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Germany Tag

Despite her party's worst showing since 1949, German Chancellor Angela Merkel has managed to secure her re-election bid. Merkel's main rival, the Social Democratic challenger Martin Schulz conceded defeat earlier this evening. Merkel was quick to stake her claim to the Chancellorship, saying, "We are the strongest party, we have the mandate to build the next government — and there cannot be a coalition government built against us." Merkel's Christian Democrats (CDU), along with her Bavarian sister party the Christian Social Union (CSU), secured over 33 percent of the vote.

Germany's right-wing Alternative for Germany (AfD)  is set to become the third largest party in this month's parliamentary election, the latest polls suggest. The anti-mass immigration party is polling around 12 percent in most polls. Chancellor Angela Merkel, still ahead of the competition, is widely tipped to form the next government. But her current junior coalition partner, the Social Democratic Party (SPD), is tanking in polls with less than a week to go before the election.

In a drastic move that would further exacerbate the European Union’s east-west divide, the European Commission, the EU executive arm, has given a month’s notice to the Polish government to roll back its national judicial reform. Poland risks forfeiting its voting rights within the EU if it does not back down in the current dispute with Brussels. The EU officials oppose the legal reform undertaken by Warsaw, arguing that it weakens the judiciary and gives more power to the country’s elected government. Polish government dismissed these allegations and insists that is acting within the purview of the national constitution.

NATO ally Turkey seems to be going out of its way to tweak German Chancellor Angela Merkel.  Last month, Turkey arrested, among others, a German citizen, and Merkel called the move "unacceptable." Turkey’s president Recep Tayyip Erdogan appears to have been unimpressed because his government just arrested two more Germans.  Merkel has now declared that "decisive action" must be taken.  She does not specify what action she means, though she does threaten to "rethink" Germany's relations with Turkey.

Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), a Palestinian terrorist organization, has been allowed to run in this month's German election. The PFLP is not only a designated terrorist organization in both the European Union and in the United States, but  it has also committed acts of terror against German citizens. An Arab Marxist-Leninist outfit, PFLP first gained notoriety in the 1970s for carrying out aircraft hijackings, including that of a Lufthansa plane in 1977, in an unsuccessful attempt to free the ringleaders of the Left-Wing 'Baader-Meinhof Gang' that were languishing in the West German prisons.

With the Western leaders divided in their strategy to counter the rising threat of Islamic terrorism, the Islamist terror groups continue to work on new ways of attacking the West. According to Germany's Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA), modeled after the American FBI, Islamic State might be planning to sabotage railway networks to inflict heavy civilian casualties in the West, as part of its evolving Jihad warfare strategy.

With less than a month until the German elections, Chancellor Angela Merkel defended her Open Borders Policy for illegal migrants on German television over the weekend. "German Chancellor Angela Merkel defended her controversial decision to admit over a million refugees in 2015, and insisted she had no regrets, saying she would take the big decisions 'the same way again,'" British newspaper Daily Express wrote. She also placed the blame ironically on the border restrictions already in place -- prior to the autumn of 2015 -- to check the unregulated inflow of the refugees into Europe. "She criticized the so-called 'Dublin Regulation' on refugees, which requires those seeking asylum to register in the first EU state they enter," German public broadcaster Deutsche Welle reported. Merkel's arbitrary suspension of the Dublin Regulation, in fact, started the migrant influx from the Middle East and North African countries that continues to this day.

There is a growing recognition of the anti-Semitic nature of the anti-Israel Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement. Anti-Israel activists claim BDS was a spontaneous 2005 call from "Palestinian civil society" for an academic, cultural and economic boycott of Israel to end "the occupation." (They are deliberately vague on what is occupied, and the leadership and activists make clear they consider all of Israel occupied.)

Just weeks until the September election, Merkel government is threatening "legal measures" against large German companies that fail to implement a 'gender quota' by putting more women on their executive boards. In what could simply be cheap antics to garner votes from women, the Merkel government is waging a war against “male-dominated” corporate boardrooms. Germany's Women's Affairs Minister Katarina Barley has “threatened legal measures if the firms fail to fix the problem within the year,” German public broadcaster Deutsche Welle reported on Wednesday. The Women's Affairs Minister presented a report on the “Corporate Gender Imbalance” to the Merkel-led cabinet this week. According to the report, large German companies had 27.3 percent of women on their supervisory boards. This still isn't good enough for the Merkel government. The State wants large companies to allocate more than 30 percent of seats on their boards to women.

U.S. President Donald Trump has rejected German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s advice on how to handle the North Korean crisis. "Let her speak for Germany," Trump told reporters yesterday referring to the statement made by Merkel earlier in the day. "She's a very good friend of mine," Trump said. "Maybe she's referring to Germany, she's certainly not referring to the United States." Merkel had criticised Trump’s recent statements aimed at North Korean regime, saying, "I consider a verbal escalation to be the wrong response." “Trump reacts to Merkel rebuke with a clear message," reported the leading German daily Die Welt.  The country's state-run broadcaster Deutsche Welle came to Merkel's defense, complaining, peace-loving German Chancellor "advocate[s] an international diplomatic response" and "Trump ignores Merkel's pleas against violence."

The student government at the University of Frankfurt has condemned the anti-Israel boycott campaign as antisemitic, by unanimously passing a resolution last week. The university, also referred to as the Goethe University, joins the Leipzig University, which passed a similar resolution last year that rejected the BDS activism creeping onto German campuses. Taking the fight to the anti-Israel camp, the student body called for a boycott of the anti-Israel boycotters on the campus.

The Merkel government is apparently covering up the extent of the ongoing migrant influx ahead of the country's general elections, a leaked police document published in German newspapers suggests. According to the document, Germany’s Federal Police, the agency responsible for immigration and border controls, is observing “high number of immigrants” entering illegally into Germany along the country's southern border with Austria. The Federal Police is urging the government to reinstate border controls to stem the flow of illegal migrants into the country, the document reveals.

Almost 50 days until Germany's general elections, Germany's Chancellor Angela Merkel still looks invincible with the double digit lead in polls over her Social Democratic rival, Martin Schulz. If Islamist terror attacks or the migrant crime wave, both resulting from her open borders policy, have failed to affect her electoral prospects, the economy could sink her political ambitions. A looming banking crisis could "down Merkel", believes the British newspaper Daily Express. Record losses made by Commerzbank, the country's second largest bank, may "spell disaster for" Merkel's re-election bid.

Four Muslim men have been convicted of planning a “Lee Rigby-style” terrorist attack that sought to murder and behead police or military personnel using explosive devices and swords. Four years ago, British soldier Lee Rigby was beheaded on a busy London street by two Nigerian-born men -- both recent converts to Islam. The gang of four wanted to carry out a similar attack. The four men were arrested last year carrying a bag of weapons, including a pipe bomb and a meat cleaver with the word 'kafir', or infidel, carved on it. The investigators also recovered a samurai sword in related raids.

With almost 50 days to go until the German parliamentary election, the country has been hit by another wave of terror and migrant crime. On Friday, a ‘Palestinian’ asylum seeker went on a stabbing spree at a Hamburg supermarket before he was overpowered by passers-by. Despite the eyewitness account of assailant screaming ‘Allahu Akbar’ at the scene of attack, German media and politicians went into their ritualised speculations over the psychological state of the attacker. German news reports repeatedly described the 26-year-old Arab attacker as ‘mentally unstable’.

A 26-year-old "Palestinian" refugee entered a supermarket in Hamburg, Germany and stabbed one man to death while shouting "Allahu Akbar."  As he attempted to flee the scene, he stabbed several other persons.  The exact number is not yet clear and reports range from three to six people wounded. Fox News reports:
A knife-wielding man reportedly screamed "Allahu Akbar" during a wild attack inside a Hamburg supermarket that killed at least one person and left four others bloodied and wounded on Friday. German police arrested the suspected attacker in the Barmbek district after witnesses followed the man and alerted authorities. The suspect was overwhelmed by passers-by and slightly injured in the process, police said.