Reagan is just one of several people who according to their supporters brought down the Berlin Wall. Others laying claim to that include Lech Walensa, Gorbaschow, Pope John Paul II, and others besides. I'm sure we can discuss the pros and contras of all these candidates for weeks. Maybe we sometimes give people more credit than due, and believe there was a master plan when people just got lucky. Things often happen for multiple complicated reasons rather single simple ones. And often the full significance of what happened doesn't become clear until after its all over. I think the same will happen to the present situation.

Thanks and consider your kind invitation accepted, though we would just end up getting wasted and talking bikes

I'm still old and Liberal and no, we'll never know what the alternative would be.
I firmly believe 90% of who we are is an accident of birth, and even with the best efforts and will in the World, people can still get smacked down or have the rug pulled out from under them. But you keep going and learn along the way...

My two cents, as a current resident - and taxpayer - in Germany.
As everyone said, she did great things until last year. But it's the last impression which counts.
Public support for her policies is waning rapidly. From a 60+ approval rate last year in September she's now in the mid-30s. Her party (CDU) also dropped from low-40s to mid-30s in the last polls. This drop did not go to the direct opponents (yet government partners - SPD, the social-democrats) but to the populist AfD (which jumped from 3 to 11 % within six months).

The "great and unshaken respect" is far from being universal. Yes, the attacks on politicians are not as "biting", as externally-visible, as in the anglo-saxon world, yet there is no "follow the leader, whatever happens" - Germans went through that in the past and it didn't end exactly well. Instead, people keep their thoughts to themselves and simmer in small groups - family, close associates. The fear of being seen as stepping out of line (or worse - xenophobic, racist, "Nazi") makes most people quash their opinions and just share them among trusted ones. On the outside it's all nice and dandy, on the inside a lot of people are boiling.

Inside the parties, the situation is also complicated. The CDU (Merkel's own party) is officially standing behind her, but more and more dissenting voices are heard. The CSU (the CDU's sister party, active in Bavaria only) is dissenting a lot, up to open rejection of her (primarily migration) policy. The AfD are picking up the pieces and growing steadily. FDP (Free Democrats) are hovering around the 5% limit for Bundestag access, no real visible voice. If this internecine struggle in the CDU continues for longer, I see the AfD picking up 12-15% of the votes in next year's elections and forcing either another CDU-CSU-SPD government (which nobody really wants, as it doesn't bring any benefits anymore) or CDU-CSU-AfD (which the CDU-CSU don't really want, as AfD have a pretty bad reputation).
The left (SPD, Greens, Linke) aren't able to conjure more than 45% of the votes for now and I don't see them mounting a challenge, as the litmus test is the migration issue - and they are all on the "favourable" part, a pretty risky position to take at the moment. Bottom line, nor the Left, nor the Right appear to be able to offer a steady government next year, so my hunch is that there will be a breaking point soon.
My scenario: Merkel "resigns", formally to accept some other position (e.g. UN GenSec), someone else is made caretaker chancellor (Schaeuble? I don't see Seehofer - the CSU leader - as being supported by the rank and file of the CDU) until 2017, with promises of a harder stance on, you guessed, immigration. I reckon this will mean if not closure of borders, then strict checks either in Greece or directly in Turkey, crackdown on those already in Germany, massive (in absolute numbers) repatriations for those not entitled to asylum.
The other option is Merkel simply ignoring the criticism; this might work - if the issues calm down in Germany - or can backfire badly in the 2017 elections.

Next Bundeskanzler! She has hair on her teet

Rather than being angry at Mrs Thatcher, you should be angry at the people who let the country fall into the state it was when Mrs Thatcher took over.


As for Mrs Merkel - well, I personally think she did the right thing.
Closing the borders is one thing (impossible anyway, so I really like her "let's not bullshit ourselves here"-approach) - but these people don't have a return ticket. They'd just have stayed at the border, eventually causing serious problems there.
The Calais "jungle" is how big? A couple of thousand people? Imagine that at a factor of thirty or more.
What would you do? Load them onto cattle railway cars and send them back to Turkey?
And if they return? Shoot them at the 3rd try?
Could we really have a European Championship of who treats refugees the worst, so that the word spreads and they don't try to flee but rather die in the ruins of their former homes?

The truth is, these people (the refugees) are just the tip of the iceberg, the hint of the amount of problems the world (and Europe especially) have been either ignoring for years or decades or even actively (if only inadvertently) fueling.
If we don't solve these problems (and don't avoid making further stupid mistakes), what we see now will look like a Sunday's picknick in a couple of years.

The Near East was already complicated before all this mess with AQ/IS and the various half-hearted military interventions.
Now, it's a complete clusterf***, a fubar'ed mess.

Not sure if Merkel is really looking for a legacy. Subconsciously, we're of course all looking to leave on. Probably even more so, if you have no kids.

I don't really have exposure to everyday's life in Germany anymore (and the view of my parents would be heavily skewed because of their socio-economic background).
So I can't really say if there's really that much grassroots-support for the Pegida-Clowns.
We will see after the next regional elections.

Looking at mainsteam media, or the euphemism for that kind of press, I see mild consternation from govercment officiials. But looking at social media, well OMG! The change in tone and sentiments from the "Wilkommenskultur" is a 180 degree U-turn. So of it border on panic, and quite widespread from reall personalities. It gives me a little bit of a chill as to what it portends.

As yourself how representative social medias are. We can agree that main stream media only represent themselves. But the part of the population on social media is actually small and the part that is active on that topic even smaller. By only looking at this frange, you do get informed about the fact that main media are not giving the full picture, but that doesn't mean the full picture is the exact opposite.

I understand that, although what I see on social media are REAL people, and what we see in the press are sponsored and vetted points of views. I realize it is more convenient to sweep the little men and women under the rug, but the way I see it, a country is about its people. Personally, I give it as much legitimacy for whatever weight its truths carry. Also wise enough to acknowledge they are just as susceptible to the same hyperboles.

Facebook has basically given censorship control over to CDC political operatives,

http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/...speech-germany

I can't see this ending well. If people are angry about something, and they're continuously silenced or shamed for it, they'll resort to violence at some stage. Democracies need to respond to the will of the people, otherwise they're technocracies or oligarchies (such as the European Union). It's like we've learned absolutely nothing from the rise of authoritarian regimes in the 20th century.

I used to consider myself left-wing, but the left has globally made a massive shift towards authoritarianism and away from personal liberty over the past fifteen or so years. Now there's widespread efforts to silence and shame people for holding 'wrong' opinions, and to enforce silence against 'wrong-think' on the Internet with government power.

Now I generally see the political spectrum as a matrix, with left/right wing on one axis, and authoritarian/libertarian on the other (although big-L Libertarians in the US tend to be their own particular batch of tree nut). I find I care little for the right/left axis anymore, but I definitely stand against this chilling effort by Merkel. I'm a student of history, and history hasn't ended, nor has the nature of the human animal changed.

This was exactly me, a Humanities/Liberal Arts major. I use to consider myself left wing until I started to realize what it culminates into.



THIS here is the crux of it all, THE TRUTH. Something went wrong here, and it is poisoning Deutschland. Until this is dealt with and retracted, it will likely continue to fester like a infectious thorn in its side. I think it is also the key to unravelling this all.

Deutschland was sold a story that ALL of those coming are refugees in need safety. This is quite true from many. There are families struggling to survive. But there are those in their mix who are not truly refugees. But by throwing the doors open, and indiscriminately allowing anyone and everyone to come in, it has poisoned the whole batch, and made the Germans sick.

I think to unravel this, it now has to get to the truth about all the individuals who have come in. It now needs to vet out true refugees from non-refugees. For 1 million people, that is a huge monumental undertaking that may be nearly impossible. This was suppose to be done before they came in.

I think it is time for Merkel to fess up to the monumental blunder she has created. I think she needs to come clean and take responsibility for this. I think she also needs to apologize to Deutschland and Europe and start discussing ways how to undo what was done. Otherwise, this will fester and its culmination could be disastrous.

I have a daughter at this age, and this looks pretty genuine to me:

Bibi Wilhailm - Ihr macht Deutschland kaputt! Aufklärung einer 16 jährigen über Asylpolitik!

Would you rather discount them as an emotionally charged teenagers and sweep them under the rug? When this generation comes of age, which direction do you think their politics will take?

More on the poll situation, if anyone is interested:
http://www.wahlrecht.de/umfragen/insa.htm

CDU support dropping slowly from 43% in August 2015 to a steady 35-36% until January 4th (before news of the NYE issues in Köln and elsewheree started coming through). Then a big drop of 3.5% within two weeks (so roughly 10% of their former supporters switched allegiance). I would speculate and say the drop is not necessarily due to the NYE events themselves, but due to the way the government handled the post-event communication.
Also an important point to be made here is that CDU and CSU are polled together, as they were part of a coalition since basically the beginning (there is no CDU in Bayern, just CSU, and there's no CSU outside Bayern, just CDU, yet they are distinct parties). The CSU is extremely strong in Bayern, particularly outside large(r) cities (Munich is one of these notable exceptions, with a SPD mayor since 1984) and they routinely score significantly above the national average for the Union. Hence I'm thinking, push come to shove, the actual support for Merkel would be even below the 32.5% shown in this poll, considering CSU's extremely critical stance on her.

Where did these people go?
Not to SPD (social-democrats - steady around 22.5%, even with a slight drop - but within the error margin). Not to the Greens (steady around 10%). Not to the Linke (far(ther) left, steady around 10%, mainly in the former East Germany).
Mainly to AfD (right/centre-right populists) - major jump from 9.5% to 12.5% (so a third, in relative terms). Small part to FDP (free democrats, centre-right), from 5% to 6.5%.

I am also speculating the AfD score, if elections took place today (or last week) would actually be higher than 12.5%. They are not liked by the mass of people, for a number of reasons, hence the possibility that some responders would actually avoid stating they would vote for AfD during an interview, but still vote for them when in the privacy of the booth (Hawthorne effect, for those interested in sociology).

If Merkel resigns, and a snap election was held, wouldn't it look like an SPD win, and can they really be expected to do anything better or different? And if Merkel was replaced within her party, would Sheuble or any other do?

Merkel knows she has a lock on her position, hence her intransigence.

Nope, SPD wouldn't win. I doubt they'd get as much as 25% at this particular moment. Even with help from the Greens (who are even more pro-immigration) and the Linke, they couldn't form a government.
I don't think there'll be any snap elections. The next term is in 2017, so the CDU has no interest in holding elections now, when they are under fire for the migration debacle. My assumption is that they will drop Merkel at some point (elegantly, mind) and have a replacement for another year or thereabouts - meanwhile, they will try to fix what can be fixed and regain the centre-right electorate they lost in the past six months - which they can mostly do by speech rather than by facts, since they cannot form a government alone either and the SPD can effectively censor their initiatives in the Bundestag.
Now the interesting thing would be SPD deciding they are losing more from being associated in the governmental coalition with Merkel and/or the CDU-CSU than gaining from being in the government. Then we would either have snap elections - which the SPD don't really want - or a minority government. Or, the third option, the SPD moving more to the right (i.e. to the centre) and backing some policy changes. In the end, for them it's a game of who can bring more votes: migration supporters (which are typically in the medium- or higher-earning strata, but which are also at a risk of being poached by the CDU) or the lower-income citizens.

I read an opinion-piece on spiegel.de where somebody basically said:

"Thank God most of the people who comment on social media are either too drunk or can't be bothered to get up from bed and cast their vote on election-day. It would be a major disaster if all these people actually started to vote".

Reflecting on the history of Europe, it has always been steered by ego-tripping individuals with strong wills, whether malevolent or benevolent. History later proves its damage or benefit after the fact. I suppose today is no different, except for a veneer of egalitarian democracy to keep the population docile. Implicitly and instinctly, Europeans apparently approve of it all.

There are cracks in the facade of the mainstream media and political landscape and they're growing every day.

I was in Germany again this weekend and listened to the radio quite a bit.

Some interesting observations.

- There have been reports of various clubs in Freiburg not allowing migrants to enter. There is nothing new about this, bouncers being what they are. But in the past if this sort of thing was reported publically there would be an outcry and maybe some bouncer would be fired or some club owner would apologize publically. Not so this time. Even the city major, himself a diehard Green who only some months ago was saying all migrants are welcome, regardless of country of origin and bla bla was saying, the people causing the trouble are Algerians and ought to be sent home. We need to be nice to Syrians though. Seems like quite a U-turn. Three months ago it was AfD saying this and the Greens shouting horror over the very thought.

- Some CDU spokesperson has denied there is a plot to to throw out Merkel. To paraphrase Konrad Adenauer, the moment somebody feels the need to deny something, you can be sure there is something going on.

- There has been quite a debate about the Greens and SPD refusing to share a podium with AfD in TV debates in the run up to various regional elections this year. That refusal sparked quite a caustic fallout and whereas some are digging their hole deeper, others have backpedalled.

So even in Germany things are changing.

I cannot think of any benevolent examples.

A lot of people are washing their hands off of this. Even Merkel all of a sudden notes that a lot of the fake and real refugees harbor deep seated anti-Semitism, that "we" have to watch out for. Manuel Valls is talking about the destabilization taking place. Koeckner appears to be contradicting Merkel.

The fingerprints are being wiped clean from the scene of the crime. At the moment, only Merkel's hands appear to be on it. Even there, I expect her to divert the blame to any and all other things that does not point to her. It all just happened to happen.

80% of newcomers have next to no useful skills for German businesses. Politicians and the media are only just realising what everyone has been saying since forever. Don't reckon she'll last much longer.

http://www.economist.com/news/europe...-away-ill-wind