RUTHFULLY YOURS

BERLIN—Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservative bloc agreed to limit the number of refugees allowed to enter Germany annually, in an attempt to bridge differences on migration and form a much-needed united front in coalition talks.

Sunday’s agreement comes two weeks after national elections brought a victory but also the worst turnout in nearly 70 years for Ms. Merkel’s Christian Democrats and their Bavarian Christian Social Union allies, who are also the most vocal in-house critic of her migration policy.

The bloc agreed to limit to 200,000 annually the number of people allowed to enter Germany for humanitarian reasons. The conservatives pledged at the same time that people wouldn’t be turned back at the German border, expressing their support for the right to seek asylum in Germany and for the Geneva refugee convention.

“We continue with our efforts to permanently reduce the number of people fleeing to Germany and Europe,” the draft agreement seen by The Wall Street Journal said. “We want to ensure that the total number of admissions out of humanitarian reasons…doesn’t exceed 200,000 people a year.”

This limit would be amended if an international crisis warrants it, the paper said.

Roughly 890,000 asylum seekers entered Germany in 2015 alone, followed by 280,000 in 2016. An annual upper limit of 200,000 is unlikely to be reached this year, according to recent estimates from the interior ministry, because fewer than 125,000 asylum seekers entered Germany this year through the end of August.

“We have a common understanding that we have to set a limit because we are otherwise overburdening a society,” Jens Spahn, a prominent critic of Ms. Merkel’s migration policy and member of her party’s executive committee, told public broadcaster ARD on Sunday. CONTINUE AT SITE

WHAT IS VARGAS LLOSA DOING IN CATALONIA OPPOSING INDEPENDENCE? HE IS A PERUVIAN WRITER WHO UNSUCCESSFULLY RAN FOR THE PRESIDENCY OF HIS COUNTRY…..HE LOBBIES AND WRITES ANTI=ISRAEL SCREED FOR PALARAB INDEPENDENCE…WHY NOT CATALONIA? AS FOR HIS NOBEL PRIZE READ HIS MEDIOCRE NOVELS…..RSK
BARCELONA—Hundreds of thousands of Spaniards gathered in Barcelona on Sunday to decry Catalonia’s secessionist push, a bid by pro-union groups to build momentum against a unilateral declaration of independence that could come as soon as this week.

The demonstration in central Barcelona, the capital of Spain’s Catalonia region, is a rare show of strength for the pro-union movement, whose gatherings have typically attracted several thousand protesters in recent years, compared with the hundreds of thousands routinely mobilized by pro-independence groups.

On Sunday, though, Barcelona’s streets were filled with an atypical sight: people waving red-and-yellow Spanish flags, unfurled alongside Catalan regional flags.

“For some time now, nationalism has been wreaking havoc in Catalonia and that’s why we’re here, to stop it,” Nobel Literature Prize laureate Mario Vargas Llosa told the 930,000 people gathered, according to organizers. Local police in Barcelona put that figure at closer to 350,000. Such discrepancies are common.

“We are fed up with this situation. We haven’t been out on the street until now, but this time around has been so surreal, so unfair, that we had to do something,” Juan Maldonado, a 52-year-old electrician from Barcelona said, as people chanted “here are the other Catalans.”

Polls by the region’s survey agency indicate that more than a third of Catalans support an independent Catalonia, although sentiment could have shifted following the Oct. 1 independence referendum, which was marred by clashes between police and voters and declared illegal by Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy.

Catalan President Carles Puigdemont is expected to address Catalonia’s regional parliament on Tuesday and could make a declaration of independence.

“We will prevent independence from materializing,” Mr. Rajoy said in an interview published Sunday by top Spanish daily El País. “I can say with absolute frankness that it won’t happen.” He said he didn’t rule out invoking constitutional powers that would allow him to seize control of the regional Catalan government. CONTINUE AT SITE

Andrej Babis, one of the Czech Republic’s wealthiest people, presents himself as a non-ideological results-oriented reformer. He has pledged to run the country like a business after years of what he calls corrupt and inept management. He is demanding a return of sovereignty from the European Union and rejects the euro.

Babis’s anti-establishment party ANO (which stands for “Action of Dissatisfied Citizens” and is also the Czech word for “yes”) is centrist, technocratic and pro-business. ANO, which rejects political labels, has attracted voters from both left and right, pulling support away from the established parties.

“The West European politicians keep repeating that it is our duty to comply with what the immigrants want because of their human rights. But what about the human rights of the Germans or the Hungarians? Why should the British accept that the wealth which has been created by many generations of their ancestors, should be consumed by people… who are a security risk and whose desire it is not to integrate but to destroy European culture?” — Andrej Babis, candidate for prime minister of the Czech Republic.

A “politically incorrect” billionaire businessman opposed to further EU integration is on track to become the next prime minister of the Czech Republic.

Andrej Babis, a Slovak-born former finance minister who has been sharply critical of German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s open-door migration policy, is leading the polls ahead of general elections, set for October 20.

Babis, one of the country’s wealthiest people, presents himself as a non-ideological results-oriented reformer. He has pledged to run the Czech Republic like a business after years of what he calls corrupt and inept management. He is demanding a return of sovereignty from the European Union and rejects the euro; he argues that it would “be another issue that Brussels would be meddling with.” He has also said he plans to cut government spending, stop people from “being parasites” in the social welfare system, and fight for Czech interests abroad. Babis is often referred to as “the Czech Donald Trump.”

Babis’s anti-establishment party ANO (which stands for “Action of Dissatisfied Citizens” and is also the Czech word for “yes”) is centrist, technocratic and pro-business. ANO, which rejects political labels, has attracted voters from both left and right, pulling support away from the established parties. Babis has said that ANO aims to replace left and right with “common sense.”

A recent poll shows that support for ANO has grown to 30.9%, while the support for the Czech Social Democrats has dropped to 13.1%. The pro-Russian Communist Party of Bohemia and Moravia has 11.1%; the nationalist Civic Democratic Party 9.1%. TOP 09, the only openly pro-EU party, will not pass the 5% barrier of entry into Parliament; it is supported by only 4.4% of Czech voters.

Babis’s approach to the EU is pragmatic: “They give us money, so our membership is advantageous for us.” He does not want the Czech Republic to leave the EU, but he is opposed to the country joining the eurozone:

“No euro. I don’t want the euro. We don’t want the euro here. Everybody knows it’s bankrupt. It’s about our sovereignty. I want the Czech koruna, and an independent central bank. I don’t want another issue that Brussels would be meddling with.”

—A gunman opened fire outside a Saudi royal palace on Saturday, killing two members of the Saudi Royal Guard, an official Saudi news agency reported.

The gunman exited a vehicle and attacked the western gate of the Al-Salam Palace in Jeddah early Saturday morning, the Saudi Press Agency reported, citing the security spokesman for the Interior Ministry. Three other Guard members were wounded, and the gunman was killed at the scene, the report said.

The ministry identified the attacker as Mansour bin Hassan bin Ali bin Al Fahid al-Amri, a 28-year-old Saudi national, the report said.

Both books are aimed at 3-6 year-olds. The first book is about “Asli, who has never been to Somalia, but now she is going there with her father to meet her four grandmothers”. Swedish children, evidently, are supposed to learn that the Islamic practice of polygamy — illegal in Sweden — is completely normal.

Swedish libraries are evidently not concerned that books normalizing the misogynist practices of Islamic polygamy and covering women from top to toe, aimed at Swedish toddlers and children, might also be considered “offensive”, not to mention criminal.

How curious, then, that the Swedish government laments Nazi marches in the streets of Gothenburg, yet is happy to spend large sums of Swedish tax payer money on those who agree with the Nazis on the streets of the Middle East.

The country that censors “offensive” words from children’s books — Swedish publishers and libraries have censored, among others, the classic Astrid Lindgren books about Pippi Longstocking — has apparently found politically correct replacements.

Farfar har fyra fruar (“Grandad Has Four Wives”) and Mormor är inget spöke (“Grandma Is Not a Ghost”), two books written by the Swedish author Oscar Trimbel, were featured at the book fair in Gothenburg recently. Both books are aimed at 3-6 year-olds. The first book is about “Asli, who has never been to Somalia, but now she is going there with her father to meet her four grandmothers”. Swedish children, evidently, are supposed to learn that the Islamic practice of polygamy — illegal in Sweden — is completely normal.

The second book, “Grandma Is Not a Ghost”, which features a drawing of a grandmother in a full-length jilbab on the cover, tells the story of “Omar, who meets his grandmother from Somalia. Omar wants to dress up as a ghost for Halloween and he wants his grandma to come along so that it will be spooky”. Apparently, Swedish children are supposed to learn that the jilbab, which covers a woman from head to toe, leaving only the face visible, is not a frightening ghost costume, but completely commonplace dress for women to wear.

Swedish libraries are evidently not concerned that books normalizing the misogynist practices of Islamic polygamy and covering women from top to toe, aimed at Swedish toddlers and children, might also be considered “offensive’, not to mention criminal. On the contrary: Stockholm Library had already ordered “Grandad Has Four Wives”.

After two Swedish news outlets wrote about the books, however, the author, Oscar Trimbel, announced that he will be taking “Grandad Has Four Wives” off the market. He gave no reason for his decision.

Political leaders across the Western world seem to have a clear set of priorities that we will not change, and therefore we must simply accept the problem.

There are several possible reasons for this, but the most likely is that they know that it is the policies of successive governments, including their own, that have caused such attacks to happen. If countries such as Canada, France and Finland had been more careful with their national security, these current attacks would not be happening.

In order to avoid the political repercussions that might follow any honest evaluation of our current situation, they seem to conclude, the only thing to be done is to pretend that terrorism is — like the weather — something that just happens to us, and that our principal problem is the bigotry of Europeans rather than another two women lying dead on our streets.

In Europe today, it is what goes unacknowledged and un-commemorated that reveals the trouble we are in.

There are plenty of public campaigns and calls by politicians to demonstrate “awareness” of things that are either non-existent problems or second-order problems. Earlier this year, for instance, the President of Austria came up with an eye-catching initiative. Addressing the ban on women wearing full-face coverings in public places, Alexander van der Bellen, the former leader of the Green Party, said:

“If this real and rampant Islamophobia continues, there will come a day where we must ask all women to wear a headscarf — all — out of solidarity to those who do it for religious reasons.”

That day has not yet come. Non-Muslim women across Austria have not yet all been asked to wear the headscarf in solidarity with Muslim women who wear the headscarf. But it is possible that they will be asked to do so in the near future, whenever the President of Austria or another senior figure decides that “Islamophobia” has become even more “rampant” and that this requires all the women of Austria to cover their heads. By contrast, after real and deadly attacks on women across Europe, nobody knows precisely what to do.

Recently in Marseille, two women, aged 20 and 21, were walking past the Saint-Charles train station. The women — named as Mauranne and Laura — were cousins, one a medical student, and the other a trainee nurse. A man stabbed both of them to death, while shouting “Allahu Akbar” before each assault. This man — who was shot dead by police — is believed to hold a number of identities, including a Tunisian passport in the name of one Ahmed H, born in 1987.

The attack in Marseille is reminiscent of a number of attacks in Europe in recent years, not least the murder in August of two women and the wounding of eight others in the Finnish city of Turku. The perpetrator of that attack was a 22-year-old Moroccan, Abderrahman Bouanane, who had lied about his age, identity and asylum claims when he had arrived in Finland a year earlier.

After Turku, nothing changed. In the same way nothing will change after Marseille. On the same day that the latest two young women were butchered on the streets of France, an Islamist carried out an attack in Canada. In Edmonton, a 30-year-old Somali refugee stabbed a police officer and mowed down pedestrians with a van. An ISIS flag was subsequently found in the perpetrator’s car. In response to the atrocity, the Canadian Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau, released a statement, saying:

“We cannot — and will not — let violent extremism take root in our communities. We know that Canada’s strength comes from our diversity, and we will not be cowed by those who seek to divide us or promote fear.”

On October 1, a Muslim man of North African descent in his 30s arrived at Saint-Charles station in Marseille with one purpose in mind – to murder as many people as possible in the name of Islam. His first victim, a 20-year-old medical student from Marseille never stood a chance. The assailant lunged at her with a knife whose blade measured 8 inches, and stabbed her repeatedly while screaming “Allah Akbar.” He fled the scene but returned shortly thereafter to claim his second victim, a 21-year-old trainee nurse from Lyon. According to sources, one of the victims also had her throat slit.

The cold-blooded and depraved murder of the two young women failed to satiate terrorist’s lust for blood. After murdering his second victim, he ran toward soldiers patrolling as part of Operation Sentinelle, who shot him dead. In Western Europe, this is the new normal but the situation is particularly acute in France, which has experienced a rolling wave of terrorism since 2012. The country currently resembles an armed camp with the deployment of thousands of soldiers and police armed with automatic weapons, patrolling sensitive locations. But apart from increased security, France appears unable or unwilling to do more to counter the threat.

The Marseille slaughter could have easily been prevented but French authorities imbibed with a combination of political correctness, laziness and just plain stupidity, allowed it to occur. The terrorist who committed the gruesome attack was known to law enforcement. He was a recidivist whose rap sheet included a laundry list of petty crimes. In fact, just days before the attack, he was arrested for shoplifting but inexplicably released despite the fact that he possessed at least seven fake identities. The man, who informed the police that he was homeless, had given them a Tunisian passport in the name of Ahmed H, born on November 9, 1987 at Bizerte. But a quick fingerprint check would have revealed that he was lying through his teeth. Unfortunately, the fingerprint verification was performed after the Marseille slaughter.

French law enforcement officials attempted to deflect responsibility by claiming that the man had no known terrorist ties and that shoplifting offenses generally result in a police report and a court summons to appear at a later date. The proffered excuse is disingenuous at best. For years, French law enforcement officials have been cognizant of the nexus between criminal activity and radical Islamic terrorism. Several well-researched and detailed studies have confirmed this interconnection. In fact, as many as 80% of those who have committed terrorist attacks in the UK, France, Belgium, Germany and elsewhere in Western Europe in the name of Islam have criminal records with lengthy rap sheets that include drug dealing, petty larceny, assault and identity theft.

As noted, the terrorist who committed the Marseille outrage was a serial shoplifter and an identity thief. Khalid Masood, the UK terrorist who carried out the Westminster car-knife attack in March had a number of convictions for causing Grievous Bodily Harm (GBH) possession of offensive weapons and public order offenses. Kobili Traore, the Muslim man who brutally beat elderly Jewish pensioner Sarah Halimi, while yelling Islamic and anti-Semitic slogans, and then proceeded to throw her out of a third-floor window to her death had spent several years in prison for acts of aggravated violence and drug dealing. Amedy Coulibaly, the terrorist who stormed the Hypercacher kosher supermarket in Paris killing four, had previously been jailed for dealing in stolen goods, drug trafficking and robbery. Brothers Ibrahim and Salah Abdeslam, who were part of the gang that perpetrated the deadly Paris attacks in November 2015, were drug users and traffickers. The bar the duo owned in Molenbeek, a district of Brussels, was shut down by police for being a drug den.

Because Germany had committed genocide, it was impregnated with self-hatred and a rejection of its own identity. Germany turned to European construction and tried to define itself as European, in order not to call itself German.

A gradual replacement of the non-Muslim population with a Muslim population is taking place. Forty percent of children under five and born in Germany today have foreign roots.

The demographer Michael Paulwitz wrote a year ago that unless the current trends are reversed, Germans will become a minority in their own country, possibly in fifteen to twenty years.

Germany’s federal elections were supposed to lead to the triumph of Angela Merkel. Their results were rather different from what was anticipated. Merkel’s “victory” looks like a disaster: the Christian Democratic Alliance (CDU-CSU) won 33% of the vote — 9% less than four years ago, its worst result since 1949. The Social Democratic Party (SPD), which governed the country with Merkel during the last four years, lost more than 5%, and fell from 25.7 % to 20% of the vote — the worst result in its history. Alternative for Germany (AfD), a conservative nationalist party born in 2013, obtained 12.6%, and will enter in the Bundestag for the first time. Die Linke, the Marxist left, received 9%. As neither the SPD nor Die Linke will participate in the next government, and as AfD is radically opposed to the policies pursued by Merkel, she has only two possible partners: the libertarian Free Democratic Party and The Greens: both of whose positions on most subjects seem incompatible.

Angela Merkel will remain Chancellor, but by default, and mostly because there was no other real choice: six months ago, two-thirds of the German population wanted her to be replaced. Only 8% wanted her to remain in her post. Martin Schultz, former President of the European Parliament, who was the SPD candidate, did not offer anything different and led a lackluster campaign.

If Merkel succeeds in forming a coalition, it will be a precarious and unstable assemblage that will keep Germany on the verge of paralysis and make the country the sick man of 21st century Europe.

Germany actually already is a sick country, and Angela Merkel is part of the sickness.

In 1945, Germany was in ruins. It rebuilt itself and gradually became Europe’s leading economic power. While regaining strength, it did not assert itself politically and remained discreet, humble, repentant, silently shameful. Because of its role in the war, it was reluctant to recreate an army when NATO powers asked it to rebuild one; instead, it adopted a general position of appeasement that led to “Ostpolitik”, a policy of rapprochement with the communist East and the Soviet Union.

Because nationalism had led to National Socialism, Germany rejected any form of nationalism. Because Germany had committed genocide, it was impregnated with self-hatred and a rejection of its own identity.

Germany turned to European construction and tried to define itself as European in order not to call itself German.

This process lasted until the fall of the Berlin Wall and the reunification of the country. Reunification was widely perceived in Germany as the fruit of humility and discretion.

Angela Merkel, who had seemed to embody a successfully reunified Germany, inherited this process when she became Chancellor in 2005.

Malfunctions had already begun to surface. The German economy remained prosperous, but poverty was increasing (in 2005, 17% of Germans were officially poor and earned half of the national average income) and the number of working poor was growing.

The birth rate was extremely low. It had started to decline in 1967, and rapidly fell to 1.5 children per woman. The population, in general, was aging.

Germany began to bring in Turkish migrants to compensate for the lack of manpower. By 2000, the number of migrants had reached 3.5 million.

Importing Muslim migrants also brought a slow Islamization of the country. In the main cities, mosques were built. Koranic schools were opened. Islam was integrated into public school curricula.

Merkel constantly sought consensus and worked with the Social Democrats for eight of the twelve years she spent as the head of the government.

Germans seemed to accept this arrangement until she decided to open the borders of Germany to a huge wave of refugees and migrants from the Middle East in August 2015. More than 1.5 million unvetted people entered the country; most were young men entitled to family reunification.

Claims that refugees would assimilate without major problems started colliding with reality. Rapes multiplied. Violence escalated.

In 2016, almost half the crimes in Berlin were committed by recent migrants to the country Jihadist networks took shape. Terrorist acts started to take place. Muslim anti-Semitism led to attacks on synagogues. The costs of welfare rose sharply.

Merkel expressed no regret. She did not even have second thoughts after the elections: she said that if she had to open the borders of the country again, she would do it. She tried to impose her decisions on immigration on the reluctant European countries of Hungary, the Czech Republic and Poland. She is still trying.

Shame is still present in the minds of million of Germans, but fading away. A few years ago, a survey showed almost 70% of Germans were angered at still being held responsible today for crimes against Jews. Roughly 25% of people surveyed agreed with the statement: “Many Jews try to use Germany’s Third Reich past to their advantage”. Recent polls shows that between one-third and one-half of Germans view Israel as the political equivalent of Nazi Germany. The German government now regularly pretends to give lessons on morality to Israel, but never criticizes terrorist leaders such as Mahmoud Abbas.

Germany remains in a position of appeasing, securing and strengthening economic ties with rogue regimes such as Iran. The German army is so ill-equipped that during exercises instead of weapons, it uses broomsticks. Polls show that the German population now think that the main danger to world peace does not come from Iran or North Korea, but from the United States. Germany is today the most anti-American country in the Western world . Stern, Germany’s most popular news weekly magazine, recently put on its cover an image of Donald Trump performing a Nazi salute while draped in the American flag.

Economic efficiency is low. The German economy is essentially an industrial economy and not adapted to the digital age. Investment in GDP has declined; innovative activity is weak; productivity stagnates. Since 2008, annual productivity growth has been only 0.5%. The planned closure of German nuclear power plants in the name of “protecting the climate” raises wholesale electricity prices, while German households and businesses bear the financial burden of paying among the highest electricity costs in the developed world. Unskilled immigrants from the Muslim world cannot replace skilled Germans who retire or pass away. The number of poor people continues to increase. The capacity for receiving immigrants has reached its limits; living conditions in many shelters have become substandard: floors are not cleaned regularly and are soiled for days with blood, urine, feces, and invasion of cockroaches are frequent. The German Commissioner for Immigration recently said that only a quarter to a third of the refugees who settled in Germany could enter the labor market. The others will have to rely on government benefits for the rest of their lives.

Diseases that were nearly eradicated, such as tuberculosis, made a comeback. Vaccines did not exist as Europeans had stopped making them.

The median age in Germany is now 46.8. A gradual replacement of the non-Muslim population with a Muslim population is taking place. Forty percent of children under five, born in Germany, have foreign roots. Since 2005, the population of new arrivals has increased by 24%, while the native population has decreased by 5%.

Demographers say that unless the current trends are reversed, Germans will become a minority in their own country, possibly in fifteen to twenty years.

Nothing at the moment indicates that the trends will reverse.

Most of the German press is permeated with political correctness. Newspapers and magazines support multiculturalism, and do not talk about the most urgent problems facing the country: anemic economic growth, population ageing, and Islamization. Many journalists, professors and writers say that German culture does not exist. When books criticizing Islam may become best sellers, their authors are immediately demonized. Deutschland schafft sich ab (“Germany Abolishes Itself”) was an enormous success in 2010, but its author, Thilo Sarrazin, was immediately treated as a “racist” and pushed towards the margin of all political debates. Rolf Peter Sieferle, a former counselor of Angela Merkel, wrote several articles describing the self-destruction of Germany. “A society that can no longer make the difference between itself and the forces that dissolve it lives morally beyond its means,” he said in 2015. Insulted and rejected by those with whom he used to work, he committed suicide in September 2016. A collection of his notes was published after his death, Finis Germaniae (“The End of Germany”).

The Alternative for Germany (AfD) political party promises to “shake off the Bundestag”. The 12.6% of the vote it received will undoubtedly give it a voice. Its leaders are treated by the media and other political parties as the incarnation of the devil. Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel warned against the entry of “real Nazis” into the parliament . A leader of the far-left Die Linke party asked: “Have we not learnt the lessons from the war?”. Jewish leaders are scared: Dr. Josef Schuster, president of the Central Council of Jews in Germany said that AfD uses strategies generally used by aspiring “fascist dictatorships.”

The AfD party is not Nazi, however. Its members rather seem to fear that Germany and Germans will disappear under the weight of Islam. The Nazis were anti-Semitic, militarist, socialist, and desired to conquer. The AfD is not anti-Semitic, not militarist, not socialist, and does not want to conquer other countries. Jewish leaders in Germany are frightened because they think that if the AfD is hostile to one minority, the Muslims, it could grow hostile to other minorities. They are probably wrong. There is no comparison between Muslims and Jews. The AfD has strongly supported Israel’s right to exist and Israel’s right to has to fight the Islamic threat against it.

Some AfD members have made controversial statements about German soldiers, and about the Holocaust Memorial in Berlin.

At the same time, the AfD is currently Germany’s most pro-Israeli party. It is also the only party that clearly foresees the very real risk of Germany sliding towards an Islamic sunset.

Is it possible for Germany to recover? We shall see. What is at stake here, however, is far more than Germany.