The Best Of Both Worlds

It’s a win-win situation for Germany again.

Austria

Austria solves the Germans’ refugee problem but they can still bitch and moan about how awful Austria is for having put up the mean and nasty border fence that did the solving. Once you’ve climbed the moral high ground you never come down, I guess.

Austria, Hungary, Croatia, Slovenia and Macedonia have all brought in no-nonsense measures over the last few months which have sealed up the Balkans route and dissuaded tens of thousands of migrants from making the journey north from Greece.

Astonishingly, beleaguered Mrs Merkel has persistently railed against the reintroduction of border controls, even though they may end up saving her career as Germany’s leader.

Die Alleingänge müssen enden.

Drop In Number Of Refugees Due To Merkel’s Asylum Policy?

I think not. Try Austria’s asylum policy of enforcing real border controls.

Tempelhof

The Berlin government is going ahead with plans to expand the big refugee center at Tempelhof airport, even though its population has dropped. According to Berlin’s latest official figures, only around 50 refugees are arriving in Berlin every day – a long way below the 1,000 that sometimes arrived daily last fall…

While Merkel officially has stuck to her line, thereby isolating herself in Europe, Austria has made a drastic about-face within a matter of weeks. In September 2015, Faymann criticized Hungarian Prime Minister Victor Orban’s policy of deterrence, and now, Austria is following suit.

Austria has imposed a cap on the number refugees it will allow into the country and the authorities will now only accept 80 asylum applications per day. A four kilometer long fence has been erected near the town of Spielfeld at the Slovenian border. When Hungary built a fence along its border with Serbia in the autumn, Faymann fiercely attacked the activities. Now, even the armed forces are deployed at the Austrian border.

German Of The Day: Heile Welt

Heile Welt

To grasp this trauma (the refugee crisis) it helps to understand the German zeitgeist that developed (mainly in the former West Germany) in the post-war years, and lingered in the reunited country. Germans call it Heile Welt. The term means something like “wholesome world”, and describes an orderly, idyllic state. It may connote the nurturing environment parents create for their children to protect them from life’s ugliness, or a private oasis of peace amid public chaos. It was a state of mind that Germans clung to after the second world war…

Foreigners were allowed into this Heile Welt, but not entirely accepted. To man its assembly lines, Germany invited workers from southern Europe and especially Turkey. The millionth arrived in 1964 and got a motorcycle as a gift. By the time the programme ended in 1973, 4m foreigners lived in West Germany. But they were called “guest workers” rather than immigrants, on the premise that they would ultimately leave again. Unsurprisingly, most stayed. Yet mainstream Germany continued to see itself as ethnically homogenous—a Heile Welt in a tribal sense…

Gnomic wisdom: Some Germans react by fleeing into ever tinier Heile Welten. “We are becoming ever more like our garden gnomes.”

German Of The Day: Durchwinken

That means to wave through.

Merkel

And Angela Merkel HERSELF has just learned, like just today, an entire new German sentence with the word Durchwinken in it: Die Politik des Durchwinkens muß beendet werden. That means: The policy of just waving refugees through from one country to the next must now be stopped.

Like I said, she just learned it. It is quite a mouthful, isn’t it? So it’s certainly easy to understand why it took her this long to learn it.

“A refugee does not have the right to say ‘I want to be granted asylum in a particular country’ in the European Union.”

“Es gibt eben nicht ein Recht, dass ein Flüchtling sagen kann, ich will in einem bestimmten Land der Europäischen Union Asyl bekommen.”

“There Is No Plan B”

When it comes to Angela Merkel’s refugee policy.

Merkel

I can understand that and I value her candor. I would just really appreciate it if somebody could tell me what her Plan A is.

Speaking on German public television on Sunday, Chancellor Angela Merkel said the policy of open borders for migrants would remain. Merkel dismissed a “rigid limit,” saying, “There is no point in believing that I can solve the problem through the unilateral closure of borders…”

Merkel’s party faces elections on March 13 when voters elect new regional parliaments in three of Germany’s 16 states. It is the first poll since the migrant crisis began.

Meine verdammte Pflicht und Schuldigkeit besteht darin, dass dieses Europa einen gemeinsamen Weg findet.”

77 + 13 = Null Ahnung

Null means zero in German. Null Ahnung means “I have no idea” or “I haven’t a clue.”

Gone

So just do the math:

The other day we found out that 77 percent of the migrants who came to Germany in January did so without having any identification papers. Now we learn that 13 percent of all migrants located in Germany just get up and, well, disappear. They get registered with the authorities somewhere when they arrive and then puff! They’re gone.

Ergo… When it comes to migrants in Germany, this 77 + 13 = uhm, wait a second… nearly 100 percent “I have no idea” or “I haven’t a clue” about what the hell is going on here in this country anymore. And something tells me I’m not the only one.

Knapp jeder achte registrierte Flüchtling verschwindet nach seiner behördlichen Erfassung.

Is 77 Percent A Lot?

That’s the percentage of migrants who came to Germany in January without having any identification papers.

Stop

But don’t worry about that or anything. Everything is under control, as usual. Human rights organizations even say that there is a good explanation for this. And that’s of course when I stopped reading the article because I have a good explanation for this, too. It’s called: Not wanting to be identified.

Have any of you non-migrant types who already live here or elsewhere legally ever tried to explain to a German cop or other German authority that you do not have an ID when asked for one? I didn’t think so. It wouldn’t, like, fly well. Like not well at all. But some of us are more equal than others these days, I guess.

Der überwiegende Teil der Flüchtlinge, die nach Deutschland kommen, hat keine gültigen Papiere. Nach Ansicht von Menschenrechtsorganisationen gibt es dafür auch eine gute Erklärung.

This Reveals The Dark Side?

Like just right now for the first time already or something? Ain’t nothing new here. I thought the BBC was more im Bilde (in the picture) than this: “Migrant attacks reveal dark side of Germany.”

Arson

This dark side has always been here, folks. It’s just that for some inexplicable reason, a whole lot of people – like Angela Merkel, for instance – don’t seem to be aware of it. You would think that she, of all people, would know what country she has “under” her (it’s about half starry-eyed Gutmenschen and half of those arsonist folks, just in case you were wondering) but sometimes, I guess, even she is going to be the last one to know.

Oh, another example of her being the last one to know: The coming introduction (reintroduction?) of a real live German border fence (see Austria). Better late than never, Frau Merkel. Although it’s probably too late for any graceful exit you may still have been hoping for.

Keep your eyes peeled on the coming regional elections in Germany, folks! Beginning on March 13 at a media outlet near you.

Attacks on Germany’s refugee shelters are increasingly common. Government statistics reveal that last year there were about 1,000 such attacks, five times the number reported in 2014.

Michael Moore Moved By German Kindness

But only about a centimeter or two.

Michael Moore

He’s a really big guy, see?

In a special wide-screen video appearance made especially for this year’s crappy Berlin Film Festival (Moore’s own latest crappy film, “Who to Offend Next,” oops, I mean “Where to Invade Next” is being shown here but he unfortunately cannot attend due to pneumonia and being a really, honking hefty dude, like I said) the annoying loudmouth commended Germany for its “kindness towards refugees, which has moved me and millions of Americans.” But, hey. Somebody’s got to do it, I guess.

Wanna see an even better Michael Moore video? When he was skinny, I mean?

Eure Großzügigkeit und Güte gegenüber Flüchtlingen haben mich und Millionen Amerikaner bewegt. Und ich weiß, es gibt Probleme.

This Is The Monster We Are Supposed To Hate

Get used to her face, too.

Petry

Her name is Frauke Petry and Angela Merkel’s refugee policy fiasco, and her refugee policy fiasco alone, is virtually assuring her party’s entry and establishment in the German political landscape and it is unfortunately too late now to do anything about it.

Petry says outrageous things like “People must stop migrants from crossing illegally from Austria into Germany. If necessary, through the use of firearms. I don’t want this, but the use of armed force is there as a last resort.”

Imagine that, suggesting the use of firearms to protect your borders as a last resort. Unthinkable, right? Well it is here. But the real outrageous part is the first part of what she said. It is outrageous because that is precisely what most Germans want and Chancellor Merkel refuses to respect this. It’s time to close the borders.  It’s been time to close the borders. And it will remain time to close the borders until the borders get closed – presumably following the next election.

Sehe ich so aus, als sei ich unter Druck?