German Chancellor Angela Merkel has plummeted to record-low popularity ratings ahead of a regional election this weekend, amid growing speculation that she could be ousted within weeks. Angela Merkel could be toppled within weeks, after her CDU party sunk to record-low popularity levels. The poll rating came out ahead of a regional election this weekend in Hamburg. The all-time low poll performance suggests that the leadership crisis in Mrs Merkel’s Christian Democrat Union is taking its toll on the party. 

CNBC’s Annette Weisbach explained: “This is a record low popularity for the CDU and Angela Merkel. It could pose a severe problem for the party itself.

“Traditionally Hamburg is a stronghold of the SPD but falling to record lows is not positive for Merkel.

“The question is whether Merkel has to resign early to make room for someone new.

“But the SPD won’t stick to a grand coalition without Merkel on board.”

The crisis looks set to help her Social Democrat (SPD) coalition partners and the Greens in the Sunday vote, where the CDU had fallen to just 12 percent support.

Campaigning in Germany’s second-biggest city was suspended after a far-right shooting on Wednesday night that left 11 people dead in the western town of Hanau.

Experts believe that Mrs Merkel’s CDU may face a backlash from voters over the chaos that has engulfed the party.

Mrs Merkel’s planned successor Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer plunged the CDU into disarray by deciding to stand down two weeks ago. 

This decision has sparked a leadership contest for the new CDU chairman. 

An increasing number of German politicians believe that Mrs Merkel should step aside so that the next chairman “won’t constantly be in her shadow” according to CNBC. 

However, there is no parliamentary majority for a replacement and many are concerned over instability.

express.co.uk/news/world/1245544/Angela-Merkel-CDU-Germany-poll-Hamburg-election-news-latest

On the sidelines of his speech on Islamist “separatism” in Mulhouse, the president was photographed right next to a woman in violation of the law of 2010.

The contrast is striking. Traveling to Mulhouse (Haut-Rhin) to discuss the theme of Islamist “separatism” – Macron’s way of defining ethnic communities – the French leader was photographed in a situation totally out of sync with the substance of his speech.

Indeed, while he was questioned by the press in the middle of a crowd in the middle of the street, the President of the Republic did not seem to notice that a Muslim woman, with her face entirely veiled, stood right next to him, in flagrant violation of the law of 2010 on the wearing of a religious Islamic veil.

It is a disastrous image for a head of state who nevertheless came to Mulhouse in order to reaffirm his will to fight political Islam. Worse still, the President of the Republic was being particularly lax by not acting against an legal offense.

Since 2010, legislation adopted under the mandate of Nicolas Sarkozy prohibits the concealment of a face in public spaces. “No one may, in public space, wear an outfit intended to conceal their face,” Article 1 notes. It is an offense punishable by a second class fine, which may be replaced or supplemented by a citizenship course.

This photo obviously quickly ignited social networks, and triggered the anger of many Internet users. Amine El-Khatmi, president of the Republican Spring, estimated that this image “will overshadow everything else”.

The essayist Céline Pina believes that an “executive determined to fight against Islamism is an executive who refuses this kind of provocation”. Pina added: “Otherwise there remains the weakness of words in the face of the shock of photos.”

For the LR deputy Guillaume Larrivé, this is “a sad summary, in pictures, of the resignation of the State in the face of Islamist conquest”.

freewestmedia.com/2020/02/21/macron-photographed-next-to-a-fully-veiled-woman/

By Andrea Widburg

On Thursday, news broke that, at President Trump’s request, Richard Grenell, who is currently the U.S. Ambassador to Germany, will become the acting Director of National Intelligence (“DNI”), with eventual confirmation in that position. This is great news because Grenell is intelligent, proactive, effective, and extremely pro-American. Leftists, however, are horrified not just because it shows that Trump is not a homophobe, but because a gay man openly sides with Trump’s constitutionally correct belief that he, not the Deep State, controls American foreign policy and national security goals.

In September 2017, Trump nominated Grenell to serve as his ambassador to Germany. Grenell was confirmed in April 2017, with Mike Pence swearing him in. One can only image Buttigieg’s horror that Pence simultaneously managed to retain his principled support for heterosexual marriage, while nevertheless working with, respecting, and treating with dignity those who do not conform to his views.

During his tenure in Germany, Grenell was rock solid in his support for the Trump administration. He gave German companies notice to cease doing business in Iran which was perceived as an insult, rather than taken as a friendly warning to get out before Trump reinstated the sanctions that have been decimating the Mullahs’ economy.

Grenell sent more shockwaves through the internationalist political class when he stated, “I absolutely want to empower other conservatives throughout Europe, other leaders.” The German establishment, which is doing its best to wipe out liberty-based conservativism from Europe, was outraged. Grenell further angered the German establishment when he called out its fake news, which routinely denigrates America and Americans.

One of the best things Grenell did was to insist that Merkel accept Jakiw Palij back into Germany. Palij had served as a Nazi guard in a labor camp and, when he was identified, Germany refused to take him back. Grenell changed that:

President Donald Trump, who grew up in the New York borough of Queens, where Palij has lived for nearly seven decades, instructed Richard Grenell, his ambassador to Germany, to make resolving the case a priority.

“I felt very strongly that the German government had a moral obligation and they accepted that,” Grenell said at the U.S. Embassy in Berlin on Tuesday.

Anyone who can make the Germans stop talking about their moral high ground and actually behave morally is a very good man.

Grenell also worked closely with Trump to pressure nations that make homosexuality illegal to reverse that policy. It’s no wonder that the left hates Grenell, for he reveals that the Democrat power structure doesn’t care about any particular victim group. It cares only about the political power it can obtain by manipulating groups it designates as victims. Nothing shows this fraud more than when someone says (a) I’m not a victim and (b) Trump is more helpful to the truly downtrodden.

With Grenell’s appointment to a domestic position as DNI, the left’s sweaty anxiety is escalating. New York Magazine’s Intelligencer calls his appointment downright “scary”.

And why is Grenell scary? Because he supports Trump’s belief that he has a constitutional right to run the government, a right that’s not vested in the permanent Democrat Deep State, that’s why.

Of course, that’s not how Heather Hurlburt sees it. National Intelligence is bigger than the president and the Constitution. It can only be handled safely by a left-leaning Deep State (emphasis added to highlight the most laughable language):

The president has made it clear, again and again, that he seeks to remake the national security infrastructure so that it does his bidding and promotes his ends. He does not recognize the idea —sacred to national security professionals — of a higher national interest to which even a president must subordinate her or himself. 

[snip]

Apparently the many Republican senators who created the director of National Intelligence position in order to have a senior, impartial leader enabling U.S. intelligence agencies to speak with one, non-politicized voice, also think it is fine to have a president who openly and repeatedly turns the tools of intelligence, law enforcement, and national security to his personal ends.

How dare President Trump appoint a conservative gay man to help him exercise his constitutional responsibility to run America’s foreign policy and national security?! Not only is this an insult to the permanent Deep State, it reminds everyone that Trump is no homophobe.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/02/trump_appoints_richard_grenell_acting_director_of_national_intelligence.html

The channel RTL reports:

In Hanau, Hesse, ten people were killed by gunfire. The suspected perpetrator, Tobias Rathjen, is also dead. The 43-year-old was found dead in his apartment this morning. According to RTL information, the police brought the perpetrator’s father, Hans-Gerd Rathjen, out of the apartment unharmed. He was routinely questioned, as reported by the magazine “Der Spiegel”. Contrary to previous reports, the 72-year-old is not a member of the Green Party, but was on the Green Party’s candidate list a few years ago.

rtl.de/cms/schuesse-in-hanau-polizei-holt-vater-des-mutmasslichen-taeters-aus-der-wohnung-4490720.html

Despite their control and aggressive exploitation of the media, liberal social engineers still have work to do when it comes to instilling the proper attitude toward Muslim colonists in Europe. Watch in horror as this poor guy is expected to wait in line like a mere infidel:

Once Muslims achieve majority status, no one will be so Islamophobic as to expect them to wait in line behind those dhimmis who are allowed to live.

moonbattery.com/muslim-oppressed-on-video/

The Swedish news site Samhällsnytt published a video clip on Wednesday which showed a Swedish girl being severely abused and beaten by a group of people.It is currently unclear where the brutal beating took place. According to reports, the video was filmed in early February and uploaded by a “Hussein” on the popular social media platform Snapchat.The video shows several people stomping on and beating a lone girl all over her body. While the beating is taking place, the person who is most likely filming yells “kill her wallah” (wallah is Arabic for I swear to Allah).Furthermore, the same person encourages the savage attackers to “fuck up the ribs” and “stomp the ribs” on the girl.The video has gone viral in Sweden and both the right and the left are horrified by it, only for different reasons.The right asks how much more violence and hatred the country can take, and when will those who are in power take real and effective measures against it?Meanwhile, the left asks how the right can be so evil to even share the video and as a result spread hatred towards migrants.As an example, Social Democrat Oskar Magnusson, who is a political expert with the Interior Minister and responsible for the police authority, writes: “The video that SD spreads in its channels is disgusting. But SD spreads it anyway, to fuel hatred between different groups in society. This party is M and KD prepared to shape Sweden’s future with.”To Magnusson’s statement, Moderate MEP Hanif Bali replied: “His first reaction to a video where a young girl is beaten to pulp with life-threatening violence is to warn of political coalitions that risks making him unemployed Disgusting is right.”In two more tweets, Bali adds: “Girls who humiliate and group assault other girls as “whores” is an increasing phenomenon. But the victims are secondary to these people – important is to signal against SD. And M and KD of course.”“Talked about this phenomenon earlier. S’s loyalty lies not with the victims of the ghettoization, in fact, they don’t give a shit about them, especially if they’re migrants.“The victims are only interesting as tools for wokes to signal their virtuousness to other wokes.”

voiceofeurope.com/2020/02/new-swedish-video-gang-stomp-girl-on-the-head-while-photographer-yells-kill-her-wallah/

The German authorities have been infiltrated, in many ways. On the one hand, by civil servants from different backgrounds, who have long since stopped caring about everything. They are demotivated and are waiting for their pensions – or for the next political change. On the other hand, by multicultural criminals who simply take everything they are offered on a silver plate: For example, formally legal residence permits that fetch a high price on the black market.

In Berlin, a 36-year-old Bosnian employee of the municipal office has now been arrested, who in addition to being a citizen of Bosnia-Herzegovina also holds a German passport. She is accused of having sold residence permits for 5000 euros each. Police found 28,000 euros in cash in her apartment. A 43-year-old Pakistani who is suspected of being the head of the gang that traded in residence permits was also arrested. According to a press release by the police, the accused are suspected in at least seven cases of having “jointly and collaboratively manipulated and organised passports on behalf of foreign ‘clients’ in such a way that previously stolen blank residence permits could be provided with pseudo-legal residence permits by the accused employee of the municipal office”. The residence permits in question here allow the holder to stay in Germany for an unlimited period of time. They are the first step towards the acquisition of German citizenship, which the holder can apply for after a few years.

According to a report in the newspaper “Welt”, the Berlin administration alone has so far been missing about 20,000 blank residence permits.

Rather reluctantly, the Berlin Senate had admitted the loss of the documents in July 2019 in response to a request by the AfD faction, stating that 1,500 copies of the papers that have disappeared since 2017 had been seized by the police in recent years. “A further 330 documents have so far been found in the case of (attempted) illegal entry and other abusive uses in the Federal territory,” the Senate’s statement states.

pi-news.net/2020/02/auslaender-im-staatsdienst-verkaufen-aufenthaltstitel/

At least eleven people were shot dead in the German city of Hanau, located near Frankfurt, on Wednesday night.

Deutsche Welle reported that the shooter opened fire at a shisha bar in Hanau’s downtown, killing three people.

He then drove to the neighborhood of Kesselstadt and opened fire at the second shisha bar, where five people died.

German police said early Thursday morning that the man suspected of carrying out the shooting has been found dead at his home.

Police said in a tweet Thursday that officers also found another body at the same address. No details were released on the other person.

The motive for the incident is not yet clear.

Germany has been on a high level of alert due to a series of terrorist attacks in the country in recent years, including a 2016 attack on a Christian market in Berling in which 12 people were killed by an Islamic State (ISIS) terrorist who rammed into a crowd of civilians.

In January, six people were killed and another two wounded in a shooting in the southwestern German town of Rot am See. Police said they believed that incident was “family drama” and not an act of terrorism.

http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/276240