December 21, 2016

"A senior foreign German politician today blamed the atrocity on 'institutional political correctness', arguing that Amri would not have been free to act if police had enforced the law."

Anis Amri, the suspect in the Berlin Christmas market attack, was a known ISIS supporter who had been arrested 3 times, denied asylum and was subject to deportation...
But under a peculiarity of the German asylum system he was granted a 'Duldung' or toleration papers allowing him to stay for unknown reasons.
The NYT invites us to consider Angela Merkel's point of view:
Virtually alone among her peers, she welcomed into her country roughly a million migrants who flooded across Europe’s borders. Having made that fateful decision, Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany now faces what nearly all here are calling the toughest passage of her 11 years in power, after a terrorist attack on Monday in Berlin left 12 people dead.....

With right-wing populism on the rise across Europe, Ms. Merkel has been seen as a bulwark against illiberal democracy....

“This is even more worrying than terrorism, strange though that may sound,” said Jacqueline Boysen, a biographer of Ms. Merkel who has known her since the 1990s. “Terrorism is terrible and frightening, but our political future is so uncertain.”

85 comments:

Anonymous said...

"With right-wing populism on the rise across Europe, Ms. Merkel has been seen as a bulwark against illiberal democracy...."

War is Peace. Freedom is Slavery. Ignorance is Strength. Thwarting the will of and working against the interests and welfare of the demos is Liberal Democracy.

mccullough said...

Looks like right-wing populism or Islamization are the choices Germans now face.

JML said...

"Terrorism is terrible and frightening, but our political future is so uncertain.”

One of the primary reasons it is so uncertain is because of terrorism. Can't these people see cause and effect and the relationship between events?

Or do they deliberately want the destruction of the West?

Sydney said...

"Institutional political correctness." The opposite of "institutional racism." Both are equally bad.

Sal said...

Germany should create some camps for these foreign lawbreakers awaiting deportation. Give them work to do and let them concentrate on the reality of their situation. Call them "Camps of Concentration."

MadisonMan said...

The problem with Institutional Political Correctness is that when something comes along that fits the narrative -- say, a church is burnt and 'Vote Trump' is graffitied on it -- it's reported on widely and then the truth comes out (link), the truth is largely ignored.

Spiros said...

Many economists are convinced that open borders, in a democracy, are the safest and easiest way to dismantle generous welfare programs and to cripple unions. There is no doubt that racially diverse societies have much smaller welfare states. So how did this woman, all of a sudden, become a champion of liberal democracy? For years Ms. Merkel has demanded idiotic austerity programs that have brought Europe to the brink of dissolution! I say all this stuff about Ms. Merkel being some great humanitarian is bull! She's a loser.

n.n said...

There has been a wave of left-wing anti-nativism from Benghazi to Damascus to Kiev to Berlin that has left a trail of mass abortions, rape-rapes, and immigration "reform". In the context of Obama and Merkel's assessments, the threat of "liberal" democracy and unqualified progress has clearly been underestimated.

Nonapod said...

Leave it to the NYT to frame Merkel as this champion of human rights being assailed by villainous scary right wing populism.

exiledonmainstreet, green-eyed devil said...

“This is even more worrying than terrorism, strange though that may sound,” said Jacqueline Boysen, a biographer of Ms. Merkel who has known her since the 1990s.

Not for the German families who will be missing a family member at the Christmas table because of this turd.

JAORE said...

"...consider Angela Merkel's point of view..."

OK, open borders serves some (unproven) goal of diversity and inclusion. A sense of responsibility for refugees outweighs a sense of responsibility to her countrymen. Evidence of incompatibility between the German culture and that of the refugees is to be dismissed.

Is that right?

Balfegor said...

A senior foreign German politician

What does this mean? A German politician who is also a foreigner? Or just foreign from the perspective of the Daily Mail?

Oso Negro said...

Angela Merkel should convert to Islam and declare Germany an Islamic Republic. THAT would show those incipient right-wingers and would make the future much less uncertain.

JPS said...

Ms. Boysen then paused, reflected a moment, and added, "Wow. It is amazing what a callous person I am, isn't it? I never realized it until saying that out loud."

Well, no, she didn't. But I'd like her better if she had.

DanTheMan said...

In essence:
We would rather be murdered by terrorists than admit our mistake.

Xmas said...

Germany has only allowed about 800,000 refugees into their country with a population of 80 million. So, it's about 1% of their population that itself contains at most 1% of hard core troublemakers. It says a lot about their country that they have no mechanism to deal with people that obviously should not be there.

That they had no plan in place to sequester any potential bad eggs may actually be a greater problem than actually letting the refugees come to their country in the first place.

DanTheMan said...

In essence:
We would rather be murdered by terrorists than admit our mistake.

Drago said...

A dozen murdered and 50 seriously or critically wounded.

Merkel and narrative hardest hit.

Owen said...

" 'This is even more worrying than terrorism, strange though that may sound,' said Jacqueline Boysen, a biographer of Ms. Merkel who has known her since the 1990s."

We have every reason to believe that this is unbiased and expert opinion, coming as it does from somebody whose reputation has been intimately coupled to Ms. Merkel's for decades through her biographical work. Bread, butter. Some assembly required.

Quite apart from that, it is IMHO perhaps the most gobsmackingly stupid and heartless remarks ever made.

mccullough said...

Only 800,000? That's a massive number, especially since most are young men. Germany is now more than 6% Muslim and has no culture of assimilation or integration of immigrants, and the guys they let in are the hardest to assimilate in the history of humans.

mikeski said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Drago said...

The Islamification of Europe continues apace.

The institutional left is incapable of real "learning" and adapting.

mikeski said...

This is even more worrying than terrorism, strange though that may sound

So, they don't have any mainstream media in Germany?

That doesn't "sound" "strange" at all. That's exactly what we hear every time some jackass kills Westerners in his prophet's name. "Oh, the religion of peace is not at fault. And we must now worry about the huge redneck backlash this might cause against those peaceful people. That's the real problem, here!"

FFS.

rehajm said...

Wow. It is amazing what a callous person I am, isn't it? I never realized it until saying that out loud.

I had to reread several times before I realized I hadn't misunderstood.

Peter said...

HE'S ON THE RUN - BUT PROTECTING HIS PRIVACY PREVENTS HIS PHOTO BEING SHOWN IN GERMANY

"Strict privacy rules in Germany mean newspapers in the country are referring to him only by his first name and the first initial of his last surname - despite a public appeal aimed at tracking him down.

"Pictures of Anis A, who if he is the driver police believe is probably armed, 'highly dangerous' and a member of a 'large' Islamic organisation, are also partially obscured, blocking out his eyes."

Virgil Hilts said...

If the facts being reported are correct, suspect:
Moved to EU 7 years ago (16 year old) as an illegal; already had rap sheet in Tunisia for violent car robberies / jailed for 4 years in Italy for burning down a school (!); then moved to Germany in July 15 / arrested three times in Germany, due to be deported, but police lost track of him / shortly after he arrived in 2015, he was put on a danger list - meaning authorities considered guy prone to extreme violence / Known to support ISIS/ to have had weapons training / Lived with hate preacher, who was under arrest for ISIS ties / Known to have used six different names under three different nationalities / State informant told officials in early 2016 that guy was attempting to find accomplice for an attack / In April of 16 given a hearing by immigration; denied asylum, ordered deported by year-end (but released) / arrested in July of 16 for knife fight over drugs (released) / arrested again in July of 16 for unknown reason (released) / arrested again in August of 16 for having fake Italian passport (released) / as of November, still under investigation by counter-terrorism for planning a 'serious act of violence against the state".
WTF? How does the German government possibly excuse this. Merkel should resign. There really is blood on her hands and those poor people died and were maimed needlessly.

hawkeyedjb said...

These politicians look at the no-go banlieues of France with wonder and envy. They want the same in Germany. They're going to have them.

Big Mike said...

“Terrorism is terrible and frightening, but our political future is so uncertain.”

OTOH, Jacqueline Boysen has to know deep down inside that the day must someday come when there is a German government not headed by Angela Merkel and possibly not including the CDU, and that she and her children will survive it. Meanwhile terrorism can kill you -- will kill you if you're in the wrong place at the right time.

hawkeyedjb said...

These politicians look at the no-go banlieues of France with wonder and envy. They want the same in Germany. They're going to have them.

Fred Drinkwater said...

"Having made that fateful decision, Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany now faces what nearly all here are calling the toughest passage of her 11 years in power, after a terrorist attack on Monday in Berlin left 12 people dead"
A nifty variation on the story of the boy who kills his parents and then begs mercy from the court because he's an orphan.

Fred Drinkwater said...

"Strict privacy rules in Germany mean newspapers in the country are referring to him only by his first name and the first initial of his last surname - despite a public appeal aimed at tracking him down."
Note, please that his privacy is is protected from the public. The government / police, of course, know exactly who he is and what he looks like.
This is to prevent the public from going all vigilante on his ass. Can't have that, after all the government has only had 3 chances to stop him so far - gotta give them another couple at least. I mean, be fair...

Etienne said...

No country can stand by and allow another country to invade them, armed or unarmed.

It is foolish to think everything will work out, and the invaders will conform themselves to your culture and society rules.

What is going on in Europe, is a complete surrender to the invaders.

The concept that if you don't make the invaders mad, maybe they won't kill everyone. There seems to be no concept of destroying the invaders and taking their country back.

Sad, but if they don't care, then I don't care. Let the Muslims have the power. Power should go to the brave and strong. Cowards have no vote.

MaxedOutMama said...

It's not for unknown reasons that this guy was not deported - it's because he had tossed his papers and Tunisia would not admit him without them. Supposedly the Germans just got them this week.

What's really striking about this, and the recent Freiburg rape-murder case, is that known lawbreakers are not treated as lawbreakers. This is why the New Year mass sex/robbery events happened - the perps knew they would not be held, even if the 1/100 chance of arrest occurred. And no one will admit this, but that's what's going on.

The current suspect was known to be a terror risk and had a very serious criminal background before he ever got to Germany (fled to Italy 2011 to avoid arrest in Tunisia for armed robbery, claimed asylum, committed several crimes in Italy and got a 4 year prison sentence for burning a school et al, released to detention center for deportation, never got go-ahead from Tunisia, was expelled from Italy and arrived in Germany to continue his career of mayhem).

Then he was picked up in Germany for offenses, and was known to be committing more. But was he held? No. Nor is it just the Germans - the (17 year old haha!) Freiburg murderer had been arrested in Greece in 2013 and sentenced to a ten-year jail term for robbery/attempted murder of a young woman. He was let out in 17 months and presumably helpfully pointed to the border.

The Germans really need to build some big prisons for the lawbreakers and then some detention centers where those denied asylum or admitted without papers may be held pending deportation/identification. They have handled this all wrong - they've admitted a criminal class, allowed gaming the system to WORK (they should never have let those without papers loose in Germany in the first place), and then compounded that by refusing to arrest and hold refugee applicants when they are picked up for drugs/Koerperverleztung/thievery etc. Naturally this just attracts more criminals. You can get arrested four times in Germany within a month for robbery and walk away, if you have refugee docs. Some of them have four or five sets of refugee docs.

I think Merkel is going to go down over this one. But it will be a gruesome shock for Germany, which right now doesn't have a good replacement in mind. In post-war Germany, chancellors have been in office for decades. The society hasn't built a consensus on how to fix the situation, and thus the political upheaval is terrifying to them.

The quote may seem heartless, and in a way it is, but Germans have been more terrified of having disorder in their society than the current problems. That is now changing.

rcocean said...

What's wrong with the Krauts? Throw her ass out.

JPS said...

rejahm, 5:12:

Reread my comment, or Ms. Boysen's?

Sorry to be oblique. It makes me angry that anyone's reaction to this could be, "our political future is so uncertain." exiledonmainstreet said it better at 4:51.

MaxedOutMama said...

Virgil - those reports do seem to be correct.

The bottom line is that not only has Germany let in people with no papers, they then have no ability to deal with them when they misbehave. This guy had screamers all over, but he was still not detained.

They won't arrest these people because they already have too many Muslims in jail, and they are terrified of creating a Muslim criminal/terrorist self-perpetuating subculture. So they just let them walk the streets. Committing multiple thefts/assaults will not get these people behind bars.

The Germans cannot face the fact that they have to start building large prison/detention centers to deal with all the people they have admitted. It's not just Merkel - no German politician can face it.

Bill, Republic of Texas said...

Read the NYT reader choice comments. Even they are starting to understand. The first six comments were anti-immigrants and Merkel.

Amazing.

Bob Ellison said...

Virgil Hilts, that's the way they play over there. Too dumb for school.

exiledonmainstreet, green-eyed devil said...

DanTheMan said...
In essence:
We would rather be murdered by terrorists than admit our mistake.

12/21/16, 5:00 PM

No, they would rather their countrymen and women be murdered than admit their mistake.

The Left is always OK with someone else - someone belonging to a disfavored group, like indigenous German nobodies, for instance - suffering. Not them. Never them.

Bob Ellison said...

O, G, this might be a terrorist attack?

wholelottasplainin said...

Spiros Pappas said...

There is no doubt that racially diverse societies have much smaller welfare states.
*****************

Ever been in Japan?

David said...

Stopping all terroristic acts is hard enough (near impossible in my book) without setting an obvious risk at large three times. The problem, of course, is that no one can decide what to do with people like him. His supposed native country said they had never heard of him. They can't execute him for being a threat and they won't put him in jail forever. Prison is likely to radicalize him further and provide him a network when he gets out.

This isn't "war" until they get over all the squeamishness. Whether hat is a good idea is not clear.



YoungHegelian said...

This is even more worrying than terrorism, strange though that may sound,” said Jacqueline Boysen, a biographer of Ms. Merkel who has known her since the 1990s. “Terrorism is terrible and frightening, but our political future is so uncertain

It's amazing how the ruling classes of both the US & Europe take the wrong lesson from the rise of 20th totalitarianism. They see it as the masses misled. It's probably better seen as the ruling classes fucking up so badly that anything seems too be an improvement.

Russia's disastrous defeat in WWI under the Romanov's. Italy's fecklessness after the bleeding of WWI that left it broke & with nothing to show for it. The Weimar Republic's inability to effectively plead the case of the German people to the Allies when the terms of the Treaty of Versailles began to corrode German society. And, as WII came, the dithering of the Allies before Hitler, & France's disastrous fall in June, 1940, in spite of the fact that they fought on their own soil, with more tanks, planes, artillery, & troops than the Germans.

History's lesson here is that when the elites have their heads stuffed up their asses, horrible things happen. And it ain't the fault of the local yokels!

Michael said...

You cannot make this stuff up. They were going to deport him but couldn't. Because he didn't have a valid passport.

Sally327 said...

I don't know enough about how this happened but I find it fascinating that in a representative democracy -which I think that's what Germany is-- one person would have the power to make such a significant decision as allowing over a million people to come into the country from elsewhere. It's as if she were queen in the 12th century or something, or a pope back then or a dictator in the 1930s, I guess, to be a little more contemporary. It seems like that kind of authority, absolute rule. How does she have that much power?

This seems like a significant loophole, perhaps in our own country as well, that there are no checks and balances.

Spiros said...

Mr. Elink, it is true that in Japan the family provides much, probably most, of the services that the welfare state and social workers provide elsewhere. But Japan is an egalitarian society with little income inequality. I still believe that it is impossible to get a political consensus to provide for the poor in racially diverse countries like the United States or South Africa or Brazil. Maybe Japan is an exception because it is an exceptional place.

mockturtle said...

With right-wing populism on the rise across Europe, Ms. Merkel has been seen as a bulwark against illiberal democracy....

More like a bulwark against common sense.

traditionalguy said...

Being stupid is dangerous. Angela is making Europe live in a myth that Muslims are just a Religion and not an Army that plans to conquer Europe, kill the men and enslave the coveted blonde women and use the small children as suicide bombers.

The Trump Effect may wake them up just in time.

rhhardin said...

Political correctness is institutional political correctness.

Balfegor said...

Re: Michael:

You cannot make this stuff up. They were going to deport him but couldn't. Because he didn't have a valid passport.

Yes, it's like Kafka. But that's German bureaucracy for you, I guess. He didn't present his papers all in order so he was put in a kind of administrative limbo. Which may have been exactly what he was counting on. He turned their stereotypical German punctiliousness against them.

Jon said...

Sally - Germany is a Parliamentary system. Different from what you (and I!) are used to in ways I admit I don't understand... but yes, Merkel can basically do anything she wants until thrown out by a vote of No Confidence (as they call it in England, don't know what it is called in Germany) by the Parliament, not the voters.

Darrell said...

She could kill George Soros and his heirs before turning the gun on herself. At least her life wouldn't have been wasted if she does that.

William said...

Just as a thought experiment, what would be the number of sexual assaults or mass murders that make it necessary for liberal democrats to rethink their position on immigration. I'd also be interested to know if there is any (left wing) opinion that is not covered by free speech rights.

Jupiter said...

"Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany now faces what nearly all here are calling the toughest passage of her 11 years in power,"

What she ought to be facing is a firing squad. Of course, that isn't possible. They no longer have the death penalty in Europe. Except for drawing Muhammad, of course. That one is still on the books, and enforced.

David said...

“Terrorism is terrible and frightening, but our political future is so uncertain.”

If politicians with liberal values fail to protect the safety of the people and the nation, they will be replaced. By what is necessarily uncertain. If you want a democratic future, be sure you understand the fundamentals of providing effective government. There is nothing inevitable about democracy if it fails its population.



gspencer said...

"Virtually alone among her peers, she [Merkel} welcomed into her country roughly a million migrants who flooded across Europe’s borders."

In some un-named German NWO think tank, circa 1928, "Herr Deiter [a forebearer of Frau Merkel], I have a wunderful idea. Lets get rid of all our Jews. Yes, they're smart and industrious, and don't cause any trouble, and in fact they add significantly to our cultural enrichment and whatnot. But still, lets get rid of them. Then after that's done we'll probably have a labor shortage problem. But we have a solution. We'll bring in lots and lots of low-skilled Turkish workers who'll refuse to assimilate and no ways will have the skills and intelligence of the Jews that we're gonna kill. But so what? The Jews will be gone. And to boot the Turkish are Muslims and they hate the Jews too? What's not to like about this plan?"

Joe said...

The German people are going to snap and when they do, it's going to freak a lot of people out. If you think calls that Trump is a fascist were out-of-hand, you ain't seen nothing yet.

Anonymous said...

Merkel ist tot.

SARC ON: they should put these asylum seekers in camps. Give them work to do until they can find jobs. Let industrial firms check the men out in job lots to work in factories. post a sign over the gate. "Work sets you free" Arbeit Macht Frei I understand there is a suitable site available outside of Munchen as a test camp. the village is called Dachau... /SARC OFF

seriously though, beyond the gutlessness of the CDU Pols, I am shocked at the wussification of the German Politzei. The German Police I knew would be all over these guys. The Germans were the original creators of the Giuliani "Broken windows" school of pro-active policing.

Jupiter said...

"With right-wing populism on the rise across Europe, Ms. Merkel has been seen as a bulwark against illiberal democracy....".

What is "right-wing" about not wanting your country taken over by useless murderous hell-spawned scum? Something tells me that if Angela Merkel were to find herself cooped up in a small house with 20 or 30 "17-year-old migrants", she'd be pretty damned "right-wing" herself by morning.

Anonymous said...

Joe said...
The German people are going to snap and when they do, it's going to freak a lot of people out.


I completely agree, but think you were a bit polite.

"The German people are going to snap and when they do, it's going to be ugly again"

Joe Biden, America's Putin said...

first problem - 11 years in power.

The rise in "I'm sick of terrorists" to the left that means the rise of Nazism. Idiots.

Anonymous said...

Jupiter?

A conservative is a liberal who has been mugged?

Anonymous said...

As an aside, think about what Merkels policies will ultimately do to places like Italy, Spain, and Greece. Her policies on asylum create a big suction effect that encourage onward transit through the border countries toward Germany. Sooner or later the Schengen agreement will collapse and the borders will go back up and the border countries will be stuck with their transit groups

eric said...

Blogger Anglelyne said...
"With right-wing populism on the rise across Europe, Ms. Merkel has been seen as a bulwark against illiberal democracy...."


Many years ago, Dinesh D'Souza was debating someone who kept calling him Hitler. Finally Dinesh says, "If you keep calling me Hitler, you're going to give Hitler a good name."

Same thing is happening here. These media organs don't realize it, but they are giving terms like "Right-wing populism" a good name.

JAORE said...

"So, it's about 1% of their population that itself contains at most 1% of hard core troublemakers. It says a lot about their country that they have no mechanism to deal with people that obviously should not be there.

That they had no plan in place to sequester any potential bad eggs may actually be a greater problem than actually letting the refugees come to their country in the first place."

And this differs how, except perhaps in scale, to what is happening in the US?

After all, our own officials tell us we have insufficient data to effectively screen those we are welcoming into the US.

Paul said...

Merkel's problem is she is a really liberal bleeding heart stupid woman who has now allowed in so many terrorist she will not be able to stop the civil war to come.

Like Obama and Hillary's destabilization of Libya, Merkel has destabilized Europe, especially Germany.

And there will be hell, literally, to pay.

Susan said...

Well at least now that they found his papers under the seat of the truck he used to mow down dozens of innocent Christmas shoppers they can finally deport him.

Once they find him that is.

eric said...

Many economists are convinced that open borders, in a democracy, are the safest and easiest way to dismantle generous welfare programs and to cripple unions.

Whenever I want to know how to think about a subject, I ask myself, "What does Paul Krugman think?"

Steven said...

The problem, of course, is that no one can decide what to do with people like him.
It's easy enough.

Since the whole refugee thing is a matter of EU policy, the obvious thing is to have a pan-EU solution for "problem" pseudo-refugees, a single remote holding location that can hold them until they can be appropriately repatriated. A suitable chunk of EU land would be, say, Courbet Peninsula in the Kerguelen Islands, part of France and therefore EU soil. Two hundred square miles of land two thousand miles from the nearest inhabited place (and that Madagascar).

Could the inhabitants radicalize and cross-train and all that? Sure. And then what? They make it too dangerous to send supply ships, you just stop sending supply ships and wait a bit.

narciso said...

Bow I think Abe walla, ska amerabdul azzuz who runs a salafist outfit, has an Whatsapp of his own, was in London two and a half years ago, Us the bugger fish

Gahrie said...

Whenever I want to know how to think about a subject, I ask myself, "What does Paul Krugman think?"

I do too. And then I take the opposite position.

LakeLevel said...

It's all clear now. Merkel was an East German and 34 years old when the wall fell in Germany in 1989. Is it so hard to believe that she was Stasi and a dyed in the wool communist? If you know anything about East Germany, you understand that there is no way to know who was or wasn't in the Communist Stasi secret police. She seems to be hell bent on de-stabilizing The West.

Scott said...


Jon said...

Sally - Germany is a Parliamentary system. Different from what you (and I!) are used to in ways I admit I don't understand... but yes, Merkel can basically do anything she wants until thrown out by a vote of No Confidence (as they call it in England, don't know what it is called in Germany) by the Parliament, not the voters.
12/21/16, 6:40 PM


Actually she's facing the voters in 2017 since by law she has to call parliamentary elections then. Something interesting I got from a casual look at the polling chart https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_for_the_German_federal_election,_2017. To the eyeball it looks like her CDU's bleeding votes out to the AFD anti immigrants (black and blue lines). Note, this graph is currently valid through November, I expect the AFD to really start gaining ground unless they self destruct.

I expect the AFD to get a major boost with this one and I wouldn't be surprised if they start running ads showing Frau Merkel inviting this guy in to run over Berliners. That said, I have to agree that when they swing against the Muslims, it's going to get very very ugly (especially since a lot of those human rights pronouncements have no real teeth for enforcement, see: Aleppo).

Alex said...

Germany could use a little illiberalism right now. If they continue to suppress normal nationalist Germans who just want a peaceful life, they will end up resurrecting Hitler's Nazi Party.

Alex said...

The rise in "I'm sick of terrorists" to the left that means the rise of Nazism. Idiots.

Right now, no. But you can turn normal people into Nazis over time if you keep telling them how horrible they are for just wanting a normal Germany.

Alex said...

I can only hope that when the AfD gets to power they will not harm Jews.

Dude1394 said...

Merkel sits behind her secure walls and her security detail. Her family sit behind their secure walls and their security details. Her citizens get slaughtered. They can not arrest her for accessory to murder but their blood is on her hands. The next citizens blood who are murdered will also be on her hands.

Hopefully they can at least end her career.

Michael Fitzgerald said...

Sally327 said...
I don't know enough about how this happened but I find it fascinating that in a representative democracy -which I think that's what Germany is-- one person would have the power to make such a significant decision as allowing over a million people to come into the country from elsewhere. It's as if she were queen in the 12th century or something, or a pope back then or a dictator in the 1930s, I guess, to be a little more contemporary. It seems like that kind of authority, absolute rule. How does she have that much power?

This seems like a significant loophole, perhaps in our own country as well, that there are no checks and balances.

12/21/16, 6:24 PM

It's happening here and now, if I'm not mistaken. Not only are there something like 100,000 "Syrian" refugees being settled in select unnamed cities, but Obama brought a few thousand illegal aliens across the border not too long ago, dispersing them throughout the nation in mystery cities. Our elected representatives are doing this and hiding it from the public.

Yancey Ward said...

Merkel is toast- nothing can save her political position next year. Like Hollande in France this Fall, sometime next Spring she will announce she won't stand as the leader of the party in the next elections.

MayBee said...

It is weird how quickly the narrative goes from "what a tragedy" to "how will this affect politicians?"

After Obama's press conference, there was a lot of talk on CNN about how Aleppo will affect Obama's legacy. As if that's the important thing about Aleppo.

MayBee said...

Remember when Obama was such a jerk and said, "what are they afraid of? Widows and children?" instead of addressing the real fears of people about taking in unscreened "refugees"?

Merkel suffers from the same hubris. And they both listen to the same global elite bubble thinkers.

JAORE said...

"It is weird how quickly the narrative goes from "what a tragedy" to "how will this affect politicians?"

After Obama's press conference, there was a lot of talk on CNN about how Aleppo will affect Obama's legacy. As if that's the important thing about Aleppo."

True enough. But the sub-title of this is a lesson to politicians, "Don't let this happen to you." At least I hope they get that lesson.

mikee said...

What exactly is a "foreign German politician" in the context of the story posted?

Is it a non-German who is a politician, somewhere, maybe Germany, maybe not?
Is it a German pol who is a foreigner to the author, wherever the author is from?
Is it a politician who is German who specializes in "foreign," whatever that means?
Is it a result of bad translation, upgefucht from the original German?

I see the phrase as a nonsequitor, a non-German German, maybe an ethnic Turk born in Germany who became a politician. That would fit with the history of Germans being rather keen on carefully defining what makes a good German.

Anonymous said...

Mikee, I think either your option: " a non-German German, maybe an ethnic Turk born in Germany who became a politician"

Or a mistranslation of some German in the Foreign Ministry (other than the authorized spokesman)

Kirk Parker said...

Michael,

"You cannot make this stuff up. They were going to deport him but couldn't. Because he didn't have a valid passport."

Pinochet would have known how to send him back to Tunisia.