Today, I and a fellow peace activist disrupted a pro-NATO love-fest featuring Germany’s Foreign Minister, Annalena Baerbock, and Canadian Foreign Minister, Mélanie Joly.
Their “fireside chat” was held in Montreal. It was organized by the Montreal Chamber of Commerce.
The German Foreign Minister is a member of the Green Party of Germany. She formerly served as its co-leader.
The German Green Party was founded in West Germany in 1980. The leading figure in the early days of the party, Petra Kelly, was a peace and ecofeminist activist, a prominent advocate of nonviolence, and a leader of the worldwide fight against nuclear missiles.
Over the years, the German Greens have abandoned Petra Kelly’s admirable commitment to peace, non-violence and opposition to NATO. Today, they are the most militaristic and belligerent of the political parties in Germany’s coalition government.
So compromised has the German Green Party become that the leading Green in Germany’s Bundestag, Katrin Göring-Eckardt, recently praised Andriy Melnyk, Ukraine’s disgraced ex-ambassador to Germany, after Melnyk lauded Nazi collaborator and notorious anti-Semite, Stepan Bandera, and ridiculed German Chancellor Olaf Scholtz.
During my disruption today of the Baerbock/Joly fireside chat, I invoked the German Green Party’s past commitment to peace and non-violence and I told the Foreign Minister that she has betrayed the core values of the Green Party. You can watch my disruption here: dimitri-disruption-of-baerbock.
My disruption was preceded by that of Laurel Thompson, a peace activist from Montreal, who denounced NATO before being ushered out of the ballroom. You can watch Laurel’s disruption here: laurel-disruption-of-baerbock-joly.
Before we were removed from the ball room, the Foreign Ministers made at least two notable admissions.
First, Baerbock acknowledged that the Ukraine war could go on for years, but she nonetheless vowed that Germany would “support Ukraine for as long as they need us”: war-will-go-on-for-months-or-years.
Then, Joly responded to a question from the moderator about the reasons for which Canada recently returned to Germany a turbine that was needed to maintain Nord Stream I gas flows from Russia to Germany. Without gas from Russia, Germany will be plunged into a catastrophic energy shortage this winter.
In explaining her government’s decision to return the turbine to Germany despite Canadian sanctions on Russia, Joly explained that the Trudeau government’s motivation for the decision was to prevent the Putin government from being able to blame Canada’s government for Germany’s gas crisis. (Silly me, I thought that the priority of the Trudeau government was to help the German people, not to win a propaganda war with Putin.) You can listen to Joly’s comments about the turbine here: turbine.
In spite of the fact that there are anti-war groups and peace activists all over Canada, it is an almost one-way street at the moment for the war propaganda being promulgated by Western governments with the assistance of a compliant media. Therefore, we all have to thank Laura and Dimitri for providing two lone voices of sanity, as Canada continues down a path of unbelievable absurdity and, ultimately, no return. Obviously, Foreign Minister Joly has not a clue what she is doing by stoking the fires in Ukraine and elsewhere. Thank you both for attempting to point towards the salient facts of a war that has no future, nor ever did…
Thank you so much. That is something we all should have done. Canada and Joly are such an embarrassment at the moment and they are taking us down a very dangerous path! As for Baerbock, what can I say. She is a Green & one of the most warlike of the lot!
Good on you!
Great work Dimitri, for calling out the hypocrisy! The Trudeau government has proven no better than the Harperites as they lead us down the garden path of war and possible nuclear annihilation. Germans should especially no better. Not one western leader with the courage to speak out for peace, nonviolence, critical diplomacy, ceasefire as if these words are anathema to them. Disgraceful!
Thank you for doing that. The censorship on this issue – even on CBC – is deplorable.
De-escalation, ceasefire, diplomacy, peace. And then, finally, full force and focus on the war we can’t afford to lose, the war on climate change.