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Taboo Subject in NATO Media: Refugees, America’s Gift to Europe

by Gregory Barrett, via Greanvillepost


In the latest episode in the never-ending series of indignities, calamities, and disasters to be visited upon the heads of the world’s millions of suffering and desperate refugees, they are now being stabbed in the back by the one leader of an affluent NATO country who had risked any political capital to help a substantial number of them, German Chancellor Angela Merkel.
At the height of the refugee wave from NATO war zones into Turkey and Europe a couple of years ago, Merkel opened the borders and allowed nearly a million refugees into Germany. Although she is a conservative woman and an obedient servant of the neoliberal economic order and American hegemony, with whom I have always disagreed about almost everything, I was proud of her for a while for taking this courageous stand against much of Europe, including at least half of her own party, the tragically misnamed Christian Democratic Union.
The political center in Germany is somewhat to the left of America’s center (which has raced to the Right chasing the Republicans since 1981), and in her cautious and plodding way the Chancellor has brought her right-wing German party several steps leftward and closer to that center in her 15 years as the CDU’s leader.
While Merkel is the daughter of an East German Protestant Minister from the days of the Iron Curtain, the CDU has close ties to the Catholic Church and to industry. Under Merkel it has loosened up a bit about gay rights, followed her late reversal to renounce nuclear power and embrace the move toward renewable energy following the wake-up call of the Fukushima Disaster, and has experienced a rising female membership in what is still a party dominated by white males.
But it remains a deeply conservative organization, and the first real threat to Merkel’s power base there came as a panicky, xenophobic reaction by the party’s right wing to her decision to help a large number of refugees in a quickly improvised response to the growing refugee crisis. That improvisation involved housing the many arriving foreigners in hastily arranged shelters all around the country, some in small towns like the one where I live, where 350 young men were brought in almost overnight to be domiciled in a large space in an industrial park, adjacent to one of the town’s busiest ALDI supermarkets. I met many of them and worked with some of them, and found them to be fine people who were deeply grateful for the help they were receiving. But shortly after these tumultuous events, a town hall meeting had to be hastily organized to explain things to the locals. I was there, the place was jam-packed, and there were many very worried faces, many of them more or less in shock.
A couple of days before that meeting, my partner had been accosted by aggressive, xenophobic Germans as she went to the shelter to help, having erroneously parked her car next to one of their businesses in an unmarked space which turned out to be private. She was surrounded by insulting and hostile machos who labeled her a “Gutmensch” (“do-gooder”) and shouted at her that “no one wants these refugees here.”
At the town hall meeting, the mayor and some of his staff reported on the measures that were being taken in coordination with the federal government. Their attitude was fairly positive and reassuring as they explained the situation, but they repeatedly cited “the pain threshold” in regard to the situation – that would be the pain of the local citizens expected to put up with refugees, not the pain of those fleeing war and destruction – which finally prompted me to speak up. A bit heatedly, I introduced myself in German as an American refugee who loves living in their beautiful region.
This was met by a good bit of laughter, and I immediately said that it was not meant as a joke, which produced sudden silence. I then proceeded to point out that these persons were fleeing from the horrors of war zones in conflicts that the German government supports, and that I was offended by the term “pain threshold” as applied to ourselves: rather, it is the refugees’ pain about which we should be concerned, and it is a wonderful thing to be in a position to help such desperate people.
For it is a fact that the largest groups in that refugee wave into Germany came from Syria, Libya, Afghanistan and Iraq. I then spoke about the despicable treatment to which my partner had been subjected as someone helping the refugees. Later one of the businessmen involved, also present, spoke in embarrassment to explain his actions.

Barack Obama joins Angela Merkel in Berlin: Spreading the snake oil again across the Atlantic. (May 25, 2017)

Many refugees…are fleeing from ISIS, which would not exist if George W. Bush had not invaded Iraq with calamitous results which continue to unfold. Many, many other refugees come from Syria, victims of a proxy war which is kept going by the US government via CIA arms and funding to islamist-jihadi groups attempting to overthrow Bashar al-Assad…”

Frauke_Petry_AfDeusch-350x278
Frauke Petry, co-chair of the budding right-wing Alternativ fur Deutschland party. The celebrations proved a bit premature

Over the following two years, tempers cooled as most Germans came to realize that refugees were no threat to their way of life. However: at the same time, racist and xenophobic political movements developed such as PEGIDA (“Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamization of the Occident”) in East Germany and the national political party Alternativ für Deutschland
(AfD) which is now represented in almost all state legislatures and on track to enter Germany’s Parliament, the Bundestag, in the coming election. Much of their support apparently came from anti-immigrant CDU voters who were deserting the party based on the refugee issue, as polls showed that many of Merkel’s longtime voters were now thoroughly disillusioned with her.
At first, she defended her actions vociferously and calmly, as right-wing attacks from within and outside of her own party grew ever more heated. But slowly, gradually, she began to capitulate.
Her governing coalition, which includes the very compromised and unsocial Social Democratic Party (SPD), pushed through changes in Germany’s once-noble asylum policies which make it more difficult for refugees to receive permanent asylum. Other weakening of the refugee-friendly policies followed. Not long ago, her government announced its intention to deport Afghan refugees who are denied asylum back to Afghanistan, even as the war there heats up yet again and terrorist attacks increase in spite of the 16-year NATO presence (which includes German troops). The government insists that there are parts of Afghanistan that are safe and that the deported refugees are not being placed in danger. The facts, especially in recent weeks, render this excuse transparently ridiculous and reveal it as another sell-out for votes.
A few weeks ago, Merkel’s Minister of the Interior, Thomas de Maiziere, wrote an article for the vulgar right-wing boulevard newspaper BILD outlining his concept of the German “Leitkultur”, which means something like “leading or dominant culture” and is understood by right-wingers here as a blueprint for assimilation of foreigners who are expected to behave in certain ways if they expect to be permanently welcome. It was the starting gun in the national election and a blatant appeal to the racist and xenophobic voters who had been deserting the party to return to Mutti (“Mommy”, as she is only half-jokingly known here in casual conversation).
The article was met with a good amount of widespread scorn and strong criticism, but along with the other measures, it is having the desired effect. The CDU is winning state elections again and the number of people voting for the AfD has fallen substantially. This subtly racist electioneering is in the best tradition of former CDU Chairman and Chancellor Helmut Kohl, Merkel’s political godfather, who always made sure to deliver a few choice, mildly anti-immigrant remarks in the run-up to every election, unspectacular but also unmistakable.
Over the last two days Merkel appeared with Barack Obama before a very large convention of Protestant young people in Berlin (see video above), and continued to twist the knife of betrayal she has plunged in the back of the helpless refugee population she once protected. In answer to skeptical questioning from young Christians – some of whom, obviously, actually take the religion’s precepts seriously — regarding her deportations into a war zone, she defended the policy and chose to focus on the need to keep things functioning smoothly in a “nation of laws”.

obama-merkel-350x235
Obama has truly become a Trojan Horse for all Seasons, helping to bolster the fortunes of the globalists wherever empty symbolism and empty rhetoric may be needed.

Then it was time for Obama to speak his piece in support of a right-wing party running a racist campaign. There was a time when his relations with Merkel took a nose-dive, following the Snowden affair and the revelation that the NSA had been listening in on Merkel’s cellphone. Germans were angry and even outraged, but although Obama never really apologized or agreed to any of the substantial changes in the NSA’s worldwide mass surveillance requested by the EU, the scandal died down quickly. Merkel’s pretended pouting about how “such things are not done among friends” turned out to be nothing but an act, when it was later revealed that at the very same time, the German BND had been helping the NSA tap phones in Paris and Brussels in the same manner, with her knowledge.
Last year she welcomed Obama back to Berlin as he campaigned for Hillary Clinton, and they appeared together to denounce “Fake News” (see my article “Hope Is Our Enemy” about Obama’s role in initiating this campaign against free speech and independent journalism, and my piece “Europe Drinks the Kool-Aid” regarding European cowardly complicity in the mendacious campaign of imperial propaganda against Russia after the US and the EU provoked the Ukraine crisis).
I won’t go into Obama’s facile and embarrassing remarks about his alleged Christian faith, which have always been of a strategic political nature considered obligatory for anyone hoping to be President of the United States.
However, he was questioned directly from the audience about the Christianity of his drone attacks – partly controlled from Ramstein Air Force base here in Germany — which the questioner said have killed “hundreds” (the real toll is much, much higher of course) of civilians. He responded that it was his responsibility to do so, to protect people from attacks like the one in Manchester – unbelievable brazen ironic gall in light of the fact that the Manchester killer appears to have been trained by ISIS in Libya, where they developed a presence after Obama, Hillary Clinton, former UK Prime Minister David Cameron and former French President Nicholas Sarkozy took it upon themselves to destroy the Libyan state, which had renounced terror much earlier after years of Western pressure.
Today, refugees are sold openly as slaves in Libya and drown by the thousand, as a direct result of Obama’s actions. Glibly, and with remarkably distasteful false piety delivered in a cheerful tone, he addressed the issue of refugees fleeing from his own war zones by saying that “while people on both sides of the borders are god’s children, our national governments have limited capacities to help”. Merkel, who at least had the temporary political courage to accept a million refugees while Obama considered accepting 10,000 a great humanitarian gesture, did not show it if she was struck by the deadly hypocrisy of this statement. But after all, she has now reversed course to move in the same cowardly direction.
EU distaste for refugees, the world’s Untouchable Caste, was enshrined in an obscene agreement between partner whores when the Union agreed to pay Turkey three billion euros to keep as many refugees as possible in Turkey to prevent them from reaching the EU.
In Turkey and on Greek islands, vast numbers of refugees inhabit filthy and reprehensible tent cities and prison-like facilities where they often suffer extreme cold in the winter and enjoy only token support from United Nations teams. Meanwhile Turkey is rapidly going fascist following its failed coup in the summer of 2016, as President Erdogan rounds up tens of thousands of teachers, journalists and intellectuals accused of “terrorist sympathies” and throws them in other nasty Turkish prisons. Europe is afraid to be too critical; what if Erdogan lets those deeply unpleasant refugees into Europe again?
The EU member nations are already fighting bitterly among themselves, with many of them accepting only small numbers of refugees and others such as Poland, Hungary and Slovakia refusing to accept any at all. No, Erdogan may be a brutal tyrant but after all, Turkey IS a NATO member and we need him, they insist. Payments continue. This is the modern European Union, definitely not a profile in courage. The refugee issue continues to be a key driving force in the growth of anti-EU right-wing parties, and while the establishment breathed a huge sigh of relief after the outcomes of the elections in The Netherlands and France, they know well that they are not out of the woods.
Almost no one gives a damn about refugees, the most desperate and powerless people on Earth, whose numbers are growing rapidly.
And how did they become refugees?
Although it is treated as a taboo subject in Europe’s mainstream media, the fact is that the vast majority of the refugees reaching the EU in the major wave a couple of years ago were fleeing from American and NATO war zones. The same NATO ally which the others consider indispensable for their protection, giving rise currently to major panic here because of Trump’s NATO-skepticism and unpredictability, is responsible in large measure for much of the refugee explosion. Many are fleeing from ISIS, which would not exist if George W. Bush had not invaded Iraq with calamitous results which continue to unfold.
Many, many other refugees come from Syria, victims of a proxy war which is kept going by the US government via CIA arms and funding to islamist-jihadi groups attempting to overthrow Bashar al-Assad. More funding for this widely diverse array of fighters comes from the evil Saudi Arabians, whom Germany too supports with arms sales and military training, in spite of their head-chopping, their support for terrorism, and their genocidal war against the Shiite Houthis in Yemen, in which the US and the UK are also deeply involved. Trump, of course, blames much of the terrorism on Iran as he plays ventriloquist’s dummy to the blood-soaked Saudi royal family.
But most people everywhere recognize this brazen lie, also a big favorite in Israel, as such. And even if it were true: there would be no Islamic Republic in Iran if America’s CIA had not overthrown the country’s democratically elected leader Mossadegh in 1953 at the behest of President Eisenhower, and put Shah Reza Pahlavi on the throne to subsequently murder and torture his way into the history books via his dreaded secret police SAVAK. Later, the CIA supported Osama bin Laden and other jihadis in Afghanistan against Russia in a stunningly brilliant strategy by Carter’s National Security Adviser, Russian-hating Pole Dr. Zbigniew Brzezinski, which regrettably evolved into Al-Qaeda after the US installed military bases in Saudi Arabia and upset the pious Osama. “Zbig” died this week and if he ever delivered a mea culpa, I was not informed.
But as I have said before, we don’t talk much here in Europe about Big Brother’s nasty habits. It’s embarrassing, since we continue to be involved as well. But after all, he’s family, we must support him.
Even though those nasty habits are tearing the EU apart? Might this not be the time to grow a backbone and put some distance between Europe and the crumbling, but still deadly and dangerous, empire in which it plays such an ignoble, subservient role?
A brief footnote: I have defended Merkel in political debate (on the refugee issue alone) against others on the Left who assert that she never had a compassionate bone in her body, as evidenced by her terrible neoliberal austerity policies directed against Greece and others, and that the motive for admitting the refugees was to provide cheap labor for German industry. While I agree that those policies have brought great suffering to Greece and are despicable, and while it seems very inconsistent that she should make such distinctions among desperate people, I am very familiar with her personality after years of living here and I consider that theory preposterous. German industry is not desperate for unskilled labor in any case and the facts do not add up. It may have been an brief attack of weak sentimentality, but she did feel compassion for the refugees and took major risks to help them. But that was then. This is now.
America’s brutal contempt for its domestic homeless population, who are driven around like herds of animals to keep them out of the sight of “respectable” people, is reflected on the world stage in its refusal to help refugees who have lost everything because of our own wars of greed and conquest. HELP them? We rarely even deign to speak of them. They are the West’s untouchable caste, Made in America, and as usual, Europe is deeply complicit.

Cover ART BY SYRIAN ARTIST ABDALLAH AL OMARI / http://www.abdallaomari.com
Gregory Barrett, originally from Tennessee, worked for 40 years as a professional pianist, singer, songwriter, and touring and recording musician in the USA and Europe, both in the spotlight and as an accompanist for major stars and others. His activist career includes stints in the 1980s with Amnesty International USA at the national level and the ACLU of Tennessee. Since 2012 he has worked primarily as a translator. He has lived in Germany for a total of 18 years and has a diverse, multicultural family. His commentary and essays are published in The Greanville Post, Counterpunch, the Anglo-Indian magazine Socialist Factor, and other publications.

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Mehran👌مهران (@the_mehran)
Mehran👌مهران (@the_mehran)
Jul 14, 2017 12:02 PM

Lazy journalism strikes again:
‘And even if it were true: there would be no Islamic Republic in Iran if America’s CIA had not overthrown the country’s democratically elected leader Mossadegh in 1953 at the behest of President Eisenhower, and put Shah Reza Pahlavi on the throne to subsequently murder and torture his way into the history books via his dreaded secret police SAVAK.’
First of all, get the name of the Shah right: it was Mohammad Reza Shah not Reza Shah (who was his father). It may not matter much to you, but it shows you just copied and pasted something from somewhere.
Secondly, the 1953 CIA coup cliche is getting really tired. The Shah had been the monarch for the preceding 12 years, so the Americans didn’t just produce him out of thin air. Prime Minister Mossadeq’s nationalisation of oil may have won him widespread support in the country, but he had no base of his own to control and channel this energy. He may have been democratically elected, but he was a populist beholden to the Communist Tudeh Party and the reactionary mullahs to prop him up, as he could not count on a secular centre for support (too small). So he started to behave autocratically manner as a way of dealing with this inadequecy, thinking that perhaps he could rely on the nationalist feelings of the army and/or the mullahs. Had he succeeded, the Islamic Republic would have been established in the 1950s and not in 1979. The mullahs had no desire to see a secular republic take hold in the country. (The great irony was that when Reza Shah, the late Shah’s father, had staged a coup and was toying with the idea of turning Iran into a republic, it was the mullahs who talked him out of it, as they feared Iran would turn into another Turkey).
Under the 1906 constitution, the Shah (any Shah) had the power to appoint and dismiss his Prime Ministers, and that’s exactly what Mohammad Reza Shah did to Mossadeq, when he saw the latter was getting out of control. Mossadeq disobeyed and had the Shah’s emissary who had brought him the dismissal notice arrested. THIS was the coup, not what followed, which was in effect a counter-coup. Yes the CIA did help to fund and organize it, but by that stage Mossadeq had lost a lot of his popular support. The so-called soup of 1953 was nothing as savage as what followed in Chile in 1973. But the left love lazily stringing these together time and time again, instead of doing some real research.
As for SAVAK….zzzzz. I mean, please, for the love of God. The ayatollahs in Iran have murdered and imprisoned and tortured more people in their gruesome 40 years in power than the Shah and his father did together. A lot of the bad press that SAVAK got (which after all was a secret police and in charge of the country’s security) was fabricated and blown out of all proportion. It was an orchestrated campaign to help bring down the Shah’s regime, because by that stage the US had decided that its interests in the Middle East would be better served by Islamism than secularism. Since the late 70s all secular leaders have been removed systematically through coups, ‘revolutions’ and invasions – the last one being Bashar Assad, who’s being worked on even as we speak.

Passerby
Passerby
Jun 7, 2017 9:43 PM

No day goes by without news about a deluge of violence, rape, knifings and killings by our refugees and asylum seekers. I always wondered how those who welcomed the refugees would react to the behavior of those they invited. Mr. Barrett’s article has been enlightening.

BigBG
BigBG
Jun 1, 2017 10:35 AM

Good article, brave of the author and OffG to take on the subject: question the influx of migrants and you are an Islamophobic isolationist Fascist (or worse)….. end of debate. Talk of strategic engineered or coerced migration and you are plain batshit crazy. Apparently, we have a social and a class need for people to scapegoat. Some of us, anyway.
Thanks to Der Spiegel/The Intercept, we know about the drone campaign’s connection to Ramstein; but what part does Stuttgart play in the migration crisis? I suspect, if we were to have an open and honest debate, quite a lot. In fact, it could be pivotal.
Stuttgart is the base of US AFRICOM; who – along with the US Special Operations Command (SOCOM); and in particular, their component (the hopefully self-explanatory) SOCAFRICA – have been fighting a ‘shadow war’ since 2002. They themselves have dubbed it “tomorrows battlefield, today.” To give an idea of scale, AFRICOM are active in 49 African countries; and SOCAFRICA carry out around 100 missions at any one time. Their mission statement is to rid the continent of “Violent Extremist Organisations (VEOs).” Right, because that strategy has been going really well elsewhere, hasn’t it? Applying what we have learned of US Special Forces activities over the years, I think we can form our own assessment.
There are two major influx routes into Europe: through Greece from the Middle East; and through Libya into Italy. The major ethnicities of the African migrants crossing the Med are Nigerian, Sudanese, Eritrean/Ethiopian, Somalian – all areas that have been US ‘projects’ – replete with a US overt/covert presence. Or wars. My understanding is that the makeup of the migrant stream is mainly males, of working age. So the explanation that they are fleeing our wars is not the whole truth. In fact, according to Italian vlogger Luca Donadel; Italian authorities have labelled 80% of them as ”clandestini.” Clandestines?
It is also my understanding that Europe does have an ageing demographic and a falling birthrate – so is the current influx an unintended or intended consequence of our Foreign Policy?
I posted links below that show that Soros in particular is linked to ‘bussing’ the migrants across the Med. His NGOs (including Avaaz) were instrumental in setting up the Mobile Offshore Aid Station (MOAS.) So is every migrant displaced by US Imperialism and their passage facilitated? Probably not, but it is a major influence.
If we can’t even talk about our disastrous interventionist Foreign policy; and we certainly can’t talk about our ongoing Imperial/neo-Colonial policies now – or there intended or unintended consequences – any meaningful debate is a non-starter. Raising the taboo, and confronting the real roots of the (engineered) migration crisis would mean us having to confront who we really are, across a broad strata of our society, across the (fomented) cultural divide. At an elite societal level, the taboo exists to make sure that never happens. Strong and stable government? Not for Africa. Just Imperialist lies.

Watch
Watch
May 31, 2017 4:10 PM

A truly democratic and defender of human rights nation would put Obama (or any other US president, for that matter) behind bars in The Hague.
But instead, a red carpet reception is organised for them, every time these war criminals touch down in Germany.

Watch
Watch
May 31, 2017 4:01 PM

Good article. Good read.
Is is obvious, refugees are fleeing orchestrated wars that are based on totally fabricated lies.
Ad yet, it is rare to see in the media this obvious link between NATO wars and the flood of refugees.
Intolerant anti-refugees advocates can appear less bigot, and much more intelligent, if they also campaign against wars and the promotion of wars.
Obama’s popularity in Germany is a totally manufactured phenomenon, cooked up by intelligence services. Rock star reception for candidate Obama in Germany? A candidate who proved to be a Bush on steroid. A candidate who campaigned for ‘Hope’ but worked relentlessly for ‘Deception’!
Obama’s continuing popularity in Germany is a reflection of the strong foothold of militaristic US agencies in Germany and Europe..

Greg Bacon
Greg Bacon
May 31, 2017 3:50 PM

It’s no a mere coincidence that the refugee ‘problem’ exploded shortly after some EU nations were making noises about recognizing Palestine and banning Israeli products made in the Occupied West Bank.
Israel doesn’t want to see its racist, bigoted state of apartheid hate go the way of South Africa and will use her GOY lackeys, like Germany, France, the USA and England to keep protecting her back while Israel’s minions attack the EU and the USA from the front, but don’t say that, don’t even think that way, unless you’re some anti-Semite, Jew hater or worse, a self-hating Jew, like Gilad Atzmon.
And now the USA will also get these ‘refugees,’ many from sub-Saharan Africa, not fleeing war and terror, but crappy living conditions and know Uncle Sam will take care of them while our nation’s infrastructure goes to Hell.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/26/us/politics/united-states-refugees-trump.html?_r=3&mtrref=bbs.dailystormer.com

Schlüter
Schlüter
May 31, 2017 11:04 AM

See also:
„Africa Under Attack! And the Refugees? May Get Drowned!“ http://wipokuli.wordpress.com/2013/11/11/africa-under-attack-and-the-refugees-may-get-drowned/
&
„Geo-Politics: The Core of Crisis and Chaos and the Nightmares of the US Power Elite“ https://wipokuli.wordpress.com/2016/08/01/geo-politics-the-core-of-crisis-and-chaos-the-nightmares-of-the-us-power-elite/
regards

JJA
JJA
May 31, 2017 8:55 AM

I strongly recommend ‘A fool’s crusade’ by Diana Johnstone about the US, NATO and the evil destruction of the former Yugoslavia, in which she quotes David Rieff, the very deluded son of Susan Sontag and strong supporter of crushing the Serbs, that Europe must be turned into a melting pot like the US, via immigration to ‘save’ Europe. This is clearly the aim of Soros, Rieff and other neocons who, sadly, are not being opposed by European politicians aka US vassals, in this outrageous destruction of Europe, the Middle East and much of Africa.
Apropos policians earning their rewards post power, like Obama, Blair and Osborne, I note Macron has already stated he only wants a short politican career and to return to business. Such a helpful hint that he is already open to feeding at the trough.

Husq
Husq
Jun 1, 2017 2:12 PM
Reply to  JJA

“Europe will not survive!”
Will not survive what exactly?

ex-SA
ex-SA
Jun 1, 2017 7:13 PM
Reply to  JJA

Former Yugoslavia was not destroyed by US and NATO, but rather by Serbian Nazi Milošević. US and NATO bombed Greater Serbia ( called also rump Yugoslavia made of only 2, out of 6 Republics of the former YU) into submission, and into becoming aspiring member of NATO/EU. Actually, smaller part of the Greater Serbia, Republic of Montenegro, has already become a member of NATO.

Admin
Admin
Jun 2, 2017 1:54 AM
Reply to  ex-SA

What evidence is there for Milosevic being a Nazi? He was recently exonerated of all alleged war crimes was he not?

Seraskier
Seraskier
Jun 2, 2017 11:00 PM
Reply to  ex-SA

[[ Former Yugoslavia was not destroyed by US and NATO, but rather by Serbian Nazi Milošević. ]]
Frankly I would stick to Peppa Pig if I were you. It’s more on your intellectual level.

David Simpson
David Simpson
May 31, 2017 7:31 AM

“that there seems to be no Western leader – including Corbyn – who is willing to state this clearly is surely the central outrage of our present moment.”
I don’t think this is either true or fair – Corbyn has repeatedly argued for peace in Syria and against us bombing or otherwise interfering militarily there. It is not his fault that he doesn’t get reported (or even asked about his position).
Excellent article (altho’ deep down I still love Mutti; I blame Schauble for Greece and her own conservative wing and fears for the threat from AFD for her backtracking on immigrants. And why after all should it only be Germany that accepts so many? What about us (the UK)?)

Enough is enough
Enough is enough
May 31, 2017 7:15 AM

A study of true history since the end of WWll reveals the highly propaganda-camouflaged ‘Uncle Sam’ as basically the ultimate menace to this planet. The greatest terrorist since Hitler (violence against civilians for political gain – be it state terrorism) and the accompanying lying … greed …hypocrisy … blah blah etcetera etcetera expose US power vices as an out-of-control mastasising cancer, that may turn nuclear and destroy this beautiful unique blue ball in space.
When will be stop following this penultimate pied piper to the cliff?
TIME COULD WELL BE RUNNING OUT
May god save us from this penultimate source of evil. Truly.

Guiseppe B
Guiseppe B
Jun 1, 2017 10:04 PM

“since Hitler”?

Jen
Jen
May 31, 2017 4:24 AM

May I suggest that Angela Merkel’s decision to adopt an open-borders policy might not have been hers to make but was something imposed on her, either by her own party, the German political establishment or even from outside?
The NSA has a file on Merkel. What’s in that file might blow her career in politics apart. Whatever it is could be enough to force her co-operation on the issue of accepting unlimited numbers of refugees from war zones in Africa and the Middle East. But who she is forced to co-operate with is the question.

Gregory Barrett
Gregory Barrett
May 31, 2017 8:33 AM
Reply to  Jen

You may indeed suggest it, and it has been suggested often. I would suggest that the truth is bad enough.
Gregory Barrett

Peter
Peter
May 31, 2017 9:11 AM
Reply to  Jen

I usually agree with your posts, Jen, but not here.

paulcarline
paulcarline
May 31, 2017 10:48 AM
Reply to  Jen

I have read that Soros is supposed to have put a lot of money into enabling the passage of refugees and migrants (by no means all fleeing from war zones) into Europe. The argument that this was a deliberate attempt to weaken the power of national cultures and specifically Christianity – as part of the EU ‘homogenisation and secularisation’ agenda – does not seem improbable to me. I never liked or trusted ‘Mutti’ (selected by the Bilderbergers – she was an attendee before rising to prominence – as a compliant, almost characterless, puppet figure?). The reversal of policy suggests that both the ‘open arms’ invitation and the ‘you’re no longer welcome’ about-turn have been politically motivated. We will probably never know for sure whether this was her own compassionate decision (unlikely) or that she was ‘under orders’. If the former, why did she not oppose the EU sanctions on Syria, which she must have known would primarily hurt the ordinary Syrians. Has she expressed a single word of compassion for the people of Donbass or criticised the blatantly biased OSCE?

BigBG
BigBG
May 31, 2017 5:17 PM
Reply to  paulcarline

I’ve posted these links before. The fact that Soros and his front NGOs (including Avaaz) are heavily implicated has led me to the same conclusion – that European culture and European nation states are being slowly diluted and dissolved.
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-03-26/italian-officials-call-investigation-george-soros-supported-ngo-migrant-fleet
http://disobedientmedia.com/2017/02/ngo-fleet-bussing-migrants-into-the-eu-has-ties-to-george-soros-hillary-clinton-donors/

binra
binra
May 31, 2017 1:01 PM
Reply to  Jen

I feel that focusing exclusively in the world as believed will grow dread and horror, rage, impotence and heartbreak that drive the perpetuation of the issues, unless and until I look within – not least as a result of opening to these ‘territories’ that our personal mind is initially formed to cover and escape or overcome – as a surface reality of a temporary sense of existence, given focus in narrative identity and some sense of control that holds a personal sense within the idea of control as power and protection. I feel to sketch some of this here as a preparation to look at why or how hate operates in ways we cannot bear – and also through us in ways the mind is fitted to deny and project out. When hate is triggered, awareness is usurped unless hate itself can be looked at. I could have use the word terror or guilt in place of hate – for they are interchangeable aspects of one thing. It is not the words that has the meaning – but connecting to the territory of the directly felt. A good reason for feeling the hate is to no longer be driven as an evasion of it. Another is ‘why not now?’ – when it comes up as part of the evils of the day thereof. Forced mass migration as a weapon of division and breakdown of cultural identities.
When people cannot speak to, address or openly enquire into what is going on, I suggest that terror operates to force the mind not to be able to focus, to insistently look elsewhere, or dissociates and fragments in narratives of justification or compensation, or go numb and blank. The nature of hidden and obfuscating stratagems of a masking mind is that they cant be openly sketched or explored without seeming insane – because the mask IS the world – in terms of its core beliefs, presumptions and agreements – most of which are unconscious relative to the surface personality. So the propaganda that sets the narrative so that any challenge is felt dissonant – and attracts penalty for ‘introducing dissonance’ is an example of fear setting the mind. In political discourse we generally see that as if we never do such a thing and hate the lie – and usually the liars. But in our own consciousness, we can see fear operates a defence – even if to hide or cover an attack that shame fear would hide so as to put blame elsewhere and persist in the perceived or believed benefit or necessity of the attack. Lies, manipulations and secrets are so readily available to observe that they should need no more than a reminder that we have a mind that frames our perceptions and our attachments, investments and communications – and it is trained reactive and runs us more than we think – while yet thinking we are free. Mind-control is the same within or without – though taking different forms and intensities of violence, but our individual responsibility is first to our own true freedom – which is predicated on self-honesty or there is no truth in it!
The physical experience is the participation in a world of conditions and parameters that are also conditioning us by our choices and responses. Terror and guilt accompany and in some sense sets the physically exclusive identity. Everyone embodies a unique pattern of fragmented relationship within a more primary sense that is covered over, and yet remains as true Pre-sense beneath whatever is being focussed in, and whatever degree of assertion and acceptance as real or true is assigned to the experience. That we can accept and assert untruth at expense of true is a capacity to believe a lie is the loss, dissonance, disconnection, of losing Self. Self that had no ‘name’ until it was ‘lost’. And a fragmented sense of self that struggles within the lie that born its division, against its wholeness – and in attempt to substitute for and replace – for truth feared is a lie born. But the release of the lie and its father (the wish to have a lie be true), opens the physically inclusive sense of existence – which is a reversal or undoing of a reversal that saw itself subjected and compelled by circumstance and unable and unwilling to look within for fear of what would be revealed. Again, I don’t mean thinking about thinking about – but a directly felt noticing or acknowledgement.
Terror can be wielded or embodied and communicated in any number of ways – and these various branches can be uncovered and described as coercions and deceits, but its core is already active within the human mind AS the structure of human personality construct. Fear as manipulation, denial and false assertion is protected and hidden fear. I am not meaning fear as the biological reflex – such as auto-responding to an immediate physical threat, but a psychic-emotional identification that equates itself with the physical and locks into the biology of fight and flight as it primary trigger to everything.
The mind is structured to ‘lid over’, displace and dissociate from what it fears to relive under a sense of being overwhelmed and relational agreement to separate while appearing limited ‘joining’ generally keeps the lid on and allows a sense of space in which other things can be experienced. But everyone knows more or less how not to attract another’s rage – just as if it suited us we would know how to provoke reaction.
I haven’t addressed to identity in power but a sense of being denied and betrayed or abandoned can all contribute to hatred and invalidation of all that is associated with pain and loss that may have no consciousness in such an individual. Shadow power as I see it is the active force of denied will that operates a shadow hand beneath consciousness – and embodies through the unwatched mind – that thinks it knows and so does not look within. That refuses to look within because weakness has no place in a world of enemies and feelings must be subsumed to vengeance in gratification of dominance. Who wants to recognize themselves in gloating over the disempowerment of another as if a victory? Fantasies seem different when being lived out – a sense of worthlessness momentarily ‘lifted up in glory’. Not that imagination cannot serve us – but to use it to deny another’s being or worth is always to lose your own for the terms you thus set upon yourself.
One image I have of ‘end-times’ is of a checkmate – not one one by another but as one unto ourself. It’s a hell of a mess – and its not other than the re-emergence of ‘where we came in’ to perhaps make a different choice than as the lie frames choices. In fact we don’t even do that much; we simply desist from doing or reacting the fear-choice, the guilt-choice, as and when we notice the bait or trigger to react. There is no other moment to change a choice but fantasies in rehearsal that become you – while lacking pre-sense. But choosing in alignment with our being opens the qualities of being in our day – which are never added on – but implicit.

Oddlots
Oddlots
May 31, 2017 3:19 AM

With huge respect that is an utterly confusing litany of outrage which is difficult to digest even if one has been paying close attention.
Can I suggest a more straight-forward, cynical viewpoint?
the natural allies in this are the nations under attack and the nations burdened with the care of those expelled by the same.
if our politics made any sense the FIRST thing anybody should be saying is: “stop the needless war.
that this is the last thing MERKEL is saying says e’thing you need to know.
put another way, I really interpret European’s willingness to accept refugees as a tacit acceptance of the interventionist narrative.
but that narrative is totally false. Thus the suffering of Syrians either in Syria or in Europe is completely unnecessary and thereby especially, cruelly insane.
that there seems to be no Western leader – including Corbyn – who is willing to state this clearly is surely the central outrage of our present moment.
the minutiae of Merkel’s strategy seems insanely beyond the point.

Gregory Barrett
Gregory Barrett
May 31, 2017 8:36 AM
Reply to  Oddlots

Thanks for the huge respect. I hope your digestion problems improve. It all makes me sick at my stomach too. I have tried to clear away confusion rather than sow it.
Gregory Barrett

Frank
Frank
May 31, 2017 10:32 AM
Reply to  Oddlots

Yes, the US/NATO starts the wars of annihilation against the 7 middle eastern, north African states as blurted out by Wesley Clarke in the famous TV interview, after he had retired of course. Unfortunately, Europe gets the refugee and terrorist blowback from this insane US foreign policy. There was no refugee problem whilst Saddam and Gadaffi were in power. But we just couldn’t let sleeping dogs lie, could we? No, we, that is, US/NATO had to go and ‘liberate’ these benighted countries, by bombing them back into the stone age (this, policy, by the way, is called ‘humanitarian intervention’). To paraphrase, Arthur (bomber) Harris C-in-C, RAF Bomber Command, ‘We sowed the wind, and now we ar reaping the whirlwind.’
It seems to me that the first and crucial step to deal with the problems caused is to stop these wars, or at least stop giving them our backing.