Palestinian man arrested for deadly stabbing spree on German train – A knife-wielding man described as a stateless Palestinian fatally stabbed two passengers and injured seven others on a train in northern Germany before being grabbed by members of the public and arrested by police, officials say. The motive of the attack was not immediately known.
Defense? By going on the offensive? Well, if all the other kids are jumping off the bridge… Let us give tanks?
“I think the Ukrainians want to, at some point, launch counteroffensives. And that’s much more effective with heavy armor — as much as you can get. Especially modern systems, which probably have more penetrating power.”
The Leopard can travel up to 44 mph out to a range of 275 miles. It is armed with a 120 mm smoothbore cannon, a 7.62 mm machine gun, and automatic grenade launchers. Additionally, the tank has ballistic and mine protections, and it’s seen operational experience in Kosovo, Syria, and Afghanistan.
Was she lame? Of course she was. But that’s the German Defense Minister’s job, to be lame. Look at the woman currently running the EU who was infinitely worse and fired “upstairs” (not elected, by the way). German defense ministers are, after all, pretend defense ministers. They are pretend defense ministers for an alibi army. No one in Germany expects the Bundeswehr to ever be anything other than that. They wouldn’t have it any other way. It’s all just a big show to justify having such a profitable weapons industry. Nobody living outside of Germany seems to get this.
Christine Lambrecht: German defence minister resigns after blunders – Germany’s Defence Minister Christine Lambrecht has resigned following a series of blunders and PR disasters.
It comes as Berlin comes under rising pressure to allow the delivery of German-built battle tanks to Ukraine.
Deutschland schmiert wirtschaftlich ab – Germany is sliding down the economic slope.
Economically, Germany can no longer keep up with the USA, Scandinavia and Western Europe.
According to a study by the “Stiftung Familienunternehmen” (Family Business Foundation), Germany is slipping dramatically in terms of competitiveness: among 21 industrialized nations, Germany now ranks only 18th!
Germany’s real estate market took a deep hit in the fourth quarter as investors shied away from deals on the back of soaring financing costs.
Total investments in the country’s commercial property sector only reached €9.9 billion ($10.6 billion) in the last three months of 2022, a decline of 50% compared with the five-year average for the period, according to a report released by BNP Paribas’ real estate unit on Monday. The development is largely due to soaring interest rates, a weakening economy and record inflation, it said.
Iranian man held in Germany over suspected chemical attack – A 32-year-old Iranian man has been arrested in Germany for allegedly plotting an “Islamist-motivated” attack.
The man had been plotting to use cyanide and ricin to commit a “serious act of violence.”
And defense for free (from Dire Straits, sort of).
Our German Ally: Tanking.
Putin has given any number of reasons (all of them nonsense) to justify Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. One of them was that Russia was “threatened” by NATO’s expansion. That is, to put it mildly, unconvincing. Russia’s grumbling about Ukrainian independence dates back to the Yeltsin era, long before (the special case of the vanished East Germany aside) NATO had expanded to include any countries in the former Soviet bloc.
A more convincing explanation (so far as the Kremlin’s attitude to NATO was concerned) was that Putin had seen the alliance’s weakness and concluded that it would present Moscow with no problems in the event that Russia took back control over its neighbor. An important reason why the Kremlin might have seen things that way was the position of Germany, a supposedly key member of NATO, but one that had a distinctly, uh, nuanced view of what membership of the alliance meant.
One obvious sign of that was the country’s neglect of its armed forces throughout Angela Merkel’s dismal chancellorship.
I still recall the sardonic, patronizing response I received in the German Chancellery around 2010, when I tried to warn my interlocutors about the danger of Russian hybrid warfare tactics—the cocktail of disinformation, economic coercion, subversion, espionage, and threats of force that Russia uses against its neighbors. “You are not seriously saying that Russia would conduct these operations against the Federal Republic of Germany?” my hosts asked, incredulously.
“Duh, yes,” I replied.
Scholz publicly hankers for a return to Europe’s “pre-war peace order,” suggesting that the lessons of 2022 have yet to sink in.
Because once things start looking better, they can only get worse.
German businesses expect only mild recession as disruptions ease – German companies expect only a mild recession next year despite headwinds from the energy crisis, raw material shortages and a tepid global economy, a survey of major associations published by Reuters on Tuesday showed.
There have been growing signs that the German economy could stave off the worst of an economic downturn triggered by a plunge in energy supply from Russia after the Ukraine invasion.
Inflation to 11.3% in November from a high of 11.6% the month prior as energy prices eased. The German government has predicted the economy will grow by 1.4% this year and next year.
And there is no movement or threat. Certainly not of any importance. Nice try, though.
Talk about your manufactured fake news. It’s just another one of those routine anti-Faschist, anti-right-wing-terror rituals all leftist media cultures have to perform from time to time. It’s performance art, in other words.
Why Germany Is Struggling to Address the Reichsbürger Threat – Right-wing terror has been generally underestimated by German authorities.
PS: It’s just like back home. The danger of right-wing terror is growing! I’ve been watching it grow here in Germany for forty years. Yawn.
