even in the UK) takes Milliband seriously.
- It's widely known that Saakashvili (with NATO connivance, encouragement, funding and arming) started the war yet the UK Govt and its mouthpiece the BBC presents it as "Russian aggression". Bizarre.
Best of all, immediately after the initial attack by Georgia, Russia called an emergency UN Security Council session and urged the members (including Germany) to get Saakashvili to halt his attack. They refused, citing a number of vague reasons for "not interfering". Only after Russia responded militarily to the Georgian attack did the NATO countries amongst the Security Council suddenly call for a "halt of hostilities".
This proves that the attack was pre-meditated with Western encouragement and that only after the outcome was certain to be a defeat for Georgia the NATO countries demanded an end to hostilities.
Article from 8 August 2008
The Security Council had met for several hours overnight at Moscow's request but failed to agree on a Russian statement that would have called on Georgian troops and their separatist foes to renounce the use of force.
http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5hpNRP9ysixHH3P9izLJRjYT1ATkA
For now, Europe seems bound to follow where Germany leads.
This has always been the case and will continue to be the case in the future. Why is it such a surprise?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/8229150.stm