Railway Sabotage in Germany Follows by Days the Explosions of Nord Stream Pipelines
In the early hours of October 8, all railway traffic in northern Germany came to a standstill, after two crucial fibreglass cables of the GSM-R (Global System for Mobile Communications – Rail), which enable communication between the control centers and the trains were cut. In the past, there have been frequent acts of sabotage against the railways, predominantly by leftist terrorists, but this incident required very special insider knowledge, since the second cable was the emergency backup for the first.
No one has claimed responsibility for the act, but the Federal Criminal Police (BKA) has described it as a “politically motivated act”, adding they have no evidence of foreign interference. (Such caution would apply in the event of the implication of an ally…) A previous internal BKA document had noted the closeness in time to the Nord Stream incident.
One immediate consequence of the railway incident will be greater powers and funding for the newly-created Territorial Command of the German Army, one of whose prime tasks is the protection of critical infrastructure. The question is how that could be done — more patrols, more Internet surveillance, more invasions of citizens’ privacy? Clearly, there is a psy-war aspect to all the talk about the vulnerability of critical infrastructure, which is meant to spread angst among the population, and thereby discourage (and suppress) protest movements.
Earlier last week, prior to the railway sabotage, Lt.Col. Bosshard of the Swiss Army wrote a second article on the sabotage of the Nord Stream pipeline, debunking the theory that Russia had inserted explosives in the pipelines, while they were being constructed, and then ignited them in September (cf. SAS 40/22). In great detail, he demonstrates the virtual impossibility of such an action from a technical standpoint. He also discredits the narrative about the Russians using a submarine or a submarine drone to deposit the explosive charge on the pipelines. However, if they did manage to do so, “then virtually every underwater infrastructure of NATO countries would be jeopardized”.
Col. Bosshard concludes that an examination of the facts shows that Western authorship of the sabotage is considerably more plausible than Russian authorship. “If, however, the USA, Denmark, Poland and perhaps other NATO allies were responsible, Germany in particular would have to draw the consequences.” Turning to the stories circulating in Western media about Russian responsibility, Col. Bosshard suggests that the aim “may simply be to surround in fog the obvious and most plausible version of a U.S. authorship. In the future, one would do well to consider Western communications with a certain degree of skepticism.”
