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Germany Tag

It’s official! Merkel will run for a fourth term as German Chancellor. After months of speculations, Chancellor Merkel has announced her decision to lead the Christian Democrats (CDU) in next year’s election. The chief architect of Europe’s open border policy, 62 year old politician has been at the helm of Germany for the last eleven years. President Obama dropped in to lend a helping hand. On the last leg of his presidency, U.S. President gave Merkel a “glowing endorsement” -- to quote London-based Financial Times -- as he toured Germany last week. Obama asked Germans to “appreciate” Merkel. “If I were here and I were German, and I had a vote, I might support her,” Obama told reporters in Berlin.

The push back against the progressive left's agenda that culminated in the election of President-elect Trump had been gaining steam for a while now and not just on this side of the Atlantic. Faced with poor economic growth, an influx of refugees, a sense of losing their national identity, and a variety of country-specific reasons, the entire Western world seems on the verge of the same sort of election-revolution we just witnessed in America. Heralded as the "the liberal West's last defender," Angela Merkel has been under intense pressure based on her open door policy to refugees, and she now finds herself feeling the growing dissatisfaction of the German people even more powerfully than before Trump's victory.

German Chancellor Merkel’s is drumming together her team and will be chairing an “emergency meeting” this morning following the news of Republican candidate Donald Trump’s victory in the U.S. election, German state-run broadcaster ARD reports. In the run-up to the U.S. election, senior members of Merkel’s government had made no secret of their hostility towards Donald Trump’s candidacy. In August, German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier called Trump a "preacher of hate." Merkel's second-in-command, Vice-Chancellor Sigmar Gabriel warned American voters of impending doom if they elected Donal Trump. "[American's could expect] shrinking GDP, fewer jobs and higher unemployment," Gabriel told German magazine Der Spiegel.

Summit Crosses have adorned hill tops and mountain peaks in the Alps since the dawn of Christianity in the West. Roman legionaries are said of have brought Christianity to the Alpine region as early as second century of Christian era. In recent months, these religious and historic symbols are targets of vandalism in this mountainous region that runs between Germany and Austria. Since August, five such crosses have been severely vandalised or destroyed, Austrian newspaper Kronen Zeitung reports. Islamist have recently carried out several acts of vandalism against Christian statues and symbols across Germany. In 2014, police in Cologne apprehended a gang of Islamists responsible for desecrating number of churches, stealing Christian artefacts and sending the proceeds to Islamic State in Syria and Iraq.

When I wrote about Obama's and Loretta Lynch's DOJ pondering how criminal background checks are inhibiting police "diversity," I wasn't aware that in Germany it is against the law for the military to conduct background checks prior to formal employment. Unsurprisingly, Germany is finding a number of its newer recruits are Islamists seeking formal military training. In fact, they are requesting to join for only a few months with the sole purpose of undergoing "intensive weapon and equipment training." i24 News reports:
Germany's military counter-intelligence agency (MAD) has discovered that a number of the country's enlisted soldiers hold Islamist beliefs and joined the army in order to receive training in advanced weaponry and tactics, according to German media reports.

A guest house in Germany’s Black Forest region caused an uproar on social media after it turned down Israeli guests saying, “Our apartments are not for them.” Communicating through an online booking service, guest house instructed Israelis to “cancel the booking.” Four Israeli families were hoping to book apartments at the guest house while planning a trip to Germany next summer. City officials and regional press are trying to downplay the incident as a misunderstanding, but the incident comes in the backdrop of rising antisemitism and antisemitic hate crimes in Germany. Earlier this year, Kempinski-Hotel in Berlin removed Israel from its phonebook. A hotel employee had explained the decision saying, "Majority of over clients are Arabs and they told us to remove Israel."

U.S. President Barack Obama has been lavishing praise on German Chancellor Angela Merkel ahead of his visit to Germany next month. The visit, announced earlier this week, comes as a surprise in Berlin. Obama was quoted by German media saying, “[Working with Merkel] was the most important relationship, the most important friendship I had during my tenure.” These are no empty phases but heartfelt words of a true admirer. Earlier this year, President Obama declared Germany’s Chancellor to be on the “right side of the history” for opening up Europe to millions of migrants from Arab and Muslim countries -- an honour he generally reserves only for himself.

Earlier this month, Syrian 'refugee' Jaber Albakr committed suicide after being arrested over a plot to bomb a Berlin airport. Now the family of the ISIS bomb plotter is suing the German government. Alaa Albakr, the brother of the terrorist, who is seeking compensation from Germany, doesn't believe his brother took his own life. He is basing his legal defense on Islamic teaching, as his 'pious' refugee-turned-terrorist brother couldn't have killed himself because "suicide is forbidden in Islam". Unless you plan to blow up some infidel Kuffars in the process, to be more precise.

A Syrian migrant arrested two days ago on charges of plotting a bomb attack in Germany's capital Berlin has hanged himself in a prison cell in an apparent suicide, according to a German police report. German investigators believe that 22 year-old ISIS terrorist Jaber Albakr was in the final stages of carrying out a major terrorist attack like the ones in Paris and Brussels previously. On Sunday, German police raided a flat belonging to Albakr in the city of Chemnitz where they found 1.5 kilograms of TATP explosives -- the same type of explosive that was used by Islamic State terrorists in the Paris (November 2015) and Brussels (March 2016). Albakr managed to escape the scene and a nationwide manhunt was launched catch the suspect. On Monday, the police arrested him in eastern German city of Leipzig.

German authorities have captured the Jaber Albakr, a Syrian refugee, after police raided his apartment on Saturday and discovered a huge bomb making factory. Officials said Albakr planned attacks similar to those in Paris and Brussels and that the Islamic State (ISIS) inspired him:
"According to what we know, the preparations in Chemnitz are similar to the preparations for the attacks in Paris and Brussels," Thomas de Maiziere said in a statement.

The police in east Germany have begun searching for 22-year-old Syrian man Jaber Albakr after they discovered explosives in his apartment in Chemnitz, located near the Czech border. They believe he has planned a large terror attack:
"The search for the suspect is ongoing," Saxony state police tweeted. "At the moment, however, we do not know where he is and what he is carrying with him. Be careful." Police detained three people in Chemnitz who they said were known to Albakr, but he remained at large. "Questioning (of the detainees) is continuing. The results are still to come," said Tom Bernhardt, spokesman for the Saxony state criminal investigation office.

With German Chancellor Angela Merkel doubling down yet again on her Open Borders Policy and lashing out at European countries like Hungary for blocking the steady flow of migrants into European heartland, a new wave of mass migration is hitting the continent. On Tuesday, Italy rescued nearly 5,000 migrants from the Mediterranean Sea, taking the number of rescued migrants at the high seas by Italian coastguard to over 10,000 within the span of just two days. Chancellor Merkel’s open offer of a better life for anyone who can cross over by any means into Europe has created a stampede of continental proportions as every week tens of thousands from North Africa and Middle East set off to Europe taking the land route or the high seas. Since the beginning of this year more than 3,000 people have died while attempting to cross the Mediterranean.

The migrant crisis that began almost a year ago is threatening to take a violent turn after this week’s bombings in the eastern German city on Dresden. On Monday evening, two bombs exploded near a mosque and city's main convention centre. Early next week, the convention centre would be hosting an event expected to be attended by high-profile guests including Germany's President Joachim Gauck. German Chancellor Angela Merkel is also going to visit the former East German city of Dresden on the same day to mark the German Unification Day. According to German media, no one was injured in the explosions. Local police suspects a Far-Right group to be behind the incident. "[Dresden Police] have reason to suspect a xenophobic motive," City's police chief Horst Kretzschmar told the press.

Just days after Chancellor Angela Merkel's party suffered a humiliating defeat in the Berlin state election, violent clashes between migrants and locals erupted in several German cities. On Sunday, Chancellor Merkel's Christian Democrats (CDU) got a drubbing in Germany's capital, with CDU's historic poor showing at the state elections. Right-wing party opposed to Mass-Migration, Alternative for Germany (AfD) outperformed the election forecasts securing 14 percent. AfD, only founded in 2013, is now in 10 state parliaments thanks to Chancellor Merkel's disastrous handling of migrant crisis. The first clashes erupted in the eastern German city of Bautzen, where apparently drunk migrants threw bottles at police and other locals. Authorities were forced to restrict the movement of the refugees and impose a ban on alcohol. The restriction aimed at young migrants caused an uproar among liberal politicians and media commentators who accused the local police and the mayor -- a leftist himself -- of 'acting in a racist way' against 'traumatised young migrants.' Leading German weekly Der Spiegel reported the temporary imposition of restriction on refugees in the city with the headline titled "Victory for the racists."

Ahead of this week’s EU summit in Slovenia, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, already suffering from low popularity at home, looks more isolated then ever at the European stage. Having backed Chancellor Merkel at the beginning of the Migrant Crisis last year, Government of Austria has long distanced itself from Berlin’s liberal stance on migrant influx into Europe. However, what worries Berlin today is the emerging alliance between Austria and the Central European countries of Hungary, Poland, Slovakia and Czech Republic -- also referred to as the Visegrad group. Prominent German newspaper Die Welt viewed the new development with concern. “Should the five [countries] were to act in concert, this would create a new political power centre in Europe,” Die Welt noted. This new rival block could pose a serious challenge to German-French dominated “European Project”. Most Visegrad member states have been against Merkel’s liberal Migrant Policy right from its onset. Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orban remains the most vocal opponent of Merkel’s Brussels-backed pro-migrant stance. “Europe's biggest problem at the moment is naivety.” Prime Minster Orban said while talking to reporters earlier this week. “[EU’s] migration policy is based on naivety and that's why we are in huge trouble today.”