Tag: germany

Does Germany Have the Stupidest Political Establishment on Earth?

There’s an old metaphor in military affairs—one that apparently goes back to Plutarch—about the disaster that occurs when competent soldiers are led by incompetent officers—namely “Lions led by donkeys.” The adage was popular in Britain during the First World War, when it became evident that most English soldiers were brave and competent, but frequently reduced to cannon fodder by their terrible leadership.

Since it became a unified country under Bismarck in 1871, Germany has frequently been led by donkeys. Kaiser Wilhelm II was a donkey and Hitler was a psychopathic rogue donkey. Now the much-abused citizens of Germany are being governed by a faltering Rainbow Coalition of Donkeys.

Guys like me who have a longstanding fascination with German culture, music, philosophy, and engineering can only regard what has happened to the poor Federal Republic with great sadness.

I thought of this adage this morning when I read an essay by fellow Substack author Eugyppius, who just published a marvelous essay titled German fascism crisis escalates as Elon Musk publishes a devastating 600-word editorial explaining why he supports Alternative für Deutschland.

The reaction to Musk’s perfectly reasonable editorial strikes me as the most remarkable outpouring of stupidity I have seen since the cancellation of Stefan Mickisch, one of Germany’s greatest musicians, in 2022.

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Germany’s Economic And Political Suicide

It’s that festive time of the year when interesting tales get told around a fireplace. So here goes (minus the fireplace).

Once upon a time there lived a country that was the envy of the world. It was among the world’s pre-eminent producers of manufactured goods. From chemicals and pharmaceuticals to precision engineering and the brewing of beer, it was second to none. Its people’s work skills, industriousness and discipline became the national hallmark of civilisational success. The country gained fame and fortune in bringing the luxuries of fine automobiles to the world’s rich and aspiring middle classes.

Alas, a blight visited that once great country not more than a score of years ago, though its destructive seed had been planted earlier. It was not some external force or act of God. Rather it was a sickness of the mind, a debilitating disease of the soul, that vexed that country’s ruling class. In restless search for virtue, the country’s rulers paid obeisance to the Goddess Gaia and promised the nation’s blood and treasure to satiate her inviolable sovereignty over her earthly domains.

This, then, is a tale of woe and misery. This Christmas shall not have been one of unalloyed merry times and good cheer. And while beer will have been drunk and dinners eaten in many a hearth and eating place, the lifeblood of that nation shall be constricted and its breathing blocked by a cursed phlegm as normal life resumes in the New Year.

Within the fateful score of years of becoming afflicted by the primordial cult of Gaia, the world’s envy has now become a sad basket case. Its economy has been tarnished as “the sick man of Europe”.

The beginning of the end of the German miracle

While the travails of Germany along with the economic stagnation of Europe as a whole have been apparent for some years now, the spate of dire headlines have gathered pace in recent weeks as the coalition government collapsed.

“Behind Germany’s Political Turmoil, a Stagnating Economy” — New York Times (December 17th)

“Germany Is Unraveling Just When Europe Needs It Most” – Bloomberg (December 15th)

“Europe’s Economic Apocalypse Is Now” – Politico (December 19th)

If Europe – and its economic powerhouse Germany – remains on its current trajectory, its future, Politico says, “will also be Italian: that of a decaying, if beautiful, debt-ridden, open-air museum for American and Chinese tourists”.

The economic rot induced by the adoption of Energiewende policies for the “energy transition” in 2010 resulted ultimately in the recession of the German economy in the last two years.

Among the manifestations of this rot are the growth of corporate bankruptcies in double digits, soaring layoffs as the Federal Employment Agency said that the unemployment figure could exceed the three million mark for the first time in 10 years at the beginning of 2025, and the crown jewel of German industry, its automative sector, announcing massive job cuts.

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The Magdeburg Christmas market attacker had a long history of erratic and threatening behaviour that police routinely minimised and prosecutors studiously ignored

The dishonesty about al-Abdulmohsen and his motives has been staggering. While those on the German left are sparing no effort to portray the attacker as a right-wing terrorist and “AfD sympathiser,” loud voices on the right have spent days insisting that he was some kind of sleeper jihadist agent.

Neither is remotely true. All the evidence shows that al-Abdulmohsen was a paranoid, mentally unstable and professionally incompetent doctor with a long history of making terroristic threats to satisfy petty personal grievances. Anti-Islam statements from the AfD appealed to him, but beyond that al-Abdulmohsen had no developed political vision, and his self-styled refugee advocacy put him at odds with core elements of the AfD party platform. His entire internet presence is moreover uniformly anti-Islamic; all the tweets cited to support the argument that he was a crypto-Muslim are invariably misinterpreted or taken out of context.

The real story here is the failure of German police and immigration bureaucrats to do anything about this obviously unbalanced and dangerous man. In Germany, pensioners who call Green politicians “morons” get their houses raided by the police, while insane migrants who promise over and over to commit terrorist acts attract no attention. Authorities neglected to deport al-Abdulmohsen even after he overstayed his original visa, then granted and extended new residence permits despite his increasingly erratic behaviour. Al-Abdulmohsen received political asylum in 2016, two years after a court fined him for making terroristic threats. In 2023, as al-Abdulmohsen’s mental state deteriorated and his continuing threats brought him to the notice of the police again and again, he was granted permanent residence in Germany. As late as May of this year, he was even tweeting veiled threats directly at Interior Minister Nancy Faeser, and nobody did anything.

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Who Is Wei Cai, German Public Health’s ‘Hidden’ Scientist from Wuhan?

So, who exactly is Wei Cai, the scientific staff member of Germany’s public health authority, the Robert Koch Institute (RKI), who, as revealed in hitherto hidden minutes of the institute’s “COVID-19 Crisis Group,” comes from none other than Wuhan? And when I say “hitherto hidden minutes,” I mean hidden precisely in the ostensible leak of the unredacted “RKI Files.” For, as I discussed in a recent article, the file in question was not included among the supposedly “complete minutes” assembled by Aya Velazquez, the prostitute-turned-journalist and anti-Covid-measure activist who unveiled the documents at a highly-publicised press conference in Berlin on July 23rd.

As discussed in a postscript to that article, although I have asked her, I have not received a coherent answer from Velazquez as to how she could have overlooked these minutes, which are indeed the minutes of the very first RKI “crisis group” meeting of which we have a public record.

Be that as it may, the reason why the revelation of the RKI’s link to Wuhan is important – and why German authorities may have preferred that it remain secret – is because, as I have documented in, among other places, my ‘The Greatest Story Never Told,’ Germany in fact had a very active publicly-funded research partnership in virology with several research institutions in Wuhan, including the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV).

Indeed, the German-Chinese virology network, known as the “Sino-German Transregional Collaborative Research Centre” or TRR60, gave rise to a full-fledged German-Chinese virology lab, not only right in Wuhan but indeed right in what is regarded as the area of the initial outbreak of Covid-19 in the city. For this and other (microbiological) reasons outlined in my ‘The Smoking Gun in Wuhan,’ the members of the German-Chinese virology partnership ought to be prime suspects in any genuine investigation into a possible laboratory origin of SARS-CoV-2.  But, instead, they have been completely ignored in favour of suspects in far-off places like Chapel Hill, North Carolina.

The below photo shows various members of the partnership, as well as associated German and Chinese luminaries in the field of virology. It was taken in 2015 at a “Sino-German Symposium on Infectious Diseases” in Berlin organised by the German Co-Director of TRR60, Ulf Dittmer. Dittmer is the bald man in the middle of the picture. None other than Christian Drosten, the German designer of the ‘gold standard’ SARS-CoV-2 PCR test, and Shi Zhengli, the WIV’s renowned bat coronavirus expert, can be seen together in the lower left-hand corner of the picture.

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Elon Musk’s AfD Endorsement Triggers EU Push for Stricter Censorship Under Digital Services Act

Elon Musk’s endorsement of Germany’s Alternative for Germany (AfD) party has sparked significant controversy, particularly among European political figures concerned about the potential for what they call “foreign interference” in Germany’s upcoming elections.

Musk, the CEO of X, voiced his support for some of AfD’s policies following a deadly terror attack in Germany. His comments have raised alarm among EU officials, prompting calls for increased scrutiny of the X app and its compliance with the EU’s stringent censorship laws.

Thierry Breton, the European Union’s former Commissioner, took to X to express his outrage over Musk’s support for AfD. In a tweet posted on December 21, Breton accused Musk of being involved in “foreign interference” in Germany’s electoral process, especially given the timing of his comments around the tragic attack in Magdeburg.

Breton, who has been an advocate for strict censorship of social media platforms, and even threatened Elon Musk for over his interview with President Donald Trump, also called for the immediate application of the EU’s Digital Services Act (DSA) to combat what he described as “double standards” when it comes to regulating speech online.

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Strange (Convenient) Narrative Emerges In Horrific Christmas Market Attack…

It’s a twist that is incredibly convenient for the current failing progressive government in Germany as they face a severe political backlash for their open border immigration policies and a rising tide of populism.  The primary suspect in the Christmas Market terror attacks in Magdeburg, a doctor and refugee from Saudi Arabia, is allegedly also a supporter of the right-wing AfD party, Tommy Robinson, Elon Musk and Alex Jones according to authorities. 

50-year-old Taleb al-Abdulmohsen, a specialist in psychiatry and psychotherapy from the Saudi Arabian city of Hofuf, moved to Germany in 2006 and lives in Bernburg. He has been recognized as a refugee since 2016.  Taleb is a critic of Islamist governments and a pro-asylum activist for people seeking to escape oppressive Sharia law.  Reports claim the Saudi Government may have tried to extradite him multiple times, which Germany refused.  

German authorities cite posts by the suspect on X showing support for the AfD and popular anti-mass immigration figures. 

In June, he retweeted AfD party leader Alice Weidel: ‘The left are crazy. We need the AfD to protect the police from them.’

He also retweeted AfD activist Naomi Seibt with the following quote: ‘Tyranny is based on the docility of cowards. I choose to be brave.’ 

Posts cited as “pro-Tommy Robinson and pro-Elon Musk” are better represented as anti-censorship and an observation on the speech restrictions enforced by the German government.

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Suspect in Magdeburg Terror Attack is Saudi Activist Who Helped Migrants Flee to Germany — Once Featured in BBC Interview Renouncing Islam

The suspect in the Magdeburg terror attack is understood to be a migrant from Saudi Arabia by the name of Taleb Al-Abdulmohsen.

According to the German state broadcaster DW, at least two people have been confirmed dead, and up to 60 more are reported injured after a car rammed into a Christmas market in the city of Magdeburg.

While details about the killer’s identity are still being investigated, Taleb Al-Abdulmohsen was reportedly granted asylum in Germany in 2016 after fleeing from his native Saudi Arabia because he longer believed in Islam.

In an interview with the BBC back in 2019, Taleb explained how he had set up a website to help people flee Gulf states such as Saudi Arabia and move to Germany.

“Hi, my name’s Taleb,” he said in the video currently circulating across social media. “I’m from Saudi Arabia. I’m an activist. I created a website to help people seeking asylum, especially from Saudi Arabia and the Gulf region.”

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Saudi Suspect Plows Car Into German Christmas Market; U.S. Media Blames [Checks Notes] the Car

An attack on a Christmas market in Magdeburg, Germany, has left at least two people dead and 60-80 injured. According to Die Welt:

A driver drove into a group of people at the Christmas market in Magdeburg. Government spokesman Matthias Schuppe confirmed to WELT that it was an attack. City spokesman Michael Reif also said that the initial report was an “attack on the Christmas market”. The suspected perpetrator is in police custody. WELT learned from security sources that he is a man from Saudi Arabia who was born in 1974.

The Saudi national, who had reportedly been in Germany illegally since 2006, allegedly rented a car and headed to the market two hours west of Berlin, which was teeming with visitors enjoying the Christmas festivities. A suitcase was found on the passenger seat of the vehicle, according to Die Welt, and authorities are currently trying to ascertain whether it contains an explosive device. The terrorist was taken into custody, and it’s not known whether he acted alone. 

A police spokesman said the suspect drove “at least 400 meters across the Christmas market.” A witness said the attack occurred in the market’s fairy tale section. 

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Germany Tightens Grip on Online Speech as Vice Chancellor Defends Arrest of Online Critic

Germany’s authorities continue to double down on their crusade against all manner of free speech on the internet: from the right of citizens to criticize them, to satirical content like memes.

Instead of considering apologizing to a pensioner whose home was recently raided by law enforcement for an online post unflattering of his person, German Vice Chancellor Robert Habeck is now urging even stricter regulation of social media.

And it’s clear what kind of regulation Habeck – who was referred to as “an idiot” in the post that got 64-year-old Stefan Niehoff in hot water with the prosecution – wants to see more of.

The Green Party politician cited the EU’s controversial, sweeping censorship law, the Digital Services Act (DSA), as a tool that could be used to “regulate” algorithms used by social media.

According to the German press, Habeck told the ARD broadcaster not only that he wouldn’t apologize but went on to try to explain – or, justify – why he filed a criminal complaint against the pensioner in the first place.

Habeck suggested that being called an “idiot” was just the straw that broke the camel’s back; his grievance supposedly originates from a previous “racist” post by Niehoff.

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Germans Being German: “You Can’t Say I Hate Free Speech! I’ll Have You Arrested!” Minister Says

As the left loses power worldwide, they are turning to increasingly authoritarian measures. In Germany, Antifa-allied Interior Minister Nancy Faeser is filing charges against conservative journalist David Bendels – ironically for calling Faeser an enemy of free speech.

In the UK, Tommy Robinson and dozens of patriots are in prison for posting on social media or screening a documentary, in Tommy’s case. Police in Essex showed up at the door of Telegraph journalist Allison Pearson because of a post on social media.

In Australia, the leftist government is seeking to pass a law requiring all Australians to register with ID to be able to post on social media.

In Germany, as the Scholz government collapses and faces pressure from the patriotic AfD party, the German government is going full Stasi and raided a retired Army vet for calling Green econ minister and vice-chancellor Robert Habeck an “idiot” (Gateway reported).

In July, Interior Minister Nancy Faeser tried to shut down right-wing Compact magazine but was defeated in court.

YouTuber Shlomo Finkelstein is currently in prison for videos showing a burning Koran.

Violent attacks on AfD politicians are the norm in Germany and are rarely prosecuted because the leftist government views the Antifa street thugs as their street muscle. AfD politicians are virtually banned from mainstream media and are subjected to vile and defamatory reporting by “investigative” journalists, often with intel support.

Now, Interior Minister Faeser is pressing charges against conservative journalist David Bendels, editor-in-chief of the AfD-aligned DeutschlandKurier, for making fun of her in a meme showing Faeser holding a sign that reads “I hate free speech” (photo above).

Yes, you read that right: The Antifa-aligned Homeland Security minister of Germany wants to prove she doesn’t hate freedom of speech by going after a journalist’s freedom of speech.

As our President says, “They’re not sending their best.”

Elon Musk commented on a video by Gateway contributor Naomi Seibt, saying, “This is crazy.”

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