Merkel probably enjoys the delusion that she’ll be in charge if she can get nation states to give up their sovereignty.

quote:

Originally posted by arfmel:
Merkel probably enjoys the delusion that she’ll be in charge if she can get nation states to give up their sovereignty.

This is not at all implausible.

quote:

Originally posted by chellim1:

quote:

It's time to just end this Globalist nonsense once and for all. I look forward to the next round of elections in europe, particularly in France.

I agree....
While at the same time, I have no problem at all with a military alliance between France and Germany:

quote:

The comments come after the two leaders jointly announced a new Franco-German arms deal.

In Berlin yesterday, the two governments said they would sign a contract with Airbus and Dassault Aviation to start working on a next-generation fighter jet in early 2019 and hope to make progress on a joint tank programme before the end of this year.

It is expected France will lead the aircraft project while Germany will spearhead the tank deal with the two countries working closely on the bilateral defence co-operation

I think that makes sense and may give the US a chance to withdraw somewhat from the defense of Europe. I don't think we should abandon Europe altogether, but we should definitely encourage them to do more for themselves.

Why is a joint fighter necessary at all in a global world? With no borders to defend, an airplane such as this is a needless frivolity.

Once again I see they need protection from Russia China and the USA. What a bunch of ungrateful assholes they have become. There are plenty of US cemeteries in France, but I guess that doesn’t matter anymore. That’s ok. Their Muslim overloards will protect them. I think the mooz are thinking these are the nations that threaten the jihad the most.

I have one word for her “nuts”, Ya and it means the same as it did just about this same time of year in 1944

quote:

Originally posted by egregore:

quote:

Originally posted by arfmel:
Merkel probably enjoys the delusion that she’ll be in charge if she can get nation states to give up their sovereignty.

This is not at all implausible.

Actually, it's entirely implausible.

Get a grip, guys. "Fourth reich", my aunt Fanny. This is nothing more than a bunch of empty, pandering bullshit. Meaningless words, and she knows it. You actually think there's some danger that nations of the world will dissolve their governments to become part of a "world order"???

It is to laugh, gentlemen.

Ha

Merkel makes some speech, says some words and suddenly, you guys are making her out to be the leader of planet Earth. Jesus, guys. Snap out of it.

quote:

Originally posted by 12131:
The real Beast finally made itself known.

I think you may be right, but I don't think it is one person. Macron and several other European leaders, along with a lot democrats here, are aligned with this Globalist mindset.



.

Wow, she helps flood Europe with people from the worst countries on earth and then demands that they give up their borders. She is truly an evil bitch. The German people should have had her swinging from a noose, Mussolini style years ago.

easier to get rid of Merkel

one and done

Tell me more about that 4th Reich...

Their current army is about the same number as our USMC, with less equipment. Smaller than France, about equal to Italy.


German Army Considers Recruiting Foreign Citizens

BERLIN — Concerned about filling its ranks seven years after abolishing mandatory military service, Germany is looking into recruiting foreigners for service, according to reports released on Thursday, though there were conflicting accounts of the extent of those plans.

Gen. Eberhard Zorn, the chief of defense, said the military, or Bundeswehr, was considering enlisting foreign citizens for highly specialized roles, like doctors and information technology specialists.

“In times of skilled labor shortage, we have to look in all directions,” he said in an interview with the Funke Media group, which was widely reported by other German news organizations.

Hours after his comments appeared, the newsmagazine Der Spiegel published an article about a leaked government report indicating that plans to recruit citizens of other European Union countries were broader and more concrete than the narrow, tentative notion aired by General Zorn.

According to the magazine, the report discussed adding large numbers of foreigners between the ages of 18 and 40 to the Bundeswehr, in a variety of roles. In particular, it suggested that the nearly two million Poles, Italians and Romanians already living in Germany would make good candidates.

A spokesman for the Ministry of Defense would not comment on the authenticity of the leaked report, but said that any plans under consideration were limited to highly trained recruits for clearly defined roles.

The armed forces have about 180,000 troops, about one-third as many as the former West Germany had in 1990, but the government has committed to expanding the military in the next few years.

There has already been some public debate in recent years about whether non-Germans have a place in the Bundeswehr in a modern, immigrant-friendly nation that is deeply integrated in the European Union. Last July, politicians sparred over whether foreigners serving under the German flag would be given access to German citizenship.

The plan would put non-German Europeans in German uniforms for the first time since World War II.
Several European countries allow citizens of other European Union members to serve in their militaries. But Germany’s history of militarism and conscription of the people of conquered nations makes the idea particularly delicate.

Germany and other NATO countries have clashed publicly with President Trump, who has accused them of spending too little on their own defense, and the German Army is suffering from poorly maintained equipment. According to news reports, the Bundeswehr had to scrape together everything from tanks to body armor to be able to participate in this year’s NATO maneuvers in Norway.

Since 2014, Germany’s defense minister, Ursula von der Leyen, has tried to boost recruitment by making the military seem more modern and appealing.

“It boils down to the question, what is the Bundeswehr?” said Sönke Neitzel, a military historian at the University of Potsdam. “Is it a fighting force or a corporation?”

Although there are already several German divisions that include brigades from other countries, the plans being considered would put non-German Europeans in German uniforms for the first time since World War II.

After the Cold War, the demand for soldiers grew smaller as Germany intentionally shrank its military, while reunification with East Germany made the population pool larger. The minimum span of a soldier’s service dropped to six months from 18. In 2011, the country ended conscription.

The military has changed significantly since the Cold War. It focuses far more on cyberwarfare and special forces, the number of women in uniform has increased and as Germany has grown more ethnically diverse so has the army.

But attracting professionally trained personnel has been a problem.

That is a problem in the private sector, too, in a country where the economy is growing but the working-age population is not. Karl Brenke, who studies the work force for the German Institute for Economic Research, says it has been very common for German employers to hire foreigners, especially people from the eastern countries of the European Union.

“Over half the workers hired in the recent economic expansion come from abroad,” he said.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/1...reign-nationals.html

quote:

Originally posted by parabellum:
Merkel makes some speech, says some words and suddenly, you guys are making her out to be the leader of planet Earth. Jesus, guys. Snap out of it.

Exactly. Quite frankly, anybody relying on Zerohedge is lost at sea anyway, and this article with its cute little mistranslations from the original German source and false suggestions is a prime example why. The relevant part from the linked text published on the website of the Konrad Adenauer Foundation (one of the six political foundations affiliated with the parties represented in German parliament, this one with Merkel's CDU) reads, in context:

quote:

[...]

At the "Parlamentarism in the Field of Tension between Globalism and National Sovereignty" event, international speakers of parliament discussed problem-solving approaches against populism, and about the 2019 European [Parliament] elections.

Merkel stated that Germany had surrendered part of its sovereign rights to the European Union. "But the states are the masters of the treaties". This always required the backing and decision of the national parliament. The heart of democracy was parliament, Merkel said and thus referred to an earlier quote of [former Bundestag speaker] Prof. Dr. Norbert Lammert.

In this national and international field of tension, trust and readiness to compromise were important keys. In the discussions about the United Nations Migration Compact in particular it had emerged that fundamental things were being questioned. The democratic legitimacy of the institution and its conventions were doubted, even if those had been decided by the national parliaments a long time ago already. She criticized that "there were people who thought they could decide when those agreements lose their validity, because they are representing the people". She rejected this nationalism. "The people are those who permanently live in this country, and not a group who defines them as the people", the chancellor stressed.

[...]

https://www.kas.de/veranstaltu...herz-der-demokratie-

Her usual convoluted style obviously doesn't help translation, but in essence she was argueing against mob rule over parliamentary democracy, and more specifically against populists who claim to represent "the will of the people" even though they didn't get a majority in elections.

The sovereignty thing is actually a staple of established politics in Germany, which hasn't been a fully sovereign country since 1945; at first under occupation after WW II of course, but the wartime allies retained some rights even during the Cold War. For example, all active German armed forces were assigned to NATO rather than national command even in peacetime, and of course the allies had to consent to an eventual re-unification of East and West Germany. Which they did, but afterwards the country ceded some sovereign rights to the EU, as did all the latter's members. Its accelerated establishment was in fact a French demand for consent to re-unification, to alleviate fears among Germany's neighbors of the united country's new position as Europe's biggest and economically most powerful nation.

Of course whenever some politician actually mentions these facts, the usual suspects take it as confirmation that Germany is still an occupied country, ruled by sinister international forces from Brussels, on Wall Street, etc.; a popular conspiracy theory is that any new chancellor first of all has to travel to Washington, DC to sign the "Chancellor Act" and swear fealty to the American government. It's probably based upon the custom that prior to re-unification, any new chancellor in fact wrote letters to the three Western allied ambassadors acknowledging the reservation of rights the former Military Governors made regarding the West German constitution of 1949 when they approved it. Which went away with the Two plus Four Treaty of 1990.

Then of course the Zerohedge article somehow links the event to Macron's completely unconnected Rememberance Day speech and asserts that "his approval rating nosedived even further after the comments". Which is true, but a result of his initial silence on the again completely unrelated Yellow Vest protests. Which unlike the piece asserts have not been growing further, but fading over the last three weeks; yesterday, all of 12,000 protested nationwide (800 in Paris), compared to 39,000, 66,000 and 125,000 on previous weekends - though in fairness, the holiday season might have something to do with that.

At any rate, however hard some people try to make the protests about their pet causes, they were a rather traditional French phenomenon: A new president gets voted in on promises to change everything (in Macron's case, mostly deregulating France's heavily state-run sluggish economy saddled with heavy workers' rights protections), but when he actually does (tax cuts for the wealthy, reduction of welfare, relaxation of tenure security, limits to severance pay, and more latitude for small and medium businesses to get around minimum wages and maximum workhours, plus the fuel tax hike to get out of fossil fuels that broke the camel's back) there's rioting, and the president promptly folds. Then when he reverses his previous welfare cuts, he gets called a socialist by conservatives on top. Guy just can't please anyone.

quote:

Originally posted by Rightwire:
I have no idea what would possess any world leader to make a statement like that.

Power, offer the cattle security and other warm and fuzzies for their freedom. That message has worked too many times. Never really worked out well.....

I agree on Brexit, once other countries see GB succeeding they will leave as well. This is why the EU must crush GB.

It is very important that GB succeed and do it quickly.

quote:

Originally posted by dewhorse:
... offer the cattle security and other warm and fuzzies for their freedom. That message has worked too many times. Never really worked out well.....

I am reminded of the Eloi and the Morlocks from H.G. Wells' The Time Machine. H.G. Wells was as prescient as Ayn Rand.



.

I bought Macron and Merkel each a book for Christmas:

I'm reminded of Western and Central European dreams of once again being the center of the universe, rather than being stuck with simply reacting to the upstart Americans, the heathen Chinese and the feeeelthy Rossians. There's a reason why the word "chauvinism" was invented in Europe - barring, perhaps, the Red Emperors, no one has ever had quite as pressing a need for the word in their languages.

I'm wearing shorts in December. How bad can it be?...

nero

Ein Schuss, ein Kill

Her country is 0-2 in World Wars. Think about that.

quote:

heir current army is about the same number as our USMC, with less equipment. Smaller than France, about equal to Italy.

According to Wiki, Germany currently has 61,721 troops. The US Marines have 224,500.

And I sincerely doubt that their army makes up all that difference in their fighting ability.

And I would venture to say that our marines are better than their soldiers.

The ca. 61,000 number is just the Army. Add Air Force, Navy, Joint Support and Joint Medical Services plus the newly-established Cyber and Information Domain Service, and you arrive at 181,000. Which is however just barely currently planned establishment (182,500 active troops, plus 2,500 posts for activated reservists); two years ago it was as low as 176,000 following abolition of the draft. There is a very slow rebound aimed at reaching 198,500 (plus 4,500 active reservists) by 2025 to satisfy NATO's new defense requirements in Eastern Europe. Somewhat topical, one of the ideas peddled for this is allowing EU citizens with several years of prior residence in Germany and fluency in the language to serve, like several other European countries already do.