Germany immigration mistakes manifesting

Meanwhile in Germany, immigration mistakes are starting to get addressed.

Germany unbanning AfD?

Is Germany allowing the conservative AfD party to run in elections rather than being branded a terrorist organization?

Meanwhile in Germany

Free speech in full retreat:

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German election summed up

Paul Joseph Watson sizes up the result.

Germany shifting right

The question is, how far?  Generally a good news election though.

Germany is lost

Remember when dopey Margaret Brennan recently claimed the Holocaust was caused by free speech? She need not worry because Germany does not have free speech: 

Can Germany be saved from Merkel's love for China?

Germany stands athwart America's and it's growing list of allies in the effort to derail communist China's global ambitions.  But Merkel does not remain unchallenged within Germany.

Pat Bucahnan nails Trump's comments on Germany

Here I was naively expecting a great quote from the Strzok hearings at Congress which turned out to be a shout-fest and a for the most part a missed opportunity for the Republicans (save a few worthy moments, especially from Trey Gowdy). But this quote from Pat Buchanan has to be the quote of the week as it sums up perfectly the reason president Trump unloaded on a freeloading Germany this week.

The president unapologetically dressed-down German leadership for it's shameless self-serving deal with Russia.

The media was apoplectic; You can't say things like that!

First, here's the set-up of the circumstances leading up to the dressing-down. Germany spends considerably less than the NATO mandated 2% of GDP on defense.  And while NATO was created as a common defense against the former Soviet Union, Germany has reached a self-serving deal to get more cheap natural gas from Russia, which is fine in a vacuum if Russia were not a bad actor on the world stage and Germany wasn't defaulting on it's NATO obligation and indeed putting it's own security at risk. And, as Buchanan puts it:

Germany spends 1.2 percent of its gross domestic product on defense, while the U.S. spends 3.5 percent. Why? Why -- nearly three decades after the end of the Cold War, the collapse of the Warsaw Pact, the crackup of the Soviet Union and the overthrow of the Communist dictatorship in Moscow -- are we still defending European nations that collectively have 10 times the GDP of Vladimir Putin's Russia?

Indeed, "Why?" Buchanan has nailed it.  It's not just Germany undercutting it's NATO partners in a self-serving way, it is doing so for it's own financial wealth when Germany is far richer than Russia and far richer than Germany was at the formation of NATO. The president was right.  Pat Buchanan is right. Done.

Window Wednesday - Germany, Russia, NATO and gas pipelines

President Trump setting Germany straight on NATO, Russia and where Germany gets its gas.

Saturday Learning Series - Geography (Germany)

Germany is a country in utter flux but they're still an economic power and from a geographic and historical perspective very interesting.

The flag:

Why Poland matters

Poland for years has been carrying the banner of Western values of freedom of speech, individual liberty, Christian values, and national sovereignty .  Perhaps it's because Poland has not been truly free since World War II, having been subjugated and then by the communists of Soviet Russia.  Having tasted freedom for such a relatively short period of roughly three decades, they are not about to surrender their liberty to globalist and/or dictatorial leadership, or creeping Sharia Law.  The Polish people seem to get what the Germans (and many Americans) are unwilling to recognize.

These two videos illustrate a lot these points that you'll not see in the mainstream media in America or much of Western Europe.

Poland has managed to carry this through an Obama presidency which was antithetical to many of these values AND in the face of Russian aggression in the Ukraine, which truly says something for the backbone of the Polish people.

Meanwhile in Germany

You have this still happening.  

Migration is not a problem. Mass migration, especially undocumented invites chaos and violence. That in turn invites recrimination. Violence will beget violence. Stupid policy will lead to terrible consequences, unintended though they may be.

Because socialism works in Europe, right?

Europe has a history of failed socialism (stretching back decades) and successful capitalism (stretching back centuries). So when Germans want to be like the French, is all finally lost?

All across Europe, political parties are under strain. After years of high unemployment and flatlining economies, voters have had enough of austerity and budget cuts. They don't want any more rhetoric about tightening belts - they want promises of milk and honey. Just one problem: There is no money left.

Europe is experiencing is a classic middle-class squeeze - a typical fixture of American politics that has crossed the pond to pester European politicians. Leaders across the Continent are left facing this dilemma: How to strengthen the middle class in an adverse environment where money is tight, debts are high, and budget deficits loom large?

It gets worse.

Recently, another European think tank released yet another graph projecting the aging of populations in the coming 20 years. The findings revealed deep trouble for a country thought to be at a peak of economic power: Germany. And even as its population starts to shrink and age, resulting in a smaller labor work force and dwindling fiscal contributions to social programs, the demands of Germany's middle class are increasing.

Peugeot and Camembert cheese or Mercedes, BMW, and Volkswagen? Which has been a more successful economy?  

And now there's word Greece wants to leave the E.U. Let them go (see Let California fail for the reasoning).  Seriously GErmany, let them go.  Before you turn into France.  And make them pick up their own over-the-top-social-programs-debt themselves.

Friday Musical Interlude - The Baseballs

German band The Baseballs' are a German rock/swing band that have done a number of great covers of songs, many of which pull off the near-impossible in music: improving on the original.  This video is I Don't Feel Like Dancing (a cover of the Scissor Sisters) from 2009.

Germans panic, think they're on a fault line

Germany the green?  Apparently Germany is getting ready to divest itself of it's productive manufacturing sector in favor an Obama-esque green agenda. While this story isn't all of Germany, clearly Merkel felt the need to halt production at a number of nuclear reactors in the run up to the election as a result of events in Japan, where earthquakes are a little more common than along the Rhine.

Europeans Rejecting Socialism. Kinda.

The BBC is reporting on the elections in the European Union this evening, showing a shift towards center right parties. Filling the void of right wing voices from the United States, most European countries shifted away from socialists towards center-right parties.

The governing parties in France and Germany and Italy have held up reasonably well (all conservative-leaning), but elsewhere there's been a shift. In the United Kingdom, the Labor party took a beating. Zapato's Spanish socialist party took a drubbing. Portugal turned away from the socialists as well.

Apparently, the European people in large part are starting to reject that which the liberal Democrats in America are starting to embrace. Good for them.

Way to go Europe. It's a good day for common sense.

Is Der Speigel Getting The Real Obama Now?

It seems like Der Spegiel has started to figure out The One. Or at least the contradictory nature of President Obama. Clearly still anti-Bush, the paper comes to some startling revelations (to itself at least) that President Obama has made some promises he can't keep.

Specifically they have become a bit disillusioned on Guantanamo prisoners, their release and the implications of actually treating them like terrorists rather than American citizens. Parenthetically, it appears Germans too do not understand the differentiation between the rights granted to enemy combatants and the rights granted to American citizens.

Or at least Der Speigel still doesn't get it. They seem to have also fallen sway to Obama's Jedi mind trick and they truly expected he could deliver on his promises without so much as raising a sweat. If it had been that simple, somebody in the Bush administration would have come up with the solution. Obama isn't the only person in America with synaptic fibers firing.

You wouldn't think it would be that hard for Der Spiegel to realize that Obama made promises he could not possible keep without some sort of difficult decision needing to be made.

Obama has never categorically rejected the military commissions ...Any return to using such military commissions would be a major disappointment to human rights groups who were hoping that Obama's election signalled a new era in America's handling of terror suspects. As German editorials show on Monday, frustration across the Atlantic is equally high.

In an editorial entitled "Obama's Great Mistake," the center-left daily Süddeutsche Zeitung writes:

"Obama's people certainly imagined things differently. But reality has caught up with them. ...Obama is thus considering holding on to the military commissions with a couple of extra rights for the suspects. Bush light, so to speak...Obama is thus discrediting both himself and the US. "

The left-leaning daily Die Tageszeitung writes:

"The US government has asked Germany to accept former Guantanamo prisoners.
Exactly the same government is apparently planning to continue the military commissions to try those prisoners. One could hardly be more contradictory."

"It is the same tactic that President Barack Obama has already used when it came to the torturers from the CIA -- punish with one hand, stroke with the other. Whenever he takes a step forward, he stumbles backwards as well. That will likely be enough to disappoint all those Europeans who had expectations that Obama would be an almost messiah-like healer. It was expected that he would demolish all of the ugly monuments from the Bush era and then, together with Al Gore, plant a Garden of Eden over the top, through which he would drive fuel-efficient compacts from Chrysler."

Okay, so Germany doesn't completely get it, at least not from the left. But over there, liberals are seeing Obama more for what he truly is than the left here is seeing him in that way. Obama's goal is clearly about maintaining power for Barack. Perhaps the liberal voters of America have truly become Obama's useful idiots.

G20 - relevant?

Is the G20 a relevant entity? First off, of whom does the G20 consist? Alphabetically; Argentina , Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, South Korea, Turkey, the United Kingdom and the United States. That adds up to 19. The European Union is also represented as the 20th entity. The G20 represents a significant portion of the globe both geographically and economically. Combined it represents 85% of the earth's GNP. From those perspectives, it's certainly relevant.

But what are the objectives of of the G20? According to Wikipedia,

The G-20 is a forum for cooperation and consultation on matters pertaining to
the international financial system. It studies, reviews, and promotes discussion
among key industrial and emerging market countries of policy issues pertaining
to the promotion of international financial stability, and seeks to address
issues that go beyond the responsibilities of any one organization.

That's all well and good, but U.K. new source The Guardian has reported that things seem to already be dividing into camps with differing agendas;

Angela Merkel, the German ­chancellor, and Nicolas Sarkozy, the French ­president, will throw down the gauntlet today by staging a joint press conference in ­London demanding the G20 summit usher in a new era of global regulation of banks, ­executive bonuses, hedge funds and offshore tax havens.

In what will be seen as a challenge to Obama, they will also insist nobody at the summit should discuss a fresh stimulus package, despite a report from the ­Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development that "world trade is now in free fall".

Germany and France have of course shifted towards more conservative governments. But that does not mean that they don't have a Euro-centric agenda. Meanwhile, bucking the trend of other countries, the United States has lurched violently leftward. President Obama has met with British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and forged an uneasy alliance. Russia and China, for selfish reasons are looking to move away from the greenback as the world's currency reserve. The point here is that with so many participants and so many views on the challenges of the recession, it's unlikely that a true consensus of opinion is achievable. The G20 risks becoming what the U.N. is in terms of it's value to the United States - negligible.

I can't see Saudi Arabia willingly signing on to a real free trade agreement. I can't see China agreeing to tougher copyright law enforcement, or Russia agreeing to committing funding to the IMF. So why talk to them about things that for the foreseeable future, they will remain intransigent about?

Back in the late 90's the G20 was in fact the G9. Those countries had common economic goals, views and Geo-political interests. What may be of more value to the United States is a re-trenching back to that level of commonality where effective and mutually beneficial decisions can be reached and common approaches to the resolution of problems can be enacted.

Is this bizarro world?

The United States, drifting ever leftward as if the ballast on the ship is all on the port side, is in danger of hitting the European vessel as it is drifting right/starboard either in reality or just by comparison to the US ship. Bizarre.

Think back to the late 1970's and imagine telling people that the United States in 30 years would be considering nationalizing the banks, and potentially the insurance industry and a myriad of other industries. And in the process telling industries it does not nationalize how much it can pay it's employees. Bizarre.

Imagine telling people that the United States would have a multi-trillion dollar deficit and would be nationalizing the health care system, making it difficult to vote against unionization (card check), getting ready to negotiate with Iran, blaming Americans for gang violence in Mexico, and even seriously debating amnesty for millions of illegal immigrants. Bizarre.

And to make the situation even more strange, the Labor leader prime minister of Great Britain is arguing for worldwide tax cuts, and the conservative chancellor of Germany says no because she's against increased deficits. The Czech leader of the European Union is saying that the American President's stimulus efforts are too socialistic. Russia and China are arguing to replace the American dollar as the standard currency reserve for the world and the Chinese are admonishing America for spending too much. How Bizarre? How Bizarre?