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Time magazine has just declared Angela Merkel person of the year and made that the occasion for a long report from Germany. Several points are wrong and they do not look like random mistakes but seem to conform to an agenda.
„Merkel stood by the cash register, with her lessons from East Germany. [...] But it was Merkel who became the face of the European banker, caricatured here as a dominatrix, there as a storm trooper. The crisis went on for years, and Merkel’s image grew as entrenched as her position: rescue only if Greece ended its spendthrift ways.“
Merkel’s stern speechifying was meant only for domestic consumption while in fact she threw out newly printed Euros with both hands. Unfortunately (for her) it backfired as a large minority of Germans had long learnt never to listen to politicians but to look at what they actually do while the Greek man in the street never saw a crumb of the avalanche of money sucked up by irresponsible banks and the political elite and listened to words never meant for him.
„Then, in the 1960s, came the Turks, guest workers from small-town Anatolia who were needed to fill a labor shortage. [...] Next were the Spanish, Portuguese, Greeks, Italians—workers from the Mediterranean countries that would later falter—all for jobs.“
This is completely backwards. The European guest workers came first. Only when the Wirtschaftswunder was already winding down and the active recruiting had all but stopped did the first Turks arrive. Behind them was pressure from the United States trying to support an important NATO ally at someone else’s expense. From the beginning strict time limits were codified with the compulsion to return home, but they were never enforced. All the other, earlier migrants, who stayed on, were completely assimilated by the second generation while the Anatolian Muslims never did and their third generation keeps itself more strictly apart than their grandparents.
„Inside Syria, press gangs from the government of Bashar Assad were going door to door, forcing young men into the stalemated conflict.“
If the United States were attacked by troops of mostly foreign terrorist mercenaries, would not the American government be legally and morally forced to reinstate the draft to defend their country? And when another government does the same against a CIA-sponsored attack it becomes a crime?
„When the story reached Hungary, a villain emerged in Viktor Orban, the right-wing Prime Minister who refused to allow the refugees to board trains toward Austria.“
The Schengen agreement has two parts. Together with the opening of the internal boundaries went the obligation to install strict controls of all the Schengen area’s outer borders. The Dublin agreement clearly states, that refugees have to apply for asylum in the first free European country they arrive at and are not free to go shopping for the most generous package. While all others openly flout contracts, agreements, and laws, Orban is the only one upholding and implementing them.
„Merkel never claimed to have a vision, and in fact quoted Schmidt as saying anyone who did should have his eyes examined.“
What Helmut Schmidt actually said was "see a doctor" which any native German would have understood as meaning "see a psychiatrist". "Have his eyes examined" is complete nonsense.
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