Essay by Eric Worrall
Greens are claiming for once it wasn’t them.
Germany: Police suspect Russia behind car vandalism
Matt Ford with AFP, dpa02/05/2025February 5, 2025
A criminal campaign which saw over 270 car exhausts stuffed with expanding construction foam is suspected to have been Russian sabotage aimed at discrediting the Green Party, according to German authorities.
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What we know about the car vandalism
Over 270 vehicles in Berlin and the surrounding state of Brandenburg, as well as in the southern states of Bavaria and Baden-Württemberg, had their exhaust pipes blocked with expanding construction foam.
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Stickers were then left on the damaged cars depicting Vice-Chancellor Robert Habeck, the Green Party’s chancellor candidate in the upcoming federal election, and bearing the message: “Be greener!”
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Prosecutors in the southern city of Ulm also have four suspects in their sights. A police spokesman said four men – a German, a Serb, a Romanian and a Bosnian aged 17, 18, 20 and 29 – were suspected of 123 counts of vandalism, with tins of construction foam found during house searches.
One of the men claimed that he and his accomplices had been contacted and commissioned to carry out the attacks by a Russian using the chat messenger Viber. He said they had received detailed instructions and had been promised €100 ($104) for every damaged vehicle.
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Read more: https://www.dw.com/en/germany-police-suspect-russia-behind-car-vandalism/a-71517942
For once I believe the greens – the vehicle sabotage wasn’t deadly enough to be an act of green activism.
Filling the exhaust with expanding foam would simply stop the vehicle from starting.
Previous green acts of sabotage have been far worse, mostly involving slow deflation of tires – a grave risk to the safety and lives of drivers who failed to notice their tires were losing pressure. Greens claimed they always left a flier explaining what they did – but even if this is true, is reading junk fliers really a priority when you are struggling to get to work, or get the kids to school? Especially if the flier was soaked by rain. It is a wonder that nobody died.
The other piece of evidence which supports the Russian theory, how many greens know what expanding foam is, and where to buy it? Only people who have ever tried to repair a hole in a wall or do honest work with their hands know what expanding foam is. I find it difficult to imagine a green activist fixing a hole in a wall with their own hands, more likely they would organise a rent strike until the landlord fixed the hole.
Interesting times we live in.
Note the type of expanding foam used by the saboteurs was probably the disposable spray can type, not the industrial scale insulation gun in the picture at the top of this article.
If Russia was trying to frame the Greens, it represents a falling out of old allies. Putin’s Russia secretly funded “green” climate activism in the West, to undermine competition to their own oil and gas industry. Here’s an article about it in The Grauniad:
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/jun/19/russia-secretly-working-with-environmentalists-to-oppose-fracking
Here’s an article about it in The Express:
https://www.express.co.uk/news/science/1575605/russia-news-putin-exposed-climate-activists-ban-fracking-ploy-gas
Here’s an article about it in The Hill:
https://thehill.com/opinion/energy-environment/596304-investigate-russias-covert-funding-of-us-anti-fossil-fuel-groups/
I don’t think too many thinking people ever discounted the idea. I’m about 99% certain the US funds opposition groups around the world.
This ^
Not only that, but recent information indicates that we even fund BOTH sides.
What recent information?
Comments from Musk’s ongoing audits of government spending
The U.S. has backed political opponents to hostile (and typically tyrannical) foreign governments, but that’s very different from Russia’s funding of environmental wackos to sabotage western commercial competition to Russia’s oil & gas industry. What Russia is doing is a form of disinformation campaign, because the Russians obviously know that the wackos they’re bankrolling are nuts, and the climate activism that they promote in the west (but do not tolerate on their own soil) is based on nonsense.
Correction:
I wrote:
“the Russians obviously know that the wackos they’re bankrolling are nuts…”
But if the Russians and the Greens have had a falling out then I should have written:
“the Russians obviously knew that the wackos they were bankrolling are nuts…”
Yes, the US is funding people as odious as Garry Kasparov but the poison is for self consumption.
My uncle was building an airstrip on Okinawa when WW II ended. Japanese soldiers would sneak out to their equipment during the night to cover then with branches, and all they could figure was they were trying to hide them. Said it almost made him feel sorry for them, being so uneducated, and how much more damage they could have done just by pulling wires loose or pouring dirt into the fuel tanks. As I understand it, most Japanese soldiers then were still farmers or low skilled labor, and simply had no understanding of engines and other technology. I don’t think Greens are that ignorant, but not understanding canned foam does sound about right.
Really? It was the Russians? Not an individual who may or may not be Russian?
‘It’s not our fault orificer it’s the Russians wot made us do it.’
I wonder if they got paid?
Next thing you know, Elon Musk is a nazi. (I’m not a fan of Elon but the worldwide rhetoric about his hand gesture is ridiculous.)
I have lived in South Africa and I know Pretoria. If you are rich white and a Pretorian you are pretty close to being a Nazi to justify your richness and superiority. Prior to WWII Namibia, just next door, was German West Africa. I worked for a German in Johannesburg. There were many ex Nazis in South Africa, singing the old SS songs and feeling generally racially superior. It was easy for them to learn Afrikaans.
Elon is what he is and where he came from. Accept it. The real issue is whether or not he will do good or make a humongous mess of it.
This unlikely and fairly idiotic administration has one thing going for it. It is not about morals, or faith, it is about doing stuff. And probably doing Murica stuff.
America, and hopefully the world, will awake from the paralysis of moral dilemmas, the iron grip of state over regulation and start to go somewhere.
Trump will make as much money as he can. Elon is a lifetime crony capitalist using government handouts to fund his businesses. In the end, some good will be done and some harm will be done, but nothing will not be done.
People will look at what gets done, say ‘ OK that works’ or ‘Really, no, we don’t want that’. But at least they will be looking at the actual results of doing stuff. And start thinking in terms not of ‘is this the right thing to do?’, but in terms of ‘will doing this achieve the results that we want, even if its not especially morally pure’.
I am absolutely not a fan of the Donald. I think he is the sort of person I have often come across in business, who will short change you, write escape clauses into contracts and never behave in good faith unless by accident. Elon is likewise, a type of person I have met in S Africa. A person of wealth and privilege whose lifestyle has been destroyed by political change.
But I am a supporter of this administration, not because I support or like its leaders, but because those types of people are ideal to break the moral paralysis that grips the Western world.
However that support will only extend as far as it does the world good. Once they step over the line, and it becomes pure profiteering and casual exercise of political power for its own sake, with no regard for its consequences. I will be the first in line with the pitchfork.
Downvote me as much as you like. But remember what Bob Dylan said
Don’t follow leaders. Watch your parking meters.
Make the Donald & Elon your servants, don’t let him become your master. Remember who put him there, and make sure you know how to take him away when he oversteps the mark. Because he will. Sure as eggs is eggs.
Huh? People with white skin in Pretoria pretty much have to be Nazis cuz they are richer than non-whites, and since Musk was born in RSA and Pretoria is in RSA, it logically follows that Musk is pretty much a nazi? Really?
There are loads of factual and logical errors in this argument of yours. But let’s start with the assumption that stark differences in wealth are ipso facto evidence of nazi policies and beliefs. Are there no counter-examples of wealth disparities without the presence of Nazi theology? Of course there are! And the bit about ‘Nazi’ being shorthand for ‘national socialism’, that too might just be important to consider. So maybe you should dial back the rhetoric and dial up the thoughtful reflection.
Musk doesn’t get rich from crony handouts.
Tesla has sold too many cars to qualify for the $7500 handout any more.SpaceX thrives by doing something NASA is too bureaucratic to even imagine. SLS is decades old expendable technology costing $4 billion per expendable launch. Starship launches will launch more at 1/100 the cost and recover both stages.Starlink is his own endeavor.You were saying? You earned that downvote.
We followed Obama and look where it got the world.
Absolute garbage. I have lived in RSA for over 50 years and have yet to meet one of these so called Nazi supporters.
I know that Russians are now the modern bogeyman, but isn’t this pushing the limits of believability a little too far!? C’mon, man! If a Russian had been directing this project they would have been doing the old “spud plug” gambit? Any self-respecting, vodka soaked Russky would push a potato up the tailpipe; cans of expanding foam are for whiny, wimpy Euro trash!
Seriously, its never that simple. In Ireland the IRA were at one level politically motivated and funded directly by Irish Americans with more money than sense, at another they were mafia gang lords and drug runners and at yet another they were vicious thugs who enjoyed killing people.
Russia doesn’t create these divisions, it just feeds them where it finds them.
Marxist idealists don’t (knowingly) work for Russia, but if some benefactor three steps removed from Russia tips them a donation to ‘carry on the good work’ they don’t enquire as to the source of the money.
It has been said that many a politician railing on about how terrible drugs were was in fact paid by drug barons to keep drugs illegal: legalising drugs would put an end to their businesses.
It’s simply a global network of corruption in which individual players direct the money they have extorted into channels that bear fruit.
But one thing Russia – or the FSB – understands is street level protests,. From the anti Vietnam movements through CND and the anti nuclear movements, to some civil rights movements and the anti fossil and anti- nuclear movements, this is all the methodology developed by and funded by cold war Russia. And now being expressed again as anti-Ukraine, antoi-Vax propaganda. And Wokeism,. critical race theory, gender ideology and the like.
These movements are all pre-existent, but Russia would be mad not to fund them where it finds them. The world is full of discontented people who feel they have been hard done by. Tell them that they have been, load them with funds and point them at the ‘oppressor’ of choice, and sit back and smile.
Again? Leo, my friend, do let’s not get so far afield from common sense. Anti-Uke war and anti-vax positions don’t have sufficient merit in themselves to deserve support; only rubles can convince a guy that one or both positions should be supported? Really?
And funding those other ‘movements’ — has to be Russia? Even as we know the USG promoted these, funded these? So, the US and RU gummints worked side by side to fund BLM and gender wokism? Really?
Not everything is a Russian operation to destabilize the west. We are doing just fine on our own.
I wonder if these guys got any money for their vandalism?
If not, then this might have just been an internet troll lying to these people and convincing them to commit crimes, and getting a good laugh out of all of it.
Indeed. Sounds more like something MI6 or the CIA would do. Putin and Co. are well aware that Germany is self-destructing and all they have to do is sit back and watch.
I’m curious as to how Russia would gain by a few hundred German cars not starting one morning. Bottom line always is Qui Bono, and Russia has a lot more on it’s plate than sponsoring teenage pranks
If it had been the Russians, it would have a much bigger and better organized operation. Four losers, paid $104 per car? Even with their current money problems, this operation is small beans.
I also agree with others that the Russians have no reason to want to discredit European greens.
Wow !! I KNOW HOW GREEENS THINK. WHAT THEY THINK !
SO, IPSO FACTO, IT’s GOTTA BE THOSE DAMN RUSKIS !!
ie… Greens are too fucking STUPID to think of using foam to
make a point. Anyway, they’d use it more dramatically – if they
could think…
Bottom Line: The Greens are STooPid, Russians are Devious !!
Or it’s CO2 or Russia, the world is so simple… 😀
Lol!
Ain’t that the truth.
You only need one, he can tell the rest.
Yep. That’s some fine evidence right there. Let them fine young men go and lets go kill us some russkies.
Couldn’t be a Bart Simpson “wasn’t me” defense by a halfwit vandal.
Halfwit vandals aren’t nearly that dedicated. A few cars parked close together and a single can of foam is one thing. Hundreds of cars and many many cans of foam take planning and dedication.
Ever lived near a frat house?
I look at Que Bono. I cannot see how this act benefits Russia when the Greens are doing such a nice job of destroying Germany from the inside. So, to me it makes sense that the is a political act. Remines me of putting a potato in an exhaust pipe which was always an act of revenge.
Bur Russian (and Russia) have done stupider things than this.
Yes, but why would the Russians want to discredit the Green Party. Hasn’t the green Party worked as had as it could to cripple German energy production, so Germany would become dependent on Russian natural gas?
“Hasn’t the green Party worked as had as it could to cripple German energy production”
Got your New England accent goin’ there. 🙂
aimed at discrediting the Green Party
They don’t really need any help.
No, it’s the Greens.
Why would the Russians sabotage the Greens, the Greens are like putty in the hands of Putin.