Wednesday 9 September 2015

The Madness of Merkel: Is It Because She Is An Osti?

Angela Merkel is of course a formidable politician - read this paean to her government- kraft by the Economist, which declares that Cameron might do well to emulate her.

At the same time, she tackles some of the biggest issues in the strangest ways.  The nonsensical Energiewende has long been up there with the maddest programmes of our time.  Only the most blinkered green could imagine it makes any sense to pour truly epic quantities of German electricity-users' money into a policy that delivers, on the one hand unprecedented levels of solar- and wind-power, but on the other, a grid that is seriously weakened in terms of reliability and quality of electricity output (there could be a disaster on almost any cold winter's day in the SW of the country) and, yes, rising levels of CO2 emissions for several years.

Her willingness to harness Germany to *doing whatever it takes* to keep the Euro-show on the road knows few limits.

Now it seems she proposes to hold open house in Germany for 'refugees', the potential numbers of which are for all practical purposes infinite.

Well.  You can suspend the laws of physics for a while if you are willing to throw enough money at them: and Germany can muster quite a lot of money. Doesn't make it sensible, though; so why does she do it?

Looks to me as though the answer lies in her being a grateful Osti, deeply struck by the extraordinary economic sacrifice (or should that be investment?) made by West Germany to re-unify.  I have written about the Einheit before, to the effect that the West Germans - or at least, their politically-motivated leadership - were indeed willing to do whatever it took to achieve re-unification.  They had thought about it well in advance; had stared it squarely in the eye; and took the fateful decision quickly, but in cold blood.  And, yes, it cost them plenty.  But they are up for that kind of thing.  Bold, decisive; *principled*, *honourable* ... and with outcomes by no means assured.

Merkel knows all this intimately - how could she not ?  Once in power, she seems to have adopted it, not just as a matter of principle, but as a working principle.  But how many of these mighty throws-of-the-dice can Germany afford in any quarter-century?  

And how many of her gambles can we afford?

ND

15 comments:

CityUnslicker said...

30% of Syrians in Lebanon have upped sticks in a few days to head for Germany.

The policy is mad; but perhaps only as mad as Blair in 2003?

Steven_L said...

But how can she stop refugees on the same land mass getting into Germany? What can she do to discourage more coming? Build uncomfortable camps to detain them in? Can you imagine the headlines?

These people have decided they want to go to Germany. Who can blame them, I'd probably decide the same thing in their shoes. The Germans will just have to hope they bag enough nice educated middle class folk and not too many terrorists.

Bill Quango MP said...

Maybe they figure.. get all the immigration for the next 50 years over and done with ...all in 5 years.

Britain managed over 2 million immigrants in 10 years. Maybe Merkel thinks she has a more efficient system and structures. Better discipline and more cash.
Can pack in 10 million in 5 years with only grumbling from the natives.

Sorts out the German pension problem. And taking 10 million creates millions of jobs, simply caring and catering for the millions that have just arrived.

Its a gamble.

But on a small scale,just in this country alone, there have been mass immigration in our lifetime, some of the numbers in the millions, from

Rhodesia
South Africa
Vietnam
Jamaica
other Caribbean islands
Korea
Lebanon
Cyprus
Poland
Czech Republic
Baltic States
Ireland
Nigeria
India
Pakistan
Singapore
Uganda
Iraq
Iran
Afghanistan
Serbia
China
Hong Kong
Croatia
Turkey
Eritrea
Ethiopia

And very recently, on a mass scale

Spain
France
and a few tens of thousands from Greece.

+ loads of odds and sods from everywhere else from Chechnya to Japan.

Elby the Beserk said...

What IS clear is that the legal basis of how the EU works is whatever Merkel says it is. Which suggests to me that we get the hell out ASAP. This is NOT going to get any better soon. And on the refugee crisis, why is it never mentioned on the BBC that

1) Englans, bar Malta, is the most crowded country in Europe. Four times as much as France, and nearly twice as much as Germany.

2) The UK financial contribution to the refugee crisis on the grounds amounts to more than all the other EU countries aggregated.

Europe is committing cultural suicide. Deliberately, it seems. We really have no obligation to join them in this.

Jan said...

It wasn't so long ago Germany was despairing over their low birth rate. Seems like quite a good idea to let in a load of well-educated people of the age where they might start reproducing when settled. The true regugees are likely to be hard-working and not trouble-makers which is another plus point. So quite a far-sighted policy really.

I heard on the radio this am the reason for one young man to up sticks from Syria now rather than a while back was that he recently received his call-up papers for Assad's army which prompted him to flee. Maybe this applies more widely and could be one reason for the recent exodus. Apparently Assad is running out of men to fight.

Elby the Beserk said...

Jan,

The huge influx of gastarbeiter from Turkey into Germany after the war was because of lack of a workforce. And I'll agree on Syrians, they are very likely to be educated and hard-working. I'll also go against the grain and say that the West should have supported Assad when trouble started there, for more reasons than Realpolitik. People have no idea how popular a leader he was; nor perhaps that in 2010 their GDP growth rate outstripped ours, they had for the first time a professional middle class, and their education system was so good that the BBC showed a series about it.

Syria was the last secular buffer between Europe and the crazies. So, Assad was pulling toenails out of Islamists. Big deal. We should have gone to his assistance (he could have farmed out the toe nail pulling to the USA), with reasonable terms for opening up the country.

My stepdaughter was in Damascus for six months, leaving the day the FO said get out. She said she felt safe on the streets there, and encountered great hospitality everywhere she went. And if Assad is so bad, why it it that so many displaced Syrians in Syria have ended up in Damascus and surrounds, rather than fleeing.

Also - whilst Merkel's policy may have some pros for Germany, how is that she can - at her say so - open Europe up to whoever wants to come here? After all, poor old Orban in Hungary, he applies EU rules, registering all the migrants crossing their border, and gets bollocked for it. Uh?

Clearly, the rules are just for the little people, as the financial crisis showed. Let them do what they want. I want out. Nobody in the EU represents me, nor do I recognise their authority to exert power over me. It is in reality a tyranny. Of bureaucrats, but hey - all tyrannies need their massive bureaucracies, as Hitler and Stalin so clearly demonstrated.

Scan said...

Everything she does is like King Canute and the waves. The only difference being Canute had the brains to know he couldn't change the laws of nature

MySawItComingName said...

@BQ - Youve just posted a list of countries - what point are you trying to make?

I've said here on several occasions that we need either mass immigration or radical social reform. The land tax is one of the most equitable ways of doing it.

What will happen now (because of the Tory young fogeys who follow what mammy an daddy tell them to think) is the country will be flooded with immigrants.
I predict 10 million within 10 years.

There is (and will never be) any system put in place to filter migrants from refugees.
No allowances will be made for schools and hospitals or infrastructure in general; the quality of life will decline precipitously.

We will import a huge number of uneducated single male muslims from agrarian societies into a western liberal Christian democratic system where tech advances will require less and less physical labour.

If we had subsidised children instead of demonising single mothers, we might have a more balanced society. Instead we pay winter fuel allowances to pensioners in Spain.
This is fuckwittery of the highest order.

As someone else said (if the numbers are big enough) we could be watching the death of western society. Some suggest this is by design. Its a very English thing to do; rather than try to develop others, we should lower our own standards.

But the GDP will increase and the BBC/Tory/Establishment axis will crow about who fast the GDP is growing.

Heres one for another post - What will the current (and future) excuses be for not screening migrants?

Electro-Kevin said...

I think people so often conflate 'formidable politician' with good leader.

Red team/Blue team shit again. Politics for the politicians' sakes and those who follow it.

The German I know (living in Dresden) says he and his fellow countrymen are most definitely not happy about this. Having only just started to taste Western style prosperity themselves they are loath to have to share it.

European civilisation will see a rapid social and economic decline henceforth. Britain too as we can do little about it once people are nationalised as EU citizens. I believe this to be her plan. Issue passports and encourage these people to move on.

My only hope is those that wanted this suffer its worst effects. And what chumps the Tories for winning the last election just as the wheel comes right off.

Electro-Kevin said...

I'm with Elby. Many leaders that are not to our taste keep a lid on things.

David Cameron, in many respects, has been worse than Blair. He has literally blown the lid off the third world with his intervention in Libya.

Electro-Kevin said...

MySawItComing - On birth rates/single mums...

if only the Left had been as compassionate about aborted British babies as they had foreign ones washed up on beaches...

Definition of a Lefty: Someone who prefers anything over their own people. And that includes a woman swathed in black forced to follow her man obediently.

In other words MAD.

Anonymous said...

Angela has spotted a top class opportunity to buy in high-grade product at a bargain price. Soon they will be turning out BMWs and Mercs etc etc and solving Germany's birthrate problem.

We in the UK are encouraging a social and educational race to the bottom relying on the hope that lawyers, bankers, PPE grads and Estate Agents will boost GDP to pay for it all. Who is the idiot?

Electro-Kevin said...

Roger - and those that aren't high grade get ushered onto our welfare system or black market with their newly acquired EU passports.

Anonymous said...

I think the fact that the Globalist is a big Merkel fan says it all.

If these Syrians are such a good deal for Germany, why aren't they considered a good deal for Israel (which controls 500 sq miles of Syria in the Golan), the Gulf or Saudi Arabia?

(and I think EK is right - EU free movement is the means by which many of those 500,000 a year 'for the foreseeable future' may end up here. The EU's border controls are only as strong as those of the member with the weakest controls)

Anonymous said...

"Angela has spotted a top class opportunity to buy in high-grade product at a bargain price. Soon they will be turning out BMWs and Mercs etc etc and solving Germany's birthrate problem."

Is that a joke (Robert Peston has similar ideas, so I guess you might be serious)? You could have solved Germany's birthrate problem by moving the population of Yemen (TFR 6 kids per woman) in. And replacing the ethnic Germans. Are countries for their economies or their people?

"high-grade product"

That's why there are so many Syrian consumer durables about the house.

Steve Sailer has a great post on Merkel, comparing her with the Roman Emperor Valens, who invited the poor persecuted (by the Huns) Goths to cross the Danube and settle in the Empire. Quotes from Gibbon's Decline and Fall.

http://www.unz.com/isteve/civilization-capitulates-to-barbarism-at-the-danube-in-the-decline-and-fall-of-the-roman-empire/

"With outstretched arms, and pathetic lamentations, the (Goths) loudly deplored their past misfortunes and their present danger; acknowledged that their only hope of safety was in the clemency of the Roman government; and most solemnly protested, that if the gracious liberality of the emperor would permit them to cultivate the waste lands of Thrace, they should ever hold themselves bound, by the strongest obligations of duty and gratitude, to obey the laws, and to guard the limits, of the republic."