That would be respective Angela Merkel and Janet Yellen, both reported to have lost a lot of power in today’s Washington Post. During at least the last year, if not the last four, they have been probably the two most powerful women on the planet.
In the case of Merkel, what has happened is that she has failed to form a coalition government after last month’s election, which put her and her party in the lead, but not enough so to allow her to push through to a coalition government, with the hard right Alternative for Democracy (AfD) getting seats.in the Bundestag. She had been trying to form a “Jamaica” coalition with the Greens and the Free Democrats, but the latter withdrew from the negotiations for reasons the WaPo story did not clarify (quality of reporting at WaPo has been declining steadily for some time). Apparently she then made a last gasp effort to negotiate another “grand coalition” with the Social Democrats, but having lost a lot of support due to having been in such an arrangement prior to the last election, they refused.
It looks like she will call for another round of elections in January, and the AfD is crowing with delight for an apparent triumph on their part. I guess we shall see. In the meantime, aside from her personal embarrassment, EU-Brexit negotiations are now reportedly in a stall pattern as nobody wants to sign on to anything without a definitely in-place government in Germany to approve or disapprove of it. Merkel may yet regain her power if the January elections go more firmly her way, although she may well be forced to step aside as Kanzler der Bundes Deutsches Republik and more completely and thoroughly lose power. Many fear the results of the latter, although if it were to be due to a government led by the SocDems, many hear might cheer.
As for Janet Yellen, obviously she had already taken a hit with Donald Trump violating precedent by failing to reappoint her as Chair of the Board of Governors of the US Federal Reserve System, even though he had praised her job performance, but claimed that he needed to “make his mark.” I fear we have had all too much of that already. In any case, while she could have remained as a governor until 2024, today’s WaPo reports that she has sent a letter of resignation to Trump and will remove herself from the board when she steps down as Chair in February, thereby giving him yet another seat to fill on the board.
It is no secret that I am and long have been a great fan of Janet Yellen’s, having been the very first person to call for her appointment as Chair all the way back in 2009. I regret this decision, but understand that probably her husband, George Akerlof, is pleased and looking forward to moving back to the Berkeley hills. I wish them both the best, even as I regret her departure.
While there may be a touch of sexism in Trump’s decision, I do not think that has much to do with Merkel’s current difficulties. Nevertheless, I think it is unfortunate that these two very capable women who have wielded great power recently will not be doing so at least in the near future.
Barkley Rosser
I’m guessing you aren’t celebrating the rise in influence of a different German woman.
Both Petry’s rise and Merkel’s wane are due to the same thing – Merkel’s actions and reactions vis a vis the large number of migrants who showed up in Europe a few years ago. This a href = “http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/migrant-crime-in-germany-focus-on-north-africa-a-1151228.html”>seems broken:
my first thought, on reading your headline, was that Theresa May would be one of the women that you were refering to…
i understand that Merkel will be calling new elections, so it seems premature to be burying her…
Sorry Bark, but I can’t let Goebbels here spout his 21st century Untermenschen’ dribble.
“On Friday, the Cologne prosecutor Ulrich Bremer in fact told me that, of the 59 suspects pinpointed so far, just four are from war-torn countries (Syria and Iraq), only 14 are in custody, and nobody has yet been charged. Nearly 600 hours of CCTV reveals very little, and there is no evidence whatsoever that the alleged attacks were planned in advance.
The refugee-as-rapist construct is the kind that has been used to demonise people throughout history. The idea is that you apply frightening characteristics to those you view as political enemies. In the 1930s Cologne’s Jews were described as ‘Untermenschen’ (inferior people) menacing European culture, before 11,000 were murdered during the Nazi Holocaust by “racially pure” Aryans, many of them beer-swilling Christians.
Read more
I’m a fan, Jess, but please admit you’re wrong
Merging racism into a wider discussion about law and order, feminism and even the future of the EU project does not make it any less objectionable. Brown men are not inherently more misogynistic or brutal than white men, and Muslims are just as likely to be family-orientated, peaceful citizens as their counterparts from other religious and cultural heritages.
Neo-Nazi groups such as Germany’s Pegida – an organisation becoming increasingly active in Britain – instead jump on the propaganda, using sacred half-truths about Cologne to spread hatred and violence. In their world, victims like Labye – white and blonde-haired – mean nothing if they are not prepared to scapegoat and lie in the cause ofp rotecting European “civilisation” from the dark invaders.”
http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/cologne-sex-assaults-muslim-rape-myths-fit-a-neo-nazi-agenda-a6872566.html
Angela Merkel is a true success story.
She grew up in East Germany, and went into government almost immediately after German reunification in 1990. She has been elected to some office ever since. Chancellor Merkel gave the German people what they wanted until she did not.
Unfortunately she could not resist doing what was politically correct when emigrants came sweeping out of the middle east and north Africa.
Her intentions were good, but all too often political leaders are blind to untended consequences. They forget that they are practitioners of the art of the possible.
The untended consequence this time was the failure of those emigrants to immediately integrate into German society.
Anyone could have seen this coming, if they were not blinded by political correctness.
Integration into a modern industrial society is at least extremely difficult if you are moving from a less developed country. The language, the helter-skelter of an industrialized country, and strange social norms would all be disorienting. Add to those that insufficient education insures unemployment.
And those emigrants never really intended to integrate, they wanted a better standard of living. But western industrial societies come as a package. Failure to conform in western societies carries heavy penalties. Sleeping outdoors in freezing weather is not that rare in the US.
Now there is trouble all over the European Union. (The increase in terrorism, crime, political upheaval, and European Union members turning on each other.)
Chancellor Merkel has brought her problems onto herself.
No moral obligation? None whatsoever for the balance we may have disturbed in the middle east? Germany which opposed the invasion and as a part of the NATO has shown consideration. I think you need to read Michael’s comments.
Mike Kimel,
Here is your repaired link:
http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/migrant-crime-in-germany-focus-on-north-africa-a-1151228.html
No thank you.
If Chancellor Merkel was the emperor of Germany then only her opinion would count.
Unfortunately for her, Germany is a democracy and she lost too many votes. Apparently many voters did not share her sense of moral obligation.
Chancellor Merkel has brought her problems onto herself.
JimH
Yea, well many of them were of the same opinion when they opened concentration camps and they denied knowledge of them. You can not hide this now with the media broadcasting the results of our intrusion be it a democracy, parliament, or dictatorship. We own it.
Couldn’t happen to a couple of more horrible human beings. True, the pain they have inflicted upon those struggling to get by in the U.S. and Europe is not quite on a level with bombing, droning and invading other countries, but it is still enough to make me hope that the rest of their lives are filled with a dose of misery and suffering they themselves have have wrought.
Karl,
Janet Yellen has been part of “bombing, droning and invading other countries”? Wow. One can certainly argue that Fed policy aggravated the crash nearly a decade ago, but the record is that more than anybody else at the Fed Yellen was the one who was warning there was a housing bubble and warning that something needed to be done, even if at certain points she did not keep pushing the point super hard. But I would say that it is pretty hard to pin bad things that came out of Fed policy on her, and the policy since she took over seems to have been carefully measured and supportive of steady growth with low inflation, while she has publicly supported such things as improving the labor market treatment of women and poor people. She deserves “a dose of misery and suffering” for this? Really?
Now Merkel has been closer to some of these nasty foreign policy matters you mention, even though Germany has generally been among the less aggressive in pushing such policies around the world than has been the US, UK, or France, much less been directly active in “bombing, droning and invading other countries.”
And, of course, Germany under Merkel opened its borders more than nearly any other European nation (and certainly more than the US) to refugees fleeing various wars in MENA and beyond, leading, in case you have not noticed, to several commentators here dripping in alt-right slime gleefully pointing out how this willingness to accept refugees has led to her poor performance in the most recent election and her failure to put together a government. You think she deserves a “dose of misery and suffering” for having opened German borders so much? In that you probably would get some nodding heads from Kimel and JimH.
Barkley,
I for one am not gleeful about anything. I especially am not gleeful about the rise of Alternative for Germany. Some of its adherents scare the daylights out of me. But I understand how Merkel’s actions have brought it about, just as I understand how GW’s choices exploded the debt to use an example that isn’t controversial around here. The decision to take out Kaddafi made by another woman, HRC, also contributed to the outcome in Germany and elsewhere in Europe. None of that means Kaddafi was a nice guy or that many if not perhaps even most refugees wandering around Germany these days are not worthy of empathy.
But stupid choices lead to stupid outcomes. Letting people from countries that produce a fair number of criminals and terrorists in indiscriminately without any attempt to weed out the bad elements is a recipe for increased crime, terrorism and reduced cohesion. And that is what we are seeing. And what is worse, it was obvious that was going to be the result.
Well, Mike, as has been pointed out to you, the Cologne incident has been exaggerated and overblown, and beyond that there has not been an increase in crime or terrorism in Germany since the refugees arrived, although arguably there has been in Belgium and France and some other places.
Regarding other comments, which I should just let sit, is “GW” George W. Bush? Yeah, well, sure he moved a surplus to a deficit.
Regarding HRC, the matter of Libya and Qaddafi was terribly complicated and pinning it on HRC is a bit simplistic, although she certainly was at least partly responsible. As it is, Obama himself declared Libya to be his biggest policy failure, so taking responsibility himself, although it is true that HRC was the main advocate for the policy in the admin. But then how did it get there and what was it? For starters, the policy itself was not specifically to kill Qaddafi. That was done by forces within Libya not directly under US control, much less HRC’s personally, even though we had 8 committees that ran on the idea that somehow she was running things in Benghazi on 9/11/12.
The move against Qaddafi arose as part of the Arab Spring initially as a revolt in eastern Libya based in, yes, Benghazi, which I made numerous posts about at the time, forecasting it would lead to the breakup of Libya, which has in fact de facto happened. This effort was then strongly backed by Abu Moussa, the leader of the Arab League. Moussa was an Egyptian running for president there in the aftermath of the overthrow of Mubarak. He was the one who pressured HRC, after getting both UK and France to commit to actively intervening to support the Benghazi-based rebellion. Given their move, it became a matter of how the US was going to react to all this, so Obama with HRC “led from behind” by getting the UN Security Council to support an effort to protect Benghazi from an air attack by Qaddafi. All this then blew up even as the US played a “leading from behind” half-baked role, with Ambassador Stevens sitting in the building in Benghazi that later he would die in.
Anyway, that whole business is a lot more complicated than just HRC “deciding” to “take out Kaddafi” [sic] .
Oh, and while we are at it, most of those refugees in Germany came from Syria and Afghanistan, not Libya. There are refugees coming out of Libya, but they are crossing the Med to end up mostly in Italy, and they are mostly from other parts of Africa, not Libya itself, even if the mess there makes it easier for them to get to the coast to try to cross the Med, Mike.
It’s the Left losing power. These women just happen to be in the way.
There is no rise of alternative in Germany. That is nothing more than a Rothschild front and run by jews. no wonder Kimel likes it. Zionism must be destroyed and that includes people who call themselves “anti-zionist”. They are not. They are the controlled by jews themselves to control the opposition.
Brexit is a dead corpse like the UK. Neither will exist by this time next year. Who benefits with the breakup of the UK? Think little men.
Bert:
I always like to use a person’s name as I want to make sure they know my comments are directed at them. I am a relatively tolerant person and it takes quite a bit to get me going. I also consider myself to be knowledgeable after all these years having been the son of a bricklayer, learning his trade, fixing my own and my children’s cars as we could not afford the cost, and attending some damn good universities during and after the Marine Corp. That is a quick review of who I am and what you are messing with here at AB. I do not like silliness and this Rothchild shit you keep foaming at the mouth with is just nonsense.
Come to Detroit, go to 12 mile and Orchard Lake Road in Farmington Hills and you will find this:
This Holocaust Memorial Center is a rendition of a class 2 Camp containing artifacts and a history of that time period in Germany. I also had the chance to visit the Pink Synagogue in Prague, Czech Republic. On the inside you will find the names of the thousands sacrificed by Germany in Czechoslovakia at the time. White-washed once by the Nazis and created again. What catches your eyes are the children’s drawings of their experiences.
You can not miss the Center on the left as you head north bound on Orchard Lake Road. If you ever are in Detroit, go there as that is where you will find the truth about what you espouse here at AB. I am not Jewish; but, I do stand against those cowards who assault others with their beliefs of racial and ethnic purity. There is a rise of the “blood and soil” and “you will not replace us” mentality in the US, Germany, and in other countries as well. The rise is promoted and aggravated by those who hope to use it for political gain and who will in the end have it turn on them.
Never again Bert.
It is best sometimes for people to find a place that suits them and their beliefs. We may not be it for you Bert.
Barkley,
Which is why is why I only said HRC contributed:
And none of this suggests there is a reason not to have some sort of border control. Letting in refugees while weeding out the bad actors is one thing, letting in refugees without weeding out the bad actors is another thing.
I note you state that the crime rate was exagerated, but don’t state what it was. Here’s a ballpark:
Each of those crimes has victims.
Sammy,
Merkel’s problems aren’t a sign of the left losing power. Merkel leads the Christian Democratic Union, which tends to be viewed as center-right.
BS,
The “American Nazi Party” was very similar. A pre-Permidex/Rothschild front. Run by Jews, for jews. The modern goons like Pierce, Duke and Black(little teeny loser he was at the time) who came out of that, had jewish ancestry in their near past. Duke even admitted it in the 80’s when had plastic surgery to get rid of his “jewy face”.
The ANP was a total farce. Made to direct whites to where the global elite wanted them to go. So is the AfD. What a scam artists they are. Led by a half jew. They are getting so brazen, they aren’t even changing their names like in the past.
The left losing power? Nothing about Yellen or Merkel or May(who should have been concluded) is “left” sammy. If you that much of a retard, you should be euthanized. I suspect you aren’t quite “pure” there either sir are you?
Mike,
For what it is worth, you have my sympathy regarding remarks by BS, who seems to utter stuff that fits his initial pretty seriously.
Regarding the matter of immigrant crime in Germany, there has been an increase in crime by immigrants, but it has almost entirely been among those refused asylum, with ones from the Balkans, Morocco, Algeria,and the former Soviet Union the main culrpits, not war refugees from Syria.
So now the white supremacists in Europe have their own Southern Strategy, and there are people who actually look for a different answer other than racism. Great.
“The brute caricature portrays black men as innately savage, animalistic, destructive, and criminal — deserving punishment, maybe death. This brute is a fiend, a sociopath, an anti-social menace. Black brutes are depicted as hideous, terrifying predators who target helpless victims, especially white women. Charles H. Smith (1893), writing in the 1890s, claimed, “A bad negro is the most horrible creature upon the earth, the most brutal and merciless”(p. 181). Clifton R. Breckinridge (1900), a contemporary of Smith’s, said of the black race, “when it produces a brute, he is the worst and most insatiate brute that exists in human form” (p. 174).
George T. Winston (1901), another “Negrophobic” writer, claimed:
When a knock is heard at the door [a White woman] shudders with nameless horror. The black brute is lurking in the dark, a monstrous beast, crazed with lust. His ferocity is almost demoniacal. A mad bull or tiger could scarcely be more brutal. A whole community is frenzied with horror, with the blind and furious rage for vengeance.(pp. 108-109)
During slavery the dominant caricatures of blacks — Mammy, Coon, Tom, and picaninny — portrayed them as childlike, ignorant, docile, groveling, and generally harmless. These portrayals were pragmatic and instrumental. Proponents of slavery created and promoted images of blacks that justified slavery and soothed white consciences. If slaves were childlike, for example, then a paternalistic institution where masters acted as quasi-parents to their slaves was humane, even morally right. More importantly, slaves were rarely depicted as brutes because that portrayal might have become a self-fulfilling prophecy.
During the Radical Reconstruction period (1867-1877), many white writers argued that without slavery — which supposedly suppressed their animalistic tendencies — blacks were reverting to criminal savagery. The belief that the newly-emancipated blacks were a “black peril” continued into the early 1900s. Writers like the novelist Thomas Nelson Page (1904) lamented that the slavery-era “good old darkies” had been replaced by the “new issue” (blacks born after slavery) whom he described as “lazy, thriftless, intemperate, insolent, dishonest, and without the most rudimentary elements of morality” (pp. 80, 163). Page, who helped popularize the images of cheerful and devoted Mammies and Sambos in his early books, became one of the first writers to introduce a literary black brute. In 1898 he published Red Rock, a Reconstruction novel, with the heinous figure of Moses, a loathsome and sinister black politician. Moses tried to rape a white woman: “He gave a snarl of rage and sprang at her like a wild beast” (pp. 356-358). He was later lynched for “a terrible crime.”
The “terrible crime” most often mentioned in connection with the black brute was rape, specifically the rape of a white woman. At the beginning of the twentieth century, much of the virulent, anti-black propaganda that found its way into scientific journals, local newspapers, and best-selling novels focused on the stereotype of the black rapist. The claim that black brutes were, in epidemic numbers, raping white women became the public rationalization for the lynching of blacks. ”
https://ferris.edu/jimcrow/brute/
We now have trump as the end result of the Southern Strategy in the US, what will Europe come up with? Hopefully, not the same that the last example in Europe.
And meanwhile, the closet racists will insist they are not racists while being the group that helps to put the country in the hands of racists.
Everything you need to know about American politics(and just about everywhere else) can be found by watching “The American President”.
“. America isn’t easy. America is advanced citizenship. You gotta want it bad, ’cause it’s gonna put up a fight. It’s gonna say “You want free speech? Let’s see you acknowledge a man whose words make your blood boil, who’s standing center stage and advocating at the top of his lungs that which you would spend a lifetime opposing at the top of yours. You want to claim this land as the land of the free? Then the symbol of your country can’t just be a flag; the symbol also has to be one of its citizens exercising his right to burn that flag in protest. Show me that, defend that, celebrate that in your classrooms. Then, you can stand up and sing about the “land of the free”. I’ve known Bob Rumson for years, and I’ve been operating under the assumption that the reason Bob devotes so much time and energy to shouting at the rain was that he simply didn’t get it. Well, I was wrong. Bob’s problem isn’t that he doesn’t get it. Bob’s problem is that he can’t sell it! We have serious problems to solve, and we need serious people to solve them. And whatever your particular problem is, I promise you, Bob Rumson is not the least bit interested in solving it. He is interested in two things and two things only: making you afraid of it and telling you who’s to blame for it. That, ladies and gentlemen, is how you win elections. You gather a group of middle-aged, middle-class, middle-income voters who remember with longing an easier time, and you talk to them about family and American values and character..”
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0112346/quotes
Barkley,
Again, Merkel made the choice to keep borders open (not just Germany, BTW – she pressured other counries to do so). It isn’t surprising that throwing open the doors lets in bad actors along with the more sypamthetic people.
BS,
You keep spilling the beans and the Jews are gonna steal your shoes. Well, one of them, anyway. In fact, with the level of knowledge you possess, I wouldn’t be surprised if a sock disappears the next time you do laundry.