European Populations Told to Prepare for Draconian Austerity

Geopolitical pressure is increasing on Europe to cut all oil and gas imports from Russia, and thus usher in a nightmare of energy blackouts, industry collapses and price inflation, including food rationing. The German debate on the issue is telling.

The leading German “climate protector” Ottmar Edenhofer of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research told the Rheinische Post on March 9: “We need massive sanctions now. Europe cannot allow ourselves to keep financing Putin’s war through gas and oil imports. We could manage to enforce this import stop.” Although he did say it would come at a high price, namely German industrial companies could be forced to shut down. “We are talking about wartime scenarios here.”

Energy expert Hanns Koenig told Manager magazine that since Germany’s planned LNG terminals would not be ready before 2026, there could be “government-imposed shutdowns” of industries.

Former German President Joachim Gauck, a russophobe who, during his five yearr-presidency, refused to meet Vladimir Putin, lectured the German population about the need to accept hardship: “We can also freeze for freedom once in a while, and we can also put up with having less happiness and joy in life for a few years.” (What the former pastor did not say is that the population’s sacrifices are not for freedom, but for a failed world order.)

Indeed, although an interruption of Russian gas supplies seems unrealistic as of now, German leaders have been prepared to implement massive austerity schemes since well before the war in Ukraine, as part of the “Great Reset” script cooked up in Davos to bail out the bankrupt western financial system. It provides for a kind of war economy, made up of massive re-armament (Germany just announced a whopping extra €100 billion of military spending!) and reconversion of the energy sector into low-density, “renewable” technologies, which will boost the hyperinflationary dynamic (cf. SAS 9/22).

However, the population’s tolerance of massive austerity will not last forever, despite the current hysterical calls for “solidarity against Russia”. At least that much seems to have been understood by German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock of the Green party, who is otherwise a strong proponent of independence from Russian gas. At a press conference in Pristina (Kosovo), she warned on March 10 that an immediate import stop from Russia would lead to Germany and Europe having “no more electricity and no more heat in a few weeks.”