Tag: Angela Merkel

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government transparency international affairs

The Age of Deference 

Angela Merkel, Germany, Wuhan, Covid, virus, lab leak

We knew from the beginning that Wuhan, China, was not only ground zero for the coronavirus epidemic, but that there was an Institute of Virology there, and that the disease could have broken out of its lab. But it took a few months for my first report, and about a year passed before I delved deeper into the evidence for the “lab leak” hypothesis.

In December, the House Subcommittee investigating the subject concluded that there was evidence for a lab leak and none for a zoonotic origin of the disease.

Throughout the period, corporate news sources barely covered the story, despite its obvious importance and inherent interest. Instead, they covered for the culprits, the better to push a “vaccine” that was more novel than the “novel coronavirus” itself. 

Journalists seemed immune to acknowledging, for example, “the man the media missed,” Dr. Peter Daszak. Years before the leak, the doctor publicly boasted about using a Chinese lab to engage in gain-​of-​function research on coronaviruses. And yet, he was placed on the World Health Organization team investigating the Wuhan situation!

Meanwhile, the CIA waffled.

Now we learn that German intelligence reported to then-​Chancellor Angela Merkel favoring the lab leak hypothesis.

In 2020.

“Two German newspapers say they have uncovered details of an assessment carried out by spy agency BND in 2020 but never published,” explains the BBC. “According to Die Zeit and Sueddeutscher Zeitung, the BND met in Berlin in 2020 to look into the origin of coronavirus in an operation called Project Saaremaa.”

The “spy agency,” as the BBC neatly puts it, “assessed the lab theory as ‘likely,’ although it did not have definitive proof.”

And, as Dr. John Campbell notes, neither Merkel nor her successor came clean with any of this.

Dr. Campbell finds his resulting loss of trust has a bright side: “it’s made me re-​evaluate many, many things.”

“The age of deference,” he concludes, “is past.”

All of our major institutions failed the pandemic test.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Illustration created with Krea and Firefly

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Accountability general freedom national politics & policies responsibility

A Threat We Can’t Refuse

NATO, Angela Merkel, Germany, Europe, Trump, Donald Trump, Russia, defense, war

“Recent days have shown me that the times when we could rely completely on others are over to a certain extent,” German Chancellor Angela Merkel told folks in a Munich beer hall last Sunday. “We also know that we Europeans must really take our destiny,” she said, on the heels of the NATO and G7 meetings, “into our own hands.”

Merkel may have designed her comments to elicit shock and dismay among the inhabitants of America. But my shock is that anyone would find anything shocking, at all.*

Merkel’s responding, of course, to President Donald Trump’s censure of European NATO members for not ponying up to their treaty obligations.** This is widely whispered as … rude. Mustn’t upset Germany and other allies, even if only five of NATO’s 28 nations have reached the agreed-​upon two-​percent of GDP goal.

The received wisdom seems to be: don’t embarrass the freeloaders.

I’m often not copacetic with Mr. Trump’s demeanor. But the “threat” that U.S. soldiers might somehow not be permitted to shed their blood to defend deadbeat countries against a feared Russian attack is … just not all that threatening. 

What’s so scary about self-reliance?

It was also announced that German security agencies won’t share intelligence with the U.S. regarding alleged Russian interference in their upcoming election. 

This, too, we can survive.

But, gee whiz, I hope we aren’t banned from the cool countries’ lunch table at the cafeteria in the brand new $1.23 billion NATO headquarters — for which the U.S. pays a disproportionately high 22 percent.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob. 

 

* In my judgment, Merkel should have jettisoned “to a certain extent” and put a period after “over.”
** It’s worth noting that Trump is not the first president to marshal this complaint.

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general freedom national politics & policies responsibility

Give or Take a Million

Muslim, immigrants, assimilation, welfare state, U.S., Illustration

“Angela Merkel’s ruling CDU party has been beaten into third place by an anti-​immigrant and anti-​Islam party in elections in a north-​eastern German state,” a BBC story headlines in bold type.

Indeed, Chancellor Merkel’s own constituency is abandoning her. Why? She invited in over 1.1 million refugees (and migrating pseudo-refugees) following the collapse of Syria.

This mass migration resulted in serious problems, including an apparent skyrocketing in rapes by migrants (old and new), most if not all Muslim men.

Which a “populist, Eurosceptic party” called Alternative for Germany (the AfD) has capitalized on, as has the more radical National Democratic Party. An AfD spokesman told the BBC, recently, “It’s very difficult to integrate Muslims.”

But how hard is it, really, for Muslims to assimilate? In Europe, and even England, it seems a disaster. In America, these United States, it has been much better.

Why?

American Muslims generally work. If you are employed, you have less time to plot terrorism, or otherwise raise a ruckus. And, moreover, less reason: you have hope.

Vertrag macht frei.* Truly.

Europe’s “more generous”-than-America’s state aid system is therefore problematic.

But it gets worse. The European Union’s movers and shakers welcomed migrants to increase the population of the young — recognizing that African and Asian Muslims procreate at much higher rates than do European whites. Why is this desirable?

To shore up an unstable system, for all social security systems depend upon population growth.

Immigration is right now popularly seen as a peril. But it is Germany’s and others’ welfare states that make it a peril, and that spurred the immigration initially.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* A play on a more alarming (and misleading, to say the least) Third Reich motto. One assimilates by contract, not state aid. (And certainly not by state aid’s extreme opposite, forced “arbeit,” or work.)

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Muslim, immigrants, assimilation, welfare state, U.S., Illustration