‘I wish I could turn back time’ Merkel finally admits she REGRETS open-door migrant policy

GERMAN Chancellor Angela Merkel has admitted she regrets opening Germany’s doors to more than a million refugees last year.

Following a devastating defeat in Berlin state elections today, Mrs Merkel said she accepted her share of responsibility for voters punishing her ruling Christian Democratic Union of Germany (CDU) party for her refugee-friendly migrant policy.

Speaking at a news conference in Berlin, she said: “If I could, I would turn back the time by many, many years.”

Merkel says refugees must return home once war over

If German authorities have already lost track of 600,000 registered asylum seekers, it should be interesting to see how Frau Merkel is going to follow through with her back pedaling. She’s likely already going to get the boot next election year.

 

German Chancellor Angela Merkel tried on Saturday to placate the increasingly vocal critics of her open-door policy for refugees by insisting that most refugees from Syria and Iraq would go home once the conflicts there had ended, Reuters has reported.

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”.

Energy as a Weapon (II)

BERLIN (Own report) – In view of the EU’s summit meeting, later this week, the “fracking” lobby and NATO are intensifying their pressure for the EU to initiate the highly controversial “hydraulic fracturing.” There are indications that the German Bundestag could speed up legislation allowing this dangerous gas production technique. The outgoing NATO General Secretary Anders Fogh Rasmussen is implying that fracking opponents are in fact working as agents for the Russian government. This incredible slander coincides with global transatlantic strategies aimed at using the current fracking boom in the USA and other western countries, to significantly weaken or even eliminate Russia’s influence as a producer of natural gas. If Moscow can no longer sell its gas to the EU, it could hardly avoid painful budget cuts. This would have serious consequences for Putin’s position of power at home and his influence in global politics. Regardless of such campaigns, German and US energy companies are pressing ahead with fracking in Europe – while continuing to do business with Russia.

Why Germany Isn’t Rooting Out its Neo-Nazis

To put it bluntly, this is the result of decades and generations of Communist rule over East Germany. This was no accident. The Soviet Union had preserved, provided a safe haven for and has used Third Reich era Germans to further their own goals of combating the West. East Germans influenced by a society that never transitioned under Soviet conditions were also used against the US in the Vietnam war as well, for example. Purposefully or not, as time has since passed on, this has paved the way for such groups as the Neo Nazis to be born.

This is not to say that all of East Germany is in sync with what is portrayed in this article. However, a large portion of influence still remains.

The unification might’ve taken place, but there is a hugely stark contrast in the cultural mindset. For example, as in the West, there are many churches in the former Soviet east. Where the difference remains is that these churches in the East remain mostly empty on Sundays.  Another difference is that through a breakdown of the education system under Soviet influence generations ago, the East is now playing catch-up, resulting in less high paying jobs and skilled professions.

West Germany in general has been more prosperous due to the Western powers rebuilding through such efforts as the Marshall Plan, for example. Whereas the Soviets at the time made no effort to revitalize before and while leaving occupied territories .

There’s a Jewish restaurant called Schalom in Chemnitz, in the eastern German state of Saxony.

Uwe Dziuballa, the man who runs it, has had hundreds of abusive calls since he opened in 2000. “They say things like ‘you Jew pig,'”, he told SPIEGEL ONLINE. “Around April 20th (Adolf Hitler’s birthday) we get people calling saying they want to reserve 88 places (a Nazi symbol for “Heil Hitler”).

Swastikas are regularly daubed at the entrance to the restaurant or carved into doors in the toilet. Once, a severed pig’s head with the word “Jude” written on it was left in front. People urinate in the letter box. The outside lamps are frequently smashed.

Dziuballa has stopped reporting incidents to the police because it’s not worth the trouble. They didn’t even bother to investigate the pig’s head, even though it offered a pretty good clue in the form of a ready-made handwriting sample, and the number of people with access to a pig and the equipment to decapitate it is presumably limited.

“If nothing happens when you report things you think should be probed, you no longer go there with every little thing,” says Dziuballa, who is moving his establishment to smaller premises in the city. “I can’t say I’m satisfied with the lack of results.”

Dziuballa has sometimes thought about giving up, but then he rallies himself. “I’m not going to let arseholes drive me out.”

The worst aspect about Dziuballa’s story is that one can’t help thinking: What did he expect? Surely, opening a kosher restaurant in eastern Germany is asking for trouble. The police even told him as much.

…

In the more depopulated rural areas such as in the northeast of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, Germany has given up the fight altogether.

The National Democratic Party (NPD), which glorifies the Third Reich, is represented in village and town councils, neo-Nazis man the voluntary fire departments, organize sports festivals and summer fetes and run youth clubs — because too few others bother anymore.

They’re even trying to influence the running of kindergartens — a further dampener to hopes that the wave of extremism that engulfed the east in the 1990s might have just been a temporary phenomenon caused by the economic upheaval that followed unification.

…

Police Blindness

The case showed how blind Germany’s prodigious security apparatus had been to the threat posed by a new generation of people who had radicalized themselves by playing with guns, listening to old Nazis wallow in past glories and generally whipping themselves up into a frenzy of hatred of minorities.

Even if a number of communities have taken decisive action against neo-Nazis, in far too many places, a culture of tolerating right-wing extremism, simply looking away or playing down the threat persists among the authorities. Investigators probing the string of murders against foreigners perpetrated by the NSU neglected to pursue the possibility of a far-right motive behind the killings, instead suspecting the nine immigrant victims — a flower seller, a tailor, two grocers, a kebab shop owner, a man who was helping out in a kebab shop, a keycutter, a kiosk owner, and an Internet café manager — of having had gambling debts or links with organized crime.

…

Racist attitudes, they say, are widespread among ordinary people, possibly because the communist-era education system didn’t instil a sense of collective responsibility for the crimes of the Third Reich.

Analysts such as Professor Hajo Funke of Berlin’s Free University say security services aren’t being reformed rigorously enough and that the file shredding at the domestic intelligence agency reveals a culture of secrecy and self-preservation that continues to undermine its credibility — and will therefore make a bid to outlaw the NPD even more unlikely.

Full article: Why Germany Isn’t Rooting Out its Neo-Nazis (Spiegel Online)