The featured image captions: – Wait. I think they are up to something!
The news in Germany have lately been dominated by Trumps victory. At least in the mainstream media this outcome is generally portrayed as a complete catastrophe.
 The Spiegel cover “THE END OF THE WORLD (as we know it):
Scroll down for more quotes from German press.
Or the venerable FAZ:
They quote foreign minister Steinmeier:
“Trump ist der Vorreiter einer neuen autoritären und chauvinistischen Internationalen. Er ist auch eine Warnung an uns. Wir finden sie nicht nur mit Putin in Russland oder mit Erdogan in der Türkei, sondern auch mitten in Europa in Frankreich mit Le Pen aber auch mit Sarkozy, in Polen mit Kaczynski, in den Niederlanden mit Wilders oder in Deutschland mit der AfD. (…) Es geht ihnen um ein echtes Rollback in die schlechten alten Zeiten. In denen Frauen an den Herd oder ins Bett gehörten, Schwule in den Knast und Gewerkschaften höchstens an den Katzentisch. Und wer das Maul nicht hält, wird öffentlich niedergemacht”
More or less:
“Trump is the vanguard of a new authoritarian and chauvinistic Internationale. He is also a warning for us. We do not only find it with Putin in Russia or Erdogan in Turkey, but also in the middle of Europe in France with Le Pen and also with Sarkozy, in Poland with Kaczynski, in the Netherlands with Wilders or in Germany with the AfD. (…) They want a real rollback to the bad old times. When women were confined to kitchen or bed, gays were sent to prison and worker’s unions got the left-overs, if anything. And those who did not keep their mouths shut were publicly humiliated”
That is a lot of bullshit in a rather short time. A deceitful misrepresentation of what the politicians and parties he insults actually stand for. With the exception of Putin (with regard to his international politics) I am not a fan of any of them, although I think that their growing support is a good sign, but I know this is not what they stand for and not what they want. And Steinmeier knows it, too.
But even if he does not, he should at least know better than to insult people he might have to work with as a representative of the German people. I think this is inexcusable behaviour for a top diplomat.
Steinmeier has been criticizing and insulting Trump as “a preacher of hate” for quite some time now and has very openly supported Clinton:
An exceptionally stupid and unprofessional position for a sitting minister of foreign affairs. It is absolutely beyond me how this is not an issue in Germany.
The German foreign minister decided to burn all bridges with a candidate for the presidency of the most important German ally for no good reason other than maybe to boost his personal leftist profile a bit. This candidate just won the election and Steinmeier doubles down with even more insults instead of resigning in shame.
Not only does he not have to resign, it looks like he is going to be the next German president.
Unlike in more democratic countries, in Germany appointing the head of state is an “insiders-only affair”. He is not elected by the people but by the “Bundesversammlung” (Federal Convention) made up of party-apparatschiks and their appointees only.
On the upside the president does not hold a lot of power and is mainly just “a guy that signs stuff and smiles for the cameras”.
And if he gets any ideas about maybe not signing whatever he is asked to sign, or happens to utter an inconvenient truth, German presidents can be removed very easily.
Personally I think the German leadership knows that Steinmeier is a dangerous fool and to make him president is their way of trying to save face and still get rid of him. They cannot criticize him too openly, because it would reflect badly on themselves. So they make him president to get him out of the way. He gets a very cozy job and Gabriel and Schulz get more options.
The SPD have not yet nominated a candidate for next year’s general elections. But it will most likely be Gabriel or Schulz. I would guess that they both do not want the nomination. They have very little to gain from it, because they know it will be almost impossible to beat Merkel. The SPD has no chance whatsoever of winning a majority by themselves. The only way they could hope to win is with a “left / green” coalition of SPD, Green Party and Die LINKE. But until the AfD showed up the LINKE were “the unreasonable extremists”. Such a move might be possible in principle, but not with the current SPD or Green leadership.
Even her own party is not enthusiastic about it. Much less so her coalition partners. It looks like she will surely win, but in an ultimately futile last stand. The German political leadership has only more of the same failed policies to offer, executed by the same failed political personnel.
I think the political and media establishment in Europe has a big problem.
First they said Brexit could not happen and everyone who supported it was a Nazi and the world would end. Then Brexit happened.
Then they said Trump could never win and everyone who supported him was a Nazi and the world would end. Then he won.
Now we have the re-run of the presidential election is Austria and the referendum Italy in the next couple of weeks. What if the election in Austria goes to FPÖ’s Hofer and Renzi fails in Italy (which looks very likely)?
Then elections next year in the Netherlands, France and Germany and maybe Italy. Wilders in Amsterdam, Le Pen in Paris, Merkel in Germany, Grillo in Italy, UK leaving the EU and Trump in The White House? Who knows? Doesn’t have to be that way… But for the first time in a long while it looks like it really could.
That would worry me a lot if I were an EU puppet.
The puppet masters must have lost control or they have sold me out.
Either way…
Terror in Europe / Munich:
In 2016 Europe has seen a comparatively high number of terror attacks:
The attack in Nice was probably the most prominently featured incident in the news and almost “coincided” with the coup attempt in Turkey. It was the one news item that challenged the “Turkish Coup” on newspaper covers the next day, and more importantly the one event that diverted attention as the coup unfolded.
It is obvious that the Islamist terror scare is used all over the West to cut back basic freedoms and further an agenda of oppression.
I think it is very likely that modern “Extremist Islamic Terror” is the new face of the old “Gladio Terror” of the Cold War
If the coup in Turkey was US-backed and orchestrated. If Daesh is US-backed and controlled. It is also quite likely that the events were planned “to coincide”.
Paul Craig Roberts, who I respect very much, has recently shared the idea that the Nice terror attack has been a staged event.
Echoing his judgement of other “terror events” like The San Bernadino Shooting, The Aurora “Batman” Shooting, Sandy Hook, The Orlando Gay Club Shootout, The Attack in Paris, The Boston Marathon Bombing, etc…
Crisis actors and implausible lies all over the place…
Be that as it may, I think the “Munich Incident” and its implications have been underreported.
What I find interesting about this incident is mainly the reporting on the response of the security services.
The official story has it, that there was one active shooter in Munich. Just one single person armed with a pistol. Indiscriminately opening fire on passers-by.
As scary as that might be, the reaction of the German security services was absolutely out of proportion with a threat like that.
Hundreds of policemen not only from Munich or even Bavaria were involved in the operation.
Large parts of Munich were on lockdown for hours. Public transport was shut down.
Special anti terror units were deployed to Munich from all over the country. Which did not even work properly because not enough helicopters were available.
Parts of the German military were put on alert and readied to be deployed. (Which would have been unconstitutional. But the constitution counts for nothing in Germany anyway, and has been broken this way before, so who cares? Certainly not the government. They want the army to be free to operate however and wherever they please and have been talking about that for a long time. Under the pretext of terror even more so recently:
That sounds to me like the German security apparatus was put into very high gear, in some cases beyond its breaking point. And the full might of the German anti terror forces took about four and a half hours to eliminate the threat created by a single, untrained, unsupported shooter armed with only a pistol.
—5:52 p.m. Friday: Police receive first report of shooting at the Olympia Shopping Center in the northern Munich neighborhood of Moosach. The first shots were reported at a McDonald’s restaurant opposite the mall. Police sirens could be heard throughout the city.
(…) (~ 4 hours 30 minutes after first report)
—10:38 p.m. A body wearing a backpack is found near the Olympia Shopping Center; police investigate whether it is that of the shooter.
(…) (~ 7 hours 30 minutes after first report)
—1:25 a.m. Munich resumes public transport.
It took a sizeable army of trained professionals four and a half hours to “find a body” of an untrained nobody in a perimeter they must have been in control of for hours? And they could not say at once if that was the guy they were looking for? How can you even fail to establish or manage to lose contact with a single, prominent target in a city on lockdown with hundreds of men on site?
It does not even seem like the target was trying to hide very much. According to the official story the shooter had time to exchange verbal abuse with local people filming from their balconies.