Wednesday, November 24, 2010
European politics has certainly descended to a new low when an essentially bankrupt Germany suddenly plays the terror hoax card to distract from the Eurosclerosis that is a direct result of irresponsible central bank policy coupled with profligate governments who have obviously totally disconnected from the needs and desires of the sovereign.
The military's involvement in the Afghanistan war is opposed by Afghans and Germans alike
Ruling with fear is a policy of tyrants but not a viable method for democratically elected governments who must not forget that historically all hardline leaders have only very rarely concluded life in peaceful retirement.
We Are All Debtors
To drive the point home: All of Europe is basically bankrupt when not even latest austerity measures help to rein galloping budget deficits that have grown to sizes that make it mathematically impossible to reduce them to sustainable levels again. Only unsuspecting politicians still hang on to a pipe dream that the Eurozone or the EU will manage to climb out of the debt hole in a foreseeable sluggish economy (at best) they had been so eager to dig in the first place.
Record unemployment almost everywhere will perpetuate soaring social expenditures and drastically rising yields will bring a European replay of the US municipal bond crash.
Remember: All Eurozone members operate on growing fiscal deficits and not a single country has such a thing called savings. We are all 4-level debtors: supranational, national, communal and in private!
Let's be realistic: There can be only one Japan in the world with a debt:GDP ratio of 200% and we have not seen the final outcome of this funny fiat money experiment.
Europe has 3 key problems that will not be solved easily and will require a rediscovery of frugality in the old world which certainly cannot be called the 1st world anymore:
- Demographics. Europe is becoming a retiree's home while stupid anti-immigration policy is designed to aggravate this problem to the point of becoming unbearable within the next 2 decades.
- Resources. Europe has none.
- Costs. Unit labor costs are still among the highest in the world.
I don't know what's being smoked (ok, rather drunk) in European parliaments when all eyes are on Germany, with the expectation that the big loser of WW2 will somehow manage to pull the whole continent out of the mess created by national governments who still do not realize that income-creating economic power has shifted eastwards by several 1,000 km. The rest of us is only saddled with costly social security systems and bloated administrations that will break our necks if these problems are not tackled immediately.
Unable to resolve the crisis, Germany now shifts into politics of fear, drawing terror scenarios in order to keep the people from revolting.
German Terror Hoax Smells As Fishy As The Official 9/11 Fairy-Tale
Here a recap of Germany's terror hoax for non-German readers:
Last week an alarm clock with attached wires was discovered in a piece of luggage that should have boarded a flight from Namibia to Germany. It was made clear from the beginning that no explosives were involved.
The official Germany, on the defense vis-a-vis thousands of protesters against a crazy and costly railway infrastructure project in Stuttgart (home to Mercedes and Porsche) and the unsafe storage of nuclear waste in a sheet-metal warehouse (yes!!!), nevertheless abused the occasion to initiate a series of terror propaganda.
All thinking Germans would laugh about it were it not for the gruesome fact that Germany's conservative government wants to silently eliminate its Grundgesetz - sort of a combined constitution & bill of rights - and enter an era of TIA (Total Information Awareness).
Critical Americans may now smile bitterly as they see a short-term repetition of history.
Critical Europeans sensitive to fascism cannot smile anymore as we recognize a tactic last deployed by the Nazi regime: Spread fear and erode civilians' rights in order to install a fascist plutarchy where capitalists will always get their way (and their money.)
This may backfire enormously. Curtailing all the freedom and liberty that were the heartpiece of politics since WW2 begins to enrage 500 million Europeans who intutively feel that governments want to maintain the old power structure at literally all costs while fearing an uprisal of taxpayers who are NOT willing to pay for the greedy madness of lending bankers and borrowing politicians.
The horror story has grown bigger and bigger since Saturday. CNN-owned news TV station n-tv first alerted viewers to the unproven fact that 2 "terrorists" had entered Germany.
Short excurse: When I worked at former Reuters in the 1990s the term terrorist was a no-no at this once impartial news service as one man's terrorist is another one's freedom fighter. Unfortunately Thomson-Reuters has abandoned its absolute impartiality since 9/11. End of excurse.
The number of guerillas in Germany ballooned to 6 within a few hours and German MSM (mainstream media) did not elide the stupidity to spread that these 6 guerrilla were planning Mumbai-style attacks in as many German cities.
Everything Is Suspicious
Common sense did not go missing in editorial offices only. Politicians easily topped that.
The leader of the Christian Democratic Union in Germany's Bundestag (parliament) said in all earnest there were 100 highly suspect people on German territory (source please!) and this would justify a real-time monitoring and storing of all electronic communications in Germany despite the fact that the constitutional court had outlawed such umbrella surveillance which was last seen under the Nazis and in communist East Germany.
Both regimes failed completely.
Another conservative politician said after the not-a-bomb find in Namibia, it should be clear now that the hunt for terrorists should not be imperiled by the Grundgesetz.
A German Twitterer was quick to sum it up: "Everything (about this terror danger) is suspicious."
I now also have to presume that it was the same kind of thinking that brought us the European financial mess.
Monitoring 82 million Germans to get hold of communication data of 100 suspects does not sound economically to me or anybody else left with a single brain cell.
The idiocy and politics of fear do not stop here. The association of German plainclothes police (Bund der Kriminalbeamten) seriously voiced the opinion that the German Army should support them in everyday issues and anti-terror objectives.
Confronted with so much stupidity and remembering Albert Einstein (h/t @Goldtwatter) who said, "if you are out to describe the truth, leave elegance to the tailor", let me remind the current German Fuehrers and their slouch hat wearing sub-authorities that NO COMMONER IN EUROPE WANTS A REVIVAL OF THE TIME WHEN THE GESTAPO WAS AIDED BY THE WAFFEN SS! The slouch hats would be better advised to read up their country's history and question the motives of their own government.
At least the German Police Union deserves applause. On Tuesday its newly elected chairman Bernhard Witthaut voiced a square refusal towards such plans of Angela Merkel's government in local German media. I am most happy that sanity has not left Germany completely.
"Ihre Papiere bitte"
It is the German police who are now forced into a Nazi-workstyle again. n-tv aired footage of machine-gun-toting police guarding railway stations and patrolling public transport, asking, "ihre Papiere bitte," ("your papers please") and searching bags of commuters. The actions culminated this week when police cordoned off the German Bundestag and closed the building - a main attraction of Berlin visited by many 100,000s annually - to the public. You can no longer visit the permanent exhibition on Germany's last 100 years.
These are all eery reminiscences of a dark time Europe had considered to be laid to eternal rest since the end of WW2.
If there are indeed some violent attacks planned, all of this will not avert them and chancellor Angela Merkel, who grew up in totalitarian East Germany should know best from her own past that oppression only works so long. In the end the appetite for freedom has always prevailed in all modern societies.
I am no terror "expert" but one thing is out of question: No government can guarantee total protection of its citizens from suicide attacks and a war against nouns (terrorism, drugs) has yet to be won to provide a first example in history books.
What Are Politicians Afraid Of?
Fencing in the German parliament rather raises the question, what are politicians afraid of? Is it maybe the real fear that Germans will soon take to the streets as the Greek, the Irish, the Portuguese and the Spaniards once word gets through that Germany is as bankrupt as everybody else?
After all Germany is just another emperor without clothes, only left with the delicate fig leaf of an AAA-rating. It cannot save the Eurozone in a solo effort as the country's banks would need a staggering €625 billion for recapitalization while the whole EFSF has only funds of €750 billion of which already €200 billion are earmarked for Greece and Ireland and 4 countries (Greece, Ireland, Austria, Slovakia) have stopped contributing to the fund for the simple reason that they have nothing left to spare.
This will only extend the crisis which would be best resolved by letting free market forces work through the overcapacity in banking bankers had always praised when talking about other industries.
Merkel's answer to the Stuttgart S21 protests - where she massively loses voters to the Green party - has been to order water guns with higher pressure. Dozens of peaceful protesters suffer from eye injuries while a few have even become blind during this attack executed by a stubborn government that does not realize that it ultimately is the sovereign directing policy in a democracy.
False Flag Attack Coming?
The world must not forget that WW2 was started with a false flag attack commandeered by Adolf Hitler. As Germany used agent provocateurs in protests at the G-20 summit in Heiligendamm 3 years ago in order to incite violence among peaceful protesters it will be very difficult to convince critics that any "terror" act in the future will have not have been executed by state authorities itself.
This is especially valid if a bomb goes off somewhere as German intelligence has been most vague about the coming attack which made all the latest surveillance and patrols necessary.
I doubt the quality and genuineness of this information if it culminates in the statement that German intelligence is almost 100% sure that somewhere, somewhen something terrible will happen.
In this context I also remember a German tweet that claimed if there was a really big terror danger Germany would ramp up security of its infrastructure - like nuclear plants - instead of scaring commuters with automatic weapons. This has not been the case.
I finish with a reminder: The German Grundgesetz, one of the best constitutions worldwide that has propelled Germany from the dark Nazi era into the undoubtedly best functioning democracy in Europe was drafted under the impression of WW2 with the aim to prevent a repetition of the most horrific chapter in German/European history. It must remain self-understood that this must not be invalidated for some cheap political gain as this would be a first step to another war on European soil. Germany has developed a functioning democracy with a decent political culture since 1945. Don't return to 1933.
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