Even Closer to the Conflicts

BERLIN (Own report) – The German government has entered the new year with the announcement of new global policy ventures and a plea not to shy away from “difficult decisions” in international conflicts. Berlin must assume “responsibility” and seek “global solutions,” German Chancellor Angela Merkel declared. Foreign Minister Heiko Maas, sees Germany having been moved “even closer to the crises and conflicts” of the present day, by its two-year membership on the UN Security Council, which began January 1. Berlin seeks to use its seat on that body to impose a formulation of EU foreign policy and induce Paris to submit to joint activities described as “European.” In the meantime, there are appeals from within the Protestant Church for an expansion of Bundeswehr missions. Beginning January 1, the Bundeswehr, has assumed command, of NATO’s “Spearhead” intervention forces, which, within 72 hours, can be deployed anywhere on mission. Should NATO launch a mission this year, the Bundeswehr would be at the cutting edge.

Germany: Trump victory to spur EU military union

German soldiers on patrol in Afghanistan (Photo: Wir. Dienen. Deutschland.)

 

Donald Trump’s victory, as well as Brexit, ought to speed up plans for EU defence integration, Germany has said.

“Europe needs common political will for more security policy relevance. The outcome of the election in America could provide an additional impetus”, German defence minister Ursula von der Leyen said in an opinion article in the Rheinische Post, a German newspaper, on Thursday (10 November).

“The Brexit decision and the election in the United States have set a new course” for the EU, she added.

She said it was “difficult for Germany and Europe, on the day after the election, to assess what to expect from a Trump presidency”.

Christianity is Rattling: “Lights Out” in Germany

• The fall of German Christianity leaves an emptiness that seems likely to be filled by a more multicultural and Islamic society. Germany today houses Europe’s largest Muslim community.
• Christians in Germany, Die Welt reports, will become a minority in 20 years.
• The falling birth rate will remove a piece of Germany larger than the former communist East Germany. It will result in a demographic loss equivalent to the population of Berlin, Hamburg, Munich, Cologne and Frankfurt combined.
• The German army just spent 428 million euros on various operations relating to migrants during the past year. It has been the costliest mission within German borders that the army of the Federal Republic of Germany has ever undertaken.
• In the decades after WWII, Germans have turned into hard-core pacifists, enjoying their role on the sidelines of global conflicts. The army was then turned into a humanitarian organization.

“Contemporary historians … right now, have failed to find a single historical example of a society that became secularised and maintained its birth rate over subsequent centuries,” the former UK chief Rabbi, Jonathan Sacks, recently argued.

Brexit is a WARNING: There must be NO MORE referendums, says German president

GERMANY’S president has urged EU member states NOT to hold any referendums amid fears Brexit could spark the break-up of the bloc.

Last month’s historic vote to cut ties with Brussels led to speculation other countries including Holland, Italy and France would follow suit.

But Joachim Gauck believes politicians across the continent should refuse to hold referendums on any issue, not just EU membership.

Europe: Allah Takes over Churches, Synagogues

The Hagia Sophia in Istanbul was the grandest cathedral in the Christian world, until it was captured and converted to a mosque by the Muslim Ottoman Turks in 1453. The Middle East is full of churches and synagogues turned into Islamic sites. Today, every traveler in a modern European city can notice the new mosques being built alongside abandoned and secularized churches, some converted into museums. (Image source: Antoine Taveneaux/Wikimedia Commons)

 

• In the Dutch province of Friesland, 250 of 720 existing churches have been transformed or closed. The Fatih Camii Mosque in Amsterdam once was the Saint Ignatius Church. A synagogue in The Hague was turned into the Al Aqsa Mosque. In Flanders, in place of a famous church, a luxury hotel now stands. Catholic arches, columns and windows still soar between menus and tables for customers.
• “The French will not wake up until Notre Dame becomes a mosque.” — Emile Cioran, author.
• Germany is literally selling its churches. Between 1990 and 2010, the German Evangelical Church closed 340 churches. Recently in Hamburg, a Lutheran church was purchased by the Muslim community.
• “History teaches us that these transformations are rarely innocent.” — Bertrand Dutheil de La Rochère, assistant to Marine Le Pen.

Last year, at the famous Biennale artistic festival in Venice, Swiss artist Christian Büchel took the ancient Catholic Church of Santa Maria della Misericordia and converted it into a mosque. The church had not been used for Christian worship for more than forty years. Büchel decorated the baroque walls with Arabic writing, covered the floor with a prayer rug, and hid the crucifix behind a prayer niche indicating the direction of Mecca, the holy city of Islam. It was a provocation.

German president calls on US to win back lost trust

Germany’s Fourth Reich is using the NSA ‘scandal’ they’ve known and happily been apart of since the agency’s inception to cause a trans-Atlantic rift. This rift serves to allow Europe to reach its own independence without America so it can become its own superpower with German leadership at the helm. The icing on the cake will be a limited war with Russia, for example, where an incursion is made into EU territories and America/NATO sit back and do nothing, like they did with ISIS. Many Europeans despite today’s tension with Putin want NATO out and see no further need for it. Germany especially sees a need for an alliance with Russia over America as it has done twice in the past, both leading to two world wars. This would achieve Russian goals for a NATO breakup and a a foothold in Europe that it always wanted.

 

It’s been nearly 20 years since a German president was received in the White House. Joachim Gauck, a dissident who organized opposition to the East German state, is calling on the US to practice the values it preaches.

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The two men will meet on Wednesday. It’s been 18 years since a German president set foot in the White House. The timing is no coincidence of course. President Gauck has arrived in America to celebrate the 25th anniversary of German re-unification, a seminal historical event in which the United States played an instrumental role.

Beware the rise of radical Right as migrants arrive in Europe, says German spy chief

It’s been mentioned here throughout the years that Europe would take an extreme right turn. All that’s needed is one event. What we’re witnessing in real time with the refugee crisis might just be that event, or a combination of events yet to come.

 

There is a mobilisation on the street of Right-wing extremists in connection with the refugee crisis, says Hans-Georg Maassen

Germany’s domestic intelligence chief warned ON Sunday of a radicalisation of Right-wing groups amid a record influx of migrants, as xenophobic rallies and clashes shook several towns at the weekend.

President Joachim Gauck meanwhile warned of Germany’s “finite capacity” to absorb refugees, cautioning against more “tensions between newcomers and established residents”.

German leader urges E. Africa to copy EU integration

German President Joachim Gauck on Thursday urged East African countries not to be discouraged by setbacks and criticisms in their ongoing East African Community (EAC) integration process.

“EAC partner states should borrow a leaf from the European Union’s book,” President Gauck told members of the EAC secretariat and the East African Legislative Assembly, the EAC’s legislative arm.

Liberation without the Liberators

BERLIN/WARSAW (Own report) – Through their virtual disinvitation, EU countries are preventing the Russian president from participating at the commemoration of the 70th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. The highest representative of the country, whose army had halted the mass murder in the German extermination camp January 27, 1945, is thereby excluded from the commemoration ceremonies. However, Germany’s president, will participate. Joachim Gauck had already used his speech on the 75th anniversary of Germany’s invasion of Poland, to massively stir up sentiments against Moscow and to transform the commemoration of Nazi crimes into an appeal for closing ranks against Russia. In his memoirs, Gauck described Red Army soldiers, who had liberated Germany, as beings “with Asian facial features,” “reeking of Vodka,” who “requisitioned and stole.” A few years ago, he complained, “the occurrence of the German Judeocide has been inflated to a uniqueness,” because “certain milieus of post religious societies” were seeking “a certain shudder in face of the unspeakable.” In 2010, he was quoted saying, he “wonders how much longer we Germans want to nurture our culture of chagrin.”

Out of Control

KIEV/BERLIN (Own report) – Accompanied by protest demonstrations, Kiev’s Prime Minister, Arseniy Yatsenyuk, will have talks with Chancellor Angela Merkel today, Thursday, on expanding German support to Ukraine. Yatsenyuk is pursuing an arms buildup by all possible means. Observers assume that Kiev is preparing a new offensive in Ukraine’s civil war. It was reported that several NATO countries are involved in arming the country’s military. The German government confirmed back in September that it had satisfactorily complied with Ukraine’s requests including “defensive equipment”. Even trans-Atlantic supporters of Kiev’s February 2014 putsch, are now warning that a considerable rise in the influence of fascist militias and certain oligarchs is threatening to establish an uncontrollable warlord system. Prime Minister Yatsenyuk’s party has particularly taken the lead in supporting right-wing extremist battalions. Yesterday, Yatsenyuk was ceremoniously received by German President Joachim Gauck.

Former Communists from East Germany set to return to power

Days before Germany is set to mark the 25th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, the way has been cleared for the former communists who ruled East Germany to return to power.

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The Left Party, widely seen as the successor to the SED, East Germany’s communist party, is expected to head the government of a German state for the first time since reunification, after the Social Democrats voted to enter a coalition with them in the state of Thuringia.

Many of the Left Party’s leadership were senior figures in the old SED, which ruled East Germany as a single-party state. And the prospect of the party’s return to power has caused alarm in some quarters.

Using Double Talk (II)

BERLIN/BEIJING (Own report) – On the occasion of the German chancellor’s visit to China, Berlin’s China experts are predicting tangible “turbulences” in German-Chinese relations. Chancellor Merkel is, above all, using her visit to the People’s Republic to seek new business opportunities for German industry. However, growing tensions between the USA and China could soon be expected, according to a recent statement by the director of Berlin’s Mercator Institute for China Studies. Germany and the EU will have to more clearly choose sides than has previously been the case. Government advisors are also proposing that relationships in the field of security policy with member countries of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) be enhanced. This would strengthen the German-EU position in China’s direct vicinity and could possibly be combined with cautious naval expeditions. Comprehensive arms deliveries are flanking these plans for a closer military cooperation. Three East and Southeast Asian countries are among the top-ten customers of German military hardware. They are among those countries, Washington is seeking to pit against China.

The Elite Wants More

BERLIN (Own report) – The CDU and Green party-affiliated foundations have been holding conferences with prominent experts to continue Germany’s campaign by elite circles to promote a more aggressive German global policy. Ultimately, a “public discussion of the security policy’s soft and hard factors” must take place, insisted the head of the Policy Department of the German Defense Ministry, Monday at a conference held by the Konrad Adenauer Foundation. At the Heinrich Boell Foundation, just shortly before, the audience was told that “a ‘pacifist Sonderweg'” (special path) cannot “be permitted.” Germany must finally “come out of the comfort zone.” According to the reader published by the Heinrich Boell Foundation, it must be “accepted that it may become necessary to take action outside the current international legal framework.” The reader calls for the creation of a “national security bureau” within the chancellery, patterned after the US-American “National Security Council,” and to significantly “upgrade” the “equipment of Germany’s intelligence services.” Decisions on foreign military missions should, thereby, be structurally facilitated.

UN wants Germany to lead missions ‘one day’: minister

The United States calling Germany to step up to the plate militarily is one thing, however, now we see United Nations backing.

The United Nations has asked Germany to “one day” lead peacekeeping missions, the country’s defence minister said Wednesday, reiterating her call for Berlin to engage more strongly on the world stage.

Ursula von der Leyen was speaking on German TV from New York, where she had met UN Deputy Secretary-General Jan Eliasson at the headquarters of the world body.

“The (UN) request is that Germany invest more senior personnel in headquarters and that perhaps Germany one day lead a military peacekeeping mission under the auspices of the UN,” she said on ARD public television.

America Pushed Germany to Remilitarize

America’s global retreat is pushing Germany to radically change its role in the world.

January 2014 was one of the most pivotal months in Germany’s post-war history. The nation’s top leaders lined up to proclaim a dramatic shift in foreign policy. Germany’s post-World War II period of restraint is over. Germany’s history, proclaimed its president, should no longer be an excuse for German inaction. The German military should act like any other: It should be prepared to get involved in foreign conflicts just like France, Britain and America.

The Trumpet has covered the danger of this shift here and here. But why is it happening right now?