Poll: AfD Now Germany’s Second-Most Popular Party

(Photo Credit: Alternative for Germany)

 

A little more than one year after becoming the first “far-right” party to win seats in the Bundestag in more than 50 years, the AfD is now officially the opposition to Merkel’s “grand coalition,” which required alliances with not only Bavaria’s Christian Social Union and the Social Democratic Party to hold a majority of seats. A new poll has placed AfD one point ahead of the SDP in terms of generic support.

“It’s A New Chapter For Europe”: Merkel, Macron Unveil Plan To Reform Europe

Lost among the other overnight news, was the launch of “a new chapter” for the EU as termed by Germany’s troubled chancellor Merkel. After her meeting with French President Macron on Tuesday, Merkel said Germany and France have agreed to cooperate to reform the EU’s asylum system as both “understand the topic of migration is a joint task” and “our goal remains a European answer to the challenge.” What she really meant is that if her government is toppled by the collapse of the CSU-CDU coalition – recall Merkel has a 2 week ultimatum to reach a solution on Germany’s treatment of refugees by July 1 – the rest of Europe gets it too, and the grand experiment is over.

Aside from immigration, the two leaders agreed to an in principle plan to strengthen the Euro area, including setting up a euro-area budget and a crisis backstop under the ESM (European stability mechanism), although they postponed decisions on some elements which could prove consequential. Chief among them: specifics on the size and conditions of the euro-area budget.

Angela Merkel Down for the Count?

 

 

There are some saying that Angela Merkel will be overthrown in a matter of weeks and others saying that there is no plot to remove her. Nevertheless, scandal rising in Germany over the refugee crisis keeps brewing behind the curtain. Cyclically, 2018 may be a peak in Merkel’s career despite what people are trying to deny.

Angela Merkel was born in Hamburg, West Germany, on July 17, 1954, and was actually trained as a physicist. She entered politics after the 1989 fall of the Berlin Wall. She eventually rose to the position of chairwoman of the Christian Democratic Union party becoming Germany’s first female chancellor. Moreover, Merkel has actually become the best-known politician in Europe whose face is more recognized than anyone else in Europe no less Brussels.

In Open Dissent

BERLIN (Own report) – The G7 summit in La Malbaie, Canada, ended in open dissent on Saturday without a joint final declaration. After the G7 state and government leaders had already agreed on a joint statement, US President Donald Trump withdrew his endorsement. The document is still supported by the other six G7 states and is occasionally referred to as the “G6” declaration, to point out the deep rift in the traditional West. Whereas German business circles still call for making concessions in the trade conflict with Washington, Foreign Minister Heiko Maas is considering new cooperation frameworks with states “beyond classical alliances, such as NATO.” This however would be in contrast to the agreement reached at the G7 summit on a mechanism aimed at a common response to cyber attacks and attacks such as the nerve agent poisoning in Salisbury. According to scholars of the German Bundestag, Moscow’s alleged responsibility has still not been proven.

The Era of Retaliation

BERLIN (Own report) – Germany’s defense minister reaffirmed that Berlin is basically ready to participate in military aggressions, such as the recent western attack on Syria. “We could also fulfill the contribution from the air that Great Britain had made in this case,” said Ursula von der Leyen, but “we weren’t asked this time.” She made this declaration in full knowledge of the fact that the Reference and Research Service of the German Bundestag – like numerous other legal experts – had classified that attack a clear violation of international law. According to the expert assessment of the parliamentary jurists, it was a “retaliation” patterned after military interventions preceding the First World War. Legality was not the justification for those attacks, but rather a subjective political moral legitimation. Claiming “legitimacy,” other countries may also decide to engage in military aggressions, warn experts. Admitting such a change of paradigm would cause “more, rather than less human suffering.”

Still Raising Questions: How Angela Merkel Started Her Career In German Politics

 

Angela Merkel is considered to be the world’s most powerful woman and perhaps Europe’s most powerful person. She’s about to be re-elected as Germany’s Chancellor for the fourth consecutive time. Her policies have provoked a lot of debate, from Germany’s decision to phase out nuclear energy over the Eurozone bailouts onto her refugee policies.

What has received much less attention is how she entered politics. A number of biographies have been written about her, with the most critical one perhaps being “the first life of Angela M”, written in 2013 by a journalist for Die Welt who later joined the rightwing populist AfD party. This centered on how she was a member of the FDJ, the communist youth organization, when she was at school, and how she later served as cultural secretary for the FDJ while working as a physicist at the Academy of Sciences, leading to Merkel denying this role included propaganda.

Far-right AfD now the second most popular party in Germany: poll

AfD federal chairman Jörg Meuthen. Photo: DPA

 

A poll published on Monday by the newspaper Bild put the Alternative for Germany (AfD) on 16 percent, showing that they are currently more popular than the Social Democrats (SPD).

The poll, conducted by INSA put the AfD on 16 percent, just ahead of the SPD on 15.5 percent. The poll marks the lowest support ever achieved by the SPD, traditionally one of the two major parties of German politics.

Berlin’s Beacon Policy

BERLIN(Own report) – Germany and the three remaining major West European EU member countries should formulate a joint foreign policy and implement it even without an EU-wide consensus, demands Norbert Röttgen, former Chair of the Committee of Foreign Affairs in the German Bundestag. Such an approach would be inevitable, because a foreign policy consensus in the EU is impossible “within the foreseeable future,” although rapid and resolute activity is needed to reach an “equal footing with the USA and Russia.” Experts are proposing, as an alternative, the introduction of foreign policy decisions being taken at majority votes. This would mean that EU countries – against the will of their respective governments – could, for example, be forced into serious conflicts with third countries. Reflecting major shifts in the global political fabric, these proposals have become elements of an intense debate within Berlin’s political establishment. The German Federal Intelligence Service (BND) is warning against the escalation of conflicts, for example, with China, and the military does not rule out the possibility of Berlin’s loss of power, through the potential disintegration of the EU.

NATO Splinters: Germany Completes Withdrawal From Turkey’s Incirlik Airbase

 

Several months after an unprecedented collapse in relations between two NATO member states, on Thursday Germany’s military announced it has finished its withdrawal from Turkey’s strategic airbase Incirlik, which as a reminder was prompted by Ankara’s refusal to allow visits by German parliamentarians. Going forward, Bundeswehr planes will instead be based in Jordan.

The Imperial Consensus

BERLIN (Own report) – With the Alternative for Germany (AfD), an extreme right wing party will enter the German Bundestag for the first time since the 1950s. With 13 percent of the vote, the AfD has successfully mobilized an extreme right-wing potential that, according to a sociological study, has always existed within the German population. All parties in the Bundestag openly repudiate the AfD. However, this only obscures the fact that the AfD’s program, particularly on the important issues of foreign and military policy, show remarkable parallels to the political objectives of almost all other parties in the Bundestag. Like the CDU/CSU, FDP, SPD and the Greens, the AfD sees Germany as a global “policy-making power,” whose armed forces should be massively upgraded and made more operational. Whereas, the mainstream parties in the Bundestag are relying on the EU as the instrument for German global policy, the AfD favors a national course for Germany exercising global power. This course would probably take effect should the EU disintegrate due to the growing internal dissentions or if more and more countries opt to exit.

Is the German Election Being Rigged to Save Merkel & EU?

 

The German website Votebuddy is openly looking to match people who have a right to vote but don’t vote with aliens who want to vote but cannot. What this site is promoting in Germany would in the USA be voter fraud. Here it is looking to arrange people for the Bundestag election to ensure Merkel wins. A very interesting twist to rig the election?

Germany Secretly Passed Total Surveillance of Everything

 

The law was intentionally hidden in a law on driving bans. It was secretly attached at the last minute hoping nobody would notice. Now the German government can monitor messenger services on smartphones and targets WhatsApp so they can intercept or read messages BEFORE encryption. The government can secretly download their spyware to the cell phone of the suspect without their knowledge. The government claimed: “We are increasingly observing that criminals communicate in encrypted form. This makes it increasingly difficult for the authorities to clarify even the most serious offenses, “said Thomas de Maizière (CDU). The problem is the term “criminal” and tax avoidance is a criminal offense.

Germany Is Quietly Building a European Army Under Its Command

[GETTY]

 

Berlin is using a bland name to obscure a dramatic shift in its approach to defense: integrating brigades from smaller countries into the Bundeswehr.

Every few years, the idea of an EU army finds its way back into the news, causing a kerfuffle. The concept is both fantasy and bogeyman: For every federalist in Brussels who thinks a common defense force is what Europe needs to boost its standing in the world, there are those in London and elsewhere who recoil at the notion of a potential NATO rival.

But this year, far from the headlines, Germany and two of its European allies, the Czech Republic and Romania, quietly took a radical step down a path toward something that looks like an EU army while avoiding the messy politics associated with it: They announced the integration of their armed forces.

Iranian spies second most active in Germany, says Interior Ministry

 

Iranian intelligence operatives are the second most active in Germany after Russian spies, with much of their activity focusing on Israeli targets in the country, according to the German Interior Ministry. The information is contained in a report that was issued in response to a request by a member of Germany’s Bundestag last week. It states that Iranian spies have engaged in nearly two dozen known intelligence operations on German soil since 2007, and have even targeted individuals for assassination.

EU Lawmakers Urge “Federal Union” For European States… Or Else

The beginnings of the United States of Europe, courtesy of a German Fourth Reich which dominates the European Union to serve its own purpose.

 

 

The leaders of the lower chambers of parliament of Germany, Italy, France, and Luxembourg have called for a European “Federal Union” in an open letter published in Italian newspaper La Stampa on Sunday.

…

In less than a month, on March 17 next, we Presidents of the national parliaments of the EU we will meet in Rome, how will the representatives of governments, for the sixtieth anniversary of the Treaty from which it began: our Union.  

But it is plain for all that recurrence requires much more than just a historical commemoration. Birthday comes the most critical stage ever crossed by the European project.