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Germany Tag

Posted by Vijeta Uniyal on April 05, 2016 7 Comments
More than 70 years after the fall of Nazi regime the government in Germany is tightening the noose on free speech. In a latest incident, Germany’s state-run television has removed a satirical clip critical of Turkish President Recep Erdogan. German Chancellor Angela Merkel called up the Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu to apologise for the “deliberately abusive text.” This was an about-turn from Germany’s prior stance on the issue. Only last week, Germany’s top diplomat Markus Ederer had told his Turkish counterpart that freedom of press in Germany was “not negotiable.” However, with over 3 million Turkish immigrants now living in Germany and Europe’s growing dependency on Turkey to regulate migration on its outer borders, has placed Turkey’s President Erdogan in a very strong bargaining position. On Monday, the Program Director of Germany’s largest broadcaster ZDF, Norbert Himmler announced channel's decision to delete the two-minute clip ridiculing Turkey’s Islamist leader’s lavish lifestyle and crackdown on democracy. Himmler told the media that were “limits to irony and satire” and “in this case, [limits] were clearly exceeded.”

Posted by Fuzzy Slippers on March 13, 2016 34 Comments
While much of the attention focused on Europe's refugee crisis has been focused on Germany, Sweden is also experiencing quite serious problems associated with the influx of Middle Eastern, Asian, and North African immigrants and refugees. Not only have Swedish officials been accused of covering up the sexual assaults and rapes of recent immigrants and refugees, but now we are seeing the problems spread beyond the large cities and into small villages in Sweden, just as they have in Germany. The small and sleepy town of Östersund, Sweden, has been shaken by a series of eight sexual attacks by migrants against residents in only three weeks. The Daily Mail reports:

Posted by Fuzzy Slippers on March 06, 2016 9 Comments
Europeans are facing a serious set of problems associated with the influx of Middle Eastern migrants and refugees. You can read LI's coverage here.  Following are some additional developments:

German Water Park Forced to Segregate Men and Women

Following a series of sexual assaults at its facility, a German water park has developed a plan to segregate men and women. The Daily Mail reports:

A German water park that has been the scene of two sex attacks by migrants have announced plans to segregate men and women.

The plan will involve banning men and teenage boys from using the waterslides at certain times when only women, girls and very young boys will be allowed access.

It comes days after police arrested two asylum seekers from Afghanistan for a sex attack on two girls on the slides at the Arriba water park in Norderstedt in the Schleswig-Holstein region.

Posted by Jonathan Levin on February 17, 2016 5 Comments
French banking giant BNP Paribas is shutting down a major financing source for the Boycott, Divest and Sanction ("BDS") campaign in Germany.  This is the latest in an anti-BDS trend in Germany and, potentially, the first step in cutting of BDS funding in Europe. Benjamin Weinthall, a Fellow for the Foundation for Defense of Democracies wrote in The Jerusalem Post:
The Munich-based DAB Bank is slated to discontinue the account of one of the top BDS campaign websites in Germany, the Jerusalem Post has learned. The BDS-Kampagne [Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions Campaign] group’s website lists DAB Bank Munich as the financial institution for electronic money transfers. The Post uncovered the DAB bank account for the BDS campaign website targeting Israel.
This is good news in-and-of-itself, but actually understates the implications.  First, it is part of a broader anti-BDS trend in Germany.  According to JPost:

Posted by Vijeta Uniyal on February 11, 2016 15 Comments
Amid a massive refugee crisis, the diplomatic relations between Germany and Poland have reached a post-WWII low. German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s EU-backed proposal to distribute large number of newly arriving Arab and North African migrants across Europe has been met with stiff resistance from the recently elected Polish government. The rhetoric coming from Germany has turned especially hostile in recent months. Leading members of Merkel’s government have talked about taking “punitive measures” against Poland and placing the country “under supervision.” Germany’s Deputy Chancellor Sigmar Gabriel has also called for economic sanctions against EU-members who refure to “shoulder the burden” and accept their “fair share” of migrants.

Posted by Vijeta Uniyal on February 02, 2016 5 Comments
According to the head of Iran’s state-run oil company NPC, two leading German companies are set to invest a total of €12 billion in Tehran’s petroleum and gas sector. The latest agreement could make Germany the first big foreign investor in Iranian oil sector, after the nuclear deal was signed seven months ago. Once the deal is finalized, these German firms will start setting up petrochemical plants in Assaluyeh in southern Iran. Mullahs in Tehran plan to get 6 unfinished petrochemical projects off the ground, which could double Iran’s annual oil revenue. Germany has been the biggest European beneficiary of the Iranian Nuclear Deal. As German companies hoping to get up to €6 billion in back payments from Tehran, once country’s banking assets are unfrozen as part of the Obama-backed deal.

Posted by Fuzzy Slippers on February 02, 2016 22 Comments
In the wake of the Cologne mass sexual attacks and her failed attempts to disassociate the Middle Eastern refugee influx from the crimes they commit, Angela Merkel is trying a new tactic. Having "lost" 600,000 refugees, Merkel is now trying to placate the German people with the idea that these refugees will all "go home" once the civil wars in Syria and Iraq are resolved. Reuters reports:
German Chancellor Angela Merkel tried on Saturday to placate the increasingly vocal critics of her open-door policy for refugees by insisting that most refugees from Syria and Iraq would go home once the conflicts there had ended. . . . . Merkel said it was important to stress that most refugees had only been allowed to stay for a limited period.

Posted by Fuzzy Slippers on January 30, 2016 11 Comments
Following reports of increasing sexual violence and general law breaking throughout Europe, including particularly in Germany, EU leaders double-down on their delusional thinking.  Apparently, they are insisting that the increased crime and sexual assaults are not linked to the Middle Eastern refugee influx. The Telegraph reports:
The sex attacks that took place in Cologne on New Year’s Eve were simply a “matter of public order” and had nothing to do with the refugee crisis, Jean-Claude Juncker’s inner circle believe. The European Commission will be the "voice of reason" and tell the public that there is no link between the migration crisis affecting the continent and attacks on women in Germany, internal minutes disclose, amid growing concerns at a “xenophobic” backlash.
Apparently, public safety is not high on their list of priorities; instead, they are focused on trying to manage and manipulate the public's perceptions.  Indeed, according to The Daily Mail, the EU  leaders want to "unconditionally reject" the link between the Cologne sexual assaults and the migrant crisis.

Posted by Vijeta Uniyal on January 26, 2016 9 Comments
German newspaper Berliner Morgenpost reports that Germany's capital Berlin is rapidly turning into an “Islamist stronghold” in the heart of Europe. Germany’s domestic intelligence agency BfV is monitoring some 680 Islamists in the city. The agency classified 360 of these Islamic radicals as capable of carrying out violent attacks. These figure where released by the City of Berlin, as local authorities launched several ‘social programs’ to ‘stop the radicalization of youth.’ The newspaper also confirmed that 50 Islamists have returned back to Berlin after serving in the ranks of the Islamic State. The Berliner Morgenpost doesn't say, but these ISIS-returnees are most likely back on the dole and receiving tax-payer funded counselling from their social workers and psychologists, to help them cope with the trauma of having brutalized underage sex-slaves, beheaded infidels, and desecrated places of worship sacred to Christians or other faiths. These revelations from Berlin coincide with the terror warning by EU’s law enforcement agency Europol. According to Europol, Islamic State may now have "hundreds of militants in countries across [Europe]" that are "ready to bring murder and mayhem to the streets." London-based Daily Mail reports:

Posted by William A. Jacobson on January 25, 2016 5 Comments
"Walking While Jewish" has become a problem in many parts of Europe due to anti-Semitism, frequently from Muslim immigrants.  We have featured the following Walking While Jewish videos: With anti-Semitism rising in Germany, and even Angela Merkel admitting that there was a problem with migrants from certain countries (she would not name them), what would it be like to be Walking While Jewish in a German refugee center? The German Die Welt newspaper published "an experiment" where an Israeli Orthodox Jew did just that. 

Posted by Fuzzy Slippers on January 23, 2016 8 Comments
Time's 2015 "Person of the Year" is facing increasing criticism for her handling of the Middle Eastern refugee crisis and her open borders policy. Now, in the wake of numerous assaults across Germany alone, including the New Year's Eve mass sexual assaults by immigrants in Cologne, and increasing crime and unease among the German people, the German government admits that it cannot account for 600,000 of the 1.1 million refugees Angela Merkel let flood into the country over the past year or so.

Posted by Vijeta Uniyal on January 21, 2016 9 Comments
Shocked by the wave of violent anti-Semitism in Germany following the Gaza conflict of 2014, the Central Council of Jews, apex body of Jewish organisations in Germany in called for the rally “Stand up! Never again anti-Semitism!” on September 14, 2014. The event was attended by German Chancellor Merkel, President Joachim Gauck and other senior government ministers. Speaking under the banner of “Never Again”, leader of the Jewish community, Dr. Dieter Graumann said, “enough is enough” and “we do not want to be compelled to gather here again in two or three years’ time.” The state ceremony graced by Chancellor Merkel and her entire cabinet is barely an year only and here we are again. 70 years after the end of Nazi Germany, the small Jewish community in Germany doesn't feel safe in Germany anymore. In recent months, prominent community leaders in Germany have urged Jews to avoid wearing religious symbols in public and to avid “districts with strong Muslim populations.”

Posted by Vijeta Uniyal on January 19, 2016 16 Comments
The timing could not have been more eerie. As Germany faces its biggest social and political crisis since the Second World War, Hitler’s Mein Kampf has again hit German bookstores. After 70 years, Germans once again have a chance of legally owning the vicious rants of this notorious Austrian-born psychopath -- in a hard bound version for €58,99. The recent migration from Middle East and North Africa did not only increase the level of antisemitism in Germany, it has also given a new lease of life to Neo-Nazi outfits. Last year, Charlotte Knobloch, the former President of Jewish umbrella group the Central Council of Jews in Germany, warned member of the tiny Jewish community in the country to "avoid being recognizable as Jews" in public, calling this the most perilous time for Jews to be in Germany since 1945. Charlotte Knobloch (83), a Holocaust survivor herself, knows what she is talking about.

Posted by Fuzzy Slippers on January 09, 2016 23 Comments
Reading the accounts from Cologne about the throngs of Arab men sexually assaulting women in Cologne on New Year's Eve, my first thought went to Lara Logan who suffered a similar fate in Egypt during the "Arab Spring." Lara is continuing to suffer from the unspeakable abuse she endured and was again hospitalized early in 2015.  My second thought went to the Second Amendment. As the evil that was perpetrated on over a hundred women (in Cologne alone) sinks in, the governments in Germany and throughout the western world—reports of similar attacks in Finland are emerging—are feeling more pressure than ever to address the refugee crisis and their own policies. Der Spiegel has published a lengthy and thoughtful article entitled "Chaos and Violence: How New Year's Eve in Cologne Changed Germany."
For some, the events finally bring to light what they have always been saying: that too many foreigners in the country bring too many problems along with them. For the others, that which happened is what they have been afraid of from the very beginning: that ugly images of ugly behavior by migrants would endanger what has been a generally positive mood in Germany with respect to the refugees.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on January 05, 2016 13 Comments
This story is the sum of the worst fears about the migrant crisis, and is sure to reverberate widely as more European countries seek to impose border controls. Germany's Deutsche Welle reports, String of New Year's Eve sexual assaults outrages Cologne:
Police in the western German city of Cologne responded on Monday to outrage over a string of sexual crimes over New Year's Eve. According to police, the series of assaults in one of the city's busiest thoroughfares represented a "completely new dimension of crime." Some 90 criminal complaints, including one allegation of rape, have been brought to the Cologne police department after women said they were molested by a crowd of men who had gathered in the city's famous square between its central train station and towering Gothic cathedral. Authorities expect more victims to come forward in the next few days. City police chief Wolfgang Albers said the crowd was composed of up to 1,000 heavily intoxicated men who gave the appearance of being "Arab or North African" in background.

Posted by Vijeta Uniyal on December 22, 2015 16 Comments
Last week, German Chancellor Angela Merkel received a rockstar reception at her conservative party CDU's annual convention in Karlsruhe. Merkel received a nine-minute-long standing ovation from the party delegates for a speech in which she refused to put a fixed limit on migrant intake. Germany is expecting to take as many as 1.5 million migrant this year. With each migrant expected to bring 4-8 family member in the short-term, the real number for 2015 alone could be well over 7 million. However, some odd 30 party delegates dared to question Merkel's stand on mass migration -- out of roughly 3000 attending delegates. That's 99 percent approval by the party cadre for Merkel's open border policy. Even Stalin-era purges didn't East-German dictators that level of support. The British newspaper Independent reports:
[I]n her keynote address to more than 3,000 Christian Democrat (CDU) delegates at a party congress in Karlsruhe, Ms Merkel effectively threw down the gauntlet to the rest of Europe and insisted that it share the burden in helping to solve the problem. “We face the biggest refugee crisis since the Second World War,” she told the party faithful. Appealing to other EU members for help she called for solidarity, saying that Europe faced a “historic test” and insisting: “The fight for a unified Europe is worthwhile – of that I am deeply convinced.” Ms Merkel conceded that overcoming the problems facing Germany, which has accepted over a million migrants in 2015 alone, amounted to a “giant task”. But the Chancellor flatly refused to accept demands from within her own ranks to set an “upper limit” on the migrant influx, or for the installation of Berlin Wall-style fortifications and controls on Germany’s borders.

Posted by Vijeta Uniyal on December 10, 2015 20 Comments
TIME magazine named German Chancellor Angela Merkel as its Person of the Year. The New York-based magazine praised “her resilience and leadership when faced with the Syrian refugee crisis and turmoil in the European Union over its currency this year.” Angela Merkel is the first women to lead Germany and last month completed uninterrupted 10 years at the helm of Europe’s largest economy. Merkel has often been referred to as the most powerful woman in the world. In fact TIME's celebratory issue’s cover story calls her “the Chancellor of the Free World.” Since President Obama has abandoned the leadership of the Free World as a matter of principle, the top job was up for grabs anyway. The problem is only the direction Merkel is steering the Western World in face of the historic migrant crisis. To give credit where it’s due, the liberal editors at TIME Magazine had quite a tough time picking this year’s winner. German Chancellor was pitted against “Black Lives Matter” activists, Islamic State’s “Caliph” Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, celebrity transgender Caitlyn Jenner, and Iran’s dictator Hassan Rouhani. Republican hopeful Donald Trump was upset over the fact that judges at TIME didn’t chose him for this year’s award, and as Trump (rightly) put it, “picked a person who is ruining Germany.”
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