Why Russia’s invasion of the Baltic States is not taking place

RT Deutsch – by Gert Ewen Ungar 

https://deutsch.rt.com/meinung/86900-claus-kleber-ausser-rand-und-band/

In the heute-journal of 4 April, Claus Kleber has Russian troops march into the Baltic States in an introduction. This gross journalistic blunder highlights the spiritual and moral state of the media elite in Germany.

A message appears on my screen. The message “Eilmeldung” is in Russian. And below the headline: “A German television channel reports about Russia’s ‘invasion’ of Estonia”. But now the colleagues on the Russian-language RT channel are really exaggerating, I think. But just a few minutes later it turns out that Russia, as always, is the source of better journalism, while the devastatingly bad one comes from Germany.

Because already a short research later is clear: He really said it. Claus Kleber, in his pre-moderation of an article on NATO in the heute-journal of 4 April, actually got himself into the wrong position:

„Today, American, German and other allies are on their way to Estonia by land, sea and air in order to fight back the Russian troops that have settled there in the Crimea as they did a few years ago.“

He then adds: “Don’t worry, it’s not like that, it’s just a vision, but a realistic one.” A zero message, garnished with the wild conjecture on which it is based. For nothing is realistic here, as I will show.

It may be that Kleber only wanted to shake Wachrütteln in the face of a Russian threat perceived in his circles. It may well be that, because of this threat, he took a remedy he borrowed from Orson Wells. He may use all of this as an excuse for his gross misstep. However, this may explain one or two things, but nothing is excused, for the process sheds light on the brutalization and intellectual poverty of the German media elites.

When Orson Wells picked up a new stylistic device on the radio, panic broke out in the USA. Wells described the idea of aliens so realistically that the listeners did not understand that it was a fiction, a radio play.

Claus Kleber may have felt inspired by it in his introduction. He may have thought he was now following in the footsteps of great art. It alone led him to a mental bankruptcy. There is a small but serious difference. We do not know whether there are aliens. But Russia exists. The country is a direct neighbour of the European Union. And while there are currently no tensions with any extraterrestrials that may exist, there are many with Russia.

Kleber’s moderation therefore moves less into the field of high art than into the context of the Gleiwitz lie. The reason for the invasion of Poland by the German Wehrmacht, which marked the beginning of the Second World War, was invented in the same way that Kleber invented his invasion of Estonia by Russian soldiers. It is therefore more than just tasteless what Kleber can be carried away to. It is history-forgotten. “Since 5:45 a.m., the gun has been fired back.” This is the context of a major German news programme. One can only be ashamed.

It may seem to the transatlantically oriented media representatives as a real possibility that Russia represents a threat to the Baltic States, because such nonsense is spread in these circles and is apparently believed to exist there in the real world this threat does not exist. Serious journalism would point to this fact. The threat which Baltic states feel and which NATO uses for its increasing aggression against Russia does not exist. The repetition does not make it any more true.

Anyone who can take a closer look immediately notices that the Western aggression on the Russian side lacks a counterpart. While here the spectre of an attack on the Baltic States is used as an argument for armament and troop stationing at Russia’s western border, such rhetoric is completely lacking in Russia. There is no such thing as “The Baltic is ours”. There is nothing to suggest that the Russian government is preparing the population for confrontation through the media. The opposite is much closer to the truth. People in Russia are glad to have got rid of the Baltic States.

Serious journalism would not only find out that it is so, it would also explain why it is so: The Baltic was a problem for the Soviet Union, as it is today a problem for the EU. It is not economically independent. It has no industry, no functioning business model, no resources. The Baltic region lives from the emigration of its young inhabitants, who work in other European countries and transfer money home. There is really nothing there that Russia needs. It is also strategically unimportant. Russia has enough access to the Baltic Sea. One could also say that the Baltic is bumming its way through history. Sometimes here and sometimes there.

Kleber’s idea that Russia, of all places, could now invade Estonia is therefore evidence of a strange ignorance of the actual situation. It is painfully embarrassing what Kleber publicly delivers in transatlantic bondage to intellectual flatness. But it also allows us to conclude how the transatlantic infiltration of German media has meanwhile led to us being systematically misinformed. Russiagates, Russian hackers everywhere, scripts, Russian threats to the Baltic states, Russian troops in Ukraine – all fakes that haunt the quality media and stage a threat that does not correspond to reality. It is propaganda that we are presented with, which is supposed to create an image of the enemy. Kleber made that abundantly clear on April 4.

What Kleber has achieved is a low point in German journalism and testimony to an intellectual brutalization and flattening of Germany.

The Baltic is a problem for the EU, because nowhere else in the EU is the Charter of Fundamental Rights so obviously trampled underfoot as it is there. State discrimination against minorities, violation of human rights, open fascism – the Baltic stands for all this. The fact that we do not learn anything about it also stands for the journalism of Claus Kleber. In all honesty and with all the facts in mind, he would have to say that one would not even want to give a region like this as a gift, because its right-wing radicalism not only discredits the EU as a whole, but actually jeopardises it.

But Kleber is hanging up the NATO alliance case, which none of us would survive. What Kleber is doing here is either close to madness or hopelessly misinformed. No matter what you decide to do, in a news programme with an audience of millions, such a thing has no place.

And another word about the Crimea. Russian soldiers never invaded it. They have always been there, their stationing was contractually regulated with the Ukraine. They did not occupy the Crimea either, but merely prevented Ukrainian soldiers from disrupting the referendum in which an overwhelming majority of the inhabitants of the Crimea spoke out in favour of disengagement from Ukraine and joining Russia. Kleber also misinformed his audience about this.

He practically no longer provides any information about Ukraine. Ukraine hardly appears in German news anymore. This has to do with the fact that there is no positive evidence of democratisation and economic development in Ukraine. While the Crimea is going steeply uphill, the Ukraine is going steeply downhill. The German mainstream is simply silent about the consequences of Western intervention in Ukraine. Nevertheless, the facts are not out of the world and continue to be effective.

When a Ukrainian looks at the Crimea today, he can only pale with envy in view of the prosperity there, the consolidated structures and the freedom that prevails there. It is therefore not difficult to predict that the Crimea will be one of the factors that will cause the whole Western coup in Ukraine to fail. Good economic and political conditions prevail there, but not in Ukraine. Glue and his own conceal that.

In two sentences spoken by him in the introduction without any informational content, every basis of these sentences is demonstrably wrong and ideologically charged. This is what is called propaganda. That is German news today: testimonies of a deep spiritual brutalization and a spiritual barricading before reality. Today Russian media inform us about this state of our news landscape, because there journalism is completely intact against all claims.

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As an observer of the German press, I want to add a thought to the article:

Mr. Kleber – as the ankerman of the ZDF news broadcast – is not ill informed, he exactly knows what he is doing with a full understanding of the real situation. This false meme of beeing ill informed is much too often implanted, wrongfully or carelessly used, especially when it comes to Merkel and other important political figures. It helps to prolonge the myth that somewhat we, the people, have to help those persons to come to grips about certain things.

But nonetheless, I’m proud that now we have our own „little“ Orson Wells.

Detlef Reimers