Germany

Knife and Gun Control in Germany

Featured image In Germany in 2023 there were 13,844, “knife crime” incidents and last month a Syrian “soldier of the Islamic State” stabbed three people to death and wounded eight others at a “Diversity Festival” in Solingen. That got the attention of Chancellor Olaf Scholz, who seeks to reduce the length of knives people are allowed to carry from 4.7 inches to 2.4 inches. Chancellor Scholz may be unaware that Theodoric the »

Winds of Change In Germany

Featured image In state elections in Saxony and Thuringia, AfD, the Alternative for Germany party, has scored a dramatic success. The Telegraph reports: Exit polls predict the anti-immigration party has gained some 33% of the vote in Thuringia, with the conservative CDU party polling at around 23%. However, in the state of Saxony, the AfD is projected to narrowly lose to the CDU, with about 30 per cent of the vote to »

Another Vibrant, Diverse Culture

Featured image At a festival in Solingen, Germany, a knifeman–an increasingly common term in Western Europe–went on a rampage, stabbing at least 11 people, three fatally. Somehow the knifeman escaped. The man was described by witnesses as “Arab-looking,” and today ISIS claimed credit for the attack: Islamic State claimed responsibility Saturday for a knife attack at a festival in Germany that left three people dead and eight hurt, according to reports. The »

Ten German Bombers

Featured image The Euro 2024 soccer tournament is under way in Dusseldorf, and in the U.K. there has been less attention to the games than hand-wringing over the likelihood of English fans singing “Ten German Bombers.” Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has denounced the song as “offensive” and urged Brits not to sing it, as has England’s team manager. A German police chief has warned British fans, “Don’t be dicks.” Only a few »

Europe Moves to the Right (UPDATED)

Featured image The results are coming in for today’s elections for the European Parliament, and so far it appears right-leaning populist parties are routing the establishment centrist and left parties.  Green Parties are taking a disproportionate share of the losses. One of Bloomberg’s headlines in their election coverage package is “Macron and Scholz Get Trounced by Far Right in EU Elections.” In France, Marine Le Pen’s National Rally won with 32% of »

The peasants are revolting, German edition

Featured image In the old Wizard of Id cartoon, when the King is advised the peasants are revolting, the King responds, “You can say that again.” This time around they are revolting in Germany. Spiked editor Tom Slater writes in his weekly email: “German farmers have had enough. On Monday, thousands of tractors and tens of thousands of farmers descended on Berlin, capping off a week of nationwide demonstrations. It was a »

Attack on Cologne Cathedral Foiled

Featured image The Christmas/New Year season is one of heightened terrorism alert in Europe. Today, German authorities announced that they had stopped an intended Islamic attack on Cologne’s (Koln’s) historic cathedral: German police have arrested three people suspected of planning a New Year’s Eve terrorist attack on Cologne Cathedral, which was reportedly to be carried out in a car loaded with explosives. Officers had first been informed of an attack planned for »

Genocide Is Popular

Featured image Yesterday, many thousands of Islamofascists and leftists turned out across the globe for pro-Hamas demonstrations, celebrating the massacre of October 7 and demanding the extermination of Jews. Trafalgar Square was packed to overflowing: Hundreds of thousands turned out in Paris: Some might find the idea of a “kill the Jews” rally in Berlin alarming: And, of course, many thousands rallied to support genocide against the Jews in Washington, D.C. It »

“We Have to Deport People More Often and Faster”

Featured image I have been speculating for some time, and occasionally hinting here, that if Europe wants to survive, at some point it is going to have to deport large numbers of unassimilable “migrants.” I’ve long thought for a variety reasons that France would be the country most likely do this, though don’t count out Sweden or Denmark, which, unbeknownst to most American media, are starting to reckon with rising crime and »

Notes from Central Europe

Featured image An unusual experience on the train from Salzburg to Munich yesterday. The train stopped at the German border, whereupon eight police officers, well armed and wearing full body armor, boarded the train and asked to see passports. I haven’t had a passport check on a European train in years, and I thought they were obsolete in the era of the Schengen Zone that allows visa-free travel throughout the European Union. »

Weimar 2?

Featured image Destroying the German economy isn’t easy, but that country’s government is working hard at it. Since the Industrial Revolution, it has been hard to imagine a de-industrialized Germany. But that is the way things are trending. The London Times reports: Germany is in the teeth of a “severe and sustained downtrend”, experts warned after a closely watched survey showed that a deep contraction in factory output was keeping its economy »

The Daily Chart: The High Cost of High-Cost Energy

Featured image Everyone knows that Germany was the “first mover” on the net-zero bandwagon, spending more than a trillion Euros over the last 15 years on its “energiewende” (“energy revolution”) only to see their greenhouse gas emissions begin rising again, and last year reviving coal-power to keep the lights on. One thing they did achieve was causing consumer energy prices to roughly double. I guess that “wind-and-solar-are-cheaper” isn’t working out according to »

De-Industrializing Germany

Featured image It is hard to believe, but Germany is on its way to becoming a post-industrial country. What its economy will look like at that point is anyone’s guess, but it won’t be pretty. The Telegraph interviews Monika Schnitzer, who heads Germany’s Council of Economic Experts. She leads off by talking about the need to distance Germany from China: Berlin outlined a plan to “de-risk” the relationship with China last month. »

Germans Have Given Up On “Green” Energy

Featured image Not the German government, which continues on a collision course with reality. But Germans have figured out that the green dream is turning into a nightmare. This report is on a survey of Germans done by forsa: An overwhelming majority of the German population is of the opinion that a successful energy transition is not realistic. According to a Forsa survey, 88 percent of respondents share this view. 88 percent! »

Pro-Trump MP Kicks Hornets Nest in Bundestag: Biden Admin ‘Is Not Our Friend’ [Updated]

Featured image The Alternative for Germany (AfD) is a right-wing populist political party whose members fiercely oppose the elitist, globalist agenda now favored by leftists around the world. On Friday, the morning after news broke of New York County District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s indictment of former President Donald Trump, AfD member of the Bundestag Petr Bystron stood before his colleagues to deliver remarks on the state of U.S. politics and the September »

Annals of Social Science, Chapter 12,186

Featured image Oh goody, something new for The View and other fanatical leftists to worry about. Fans of statistical fallacies and other quantitative flim-flam will know that it is possible to demonstrate a correlation between storks and the birth rate, but social science has moved on to much more significant questions, such as “anti-wolf sentiment.” And especially anti-wolf sentiment among—wait for it!—the “far right.” A recent study from the Proceedings of the »

Guess What: Electricity Isn’t Free

Featured image One of my favorite indicators of ignorance are the people who buy personalized license plates, or affix stickers, for their electric cars that say “Emission Free.” Even if you ignore the enormous environmental impacts associated with manufacturing an electric car (which are significantly higher than a gasoline-powered car), if you live in a state that generates a lot of its electricity from coal, you are essentially driving a coal-powered car. »