Trump’s ambassador threatens Germany on gas pipeline

This 9 June 2018 video from the USA says about itself:

Germans Want Trump’s Ambassador Kicked Out Of Their Country

Politicians in Germany are wanting to remove Donald Trump’s ambassador to Germany, Richard Grenell, after he publicly came out and said that part of his job was to promote the conservative party in Germany. Not only are ambassadors not allowed to get involved in politics in the countries that they are sent to, but this is not Grenell’s first time meddling in the business of Germans, and now they want him gone. Ring of Fire’s Farron Cousins discusses this.

Translated from Dutch NOS TV today:

The American ambassador in Germany also warns about sanctions against companies that cooperate with the Russian gas pipeline Nord Stream 2. The newspaper Bild am Sonntag has seen letters in which ambassador Grenell warns companies.

As the video says, Donald Trump’s ambassador in Germany Grenell was in the news earlier for using US American taxpayers’ money to support far-right political parties in Europe.

Earlier his colleague in the Netherlands did the same.

“We want to emphasize that companies involved in Russian energy exports deal with a sector in which there is a significant risk of sanctions”, writes Grenell in the letter. …

The Russian gas pipeline Nord Stream 2 is currently being constructed in the Baltic Sea between Russia and Germany. The US argues that Europe is thereby becoming more dependent on Russia and that Ukraine is losing power as a transit country. The US also wants to supply its own gas to Europe.

Earlier, the US ambassador to the Netherlands, Pete Hoekstra, warned that sanctions threaten. …

Mr Hoekstra was in the news earlier for falsely claiming there were no go-zones in the Netherlands where cars and politicians were set on fire ‘because of radical Islam’; and then calling these, his own, sayings, ‘fake news’.

No politicians are set on fire in the Netherlands. Dutch politicians’ cars ARE sometimes set on fire. But not by ‘radical Islam’. By right-wing xenophobes who think these politicians are too leftist and too pro-refugees. Like happened in Oostknollendam in 2015.

The US delegate to the EU also noted that President Trump has “many different instruments” to counteract the construction of the gas pipeline. “We have not yet made every effort to undermine or even stop the project.”

LARA TRUMP: MIGRANTS ARE ‘DOWNFALL OF GERMANY’ Lara Trump, the president’s daughter-in-law and 2020 campaign adviser, asserted that Germany’s acceptance of migrants was “the downfall” of the country. She said Angela Merkel’s open-door policy was “one of the worst things that ever happened to Germany,” and “this president knows that.” [HuffPost]

TRUMP NAMES FIREBRAND LOYALIST AS ACTING DIRECTOR OF NATIONAL INTELLIGENCE President Donald Trump appointed U.S. Ambassador to Germany Richard Grenell as the acting director of national intelligence, sidestepping a Senate confirmation process in which Grenell might not be confirmed. [HuffPost]

GERMAN Chancellor Angela Merkel hit back today at US threats to impose sanctions on individuals linked to the planned Russia-Germany Nord Stream II gas pipeline. “We are against extraterritorial sanctions and not just since this decision — we also have this problem with a view to Iran,” Ms Merkel said, referring to the Senate’s approval on Tuesday of a Bill that slaps sanctions on people involved with laying sections of the pipeline. Germany and other EU countries have also opposed the US’s unilateral sanctions against Iran: here.

The temporary halt to construction of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline has dramatically intensified tensions between the United States and the European powers. Over the weekend, German government representatives and spokespeople from almost every party in parliament criticized the aggressive actions by the United States over the Nord Stream 2 pipeline in unusually strident terms: here.

The decision by the US Congress to impose sanctions on companies involved in the construction of the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline underscores the sharp divisions between the imperialist powers and the acute danger of world war. In the past, the cutting off of energy supplies was considered an act of war: here.