Borders Do Matter

GERMANY INTRODUCES BORDER CONTROLS

Berlin reluctantly following lead of other European nations

RT - MARCH 16, 2020 4 Comments 

IMAGE CREDITS: ALEXANDER HASSENSTEIN/GETTY IMAGES.

The spread of the deadly coronavirus epidemic has forced Germany to introduce travel restrictions and enhance control over people’s movements. But economic concerns are still high for Berlin.

On Monday morning, Germany imposed checks and suspended visa-free travel on its land borders with five nations: France, Austria, Switzerland, Denmark and Luxembourg. Poland, Belgium, the Netherlands and the Czech Republic have not been affected by the new restrictions so far.

From now on, foreigners crossing the border from any of the five nations in question must have “a valid reason to travel” or they will be denied entry to Germany, Interior Minister Horst Seehofer said as he announced the new measures.

“The spread of coronavirus is progressing very rapidly and aggressively,” he added, justifying the restrictions. “We have to assume that the peak of this development has not yet been reached.”

The control measures are not as draconian as they might seem at first glance. The restrictions mostly affect foreign tourists and holidaymakers travelling by road, since there is no information about any changes concerning international flights or railway services.

Germans can still come back regardless. “Of course, the German citizens have the right to return to their home country,” Seehofer noted. The same applies to foreigners with a residence permit in Germany.

Commuters and truck drivers trafficking goods through the border also enjoy a free pass, as long as they have valid documents issued by their employers.

“We are not prohibiting work,” the interior minister said, while Economy Minister Peter Altmaier assured concerned citizens that “we try to keep restrictions as limited as possible,” citing the need to avoid unreasonable hurdles in the movement of goods and economic activities.

EU Commission head and Germany’s former Defense Minister Ursula von der Leyen also seemed to be more concerned about the economy than healthcare. She warned about “thousands” of truck drivers stranded at the border because of new controls and said they could lead to replenishment problems for certain supermarkets.

“At the moment of crisis, it is of utmost importance to keep our common… market going,” she added.

The new measures are to remain in place “indefinitely” until the threat of coronavirus has passed, the German authorities said. Border closures are apparently still out of the question, however.

“We don’t close borders; North Korea does,” German Police President Dieter Romann, said, adding that his agency has enough staff to enforce effective border checks without resorting to any drastic measures.

Still, he admitted that the officers are also exposed to coronavirus infections, adding that there are four confirmed cases among police personnel, with a further 240 officers quarantined as a precaution.

Meanwhile, some of Germany’s neighbors have introduced much more stringent restrictions.

Denmark has closed all its borders, allowing only Danish nationals to enter.

Tourists are now stopped from entering the country.

The Czech Republic’s borders have been closed not only to all Germans, but also the Italians, Austrians and French.

Poland has closed its borders to foreigners for 10 days and suspended international flights and rail services for two weeks. However, it is still allowing entry to commuters, people with residence permits and goods traffickers.

Alex Jones reveals how the coronavirus outbreak is the perfect crisis for the globalists to use in order to create a totalitarian prison planet in a very short amount of time.

Why Israel Is Important To Jews

Jews once again play the ostrich in Germany

Jews celebrate the 70th anniversary of Israel's re-birth

By Bret Stephens

New York Times  Opinion Columnist

April 20, 2018

Adam Armoush is a 21-year-old Israeli Arab who, on a recent outing in Berlin, donned a yarmulke to test a friend’s contention that it was unsafe to do so in Germany. On Tuesday he was assaulted in broad daylight by a Syrian asylum-seeker who whipped him with a belt for being “yahudi” — Arabic for Jew.

The episode was caught on video and has caused a national uproar. Heiko Maas, the foreign minister, tweeted, “Jews shall never again feel threatened here.”

It’s a vow not likely to be fulfilled. There were nearly 1,000 reported anti-Semitic incidents in Berlin alone last year. A neo-fascist party, Alternative for Germany, has 94 seats in the Bundestag. Last Thursday, a pair of German rappers won a prestigious music award, given largely on the basis of sales, for an album in which they boast of having bodies “more defined than Auschwitz prisoners.” The award ceremony coincided with Holocaust Remembrance Day.

To be Jewish — at least visibly Jewish — in Europe is to live on borrowed time. That’s not to doubt the sincerity and good will of Maas or other European leaders who recommit to combating anti-Semitism every time a European Jew is murdered or a Jewish institution attacked. It’s only to doubt their capacity.

There’s a limit to how many armed guards can be deployed indefinitely to protect synagogues or stop Holocaust memorials from being vandalized. There’s a limit, also, to trying to cure bigotry with earnest appeals to tolerance. The German government is mulling a proposal to require recent arrivals in the country to tour Nazi concentration camps as a way of engendering a feeling of empathy for Jews. It doesn’t seem to occur to anyone that, to the virulent anti-Semite, Buchenwald is a source of inspiration, not shame.

All this comes to mind as Israel this week marks (in the Hebrew calendar) the 70th anniversary of its independence. There are many reasons to celebrate the date, many of them lofty: a renaissance for Jewish civilization; the creation of a feisty liberal democracy in a despotic neighborhood; the ecological rescue of a once-barren land; the end of 1,878 years of exile.

But there’s a more basic reason. Jews cannot rely for their safety on the kindness of strangers, least of all French or German politicians. Theodor Herzl saw this with the Dreyfus Affair and founded modern Zionism. Post-Hitler Europe still has far to fall when it comes to its attitudes toward Jews, but the trend is clear. The question is the pace.

Hence Israel: its army, bomb, and robust willingness to use force to defend itself. Israel did not come into existence to serve as another showcase of the victimization of Jews. It exists to end the victimization of Jews.

That’s a point that Israel’s restless critics could stand to learn. On Friday, Palestinians in Gaza returned for the fourth time to the border fence with Israel, in protests promoted by Hamas. The explicit purpose of Hamas leaders is to breach the fence and march on Jerusalem. Israel cannot possibly allow this — doing so would create a precedent that would encourage similar protests, and more death, along all of Israel’s borders — and has repeatedly used deadly force to counter it.

The armchair corporals of Western punditry think this is excessive. It would be helpful if they could suggest alternative military tactics to an Israeli government dealing with an urgent crisis against an adversary sworn to its destruction. They don’t.

It would also be helpful if they could explain how they can insist on Israel’s retreat to the 1967 borders and then scold Israel when it defends those borders. They can’t. If the armchair corporals want to persist in demands for withdrawals that for 25 years have led to more Palestinian violence, not less, the least they can do is be ferocious in defense of Israel’s inarguable sovereignty. Somehow they almost never are.

Israel’s 70th anniversary has occasioned a fresh round of anxious, if not exactly new, commentary about the rifts between Israeli and Diaspora Jewry. Some Diaspora complaints, especially with respect to religion and refugees, are valid and should be heeded by Jerusalem.

But to the extent that the Diaspora’s objections are prompted by the nonchalance of the supposedly nonvulnerable when it comes to Israel’s security choices, then the complaints are worse than feckless. They provide moral sustenance for Hamas in its efforts to win sympathy for its strategy of wanton aggression and reckless endangerment. And they foster the illusion that there’s some easy and morally stainless way by which Jews can exercise the responsibilities of political power.

Though not Jewish, Adam Armoush was once one of the nonchalant when it came to what it means to be Jewish in the 21st century. Presumably no longer. For Jews, it’s a painful, useful reminder that Israel is not their vanity. It’s their safeguard.

Sexual Assaults Continue In Germany

SEVERAL ARRESTED IN BERLIN, COLOGNE OVER SUSPECTED SEXUAL ASSAULT DURING NYE CELEBRATIONS

At least seven people were arrested for sexual assault in the German capital

RT - JANUARY 1, 2018 102 Comments 

IMAGE CREDITS: FRANK HERRMANN / GETTY.

28

0

1

Police have arrested several people in Berlin and Cologne over suspected sexual assault against women during New Year’s Eve celebrations, police and media say. Most of the suspects were young men from Syria and Afghanistan.

At least seven people were arrested for sexual assault in the German capital, police said, as cited by Die Welt newspaper.

The incidents took place during a New Year’s Eve festival at Berlin’s Brandenburg Gate area, which drew hundreds of thousands of spectators, accordingto the event’s organizers.

“Cases of sexual assaults were unfortunately reported during Welcome2018 events in Berlin. We do not tolerate such acts. Suspects were arrested,” Berlin police tweeted on Monday morning.

In most cases, women were “groped between their legs or their buttocks,” Thomas Neuendorf from the Berlin police press office told Ruptly. “The suspects were predominantly young men from Syria or Afghanistan,” he said.

Polizei Berlin Einsatz

✔@PolizeiBerlin_E

Bei den Veranstaltungen zu #Welcome2018 in #Berlin wurden bislang leider vereinzelt sexuelle Übergriffe gemeldet. Solche Taten dulden wir nicht!
Es wurden Tatverdächtige festgenommen. Wir haben zivile Kolleg. auf der #Festmeile, die gegen diese Taten vorgehen.

5:31 PM - Dec 31, 2017 · Berlin, Germany

•  195195 Replies
 
•  681681 Retweets
 
•  1,3481,348 likes

Twitter Ads info and privacy

In Cologne, nine women claimed to have been touched inappropriately during the celebrations, a police spokesman said on Monday, adding that three suspects were identified. German media reported that these three suspects were later arrested. The spokesman, however, noted that there were no incidents like those of the notorious New Year’s Eve celebrations in Cologne two years ago.

Police in Hamburg stated that they received “a very small number” of reports of sexual assaults during New Year’s Eve celebrations. Munich police have yet to assess the situation. “Experience shows that such a thing [sexual assault] often emerges only one or two days later,” a Munich police spokesman said.

Germany has witnessed a surge in sexually-motivated attacks during mass public events in recent years. On New Year’s Eve in 2015, a wave of sexual assaults, as well as thefts and robberies targeting women, swept through a number of German cities, including Dusseldorf, Hamburg, Frankfurt, and Stuttgart.

One of the largest incidents was reported in Cologne, where “heavily intoxicated” men of “Arab or North African” origin allegedly attacked local women en masse in the city center on New Year’s Eve. Investigators gathered evidence to prove there were over 1,500 criminal cases on New Year’s Eve, with more than 1,200 victims across the country, German media reported. Subsequent probes, however, have since stalled, as CCTV footage from the scene turned out to be of low quality, while the victims failed to identify their attackers.

In an attempt to curb sexually-motivated crimes, ‘safety areas’ for women were introduced in Berlin this year. Women subjected to sexual offences or who otherwise felt harassed during the celebrations were able to seek shelter in tents set up by the German Red Cross and report potential crimes there. The measure was met with criticism from the head of Germany’s Police Union, saying it implies that women celebrating outside the zone won’t be safe.

Sharia Law Spreading Throughout Europe.

• ABOUT US
• EVENTS
• EXPERTS
• AUTHORS
• DONATE
• ARCHIVES
• MEDIA CITATIONS
• CONTACT
• MOBILE WEBSITE

Europe's Cities Absorb Sharia Law by Giulio Meotti August 2, 2017 at 5:00 am https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/10754/europe-sharia-law Share460   Comment London Mayor Sadiq Khan banned advertisements that promote "unrealistic expectations of women's body image and health". Now Berlin is planning to ban images in which women are portrayed as "beautiful but weak, hysterical, dumb, crazy, naive, or ruled by their emotions". Tagesspiegel's Harald Martenstein said the policy "could have been adopted from the Taliban manifesto". The irony is that this wave of morality and "virtue" is coming from cities governed by uninhibited leftist politicians, who for years campaigned for sexual liberation. It is now a "feminist" talking point to advocate sharia policy. To paraphrase the American writer Daniel Greenfield, the irony of women celebrating their own suppression is both heartbreaking and stupefying. Within days after the Islamic State conquered the city of Sirte in Libya two years ago, enormous billboards appeared in the Islamist stronghold warning women they must wear baggy robes that cover their entire bodies, and no perfume. These "sharia stipulations for hijab" included wearing dense material and a robe that does not "resemble the attire of unbelievers". Two years later, Europe's three most important cities -- London, Paris and Berlin -- are adopting the same sharia trend. Paris has said au revoir to "sexist" ads on public billboards. The Paris city council announced its ban after the Socialist Mayor Anne Hidalgo said the move meant that Paris was "leading the way" in the fight against sexism. London Mayor Sadiq Khan also banned advertisements that promote "unrealistic expectations of women's body image and health". Now Berlin is planning to ban images in which women are portrayed as "beautiful but weak, hysterical, dumb, crazy, naive, or ruled by their emotions". Der Tagesspiegel's Harald Martenstein said the policy "could have been adopted from the Taliban manifesto". The irony is that this wave of morality and "virtue" is coming from cities governed by uninhibited leftist politicians, who for years campaigned for sexual liberation. There is a reason for this grotesque campaign banning these images. These cities host significant Muslim populations; and politicians -- the same who frantically are enacting mandatory multiculturalism -- want to please "Islam". It is now a "feminist" talking point to advocate sharia policy, as does Linda Sarsour. The result is that, today, few feminists dare to criticize Islam. It is happening everywhere. Dutch municipalities are "advising" their employees to not wear mini-skirts. There are women-only hours at Swedish swimming pools. German schools are sending letters to parents asking children to avoid wearing "revealing clothes". The first to suggest calling for a ban on posters or advertisements that "reduce women or men to sexual objects" was German Justice Minister Heiko Maas, a Social Democrat. "To demand the veiling of women or taming of men," said Free Democratic Party leader Christian Lindner, "is something known among radical Islamic religious leaders, but not from the German minister of justice." In 1969, Germany was overwhelmed by a debate on introducing into schools the "Sexualkundeatlas", an "atlas" of sexual science. Now the effort is to desexualize German society. The newspaper Die Welt commented: "Thanks to Justice Minister Heiko Maas we finally know why on New Year's Eve, at Cologne Central Station, about a thousand women were victims of sexual violence: because of sexist advertising. Too many eroticized models, too much naked skin on our billboards, too many erotic mouths, too many miniskirts in fashion magazines, too many wiggling rear-ends and chubby breasts in television spots. It is another step in the direction of a 'submission'". Instead of nipples and buttocks, Die Welt concludes, "should we urge the use of burqa or veil, as Mrs. Erdogan does?" The same German élites who suggest banning "sexist" billboards censored the crude details of the mass sexual assaults in Cologne. Meanwhile, a liberal Berlin mosque, which banned burqasand opened its door to gays and to unveiled women, is now under police protection after threats from Muslim supremacists. Europe's élites have adopted a double standard: they are proud to host an exhibit of a Christian crucifix submerged in urine, but quickly capitulate to Muslim demands to censor cartoons of the Islamic Prophet Mohammed. The Italian authorities went to great efforts to spare Iran's President Hassan Rouhani a view of nudity on ancient sculptures in the Capitoline Museums of Rome. The Western public appears fascinated by Islamic veils. Ismail Sacranie, a founder of Modestly Active, the manufacturer that designs burkinis, told the New York Times that 35% of their clients are non-Muslim. Aheda Zanetti, a Lebanese woman living in Australia who invented the burkini, claims that 40% of her sales are to non-Muslim women. The Western public, which has been romanticizing Islam, is apparently absorbing the pieties of Islamic law. The Spectator called it "a new puritanism" and "why some feminists make common cause with Islam". To paraphrase the American writer Daniel Greenfield, the irony of women celebrating their own suppression is both heartbreaking and stupefying. Europe might soon have to apologize to the Mayor of Cologne, Henriette Reker. She was criticized -- denounced -- for advising women to keep "at an arm's length" from strangers to avoid sexual harassment. If the West keeps on betraying the democratic value of individual freedom on which Western civilization is based, Islamic fundamentalists, like those who imposed burqas on Libyan women, will start imposing them on Western women. They may even begin with those feminist élites who first created the sexual revolution to emancipate women in the 1960s, and who are now infatuated with an obscurantist garment that hides women in a portable prison. If the West keeps betraying the democratic value of individual freedom, Islamic fundamentalists, like those who imposed burqas on Libyan women, will do the same to Western women. (Photo by Alexander Hassenstein/Getty Images) Giulio Meotti, Cultural Editor for Il Foglio, is an Italian journalist and author. © 2017 Gatestone Institute. All rights reserved. The articles printed here do not necessarily reflect the views of the Editors or of Gatestone Institute. No part of the Gatestone website or any of its contents may be reproduced, copied or modified, without the prior written consent of Gatestone Institute.