The Latest: Trump claims Germany 'captive to Russia' Associated Press | July 11, 2018 | http://www.foxnews.com/world/2018/07/11/latest-trump-claims-germany-captive-to-russia.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+foxnews/world+(Internal+-+World+Latest+-+Text) BRUSSELS – The Latest on President Donald Trump's trip to Europe (all times local): 9:45 a.m. President Donald Trump is asserting that Germany is "totally controlled" by and "captive to Russia" over a pipeline project during a testy breakfast with NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg (yehnz STOHL'-tehn-burg). Trump is taking issue with the U.S. protecting Germany when the European nation is making energy deals with Russia. The president appeared to be referring to the Nord Stream 2 pipeline that would double the amount of gas Russia can send directly to Germany, skirting transit countries such as Ukraine. The project is opposed by the U.S. and some other EU members. Trump says of Germany: "We're supposed to protect you against Russia" and yet you make this deal with Russia. Stoltenberg pushed back, stressing that NATO members have been able to work together despite their differences. __ 9:15 a.m. President Donald Trump is pressing NATO allies to bolster their defense spending as he opens talks with leaders of the military alliance. Trump says the disproportionate defense spending an "unfair burden on the United States." Trump is saying at the start of his meeting with NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg that "because of me" NATO has raised more than $40 billion in defense spending. Trump says, "So I think the secretary general likes Trump. He may be the only one but that's OK with me." The U.S. president has called upon NATO allies to meet commitments to spend 2 percent of their GDP on defense. Stoltenberg says "a strong NATO is good for Europe." __ 8:55 a.m. President Donald Trump is meeting with NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg (yehnz STOHL'-tehn-burg) at the start of a summit of the military alliance. Trump is expected to continue questioning wary NATO allies about their military spending during talks in Brussels. He tweeted en route from Washington that European counties "want us to happily defend them through NATO, and nicely pay for it. Just doesn't work!" Trump's day will include a welcome ceremony, a meeting of the North Atlantic Council and a working dinner with some of the same leaders he berated over trade during his last world leaders' summit in Canada last month. Brussels is the first stop of a week-long European tour that will include stops in the United Kingdom and a meeting with Russia's Vladimir Putin. Edited to add: Angela Merkel Slams Donald Trump At NATO Summit, Says Germany Isn’t ‘Totally Controlled’ By Russia The Inquisitr July 11, 2018 Fallout continues after President Donald Trump’s blasting of Germany, claiming they were “a captive of Russia,” on the first day of the NATO summit in Brussels, reports The Guardian ... Trump Today: Here’s the raucous exchange between the president and the NATO secretary general on Germany Market Watch July 11, 2018 And the gas pipeline from Russia to Germany is one issue where allies disagree. But the strength of NATO is that despite these differences, we have always been able to unite ... PS- Personally, I am glad that President Trump made his appointment to SCOTUS on Monday night the day before he was leaving for a week long trip to Europe for a NATO Summit, a UK visit, and a USA/Russian Summit. This will hopefully give the MSM plenty to discuss besides all of the unfair news coming from the Dems regarding Judge Brett Kavanaugh. In addition, I agree with President Trump's statement here, “Now, if you look at it, Germany is a captive of Russia because they supply. They got rid of their coal plants. They got rid of their nuclear. They’re getting so much of the oil and gas from Russia. I think it’s something that NATO has to look at. I think it’s very inappropriate. You and I agree that it’s inappropriate. I don’t know what you can do about it now, but it certainly doesn’t seem to make sense that they paid billions of dollars to Russia and now we have to defend them against Russia.” and I don't at all agree with Schumer and Pelosi's comments in return to this statement. Imho President Trump's statement here is not a pro-Russia (or anti-Russia) statement but a common sense statement and I believe that President Ronald Regan said something similar in this regard.
Merkel ought to listen to Trump about her offering Germany up to Putin's whims and being controlled. There's already history about this control while Russia only controlled 30% of Germany's energy....now with this new deal Merkel is going to wind up in an even greater servile position to her "owners" with 70% dependency. Putin has acted in the past when he wanted Germany to heel to his desires by simply turning off Germany's supply. Makes you think that Merkel's former living under the Soviet Union in East Germany had the Stockholm Syndrome effect on her. Even from back in 2014: Questions Raised Over Merkel's Communist Past ....Questions are being raised about Merkel’s early life in totalitarian East Germany, the extent of her ties to its communist regime and her history as “an ardent Russophile” in Soviet-dominated East Germany. ..... Some Americans are now asking: was there a good reason the US needed to keep an eye on Merkel’s private conversations? As Reuters blogger Jack Shafer wrote when the story broke last year: “Just as Germany has yet to expunge its Nazi past, its eastern, totalitarian provinces have not come close to expunging their Communist past.” “The longitudinal interest by the US in all things Merkel may be informed by her past. She was a citizen of East Germany before reunification, and her personal history has long been controversial.” One Washington foreign policy expert, who did not wish to be named, this week described Merkel to Breitbart London as “a former member of the East German Communist Party who functioned as a mid-level propaganda commissar for the Free German Youth, that is, the young Communists.” .... “She and the then-KGB operative Putin, who is fluent in German, were active in East Germany at the same time. Whether they met or worked together, I don’t know, but they were both in the same line of work.” In April Cliff Kincaid, a director of the AIM Center for Investigative Journalism, wrote“Merkel was known to be suspiciously pro-Russian when she ran for high office in Germany but that her political party, the Christian Democrats, nominated her anyway.” Kincaid notes that Merkel “grew up in the formerly communist East Germany and spent 35 years of her life under the dictatorship.” Germany’s increasing dependence on Russian energy imports “is related to Merkel’s decision, after the accident at the Fukushima nuclear plant in Japan, to phase out Germany’s nuclear energy program.” Kincaid refers to a book by Günther Lachmann and Ralf Georg Reuth called The First Life of Angela M. He says the book suggests “that she had deeper ties to the communist regime than previously known or acknowledged.” “She has admitted joining the Free German Youth, the communist youth organisation, and a photo has surfaced showing her in a communist uniform. But the book argues that she hid her role in the youth group as secretary for agitation and propaganda, instead depicting herself as someone engaged in ‘cultural’ affairs.” https://www.breitbart.com/london/20...to-east-german-regime-americans-want-to-know/
Wrecking NATO By Shoshana Bryen | July 11, 2018 | https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2018/07/wrecking_nato.html The Washington Post headline blared, "Trump is bent on wrecking NATO. Prepare for catastrophe." The Post fears that President Trump's diplomacy will benefit Vladimir Putin to the detriment of American and European interests. European Council president Donald Tusk sniped, "Dear America, appreciate your allies. After all, you don't have that many." The NATO countries are, indeed, among America's closest allies, but some of them appear more interested in oil, natural gas, and trade with Iran than in the Fulda Gap. Some of our "closest allies" have been working overtime to undermine America. If Mr. Trump is irritated with them, there is a reason. Iran is preparing to take $300 million in cash out of German banks to get ahead of impending U.S. banking sanctions. While American intelligence officials are concerned that the money will finance terrorism, the German government says it has "no evidence" to that effect. According to the German newspaper Bild, "Iran ... says that they need the money 'to pass it on to Iranian individuals who, when travelling abroad, are dependent on euros in cash due to their lack of access to accepted credit cards.'" The German government appears to think that one million Iranian tourists might need $300 each – or perhaps 300 tourists might need $1 million each. The plan to send dollars to Tehran is in line with European negotiations, led by Germany and France, to help Iran mitigate the economic fallout of the American withdrawal from the JCPOA – the Iran deal. The E.U. has also begun to update its "blocking statute," the rule that will prevent European companies from complying with impending Iran sanctions. Germany is willing to run a multi-billion-euro trade deficit with Iran to keep the doors open, even as a 2018 German intelligence report confirms that Iran is currently seeking nuclear technology in there. It is unclear why America's "closest allies" want to help the regime that sponsors Hamas and Hezb'allah, created a mercenary army of tens of thousands of Shiites to uproot the mostly Sunni population of Syria, sentences a women who doffed her head scarf to 20 years in prison (she will serve at least two years, likely more), bans homosexuality and hangs gay people from cranes in public – and is, in fact, behind only China in the number of executions it conducts annually – and imprisons foreign nationals. And that's before mentioning that Iran cheated on the JCPOA by hiding the military nature of its program and violated U.N. Security Council resolutions on ballistic missile development and the import and export of weapons. As a practical matter, it may be irrelevant. Iranian president Hassan Rouhani went back to Iran in a snit because, he said, "The package from Europe does not meet all our demands." Iran makes "demands" on America's "closest allies," and the allies consider them? Since NATO was designed to defend Europe from Russia, perhaps our interests are more closely aligned on the subject of an increasingly bellicose and aggressive Vladimir Putin. Earlier this year, The Washington Post ran a story in which Germany's parliamentary commissioner for the armed forces "reached the conclusion that the German military is virtually 'not deployable for collective defense.'" The commissioner "also indicated in an interview that Germany was unprepared for the possibility of a larger conflict even though smaller operations abroad may still be possible." Then perhaps Germany is preparing to spend the NATO-required 2 percent of GDP on defense to make it up. No, it is not. Germany's defense minister, on a visit to the Pentagon earlier this year, said Germany may get to 1.5 percent of GDP in 2026. In the meantime, The Post reported that Germany has not one operational submarine, only half of its Leopard 2 tanks were operational in November 2017, and so many helicopters require repair that Bundeswehr pilots were using private helicopters for practice. While Germany declines to spend 2 percent on defense, it appears to have enough money to build another natural gas pipeline from Russia to Germany and beyond – this will be the third. Germany already imports about half of its oil and natural gas from Russia; the new pipeline will increase that to 60% and beyond. The pipelines also serve France, Belgium, and the Netherlands, among our "closest allies." Remember how upset our European allies were by Russian meddling in Ukraine and the conquest and annexation of Crimea? They tossed Russia from the G-7 and imposed sanctions on Russian oligarchs and companies – though not on Putin himself. Then, when Russia tried abruptly to cancel its gas transit contracts with Ukraine and Poland, Ukraine won its case to retain the shipping rights – and the associated fees – in the international arbitration court in Sweden. So, of course, Germany, et al. sided with Ukraine, which needs the fees in part to continue to resist Russian-inspired aggression. Right? No. Germany sided with Russia against Ukraine – offering to "mediate" between the invader and the invaded. How much political influence will Russia have in Germany and other European countries when the thermometer dips next winter? How will our "closest allies" respond to Russian pressure? A flashback from 2012 might be instructive: Obama: On all these issues, but particularly missile defense, this, this can be solved, but it's important for him [Putin] to give me space. Medvedev: Yeah, I understand. I understand your message about space. Space for you... Obama: This is my last election. After my election, I have more flexibility. Medvedev: I understand. I will transmit this information to Vladimir. Our European allies offered not a word of criticism. Now, six years later, who is actually "wrecking NATO"? Who is actually "colluding" with Russia? Who is actually weakening the Atlantic Alliance? Who is actually supporting Iran today – which threatens the United States (and Israel) directly and Europe by extension? [emphasis added] Hint: It is not Mr. Trump. [emphasis added] Edited to add: Here is another interesting article from the American Thinker, The Paranoid Style of Jonathan Chait .
The free lunch is over for Germany and all NATO nations who want to play both sides of the fence. No more!
If anyone is interested, Peter Strzok, one of the pair of "lovebirds" in the FBI, whose text messages revealed his plans to use agency power to block Trump's Presidency either before or after (with that "insurance plan") is publicly testifying in just a few minutes. It's on C-SPAN 3 or FOX or whatever other media may be carrying it. C-SPAN covers it without interruptions. The other half, Lisa Page, as you might know, has refused the subpoena to testify....is in contempt of Congress. May the evil system (s) be exposed and overcome by the truth.
Trump could fire Mueller, Rosenstein and the whole lot of these swamp creatures tomorrow if he wanted but doesn’t. I can’t understand it. Just really weird the whole thing.
This brilliant President (by the effects of his decisions in this unsurpassed short time in office w/ no experience of such political operations, btw) knows that such a move would have the enemy on full blown "obstruction of justice" mode, screaming forth from their propagandist hired media, and giving them just what they want and forming for them some kind of illegitimate basis for impeachment, if they take over Congress. That's always been their goal and he knows it. Makes perfect sense for such obvious deductions. Meanwhile the public is being educated gradually to the deep state and just how it's operated now for decades...esp. under the Obama regime. It's also exposing the establishment's own compliance with all of the protection of criminals. President Trump needs no more distraction while he does his deals on the world stage. Let the losers waste their time among themselves. The Trump successes are what are getting the convincing facts across to the people. In such a short time while surrounded by all of the attacks he's changing the whole world. The rest whine among themselves because they're being exposed while they are shown to be only the party of NO and RESIST.
I agree! He is a brilliant strategist. When he is ready—when he feels the country is ready—they are all going down.
Our country is completely divided right now and I believe that it is very possible that God gave us a sign that this was going to happen when the USA experienced a solar eclipse last August 21st that crossed through the entire country beginning at the West coast and ending at the East coast of our country. I listened to a lot of the House's hearings today with Peter Strzok and some of the Democrats were stating how absurd these hearings are but I remember the hearings with Amy Barrett, Mike Pompeo, Gina Haspel and the list goes on. Some of the questions that the Democrats gave those individuals were very absurd and we can all assume what they want to do to Brett Kavanaugh given the protests that occurred after President Trump appointed him to SCOTUS on Monday night. If you look at the following history of elections to the US Supreme Court since Anthony Kennedy's election in 1988 you can see that there is a bit of a pattern occurring. Democrats have become more and more biased against a judge that has been appointed by a Republican president and the Republicans have become more and more biased against a judge that has been appointed by a Democratic president although not to the same extreme. Anthony Kennedy by Ronald Regan vote was 97-0 (February 18, 1988) Republican Clarence Thomas by George H.W. Bush vote was 52-48 (October 23, 1991) Republican Ruth Bader Ginsberg by Bill Clinton vote was 96-3 (August 10, 1993) Democrat Stephen Breyer by Bill Clinton vote was 87-9 (August 3, 1994) Democrat John Roberts by George W. Bush vote was 78-22 (September 29, 2005) Republican Samuel Alito by George W. Bush 58-42 (January 31, 2006) Republican Sonia Sodomayor by Barack Obama vote 68-31 (August 8, 2009) Democrat Elena Kagan by Barack Obama vote 63-37 (August 7, 2010) Democrat Neil Gorsuch by Donald Trump vote 54-45 (April 10, 2017) Republican
...I watch what's happening, and, in my view, see a president attempting to do what he can to support religious liberty, to support pro life causes, to approach foreign policy, immigration and regulations with common sense, and then I see him utterly "hated" by many. And I see so many things improving by the numbers, and conservative judges put in place, and yet I just read 12 million more democrat voters have been registered. Voters who, apparently, want no borders much less enforcement, place ideology over an improving economy, want abortion on demand at any stage of life, want all other rights to trump Catholic ones, want to take all guns away from law abiding citizens and support antifa, the ACLU and any riots as long as they are left wing, and who will basically rule and regulate us to death. So, what, after all of this, with a phony dossier ... democrats who want to impeach him basically because he's not a liberal will get their way in November? Seriously........I need a way to cope with the daily madness because I feel like I'm in a third world country.
Could not but help think of one Smedly Butler as I listened on this. Then I bethought of Tony the liar Blair as he told us all of Saddam being but twenty minutes of wiping out London. Really??? I stood in a shop about that time when the liar/war criminal B-liar Blair seemed to have convinced a woman in front of me of his truths. I was going to engage her and ask her if she really had thought this through. I reneged of course as I knew of the fruitlessness of common decency. I often wonder of that woman, if she had children, if the butcher who agreed with her had children ? Did they really think things through ?Brown children by the thousand of course have died in their thousands in that part of the world. Forgive me if I do not tarry on those thoughts as I yet renage yet again as I see little children being shot purposefully to crippledom by the world's most moral army. Those same children of course carry the blood of our Most Holy Mother. But then who really cares, and yet perhaps someone does really understand bloodlines. North Korea really never threatened anyone. Their hatred is also controlled as their country was decimated in that wasteful war. There was more munitions dropped on the north of Korea than there was in the second world war. The north of Korea was wiped out by one third for the instillation of democracy............ .............No thank you as I shun American democracy in favour of a true republic of the American founders.
Blocked on copyright grounds it seems in my neck of the woods. But then again I think his real name is not really Bill Maher. John Kerry of course got his family name by someone sticking a pin in a map of Ireland. So really I have to suppose the real world is not real at all really...........
I hear ya. First rule for me is not trust MSM. Anything they say is either outright false or carefully edited to skew the truth. And then I remind myself of the scripture “He will keep in perfect peace whose mind is staid on Thee.”
Exactly. Look carefully at the videos and pictures of the supposed 10's of thousands of protestors in the UK these past few days.
Exactly! They pulled the same thing with so called protests I. Front of SCOTUS. Once you accept the fact that the media is the propaganda arm of the Left you no longer to look to them for info.. more and more people are catching on.
Yes, and this is why they are trying to control the internet so fiercely. It is no coincidence that Obama handed control of the internet over to the UN as one of his parting gifts. People online are exposing the truth of these things and a good portion of people are asking questions now. This is key. They have had things so wrapped up for the past couple decades that people watch the MSM and become discouraged and despondent. They rely on this because in truth they are a small group in comparison and do not have the support of the majority by a long shot so they rely on this apathy on the part of people to seize control. In Russia, when the Tzar was in power Lenin was sent to Siberia for starting and operating a banned newspaper. It is the same practice today except they own the mainstream news services. Russia fell to the Bolsheviks with less than 1% of the support of the common Russian. The rest were apathetic. I wonder where they were getting their news...
...very true, about the MSM. And the bias has been going on at least since I began paying attention to politics, during Reagan's first term. Only now, the MSM has shifted from being biased, to literally being advocates for the leftist ideology. I keep praying for that very elusive peace inside of me, to cope with the daily madness (I also pray for peace, in general, of course).
It is a battle Mark—daily. I find it helps to avoid TV news even Fox. I get my news on line and I cross reference sources. I have taken to following twitter feeds of some knowledgeable people—Lisa Mei Crowley, Thomas Wictor, The Last Refuge for example. I also check True Pundit and Neon Revolt. Then more “mainstream” the Daily Caller and Breitbart. I guard my peace. If I start to feel that darkness and despondency I remind myself that if God had given up on us He wouldn’t have allowed Trump to win and then I am filled with gratitude and I pray. I am surround by family who have “drunk the cool-aid “ so it is a survival strategy for me.
