Germany Gate, or: GO/NGOs and Influence-Peddling Writ Large

‘We Stand with Ukraine’, Norwegian Style: False Flags Abound, Co-sponsored by the EU and Germany

Editorial prelim: this is a long-form essay about the nefarious role of GO/NGOs we recently explored in some detail:

In the Year 1 BC™ (before Covid), the German gov't spent 15b on 'NGOs'

There will be about three instalments of this essay, and I’m very much hoping you like that kind of investigative reporting. All non-English translations, emphases, and commentary are mine.

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‘We Stand with Ukraine’, Norwegian Style

On 17 May 2022, after a Covid mandate-induced, two-year hiatus, Norwegians took to the streets again and celebrated the anniversary of the promulgation of their constitution. It was the first such event I had personally witnessed, and as an Austrian citizen born in the early 1980s, it was quite a sight to behold: 17 May is the day of the year when most Norwegians dress up in traditional costumes or put on something fashionable and go out celebrating the fact that, at least once a year, ‘we put aside our differences and come together as one people’, as my neighbour put it.

The festivities in 2022 were quite special, though, and it was not Covid-19 that was responsible for this mood. Quite the opposite. Since 24 Feb. 2022, there was also the Russian ‘special military operation’ in Ukraine, which had a profound, if rather strange, impact on Norwegian society.

Ill.: Bergen’s Ukrainian Association (Ukrainerne I Bergen) during the 17 May 2022 parade; the picture accompanied an article in Bergens Tidende that appeared on the same day (source).

‘We march to show our gratitude to Norway’

This was the header under which the Bergens Tidende, the newspaper of record of Norway’s second-largest city, reported on the specifically Ukrainian aspects of its 17 May parade. Yet, as there is so often, there is much, much more than first meets the eye.

This is an investigation into the strange netherworld of the EU’s tentacles that hold considerable, if rather quite well-hidden, sway over how non-governmental organisations influence public opinion—and policy. In other words, this is an inquest into the role of a number of such NGOs and their connections to both the EU Commission and the German government in particular. In this day and age, while it might appear equally possible that foreign intelligence services are also at-work, the available documentation does not rise to the level of conclusive evidence.

As our point of departure, we shall first take a close look at the above-linked article in Bergens Tidende, which appeared on 17 May 2022. Written by Pål Andreas Mæland, it nonetheless contains a wealth of, shall we say, quite interesting bits and pieces of information (here and in the following, my translation, and emphases):

In the main procession, the Ukrainians’ Association in Bergen was among the formations that received the most applause along the route…

‘This is the first time we participated in the 17 May festivities. It is fantastic’, says Volodymyr Novosad, the chairman of the Association.

‘I used to call myself Valdemar in Norway, but now Norwegians have learned that I share the same first name as President Zelenskyy’, he adds.

[Mr. Novosad] has lived in Norway for 20 years, and the Association has always been too small for there to be any point in participating in the 17 May festivities.

‘But now there are many more Ukrainians in Bergen, which is however unfortunate, one has to add, considering the reason for this to happen’, says Novosad.

Well over 1,000 Ukrainians have come to Bergen as refugees after the Russian invasion on 24 February.

Back then, many of these refugees from Ukraine were put up in the 4-star Rosencrantz Hotel next to Bergen’s Hansaeatic Quarter, Brygge. In May 2022, these rooms cost slightly more than 200 € per person and night, including breakfast. In other words: quite a good deal, all things considered, and certainly not the worst way to spend the tax-payer’s hard-earned money, in particular given the potentially traumatising experiences of many refugees.

Still, I recall what the mother of one of my daughter’s kindergarten friends told me around the same time. Of Russian extraction herself—her parents had emigrated to Norway as white-collar professionals in the 1990s—and working as a clinical psychiatrist at the University Hospital, I learned that

most refugees from Ukraine here in Bergen are actually asking for information and counselling in Russian.

As an aside, this is also true of the one refugee family that was resettled in the small rural community in the Sognefjord I call my home today: their children attend my daughter’s school. Much to the disorientation of my child—and, I would hasten to add, contrary to the non-stop propaganda in legacy media—many refugees here in Norwegian speak Russian, not Ukrainian.

While I do not doubt the sincerity of local bureaucrats in their desire to help the Ukrainian refuges, they also prepared leaflets, brochures, and all kinds of services in the Ukrainian language.

So, with my fellow parent being of Russian extraction and, it is quite common that many refugees find themselves quite uncomfortably positioned between a rock (Russia’s ‘special military operation’) and a hard place (attachments to their inner Ukrainians). The mantra of ‘we stand with Ukraine’, peddled by politicians and amplified by legacy media, typically verlooks the distinction between ‘the people of Ukraine’ vs. the government in Kyiv, to say nothing about the ethno-linguistic divide between speakers of Ukrainian and (vs.) Russian.

That said, here’s more from the Bergens Tidende:

The members of the Ukrainians’ Association are both Ukrainians who have lived here for a long time and newcomers. They carried both Norwegian and Ukrainian flags.

‘We march to show our gratitude to Norway for all the help from the municipality and the Norwegian people’, says Oleksandr Aleksandrovskyy, who joined Novosad in the procession…

The war in Ukraine was the evident background of this year’s 17 May festivities. And unlike in Oslo, there has been no debate about the use of Ukrainian or other foreign flags. Along the route there were many Ukrainian flags to be seen, in addition to the Norwegian ones.

‘17 May in Bergen is for everyone, and people can come with the flag they want. We paid particular attention to integrating the Ukrainian refugees who have come here, and we hope we have succeeded’, says [Cecilie] Lycke [chairwoman of the 17 May Organisation Committee].

Note, by the way, the same conflation of the Norwegian government with the Norwegian people (and note that—without public debate—the former had shipped heavy guns to Ukraine less than two weeks earlier).

Then there’s the mentioning of Oslo and the larger issues of ‘antifascism’ and the anti-Russian sentiment that was openly peddled. Here’s the remainder by Bergen Tidende’s:

In the speeches at Festplassen [Bergen’s main square where the official part took place], Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was mentioned frequently…

‘We send a thank you to everyone in Ukraine who fights not only for their own country, but for the whole world. A new fascist regime threatens the world’, said the commandant of Bergenhus fortress, Commander Erik Alf Bøe, in his speech in memory of the fallen.

He drew parallels between the current Putin regime and Hitler’s Germany, which invaded its neighbours 84 years ago.

[Bergen] Mayor Rune Bakervik also devoted much of his speech to Ukraine: ‘Ukraine's honour and freedom are not dead yet’, reads the Ukrainian national anthem. If you read the text, you understand that Ukraine cannot lose the war they are in now’, he said, among other things.

You see, this is about as dishonest as it gets: the military commandant of the Bergenshus—which is to say: one of the key pillars of the Norwegian state—calls Putin ‘Hitler’ and the leader of ‘a new fascist regime’ that ‘threatens the world’.

Fake History: Vladimir Putin is the ‘new’ Hitler (and Stalin)

Commander Bøe does so, certainly with the consent, if not having been ordered to do so, of his superiors, i.e., the Norwegian military and/or government. There cannot be any doubt about the pre-clearing of these statements with the military command or the Defence Ministry.

This fact alone is quite telling, and it should serve as a reminder of the usefulness of the distinction between a government vs. the people. In other words: ‘even’ Joseph Stalin, in the aftermath of the Second World War, insisted on this differentiation at the Nuremberg Trials. Yet, today’s collective West doesn’t.

Lest you accuse me of false equivalences of ‘whataboutism’, do keep in your mind that until around 2016/17, western legacy media routinely, and quite accurately, reported on the pervasive nature of Neo-Nazi/ultra-nationalist sentiments, paramilitary groups, and armed formations (mainly the Azov Regiment). I have written about this elsewhere, and I shall not dwell on this aspect here.

From 2016/17 onwards, though, this began to change: Azov and the Ukrainian far-right paramilitaries became ‘freedom fighters’, supplied with western equipment, and trained by NATO officers. Any inconvenient facts quickly disappeared right before the commencement of Russia’s ‘special military operation’.

What facts are we talking about, by the way?

Please read the Minsk 1 and 2 agreements, both part of international law via the UN Security Council and note that the common trope of Russian violation of said agreements is—false: Moscow was a guarantor—much like France and Germany, for the agreements pertained to the Kyiv government and the Donbass republics. Note, further, that both former French president François Hollande and former German chancellor Angela Merkel have since revealed their duplicity.

There were virtually no Russian troops in Donbass before February 2022, which was reported—factually quite accurately, by the way, by the Kyiv Post and the Washington Post, among others (yes, there were some, 56 Russians, according to the former, which is about in the range of, say, Swiss mercenaries in Syria fighting on behalf of ISIS).

Against this background, we note the dramatic rise of Ukrainian paramilitary formations, especially the notorious Azov formations, into the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU). This was all shown in a Reuters article that was published on 26 Jan. 2022. Note that these paramilitaries are under the command of the Ministry of the Interior (which is also why the Russian Supreme Court had announced that members of the Azov formations will not be tried as members of the military, but as terrorists).

Speaking of these paramilitary formations, it is well-known and acknowledged by a wide variety of governmental institutions and media outlets that the Azov units consist of far-right extremists, as reported by, e.g., USA Today. These facts be damned, Western legacy media considers any mentioning of this ‘Russian propaganda’ (e.g., Le Monde), yet the widespread presence of Neo-Nazis is confirmed by, e.g., the Times of Israel, members of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, and the US Army’s Combating Terrorism Center at West Point Military Academy, among others.

On this issue, interested readers are directed to a piece I wrote in April 2022, which documents the contortions of German legacy media to obscure just this fact.

Then there’s my 8/9 May 2022 column, which brings more of this madness to light, including the renaming of the Russian-German Museum in Berlin (they dropped the ‘Russian’), although the museum is dedicated to the remembrance of Hitler’s attack on the USSR during WW2—while the Ukrainian ambassador to Germany calls out the German government to ‘‘to take this war more seriously…which means going beyond merely symbolic gestures, but to undertake all that is possible… to ensure that Ukraine doesn’t lose this war’.

For insights into the recently vacated Azov HQ outside Mariupol, we may turn to exiled American former marine and police officer-turned-journalist John Mark Dougan (see his videos—one of 15:22 minutes and the other a bit shorter 5:47 minutes).

I would encourage everyone to watch these videos and see for themselves all the Neo-Nazi or other far-right materials. Note further that there’s clear evidence of US-supplied ammunition, which again indicates the usefulness, if not outright necessity, of the above-mentioned distinction between ‘the people’ (both individually and collectively) of any state vs. the government of said state.

Sidenote: if you haven’t heard of John Mark Dougan, he’s served with the US Marines and later became a police officer in Florida. In the latter capacity, Dougan unearthed rampant corruption, including the shenanigans known as ‘Russiagate’ (which was about as ‘true’ as the claims that ‘we in the West’ are supporting the ‘freedom fighters of the Azov formation’). Dougan posted the material online after he couldn’t get the authorities interested in these activities—only to have his residence raided by the FBI. Dougan was then placed on a no-fly list, escaped the US to Canada in 2016, and emigrated—forced into exile—to Russia where he applied for asylum (because US Attorneys are threatening Dougan with 95 years in prison). Click here to learn how John Mark Dougan told his story, and then you may click here to learn what Western legacy media speaks about the same story—you be the judge. (Note that I replaced the original link to the DailyBeast story with a Wayback Machine link because the original doesn’t work anymore; it worked fine two days ago when I started writing this piece.)

With the stage thus set, we may turn to the main course to be delivered in part two.