The German Greens are "stars and stripes', not green

OskarLafontaine, born 16 September 1943) is a German politician who served in the government of Germany as Minister of Finance from 1998 to 1999. Previously he was Minister President of the state of Saarland from 1985 to 1998, and he was also Chairman of the Social Democratic Party from 1995 to 1999. After having won the 1998 German federal election along with new Chancellor Gerhard Schröder, he resigned from all political offices, including his seat in the German Bundestag, only a half year later and positioned himself as a popular opponent of Schröder's policies in the tabloid press.

Germany’s Greens Are Not Green – They Are Stars And Stripes

Chair of Die Linke Party comments on Frack-gas, Nordstream II and German politics

FortRuss,

17 January, 2020

We translate Oskar Lafontaine’s January 1 Facebook post.

The Greens and the Fracking Gas

The Greens are the extended arm of the United States in the German Bundestag. This has been demonstrated again and again, most recently on the subject of fracking gas. In the interest of environmental protection, they should refuse to buy this dirty gas. But as “Friends of the USA” they keep coming up with something to enable the sale of this over-priced gas in Germany and Europe.

Now the green co-chair Annalena Baerbock has come up with something new. We have “a considerable amount of leverage in our hands with the Russian Nordstream 2 pretige project,” she says, “to bring Putin to reason.” After all, the Russians supported the bombing of Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad in the Idlib region.

Why not leverage on the US?

The jihadists armed by the United States and their Arab friends have settled there. It is striking that Annalena Baerbock and many Greens see no leverage in the “US Prestige Fracking Gas Project” against the US bombardments in several countries and their drone wars that violates international law. Despite styling themselves as a “human rights party”, they repeatedly refuse to pillory the state which is responsible for most human rights violations with their arms deliveries, trade wars, covert wars, drone wars and bomb wars terrorizing the world.

Baerbock is in the tradition of Joschka Fischer, who played a major role in Germany’s participation in the Yugoslavia war that violated international law. He is now Senior Strategic Counsel for the advisory firm of Madelaine Albright, the former Secretary of State who believes that the US sanctions against Iraq, that resulted in the death of 500,000 children, were “worth the price”.

So far, Baerbock has only become a member of the German Marshall Fund and the transatlantic advisory board of the US-friendly Heinrich Böll Foundation – but it is only just beginning.