Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, the intended successor to Chancellor Angela Merkel as leader of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), has announced her intentions to step down as party leader.

Ms Kramp-Karrenbaurer, known as AKK in Germany, made her announcement Monday during a press conference saying that she did not want to run for Chancellor of Germany in the next federal election and that she would also resign as leader of the CDU, Bild reports.

The successor to Chancellor Merkel, who was voted party leader in December of 2018, claimed that there was a distinct lack of support for her among fellow party members and a poll released over the weekend showed only 15 per cent of Germans thought she was the right person for the job.

AKK is expected to remain on as party leader into the summer, with a new leadership race expected by December when the next CDU national party convention is held. She is also expected to remain defence minister, with Chancellor Merkel voicing her approval.

Reactions within the CDU to the announcement have been critical, most notably from former defence minister Volker Rühe who has also called for Chancellor Merkel to resign.

“Respect for the decision! However, we must not forget who suggested Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer to the post of party leader, who proposed her for it,” he said.

Wolfgang Bosbach, a noted conservative figure in the CDU, blamed the crisis in the state of Thuringia for the resignation of AKK, saying: “Without the events in Thuringia, it would not have come that far, I am certain.”

Thuringia’s regional government was placed into crisis after the populist Alternative for Germany, led by firebrand Bjorn Hocke, supported libertarian Free Democrat (FDP) candidate Thomas Kemmerich to be elected Minister-President, alongside the CDU.

The cooperation between the AfD and the CDU was the first-ever and caused nationwide condemnation across the mainstream political spectrum. Kemmerich was forced to resignjust 24 hours after his election.

Former leader of the Social Democrats Sigmar Gabriel predicted that the announcement could have serious effects on the future of the grand coalition between the SPD and the CDU, saying: “I suspect it won’t be long before there will be new elections.”

Dietmar Gerhard Bartsch, chairman of the far-left party Die Linke in the Bundestag, went even further saying: “The CDU is currently not capable of governing. Stop that government.”

https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2020/02/10/merkel-successor-resign-party-leader-citing-lack-support/

Last weekend, members of the Wenden fire brigade were shocked to discover that the St. Florian chapel on the cycle path between Wenden and Altenhof was again the target of vandalism. Between Saturday and Sunday, unknown persons threw stones, slate-plates and other objects at the furnishings in the chapel, causing material damage of about 150EUR. Unfortunately, this incident is one of a number of similar cases of damage to property that have occurred in Wenden in recent weeks.

presseportal.de/blaulicht/pm/128090/4516776

Robberies against children and young people are becoming more common and more serious in Sweden, according to the police. Many victims also dare not report the crimes because they are afraid of retaliation.

Susanne Thonberg, a police inspector in Haninge, outside Stockholm, states that many youth robberies involve genuinely criminal elements, Sveriges radio reports.
“They don’t just rob, they bully their victims as well. They force them into the woods and pee on them,” Thornberg told the broadcaster.
In recent years, robberies committed against youths have increased in Sweden. In 2019, 2,500 robberies were reported against children under the age of 18. Haninge, a municipality that has been particularly plagued by such robberies, has seen a significant uptick in these types of crimes in the last 1.5 years.
After being robbed, many victims are traumatized. Following the traumatic event, they are often afraid to sleep alone and lose interest in things that they previously enjoyed.
Another issue that the police have noticed is that few youth victims dare to file a report and testify after a robbery.
“Many youths don’t want to contact, or cooperate with the police because they are afraid of reprisals. They get accused of snitching, so many don’t want to be involved,” said Thonberg.

voiceofeurope.com/2020/02/new-trend-foreigners-rob-swedish-kids-before-peeing-on-them/

The Italian Navy is heading for Cyprus: the frigate Virginio Fasan in the waters of Nicosia is a sign of extreme interest in Mediterranean politics, given that it is the second time that an Italian war ship has stopped (within a few weeks) in a Cypriot port.

And it happens at the most critical phase of the internal power relations in the Mare Nostrum between Turkey and the EU.

The signal from the Italian and NATO forces is obvious. And it is no mystery that the Italian, French, Greek and Cypriot maneuvers in the sovereign waters of the island also have the meaning of a warning to Turkey, since the Italian Navy itself speaks, in the press release, of “activities, presence and surveillance of maritime spaces, in compliance with international law and to protect national interests”.

It is a sparse but eloquent statement since, in theory, it is sovereign waters of an allied country, surrounded by Italy’s commercial and strategic partners. Even so, ships are constantly sent to monitor this particular maritime sector.

The response stems from two needs. The first is to monitor the waters of the block in which Italian oil concern Eni operates, given that the gas from the Cypriot seabed is extremely important for Italian national interests.

But control stems above all from a need to curb the moves of Turkey, which for some time, have been present in the waters of Cyprus. And the eastern Mediterranean it is likely to blow up at any moment, given that Recep Tayyip Erdogan does nothing to hide his will to expand his country’s maritime borders. This was confirmed also by the agreement reached between Ankara and Tripoli for the new limit of the respective exclusive economic zones.

Europe, and especially the countries involved in Cypriot gas and the Levant basin, are watching these developments with great concern. Turkey has set its sights on the seabed of Cyprus and is above all concerned with preventing the East-Med pipeline – a project of fundamental importance for Israel, Cyprus, Greece and the European Union – to take shape.

The desire of Ankara is to extend its network of influence throughout the enlarged Mediterranean starting from Syria, the eastern Mediterranean and northern Cyprus, and it is clear that the European powers involved in this part of the sea are worried, especially because gas interests are an integral part of any country’s national strategy, also for southern European countries.

Clearly France and Italy do not have the same interests. And relations with Turkey are not the same. But the Mediterranean crisis has a significant impact on mutual relations, considering that France has a naval base in Cyprus, has a strong interest in the Cypriot fields, has strategic interests in Lebanon and Syria and in Libya it sides with the opponent of Turkey: Khalifa Haftar.

Italy, on the other hand, is in a rather uncomfortable position. The solid relations with Cyprus are paired with the necessary relations with Erdogan’s Turkey, with whom they share a very difficult coexistence in Tripoli and in the western part of Libya and intense commercial ties.

But the gas from the Nicosia block, where Eni has long ago started its explorations, is a key point on the Italian political agenda. And also the recent military orders of Egypt (which in fact undermine Paris) indicate the Italian will to emphasize its convergence with the anti-Erdogan blockade.

freewestmedia.com/2020/02/10/french-and-italian-war-ships-head-for-cyprus/

By Monica Showalter

If you need any proof about how little Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez knows about economics, take a look at who she cited as her maven in arguing for a four-day work week, always looking out for that “unwilling to work” constituency:

According to Fox News:

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., who holds a bachelor’s degree in economics from Boston University, had to correct herself Saturday evening after mixing up two “very different” economists during a lengthy Instagram discussion.

“UGGGH TYPO,” the freshman congresswoman wrote after confusing John Maynard Keynes, an early 20th-century British economist who theorized that government spending was linked to economic growth, with Milton Friedman, a free-market American economist and 1976 Nobel Prize winner, according to The Washington Examiner.Ocasio-Cortez mistakenly combined their names into “Milton Keynes.”

“I was just reading today about how in 1930, famed economist Milton Keynes predicted that by 2030 GDP and technology would have advanced so much that it would allow everyday people to work as little as FIFTEEN HOURS a week and provide for their families,” Ocasio-Cortez said while discussing the benefits of a four-day workweek with her Instagram followers.

Which is not the kind of “typo” you make when you’re an economics major and cite economists with household names. It’s the kind of mistake you make when you’re “unwilling to work.” And surprise surprise, she’d like us all to work like she does, and cut it to four days a week.

Maybe it’s just a confederation of stupidities, but it’s weird stuff because it’s also the name of a top-100 city in the United Kingdom.

It almost looks like a Freudian slip. Power Line’s John Hinderaker points out that the city’s name was in the news recently because it’s being used as a quarantine center for British citizens who’ve been exposed to the coronavirus. Maybe that was what was on her mind, it’s possible, but color me dubious she actually reads up on such measures abroad.

It’s also a city that’s pretty close to Oxford, a university town that’s full of far-leftists of the Jeremy Corbyn stripe. Milton Keynes in Buckinghamshire, a British county that abuts Oxfordshire and is driving distance to the university, making it home to more than a few lefty Oxford professors, although the county has conservative members of parliament. The only reason I know this is that I remember that from having gone to Oxford as a student for a year. Could Ocasio-Cortez have a link to that socialist bunch? Maybe. I’m keeping my antennae up on that one.

A third possibility is that Milton Keynes is a state-planned community, not as bad as some of them, but it’s not utterly farfetched to think she might have heard of and admired the place for that.

Except that she’s really, really lazy, same as Bernie Sanders, who got booted from his hippie commune in he 1970s for sheer sloth. That makes that last possibility a pretty unlikely one. She does, after all, not just chase business out of her district to keep the locals on the dole, her green new deal actually champions those who are “unwilling to work.”

It’s obvious she was one of those when she somehow scarfed up that economics degree from Boston University, whose economics program was last ranked by U.S. News & World Report at a respectable but not “tippy top” as she says, #23 in the nation.

Freudian slip or not, Ocasio-Cortez has shown a consistent ignorance of economics that’s well worse than even the average non-economics major.

John Hinderaker over at Power Line points out that even her knowledge of Keynes is a disaster – citing Keynes, perhaps she didn’t realize that Keynes was abig fan of income inequality.

Here is a credible economist’s assessment of her from last year, and it’s devastating. In “The Economic Illiteracy of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez,” published in Quillette, Jonathan Church writes:

First, her Green New Deal, which appears to be inspired by the highly-risky, nonsensical ideas of Modern Monetary Theory (MMT, which I have written about here). Instead of focusing on entitlement reform and addressing the demographics and rising health care costs which lie at the root of America’s looming debt crisis, the Green New Deal would “spend the U.S. into oblivion,” likely beyond anything that could have been imagined when President Reagan’s critics blamed his supply-side fiscal policies for increasing America’s debt load (as a percentage of GDP) during the 1980s.

Second, she demonstrated her F-grade economic literacy when tweeting about tax incentives and her opposition to Amazon’s attempt to establish offices in Long Island City. She subsequently claimed, “If we’re willing to give away $3 billion for this deal, we could invest those $3 billion in our district ourselves if we wanted to,” as if the $3 billion were a giveaway from funds already available in the tax coffers, rather than “$3 billion that would go back in tax incentives…only after we were getting the jobs and getting the revenue,” as New York City mayor Bill de Blasio (and fellow progressive) explained during an interview with NBC’s Meet the Press.

Third, in one high-profile PBS interview last year, she claimed that unemployment in America “is low because everyone has two jobs” and “people are working 60, 70, 80 hours a week.” She was subsequently chastened by Politifact, which pointed out that “[f]ewer than one in 20 employed Americans holds a second job of any type, and the people who might be working as much as 70 or 80 hours a week represent a tiny fraction of that tiny fraction.” Moreover, “[w]hen…[the government] determines the unemployment rate, a person is counted as employed as long as they have at least one job” (i.e. the U.S. government does not double-count jobs when people with multiple jobs report being employed).

It’s not just that she often gets facts wrong, or that her pie-in-the-sky idealism convinces her to take seriously MMT’s cavalier attitude about budget deficits. These can be expected from a political neophyte, and perhaps even forgiven. More astonishing is that her views garner so much attention on matters of economic significance despite how transparently her remarks make her sound as if she’s never taken an economics course.

It all raises questions about just how she got that Boston University economics degree at all. To date, she only made errors in her economics talk, and hasn’t said anything to date to suggest she has the slightest understanding of economics. The economics she cites are pure barstool regurgitations. We know now why she never landed an economics job after college – imagine someone this ignorant in a job interview for an economist position — not just at a Wall Street firm or academia, but even at some Sorosian NGO. It wouldn’t happen. Ocasio-Cortez’s knowledge is actually less than zero.

In a ridiculous defense of Ocasio-Cortez’s academic prowess published bySnopes, the apologist cites Ocasio-Cortez’s academic award, which was a Latino-based award. Could that be the indicator of how she got through college? It sounds like maybe she played the affirmative action rackets, not just to get the undeserved economics award but possibly to get the grades to pass college.

It goes to show that she’s not utterly without merit though: The one contribution to economics she has made is in that soft spot she has for those “unwilling to work.” Perhaps that was the basis of her economic credential then. Maybe Milton Keynes can give it to her.

americanthinker.com/

Hilal Mohamed, 22, Abdisalam Mohamad, 21, and their friend Roberto French, 22 have been convicted for raping a 16-year-old schoolgirl, after one threatened her with a machete, robbed her and held her captive.

The three defendants, were all found guilty of rape at Wood Green Crown Court on Friday, with one further convicted of robbery and false imprisonment against the same victim.

They will be sentenced at the same court on Thursday, March 19.

Jurors heard how the victim had travelled to London from Bristol on August 13, 2016, when French held a machete against her throat while he robbed her in front of the other defendants.

The 22-year-old then falsely imprisoned her in a residential block in Enfield, where she was forced by the defendants to perform oral sex on each of them.

Detective Sergeant Charlotte Carter, of the North Area Safeguarding Team, said:

“The victim and her family have shown tremendous strength and patience in supporting a prosecution, I would like to commend their courage, particularly in facing the defendants in court. It is due to their strength that three dangerous individuals have been convicted.

“I am hopeful that sentencing will reflect the severity of these offences and the trauma suffered by the victim.”

voiceofeurope.com/2020/02/uk-mohamed-and-mohamad-machete-robbed-gang-raped-and-held-school-girl-captive/