Active Shooter In Olympia Mall In Munich

[Ssnake]

After [al-Bakr's] eventual arrest, the investigating judge suggested that he might be suicidal (which is kinda logical for a suspected would-be suicide bomber)

 

Actually, that's not necessarily the case.

 

Islamic teaching is pretty unanimous that suicide is really bad (pretty much on the Catholic level - "you can't be buried here with the rest of us").

The Islamofascists then came up with the loophole that if you fight for Islam and get killed in the process, you're martyr who gets a backstage pass to the after-party in Paradise. So, if you argue that the guy is a bomb building, die-hard Islamist, then mere suicide is actually not so terribly likely. Unless of course Jihad is just a convenient outlet for general frustration, and the guy belongs to a group that actually isn't very ideological or religious.

 

Hindsight being 20/20, it's now obvious. And while I agree that Saxonian authorities could have done better, and while I deplore the loss of a potentially valuable (though probably uncooperative) intelligence source, I don't think that his suicide was a forgone conclusion.

[Ssnake]

 

When all the kings and the Emperor left their thrones it was clear that this empire had ended.

 

I think our good ole Eastern Commies called it "die normative Kraft des Faktischen".

[Markus Becker]

Here we go again:

 

Anti terror raids in five states today. 13 places seached. The original suspect was a 28 year old with ties to the IS. During the investigation another 13 people got into the (not literal) crosshairs of the cops.

 

So far the usual but behold: State radio news called the suspects "asylum seekers", not "refugees". This from media that re-branded asylum seekers into refugees over a year ago.

[BansheeOne]

That's because asylum and refugee status are in fact two different categories, even if they typically both start out by applying for asylum, and tend to get conflated in popular usage; I really only learned about the differences during last year's crisis, too. In this case, all 14 suspects are Chechens (with Russian citizenship, natch) investigated over allegations of intending to funnel money to the IS, and one 28-year-old among them to join the fight. Their status has not been decided, and I haven't seen any information how long they've been here, only that investigations against the initial suspect started in the second half of last year.

[Markus Becker]

"That's because asylum and refugee status are in fact two different categories,..."

 

From a legal POV that is correct but do you think reporters are that thorough about legal fine print? They are not lawyers.

 

They came up with refugees and even protection seekers to create compassion and hide the fact that the protection seekers crossed several nations where they were 100% safe from war and persecution. Now that some protection seekers are turning out to be terrorists they are rebranded lest they damage the image the media created around the "refugees".

 

And it is a recent rebranding. The Würzburg terrorist was called a refugee.

[BansheeOne]

Frankly, that's an invented outrage to get worked up over.

[Markus Becker]

In that case let us agree to disagree.

Edited October 26, 2016 by Markus Becker

[BansheeOne]

Good old Renate Künast of the Greens whose main concern after the Würzburg train axing spree was why police couldn't just render the perpetrator incapacitated rather than killing him reliably took to Twitter again after the Reichsbürger shootout, suggesting that there was a lack of media outrage compared to what would have been if the killer had been an Islamist. Apart from again not expending a thought on the victim, she seems to read different media than I, because reaction has been at least as forceful, with people across the political board warning that the threat of the Reichsbürger movement has been underestimated, calling for surveillance by domestic intelligence on the national level and revoking gun licenses of sympathizers (which, as the incident shows, is being done anyway).

 

Incidentally, the current issue of "Spiegel" has a hoot of an article about Künast visiting people who posted hate comments on her facebook; on their website, it's behind a paywall. It describes four such encounters, no doubt selected for their entertainment value, which is considerable.

 

The first guy is totally smitten by her sudden appearance in his personal life, and while cheerfully explaining his comment with all the usual stuff about there being never any money for the "little man" as read in "Bild", but billions being made available for furriners, he's eminently pleased by big politics stooping to talk to little him, tells his wife "you'll never guess who's here" when she calls, and of course has his picture taken with Künast who is left with the unsettling thought of "what if all these guys are just totally normal, nice people?"

 

The second unexpectedly turns out to be a personal acquaintance who was in the Berlin Greens' predecessor "Alternate List" with her in the late 70s, though she doesn't remember him. He's also happy to see her and says he posted about her appearance on a talk show when she kept defending her controversial tweet after the Würzburg train attack rather than acknowledging she might have struck a wrong tune. She promptly keeps doing the exact same thing, piling on explanations until the guy just says tiredly "oh well, you're right", only to tell the journalist "she's typical for most Greens: stupid, school or professional dropout, and inacapable" as soon as she's out of earshot.

 

The third is a full-on conspiracy nut, who first of all calls over his Syrian neighbor who immigrated 20 years ago and further serves as his sidekick in a sort of real-life satire piece. The guy then proceeds to call the Greens "America-friendly lowlifes", somehow veers of into 9/11 having been an inside job and brings up one Thomas Barnett who appears to be a former US government advisor who has written a book about some nefarious American plans to create a "light brown mixed race" just smart enough to work by bringing 1.5 million North Africans into the country each year, but notably only in English, so that the truth is kept from the German people. He also accuses her of rigging elections, which is why they (he seems to be an AfD member) are for popular referendums. To which Künast replies "but if we can rig elections, we could also rig referenda", to which the tresponse is "so you even admit it!"

 

The last is a rather speechless type who says he didn't think she'd even read his comment, just that she was somebody who has never had a gun in her hand and blaming police officers. She pontificates on and on like she was "holding a speech before the UN General Assembly", as the journalist notes, while the guy and his wife withdraw half-step by half-step ...

Edited October 31, 2016 by BansheeOne

[seahawk]

It will be a pleasure when she is leading a ministry next yera in a Red-Red-Green coalition.

[Markus Becker]

RRG is but talk. Never mind that the three don't go together smoothly enough to function. They also don't have the numbers. CDU and FDP together are practically as strong as RRG.

[Ssnake]

Yeah, but if the AfD steals just enough votes from the CDU that they are not, then what?

Prior to the immigration crisis the CDU was pretty much glued to the 39...40% line, no matter what, with the FDP at five. With 5...8% of the votes going to bizarro fringe parties 45% of the combined vote would pretty much guarantee victory.

 

Now the CDU is at 33%, and the FDP still at five. Let's say 15% go to the AfD, 4% to the fringe parties. That leaves 45% to be divided among SPD (23%, constant and unwavering since the last elections, no matter what), 13% Greens, and 9% to the commies. This is anything but a slam dunk.

[lucklucky]

CDU only have to blame themselves.

[Ssnake]

That's entirely besides the point.

 

He said that R2G could not become a reality. I say, the CDU may not be able to block the formation of a government without their involvement.

 

It is true as long as the left remains divided (and I don't see them giving up this habit so soon for a variety of reasons - ideological intransigence and personal feuds among them). Still, even in that case I just don't see CDU and FDP being able to form a majority of seats in parliament. Nor one for an Ampel. Maybe a Schwampel, but I don't think the Greens at federal level are ready for that. So the true choice would be between R2G or another Groko, and only if the CDU is lucky and the leftists and the commies stay best fiends rather than befriending each other. In which case there would actually be no choice at all, CDU and SPD going on for another four years.

Yay.

[Markus Becker]

The nice thing about RRG is we don't need to rely on the CDU and the FDP to prevent it. RRG has to implement it and how the hell is that going to happen with the three combined at no more than 45%?

 

And the AfD? First they get their votes not exclusively from the CDU but the SPD and Commies as well, not to forget a lot of previous non voters but the most important thing is any vote the AfD gets counts against RRG.

 

So no danger of RRG, instead we will enjoy four more years of wise rule by the 2nd GroKo.

[Ssnake]

45% can be entirely sufficient if enough fringe parties fail to make the 5% cut. Because only the remaining votes will be divided up into seats.

The CDU will win a disproportional amount of direct mandates. That requires a lot of compensation seats from other parties' lists, but only if they make it across the 5% hurdle (=seat inflation, separate topic). Anyway, if 6% of all votes do not count because they go to fringe parties, you only need half of 94% (=47%) to win an absolute majority. That is a challenge, but not impossible for R2G. The stronger the AfD, the more likely is an R2G win. Whether they can actually agree on forming a coalition is a different question, obviously.

Of course the CDU could counter that move by teaming up with the AfD. But how likely is that.

[Markus Becker]

What you describe is the situation we currently have. ...

 

http://www.wahlrecht.de/umfragen/

 

On second thought it depends on the FDP. Enough people have to be dumb/desperate/whatever enough to push them over 5% to prevent RRG under any circumstances.

Edited November 1, 2016 by Markus Becker

[Ssnake]

So it's "dumb desperation" trying to prevent RRG?

[Markus Becker]

Voting for the FDP is not the smartest thing to do. They OKed both Eurorettung and Energiewende but since it looks like ~5% will do it, I cross my finger the party gets 5.1% and not 4.9%.

 

As far as RRG goes, they are too divided. The upcoming appointment of a new president shows that. Linkspartei politicians objected to Steinmeier. If they can't even agree on such an unimportant matter how could they form a government that has to deal with stuff that actually matters?

[Ssnake]

I do not necessarily disagree with anything that you wrote last. But the prospect of forming a government and to finally be able to do all the crazy stuff that so far you could only dream about has the power to change minds. If opportunity arose, the SPD would go with the commies in a heartbeat. At the same time they would howl if the CDU went as far as forming a coalition of the AfD, which ironically may be the best way to expose these nutters as the incompetent and ineffectual imbeciles that they are (and thus to help shrink them in coming elections).

Edited November 2, 2016 by Ssnake

[Markus Becker]

Well, the right of the Linkspartei could work with the SPD but the Commies got far left nutters and the SPD has a right-ish wing. That IMO makes RRG DOA.

 

As for the AfD, they don't need to be good to win as long as the alternatives(pun intended) remain as bad as they are. And I'm not seeing any sign of change there, just more of the same. Particularly the effort to delay the Greek bankruptcy until after the election.

[Ssnake]

Well, the right of the Linkspartei could work with the SPD but the Commies got far left nutters and the SPD has a right-ish wing. That IMO makes RRG DOA.

 

Except that there already have been several SPD-Commie coalitions over the past decade or two. Up until now the divide has been there because of

a. Lafontaine,

b. Lafontaine,

c. Agenda 2010,

d. Lafontaine,

e. NATO = evil

 

Once that the SPD leadership has replaced enough people by ones that are not harboring personal resentment over Lafontaine (and the man is growing older every day, too), and if the commies can learn to suppress their fits about the Agenda until about half a year before the next elections, and learn to accept NATO as a reality there are no more obstacles. The SPD will do it. You know it, I know it, everybody knows it.

 

 

No objections to what you wrote about the AfD, except that I don't think that the AfD is particularly concerned about the Euro crisis. They will happily accept any worsening of the situation with a "told you so" but they have transformed primarily into an anti-muslim party with strong ties to the neonazis. Whether it's about shooting women and children at the border or not wanting to live next door to Jerome Boateng, there is a clear pattern.

The Anti-Euro AfD mostly disintegrated with the ousting of Lucke. The man invited the racists into his castle, they took over and gave him the boot. Can't say that I feel particularly sorry for him.

[BansheeOne]

While I tend to opine that the AfD is pretty much guaranteeing Merkel's continued reign, most likely with another grand coalition, because they're tying up a 12-14 percent block of votes which nobody will touch, leaving the CDU as the biggest party against which nobody can rule, and Red-Red-Green will not work for reasons mentioned above -

 

there's an interesting article in this week's "Zeit" suggesting that the SPD wants to run on the tried-and-proven "peace party" trope in next year's campaign, argueing for detente with Russia and selling it as a remake of Willy Brandt's Ostpolitik while conveniently ignoring the differences with today's situation, including that Brandt was very much stressing the first part of "change through rapprochement". Proponents reportedly point to the success Gerhard Schröder had with his stance on Iraq in 2002, or much more recently Mecklenburg-Vorpommern State Minister President Erwin Sellering with argueing for the end of sanctions against Russia in this year's state elections. Which is tacitly counting on the fact that anti-American sentiment and at least some sympathy for Russia is widespread among SPD sympathizers, a trait shared with the Wutbürger on both the left and right; so the hope supposedly is to win back voters from the AfD as well as the Left Party, and moreover a more lenient stance towards Russia and some mild criticism of NATO would probably make it easier for the Left to enter into a coalition with the SPD.

 

Foreign Minister Steinmeier has of course been making noises including his criticism of "saber-rattling" in NATO for some time as part of his more-or-less clandestine campaigning for the presidential elections next February, in concert with party head Sigmar Gabriel and of course Putin's own ex-SPD head Schröder. The issue of the presidential candidate has now been forced by Gabriel officially championing Steinmeier rather than agreeing on a joint CDU/CSU-SPD nomination, and organized public support by the usual suspects from arts and intellegentsia springing up; the election has of course been saddled with suggestions of presaging the next government coalition. As noted before, some realists in the Left Party like Thuringia State Minister President Bodo Ramelow and Bundestag co-group leader Dietmar Bartsch have endorsed Steinmeier as a project to foreshadow an R2G government, Bartsch going as far as suggesting that agreement could be found over NATO and Bundeswehr deployments if the existing SPD-Left-Green majority in the Bundestag elected a government right now for the last year of the current term.

 

Of course the loony lefties from their own party immediately argued the opposite, Bartsch's proposal was rebuffed by SPD and Greens, and obviously the Greens as the putative third partner would have to say something about policy, too; which considering that in regards to Russia they're pretty much the most critical party would look another awkward fit. However, most of all they're a rather divided party, maybe more than ever these days with the southwestern conservatives-with-an-ecological-conscience headed by Baden-Württemberg State Minister President Winfried Kretschmann on one hand and the largely leftist northerners still somewhat under the sway of Jürgen Trittin on the other. You see that in their row over wealth tax, the fact that they couldn't agree on a presidential candidate either for fear of promoting either R2G or going with CDU/CSU; and relevantly for the NATO/Russia issue, some of the most outspoken critics of Russian policy just failed to secure their Bundestag nominations for next year, former human rights ombudswoman Marie-Luise Beck from Bremen, and Rebecca Harms from Trittin's Lower Saxony state chapter (pointed out in a different "Zeit" article this week).

 

It's all still nothing I would take as evidence for R2G becoming a realistic possibility, most of all due to the ingrained nutterdom in the Left Party. However, with the recent meeting of MPs from all three parties to discuss things, notably including not just established proponents but also some of the critics, and graced by the attendance of party head Gabriel himself, it seems clear people on all sides are trying to overcome the "not anytime soon" mood of 2013. Seeing that CDU/CSU have not yet managed to find a presidential candidate either, it's not inconceivable that Steinmeier would win a plurality in the third round and give a boost to the project. Which from a democratic point of view is actually not bad, because otherwise you're looking at semi-eternal CDU/CSU rule, most like in continued grand coalitions; the only chance for CDU/CSU-Greens for some time may have been after the last elections, when neither side could muster the courage.

 

With the rise of the AfD, even a grand coalition would struggle to get 55 percent with current polls - and at the same time it could be argued that the AfD is very much a creature of the consensus-oriented grand coalition politics of the last decade with little room for effective opposition, the same way the "out-of-parliament opposition" emerged in the 60s and down the road gave rise to the Greens; the AfD is after all a mirror image to the latter with their "alternate", anti-establishment self-conception, even if politics are 180 degrees opposed. One only needs to look at Austria to see where perpetual grand-coalition rule leads - a Green facing off with an FPÖ right-winger in presidential elections because people have become thoroughly fed up with never-changing all-pervasive centrist government. It's just a shame that with healthy democratic change between camps come nutty fringe politics ...

[Markus Becker]

Here are some thoughts on the talk about RRG by a former SPD parliamentarian. Wishful thinking on the part of the media but very likely to unsettle the center.

 

 

Mit Links: Der Griff ins Klo – DIE ACHSE DES GUTEN. ACHGUT.COM

http://www.achgut.com/artikel/mit_links_der_griff_ins_klo

[BansheeOne]

The Global Terrorism Database of the University of Maryland actually gives an interesting view of the dead from terrorist attacks (all motives) in Western Europe since 1970 (excluding perpetrators); orange is France alone. The worst year was 1988, which included Lockerbie, though it only slightly exceeds earlier years which saw a lot of smaller attacks mainly in Northern Ireland/the UK and Italy.

 

Just saw another chart based on the same source which differentiates better between countries. Really drives home for how much the Troubles in Northern Ireland accounted.

 

[lucklucky]

Cultural shift with Marxism winning the Left assures that SPD+Red+Green will be a possibility in the future. In Spain Podemos is taking a big chunk of the PSOE. In Portugal there is for first time a Socialist Government with parliament support from Left Bloc and Communists. In Greece the PASOK is in single digits, in England Marxists dominate the Labour. It is a cultural trend due to Media and Academia.