In the Name of Europe

BERLIN (Own report) – The first telephone call between the German chancellor and the US president was flanked by appeals for the EU to close ranks. Following Saturday’s call, both parties declared that they would “deepen” their bilateral relations. However, Berlin is preparing to assert its own interests offensively vis-à-vis Russia – also with the EU’s help. This is why the EU must finally “close ranks,” as German politicians are demanding. On Saturday, on his first foreign visit as German Foreign Minister, Sigmar Gabriel met his Parisian counterpart Jean-Marc Ayrault. His vigorous insistence “that Germany and France demonstrate they have common positions on nearly all issues” was also aimed at closing the EU’s ranks. While Gabriel was visiting France, the seven southern European countries’ heads of states and governments – including the French president – were meeting in Lisbon to determine their own positions, also regarding their economic policy. In view of British Prime Minster Theresa May’s recent visit to the USA, observers note that the Brexit is creating “a second geopolitical pole in Europe,” and “for Germany, which has become accustomed to speak in the name of Europe, […] this is not a favorable development.”

Superpower Europe

As said a quite a few times in the past, after America is done suiciding itself into the dustbin of history, you’re looking at your likely next superpower: A German-dominated United States of Europe. History tells us that when a superpower dies, there will ultimately be another one (or more) to fill in the gap. Donald Trump’s NATO funding rhetoric just might make it so real soon.

 

WASHINGTON/BERLIN (Own report) – Under German pressure, the EU is pushing toward the establishment of military structures, independent of NATO, as is evidenced by recent decisions taken by its defense ministers. At their meeting, ending yesterday, the defense ministers decided, as a first step, that particular EU countries should enhance their military cooperation. The EU will establish a logistic hub and explore the creation of a European Medical Command. They planned the setting up of a nucleus for an EU civilian-military headquarters that, according to Italy’s foreign minister, could grow to become a European general staff. These structures could serve NATO, but in the end, are suitable for an EU army. Berlin’s attempt to pit the EU against the USA, by ostentatiously taking a distance to President-Elect Trump, has encountered opposition from the UK and several eastern EU countries. Leading European foreign policy makers called the EU a “superpower” expected to be a “global security provider.”

European Values (II)

BERLIN/WARSAW (Own report) – Whereas Berlin is attacking the Polish government because of its media law; massive criticism is being raised against the German public broadcasting. While German politicians are calling for sanctions to be imposed on Poland, because it is placing its public media under government supervision, a right-wing conservative former CDU minister has become Chair of an influential panel of Germany’s ARD public television channel. Observers note that, even after the Federal Constitutional Court’s intervention, state officials or individuals with close government ties exercise significant influence on the public broadcasting steering committees. Due to their structural relationship to the state, on the one hand, and the programs’ political orientation toward government policy, on the other, one could speak of “embedded journalism” in Germany, a former correspondent of the ZDF public television concluded a few years ago. The journalist went to work for the Swiss Television, because it does not have “a NATO state’s obligatory alignment.” The German public television’s foreign news reporting is even increasingly being accused of using falsifications.

Does Germany have a new Middle East policy?

Violent conflicts are spreading throughout the Middle East. Germany is working with Egypt, supporting Saudi Arabia and delivering weapons to the peshmerga – but the government opposition in Berlin is critical.

Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi has been in office for almost a year. Soon he’s due to visit Germany. In March, German Economy Minister Sigmar Gabriel extended an invitation on behalf of Chancellor Angela Merkel. That marked a departure from the government’s earlier position that parliamentary elections in Egypt were a precondition for an official state visit by the president.

‘The Fourth Reich’: What Some Europeans See When They Look at Germany

People today are understandably confused when they hear “Fourth Reich” and Germany combined in the same sentence. They cannot put two and two together because they continue to look for Nazis running the country. There are none.

The Fourth Reich of today is economic dominance and subjugation of the European continent which will later turn the landscape into a United States of Europe — the only way for the Euro, or single currency bloc to survive. The only solution is further integration, and further integration means destroying national sovereignty from country to country and doing things the hegemon’s way.

Along with an upcoming United States of Europe will be a European Army, thanks in part to the suicide of the United States and Russian threats from the East. Many may not see it, but it’s going in that direction step by step. Whether one chooses to believe it or not doesn’t change the fact that it in fact is happening, albeit at a slow pace, before their very eyes.

If you’re still looking for Nazis, you’re 70-plus years late to the party.

 

 

 

Following World War II, a German return to dominance in Europe seemed an impossibility. But the euro crisis has transformed the country into a reluctant hegemon and comparisons with the Nazis have become rampant. Are they fair?

May 30, 1941 was the day when Manolis Glezos made a fool of Adolf Hitler. He and a friend snuck up to a flag pole on the Acropolis in Athens on which a gigantic swastika flag was flying. The Germans had raised the banner four weeks earlier when they occupied the country, but Glezos took down the hated flag and ripped it up. The deed turned both him and his friend into heroes.

Back then, Glezos was a resistance fighter. Today, the soon-to-be 93-year-old is a member of the European Parliament for the Greek governing party Syriza. Sitting in his Brussels office on the third floor of the Willy Brandt Building, he is telling the story of his fight against the Nazis of old and about his current fight against the Germans of today. Glezos’ white hair is wild and unkempt, making him look like an aging Che Guevara; his wrinkled face carries the traces of a European century.

Language please: Merkel wants more German spoken in EU

Berlin: Angela Merkel’s conservatives want to increase the use of German in Europe if they are re-elected in September, calling in their campaign programme for the language to be treated on a par with English and French in top Brussels institutions.

“German is the most frequently spoken native language and one of three working languages of the European Union,” a draft programme from Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and its Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social Union (CSU), reads.

“We will push for a further strengthening of the German language in Europe. Our goal is that it is treated in the same way as English and French in the European Parliament, the (European) Commission and (European) Council.”

Merkel ally says Islam not part of Germany

When push comes to shove, look for Europe in general to eventually take a hard right.

“Islam is not part of our tradition and identity in Germany and so does not belong in Germany,” Volker Kauder, head of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservatives in parliament, told the Passauer Neue Presse.

“But Muslims do belong in Germany. As state citizens, of course, they enjoy their full rights,” he added.

Full article: Merkel ally says Islam not part of Germany (AP)