Germany

Open Thread

Mark Noonan16 Comments

Germany’s internal intelligence agency – allegedly to protect Democracy – has ruled that Alternative for Germany (AfD) is an extremist party. This sets it on the path to being banned – and a ban on any of its adherents being employed by the German government.

Currently AfD holds 152 out of 630 seats in the Bundestag and is the official opposition to the ruling CDU/CSU/SPD coalition. That right there tells you what the problem is: the CDU/CSU is the nominal Conservative party in Germany while the SPD are the Socialists…but there they are in coalition. Why? Because they are all Establishment. So, too, are Greens and the Left – two pretty much outright Communist parties. Essentially, what you have is the entire German establishment determined to keep AfD out of power. And they thought after the election this past February that this was accomplished…AfD was held to a distinct minority of seats and everything could calmly go on as the Establishment imported Germany’s replacement population. But the most recent polling shows AfD tied with or slightly ahead of the CDU/CSU…and in the old east Germany, the AfD is starting to run away with it. The next election isn’t until 2029…but with AfD rising there is always a risk that the German government could lose a vote of confidence in the Bundestag and that would trigger an election…and as the SPD starts to drop down to political insignificance (after being one of Germany’s two major parties since WWII), they might decide it is better to roll the dice in a new election (polling in eastern Germany – you know, former Communist Germany – has them as low as 10%).

To be fair, the German laws which allow political parties to be banned stem from the reaction to the Nazi era – and we must note that the old Communist Party of Germany was banned in 1956, as have many small parties heavily influenced by Nazi ideology. The claim is made that because the AfD doesn’t like mass immigration they are striking at the heart of Democracy…which is drivel because Democracy doesn’t have anything to do with immigration. They are two entirely separate species of issues. But by casting up the shadow of Hitler they want to turn public opinion against AfD. I’ve mentioned the AfD platform before and it hasn’t anything remotely Nazi in it – in fact, if it is anything compared to the USA, it is a Libertarian ideology (though with generous welfare structures because Germany). They want a decentralized government made up of citizen-legislators and bureaucrats who don’t remain forever entrenched in the realms of power. This is very un-Nazi. Heck, its pretty much un-anything. No nation puts any real restraints on those who grasp for political and economic power. They’re not even anti-immigration – they just want it controlled, an end to bogus asylum claims and the full integration of the immigrants into German society…that is, make them Germans. If anyone can spot Nazism in here then I’m all ears.

Secretary of State Rubio and Vice President Vance issued strong condemnations of the move against AfD – seeing it for what it is: a desperate attempt by a dying political order to remove its opposition. In my view, if Germany goes forward with this ban, then we should not only withdraw from NATO, we should break off diplomatic relations with Germany. The United States cannot afford to be allied with tyrannical regimes.

Trump posted an AI picture of himself dressed up like the Pope and this has caused a lot of outrage…all of it bogus. And I include here some of the official Catholic outrage. After all, the Bishops fussing about this haven’t gotten around to addressing the public scandal of pro-abortion Catholic politicians. A joke picture by Team Trump is hardly something to get all upset about. Sure, it was in poor taste…but not exactly the most important thing going on at the moment, both in secular and religious matters.

I guess some white girl on social media used the N word and then some go fund me type thing raked her in half a million dollars. This has also generated a lot of outrage. But one smart guy I follow on X has noted that if we have different sets of rules for different ethnic groups then there will be a reaction to this. Nobody likes unfair things. If the N word is wrong, then it is wrong. It can’t be wrong for one sort of person to say it but right for another sort. I personally hold to the view that it is a vulgar and insulting term and its best left in the past. But as the word is routinely used by some, I’m not going to call out its use by others.

One set of rules, guys. Pick the rule you want and then everyone has to adhere to it. No special breaks.

Another story that crossed the time line is the arrest of an alleged 5 year old (who is clearly not 5) who was accused of stealing – when arrested, the shouts of racism came fast and furious (the accused being black, the victim being white). This has caused a bit of a social media kerfuffle. There is the real chance that the whole thing was a set-up: that is, some Left pressure group wanted to get a race story and so got one kid to steal from another and had a person handy there to video the interaction. But outside that, people are chiming in with stories of feral youngsters prowling around neighborhoods and businesses just looking for things to steal – and shouting racism when caught. This, I’m confident, is organized crime. It is like the people who go into stores and steal things…this isn’t random. These places are clearly cased in advance and the people doing the stealing pretty much know what they’re looking for (ie, high value, easy resale items). This is the long-term effect of the destruction of societal norms…most notably that theft is bad.

Keep in mind Leftist ideology here: all crime is the result of our unjust system. They sincerely believe this – and, so, their response to crime has been to systemically reduce penalties. This has taught people that they can easily get away from it – theft is a low risk/high reward occupation. Assault or killing is still a no-no (for now), but the Leftist judicial system will look benevolently upon your thievery. But what is forgotten here is that the police don’t exist to protect the honest – they are there to protect the thieves. To ensure they get a fair trial rather than a back-alley whipping or, in more extreme cases, hanging from the most convenient spot. Our Leftist urbanites will put up with a lot…and they’re rich enough to barely be inconvenienced when, say, their car is broken into. But working class and middle class people will only endure it for so long…and after they’ve been robbed a hundred times and the police continue to do nothing, they will take matters into their own hands. There will be curbside tribunals which will dispense rough and ready justice.

And when it happens, I didn’t see a darned thing. Sorry, sun got in my eyes.

There is a way out of this, of course. Start severely punishing petty crime. It actually does the thieves a favor as it will convince a large percentage of them to find something else to do for a living.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan50 Comments

I got into a gun control argument with a Brit on Twitter the other day – very unusual in that it wasn’t nasty. But, it also didn’t really have a conclusion…the guy simply stopped responding. This was after I pointed out something which most don’t think about these days:

To love someone is to do what is best for them – if I am to show love for my fellows then certain things are required of me. One is that I never permit someone to be unjustly attacked. Another is that I restrain the wrongdoer from carrying out his plans. The former is far more easily understood than the latter, but neither are really thought of these days.

What my interlocutor was on about is that my Christian faith – which he claims to share – is about mercy and turning the other cheek and so forth; so, it isn’t really right for me to have a gun to shoot the burglar. But the reality is that it is almost a moral requirement that I be armed – as I’m physically capable of bearing arms – because if I am unarmed I can neither defend my neighbor nor attempt to prevent the burglar from doing his evil deed. I can only sit helplessly by…while my neighbor is robbed and maybe killed and the burglar risks his immortal soul in the commission of his crime. How can I be said to be showing love to either of them by doing nothing? There is much we’ve lost: most importantly our sense that justice and mercy go together. Its not one or the other – and, in fact, if you try to do either in isolation, you’ll get neither.

Germany’s Populist-Conservative AfD did well in regional elections – so well, in fact, that Germany’s other major parties (CDU, SPD and Greens) are thinking of a partnership with the German Communist Party (now called Linke, because “Communist” sounds bad). This is the mask fully dropping: all the parties were simply about who gets to slice the pie, not about what the pie shall be. And the Ruling Class in Germany – and around the West – wants the pie to be about open borders and only the Elite getting to decide what happens. We’re all in this together, folks: as goes AfD goes Brexit goes Trump. Either we all win, or we’ll all be destroyed.

John Hindraker is probably like most of us these days – watching what’s happening and figuring the Democrats are completely out of touch with reality. Of course, he also notes that he could be the guy out to lunch. We’ll all find out next November – but, I’m betting it is the Democrats who are busily alienating 60% of the electorate.

France’s Macron is offering a $15 billion bribe to Iran to keep it in the nuke deal – which we’re out of and Iran never had the faintest idea of abiding by. I don’t really understand this: is Macron that stupid, or does Iran just have so much dirt on Europe’s Ruling Class that they have to play ball?

South Dakota Democrat Party closes its last two offices for lack of funds. One down, forty nine to go…

Turns Out We Can’t Beat the Russians

Mark Noonan51 Comments

Anyone thinking that Obama might find his backbone and actually stand up to Putin’s imperialism better think again:

“Our question was: Would NATO be able to defend those countries {the Baltic states}?” Ochmanek recalls.

The results were dispiriting. Given the recent reductions in the defense budgets of NATO member countries and American pullback from the region, Ochmanek says the blue team was outnumbered 2-to-1 in terms of manpower, even if all the U.S. and NATO troops stationed in Europe were dispatched to the Baltics — including the 82nd Airborne, which is supposed to be ready to go on 24 hours’ notice and is based at Fort Bragg, North Carolina.

“We just don’t have those forces in Europe,” Ochmanek explains. Then there’s the fact that the Russians have the world’s best surface-to-air missiles and are not afraid to use heavy artillery.

After eight hours of gaming out various scenarios, the blue team went home depressed. “The conclusion,” Ochmanek says, “was that we are unable to defend the Baltics.”

The active Russian Army is stated at 395,000 – Poland, the closest nation with a large military force has 120,000 troops. Germany, next closest, has just under 61,000. The French army, a little further off, has 115,000. That works out to 99,000 less than the Russian army, when you combine them all together. Small wonder that even with the US Army in Europe augmented by the 82nd Airborne that we can’t get the job done – and this probably supposes that we could get the French and Germans to go along (getting the Poles to go along wouldn’t be difficult).

The thing about an army is that you just never know when you’re going to need one – which is why you’re supposed to keep a top-notch one in being at all times, even when it doesn’t seem particularly necessary. For decades now the Europeans have continually reduced the size of their military force – they got it into their heads that there would never be another major European war. Now we’ve got the Russian bear trying to rebuild the Russian Empire and no one has an army in being capable of stopping the Russians. The only way to actually stop Putin if, say, he decided to occupy Estonia is to declare war on Russia, build up a massive army, and then invade. This is not something which is going to recommend itself to European and American politicians.

Welcome back to the real world, folks. We’re in quite a pickle, right now. Not only does no one respect of fear us, but we simply do not have the military power to make anyone respect or fear us. On the other hand, our military is now almost perfectly politically correct – with only a few Marines still to be forced into line. Great, huh?