Germany to close Schroeder’s office in repudiation of ex-chancellor – Gerhard Schroeder’s publicly funded office is to be closed and its remaining staff reallocated amid mounting dismay at the former German chancellor’s refusal to distance himself from Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Gerhard Schröder to lose Bundestag office this week. The SPD, the Greens and the FDP want to strip the former chancellor (SPD) of some privileges immediately: In a draft for the budget committee, he will be deprived of offices and staff.
That means incorrigible, unreformable, incurable, dyed-in-the-wool.
Take Gazprom Gerd, for instance. Please. The Germans have pretended to be upset by his post-chancellorship antics but have secretely admired him all along, handling him with kid gloves (anyone who stands up to evil US-Amerika is a hero here). Now, with this little Ukraine thing going on, the bill finally has to be paid and everyone’s upset and wondering how they got here. Will there be consequeces for him? Of course not. Gazprom Gerd is Gazprom Gerd, after all.
The former chancellor who became Putin’s man in Germany – On the evening of Dec. 9, 2005, 17 days after Gerhard Schröder left office as chancellor of Germany, he got a call on his cellphone. It was his friend President Vladimir Putin of Russia.
Putin was pressing Schröder to accept an offer to lead the shareholder committee of Nord Stream, a Russian-controlled company in charge of building the first undersea gas pipeline directly connecting Russia and Germany.
“Are you afraid to work for us?” Putin had joked. Schröder might well have been, given the appearance of possible impropriety; the pipeline he was now being asked to head had been agreed to in the final weeks of his chancellorship, with his strong support.
He took the job anyway.
Seventeen years later, the former chancellor, who recounted the events himself in a pair of rare interviews, remains as defiant as ever.
You know, kind of like ex-chancellor Gerhard Schroeder (SPD) being Gazprom’s top lobbyist?
Ain’t no big deal. The Greens are from the government and here to help, after all. They’re perfectly willing to turn a blind left eye to any conflict of interest or other ethical concerns in order to “save the planet.” The ends justify the means.
Germany’s foreign minister is facing domestic criticism over her surprise decision to recruit the head of Greenpeace as an international environmental envoy, including accusations she bent the rules to create the post and had obscured the divide between governing and lobbying…
She will reportedly receive a salary in line with that earned by bureaucrats of a similar rank, of almost €15,000 a month.
Morgan will have to also undergo a security check by Germany’s intelligence services, with some critics suggesting it may be difficult for her to distance herself from Greenpeace protest initiatives where its activists have clashed with the law.
He didn’t say who these counter-reactions were going to be most painful too, however.
Nord Stream 2, folks. It’s getting ugly. The ex-chancellor’s reaction is quite understandable, however. Considering who he works for.
German government officials, MPs and experts have criticised U.S. plans to tighten sanctions on the contentious natural gas pipeline project Nord Stream 2 (NS2) currently under construction in the Baltic Sea as an encroachment on EU sovereignty in a parliamentary hearing. Former German chancellor Gerhard Schröder, who has close ties to the Russian government and chairs Nord Stream 2’s board of directors, said there is no doubt that the U.S. attempt to “dictate the sovereign community of states such as the EU what to do” must be rejected. He said that diplomatic possibilities must be exploited, “but this will not work without counter sanctions”, without giving details. Schröder said natural gas would be needed as a bridging technology in Germany’s energy system for a very long time.
But the former chancellor’s comments were met with criticism. His presence as a “badly informed Russian gas lobbyist is a disgrace for the highest government office”, said Alexander Reitzenstein, senior policy advisor at think tank E3G.
That means oligarch. Take former chancellor Gerhard “Gazprom Gerd” Schroeder, for instance. Please.
Sanctions aimed at key individuals can be surprisingly effective, it turns out. They help to undermine internal support for the regime or at least its most unattractive policies.
One oligarch, though, remains overlooked. Arguably he is the most important of all. That’s former German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder…
Mr. Schroeder has been a one-man Trojan horse against every European Union commitment to curb Russian energy leverage and improve the competitiveness of its gas market. Notice that the alternative was never to shut Russian gas out of Germany. It was simply for Germany, at every step, to stop lending itself to the enhancement of Russia’s energy power, with Mr. Schroeder leading the influence brigades.
Schröders Engagement in Russland und Nähe zu Putin, den er einen Freund nennt, stößt seit Jahren auf Argwohn. Im vergangenen September ließ sich der Altkanzler allen Einwänden zum Trotz zum Aufsichtsratsvorsitzenden des halbstaatlichen russischen Ölkonzerns Rosneft wählen.
A highly influential lobbyist for Russia’s steamrolling natural gas colossus Gazprom (and former chancellor of Germany) has taken time off from his busy disinformation timetable to explain how the European Union’s policy toward Ukraine caused this whole unfortunate Russian-Ukraine-Crimea mess in the first place.
The loggyist explained how when the EU offered Ukraine an association agreement based on what he called “either/or” terms (either the EU or Russia), this confused practically everyone involved because, as we all know, offering people a free choice “over there” can only lead to the wrong choice being made, thus giving Russia the legal right to intervene, more or less.
“In the 1930s, Nazi Germany occupied part of neighbouring Czechoslovakia under the pretext of protecting ethnic Germans.”
Observing Hermann 