Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 50 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
German Intel Officer Arrested for Islamist Plot to Bomb Spy Agency
Headquarters for Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz, Germany’s domestic intelligence service.
After announcing her intention to run for a fourth term as German Chancellor, the last thing Angela Merkel needed was another scandal involving Islamism. Ach du lieber!
A German intelligence officer has reportedly been arrested over a suspected Islamist plot to bomb the agency’s headquarters in Cologne. The 51-year-old official was said to have made a “partial confession” to the plot, according to Der Spiegel.
The suspect attempted to pass on “sensitive information about the BfV (Germany’s domestic security agency), which could lead to a threat to the office”, an official told the newspaper.
“He is accused of making Islamist remarks online under a false name, and offering internal information during chats,” a BfV spokeswoman told AFP.
The unnamed officer has been gathering intelligence on Islamism since April, but apparently “went native,” converting to Islam and pursuing a radical path.
Adding this news on top of several terror attacks in Germany and Merkel’s fateful decision to let in more than a million refugees, mostly from the Middle East, the people want changes. Over the past year and a half, Germany has spent $17 billion to feed, clothe, and provide language lessons to the new migrants. That works out to about $13,000 per refugee.
Seeing her political future in jeopardy, Merkel is belatedly reversing course, promising to deport 100,000 migrants at a conference of conservative MPs:
”The most important thing in the coming months is repatriation, repatriation and once more, repatriation.”
…And employing a tough new form of rhetoric, she warned local regions to deport all migrants whose asylum applications are rejected, using force if necessary.
She warned them: “If state governments refuse to forcibly deport migrants, then of course everyone will say, ‘I will not do this voluntarily, because they will not do anything anyway’.
And in a stunning U-turn on her open borders policy, she added: ”It can not be that all the young people from Afghanistan come to Germany.”
Earlier this year in parliamentary elections, Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union came in third with just 19 percent of the vote. The winner was the liberal Social Democratic Party with 30.6 percent, but CDU leaders were more nervous about the Euroskeptic, anti-immigration party Alternative für Deutschland, which came in second with 20.8 percent.
What do you think: Will Merkel’s course correction get her re-elected or is it too little, too late?
Hopefully, too little and too late.
I lean towards too little/late. But what hit me is that some of that stuff, like posting pro-Islamic comments online, might be the sort of thing you would expect intel people to be doing in establishing an identity.
Too little too late. Why don’t they have term limits?
Should her coalition survive the 2017 elections, the balance of power may shift to SPD. Unless SPD wants to keep her in in order to take the blame and kill off CDU in the 2021 elections (or earlier if the 2017 government collapses), SPD will take the chancellorship.
Or, SPD gets enough to form a purely leftist coalition.
If AfD gets enough of the vote, and there is no CDU-SPD coalition, AfD will demand Merkel’s ouster as a precondition for an AfD-CDU coalition.
More of that dang “workplace violence”, sparked by some verbal altercation with a colleague perhaps? I suppose we’ll never know.
10 DM says the German courts prevent any deportation.
Merkel is toast, or should be. I mean what was she thinking? Way too little way too late.
Edit:
Original comment withdrawn because of poor taste – I have been so peeved at our MSM giving themselves hernias today trying to backpedal this Ohio State situation that I vented on this comment section.
It’s hard to say. A German friend just sent me Thanksgiving greetings that closed with her sadness that we wouldn’t have Obama as president much longer. I don’t discuss politics with her very much — mainly it is just catching up on family and friends.
Merkel has succeeded where Hitler failed. She is overseeing the conquest of Europe without even firing shot. She is just flinging the doors wide open and letting in the invaders. It’s hard to believe this is the same German people that our grandfathers had to beat down with the entire arsenal of the free world. Now the Germans can’t even find their [CoC] enough to defend their own women from Islamic rape gangs.
Unfortunately, with or without a course correction chancellor Merkel has very good chances to get reelected.
Polls for the general election have her party CDU and the regional Bavarian CSU (with between 32% to 37%) at a 10 point lead over her coalition partner SPD which does not even have a candidate yet. Her popularity is amazingly still at around 50% although she lost 20 points since inviting and provoking the newest Muslim invasion of Europe.
No other German party will form a coalition with the AfD (at 10% to maybe 15% nation wide). The German mainstream media is denouncing the new populist party as (of course) a reincarnation of the “Nazis”. Likely the Green Party will be invited in the “great” coalition which will give a “Jamaica” coalition a solid governing majority.
I would be highly surprised if any substantial number of “refugees” let alone 100,000 will indeed be repatriated. I am astonished that Frau Merkel takes the risk of demonstrating in advance of the election that all promises of repatriation are empty promises. Once she broke the law to let the invasion happen there simply seems to be no legal or practical way to reverse the welcome.
She must be very sure that there is “no alternative” to her victory. I could even imagine it as an election battle cry:
“Es gibt keine Alternative: Merkel” (there is no alternative: Merkel)
Germans seem to have a tendency to do what they are told, whether its from a GPS or a politician. I don’t know how the election will turn out, but Merkel has done the stupidest thing I have ever seen a politician do. Together with her inhumane and destructive “kick can down road” handling of Greece, her only hope would be that her opponents are disorganized and not serious.
I used to hold Merkel in such high esteem. I once called her the best world leader in office and I meant it and I still do if the clock hadn’t moved three or four years forward. But this Islamic immigration disaster she has advocated has turned it all around for me. I hope she loses and loses badly as a referendom on this issue. I don’t know enough of the political dynamics in Germany to predict her fate. I can only hope and pray she loses.
I don’t think a reinvented Merkel is in the offing.
Modern lefties are used to thinking of themselves as the endpoint of history. The telos of 3 billion years of evolution is a bobo reading Der Spiegel or the NYT on an iPad while sitting on a stark designer chair surrounded by blank white walls with a single two-color abstract on one. The endpoint is dressed casually (to reject the demands of conventional thinking) but stylishly casual (in accordance with the demands of enlightened conventional tastes) all the while achieving self-satisfaction by deploring somethings or someones somewhere else.
Why have a plan B if you are the endpoint of history? Libs don’t think in those terms. Merkel may fudge, lie, triangulate or whatever is required to keep the deplorables at bay but she will still be Merkel, darling of the fully evolved and keen to impose enlightenment whenever and wherever she can.
The “Energiewende” (energy transition, i.e. no more nuclear power will be produced in Germany, massive subsidies for solar and wind energy, highly regulated coal, strict “climate goals”) is also disastrous [edited from denglish] in my eyes.
But Frau Merkel could lose very badly and still stay in power, this would only result in a move even further to the left.
Because then the Green Party and possibly even the former SED (“die Linke”, identical with the ruling socialist party in the GDR) would be needed as a coalition partner to keep the deplorables of the AfD out of power. The later (AfD) could triple their expectations and still wouldn’t be able to form a government.
Welcome to the European parliamentary system.
The chances for a conservative revolution in Germany 2017 are as high as say in California, the center-right already has their Angela Schwarzenegger in power (green policy and all), there is nothing like a “tea party movement”, only a relatively small alt-right movement oblivious to social ostracism and many (but by far not enough) angry protest voters.
…exit is the only solution for our neighbors, for Germany it will be full speed ahead into the iceberg.
“Wir schaffen das!” (we can do it)
This sort of abrupt about-face always makes any politician look worse. It makes them seem feckless as well as exposing an underlying lack of core beliefs.
In any case, I don’t think that some sort of mass deportation or border enforcement effort will be undertaken. I don’t know what event would precipitate a massive grassroots rejection of a policy which allows mass migration of people from a vastly different and hostile culture to establish settlements in Germany.
Oh, Demolition Man!
The Hillary Clinton Administration never looked more inevitable than at 2pm EST on Election Day.
The politics of this thing are, for once, less interesting that the psychology of a man who goes from making gay pron to working for German Intelligence to becoming an ISIS agent.
What a terrifying fun-house that mind must be.
I forgot about her move to all solar and wind. Yes, that is also a mistake, though I wouldn’t say it’s as diasterous as letting one million muslim immigrants in.
You have me confused.
You appear to envision a CDU/CSU-Green-Linke coalition.
What about the SPD?
Are you saying that CDU/CSU-SPD or even CDU/CSU-SPD-Green would not total enough to form a government? Is there a 2/3 threshhold rather than a 50% threshhold?
Are you saying that the Greens and Linke would rather form a coalition with CDU/CSU than with SPD?
I hope Euroskeptic isn’t a bunch of black boot Nazis – they seem to have gained a little more ground than Merkel – what is known about them??