Chaos in Germany

[barkingmad]

Annegret Unpronouncable has announced she’ll step down soon after taking the helm from Angular Meerkat when she steps down from being the gaffer.
What is going on in the fatherland?!?!
Is their economic situation flagging up future shocks so’s nobody wants to be at the helm when the storm breaks?

[OFSO]

The storm is on the horizon, far-off but visible. AKK, Merkel's favourite to lead the CDU party, recommended by Merkel and gaining around 99% of the party member's votes (proving nothing has changed in Germany as the Volk always do what the leader tells them to) has been weak where strength was called for and dithery in making decisions. Now the CDU party is without a leader (as in effect it has been since Merkel resigned) and Germany the country has lost its chancellor-elect. The Greens and the far right have candidates ready to leap into both vacancies. The problem for the CDU is that if they fail to elect a strong leader, they will rapidly be sidelined as a political party. And we all remember what the German public go for when they lose patience with weak leadership at the helm. My retired German friends, exiled in Spain, are shaking their heads already (although to be fair, they have been doing that for some months).

[BenThere]

The climate crisis in Tulum is in a panic. I woke up in Michigan this morning to a text message from my good friend, Sam, a full-timer in Tulum. He was lamenting that it was already 85 degrees F at 10 AM. I asked Alexa what was the temperature in Canton, MI and she said, "Right now it is 24 degrees F. Today's high will be 33 degrees F with snow flurries. I don't like it too hot or too cold, but I like the idea that Sam can sit on the beach, sip on a margarita, and take a plunge into the 80 degree surf at will, steps from his table. I don't think it's fair that he can do that and I, stuck here in Michigan with single digit temps (F), have to suffer. It's got to be some kind of white supremacy, privilege, or phobia that allows such inequalities to pervade.

https://s3.amazonaws.com/RETA/slideshow+RETA.html

[barkingmad]

Ben, lost the connection ‘twixt the German political scene and Mexican beach?
Thread jump?

[llondel]

Was there a telegram involved?

[barkingmad]

Unless the Mexican beach was crowded with German holidaymakers enjoying watersports and aah.....

[OFSO]

They don't enjoy watersports as much as getting up at 4am to put their beach towels on the best sunloungers. Returning to the thread: Merkel was on French TV tonight, looking rather less than healthy, explaining the Grand Plan for keeping the AfD, a duly elected party, out of government and thus ensuring the continuation of Democracy. If I were in Germany I'd go and lay some flowers on Rosa Luxemburg's grave.

[OFSO]

I utterly reject and repudiate Rosa Luxemburg's political views but her death is an example of how a political party, in this case the German Socialist Party, thought murdering opponents is a legitimate form of behaviour. People who can do that are happy overthrowing the result of legitimate elections.......oh, wait.....

[barkingmad]

One particular early morning towel-placer has gone on the rampage with a firearm and murdered innocent folk having a quiet smoke in their hookah-pipe bars.

Apparently the German anti-terrorist police have taken over the investigation from ordinary Frankfurt Plod.

Reports are that the suspected assailant also found dead in his apartment post suicide. Weapons in the hands of ordinary citizens will rise onto the agenda no doubt?

[Capetonian]

One particular early morning towel-placer

Towel-placer or towel-head? He was a German citizen but that does not preclude him from being of, shall we say, 'other' origin, he could have been a towel-placing towel-head.

I apologise, this is not really a topic for levity but I am afraid we are rather inured to these shootings and until these known trouble makers are encased in concrete, fed to sharks, or deported, they will continue. The policy of appeasement and integration has not worked, indeed it has been counter-productive. Merkel's Madness, although no doubt this one has been in Germany since before that started, is now stabbing the country in the back.

[Boac]

180 out. We also need to encase the far right in concrete, etc. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-51567971

[OFSO]

When I lived in Germany various sects or septs of foreign nationals were always murdering each other, only it wasn't called terrorism then but Scheissauslanders. If you went into a bar in Kaiserstrasse, Frankfurt a.M (opposite Meyer Gustl's dance emporium) there was a chap who'd do murders to go. A wife was DM15,000 I seem to remember, including disposal. Cheaper than a divorce, and you could get custody of the dachshund.

[barkingmad]

I always understood that the country was running uneasily for many years following the large importation of Turkish guest-workers quite some time ago. Apparently they were expected to immigrate for a limited time, build cars and clean the streets, then return to their native land.
As if that wasn’t naive enough, Angular Meerkat then invited the one million refugees to flood in over a very small timeframe in 2015 which caused the inevitable discomfort amongst the existing population, both the Teutonic and the earlier immigrant sectors.
Now she stands up and calls racism a poison, forgetting her part and that of her predecessors in generating the conditions which give rise to such unrest.
But I don’t suppose politicians have to undergo neither intelligence nor selection tests for basic aptitude for the job, including a working knowledge of relatively recent history?!

[OFSO]

In the 1980's we had no trouble whatsoever between Turks and Germans in Darmstadt, Hessen. The Turkish factions did fight among themselves, however.

[Capetonian]

It rather looks as if this mass murderer was a German, by which I mean a real one, not a second generation descendant of immigrants from the third world.

The problem is exactly this :
her part and that of her predecessors in generating the conditions which give rise to such unrest.
Europeans see their life styles being eroded, their streets becoming dangerous, and many other threats to their once good life style. No wonder there is racial hatred.

Enoch Powell said it over 50 years ago and those who agreed were called 'racist'.

[Boac]

As I said, Cape, '180 out'. This guy was a complete arschloch and nutter and I doubt the Merkel's actions will have made much difference. Lock up all the right-wing extremists as well as the left!

[Undried Plum]

It rather looks as if this mass murderer was a German, by which I mean a real one, not a second generation descendant of immigrants from the third world.

Yes. By definition, it is the behaviour of a German racist white-supremacist mass-murdering arsehole.

No surprises there.

Next!....

[Boac]

Now, where have we seen that before?

[Capetonian]

This guy was a complete arschloch and nutter and I doubt the Merkel's actions will have made much difference. Lock up all the right-wing extremists as well as the left!

We will never know but you are probably correct. (I was going to say 'right' but you might have thought I was making a bad joke at your expense!)

[Boac]

I think you would have got away with that

It is beginning to look almost as if the extreme right wingers are becoming as much of a threat as the Muslim fanatics. Probably more so in Germany, and debatable in the rest of the 'free' world.