By Peter Skurkiss

Europe is sailing into a perfect storm involving China, Brexit, and America.  And this does not include Europe’s immigration problem and the populist uprising in member states. This year will be rough ride for Europe, but 2021 could be a true nightmare when all its problems coalesce. Here’s why: Phase I of the U.S.-China trade deal is a fait accompli. The agreement basically calls for China to purchase $200 billion more in American goods and services over the next two years. A big chunk of this ($32 billion) will in agriculture exports to China. The deal also starts to protect intellectual property and curtails currency manipulation. And unlike other trade agreements with China, this one has enforcement mechanisms with teeth should China renege on this or that aspect of the deal. In return, President Trump agreed to ease off on some tariffs which are in effect and hold off on other tariffs with which he has threaten China. This is a significant step in re-balancing the unfair terms of trade America has endured with China since the Clinton presidency. Assuming that China actually complies with this agreement, there will, however, be collateral damage to others. The math here is straightforward. If China buys more from the U.S. it will out of necessity buy less from others. Places from Brazil to Russia, to the European Union will see hits to their agriculture sector.  More critically still is the area of industrial goods. Europe will also come under heavy pressure as China tries to flood the European Union with manufactured goods to make up for what it lost in the U.S. And to make matters worse for Europe, as China loses market share in the American market, it will have fewer dollars with which to buy European products. It is problematic whether or not Europe has the will to stand up to the Chinese assault. The EU is a gaggle of countries with no unified voice. Its ranks can easily be split by a wily adversary which does not have Europe’s best interest at heart.  There are two other storm clouds of the horizon for Europe. One is Brexit itself.  With Brexit, which began on Jan. 31, the EU will lose its second-largest economy with which to trade with as well as a net contributor to its budget. This will enhance the strain between the prosperous northern countries and the the EU’s economic laggards in the south. France, the leader of the Mediterranean countries is already calling for Germany to open its pocketbook and subsidize others. The prudent Germans do not look kindly on such suggestions. With Britain gone, this situation will exacerbate the tension between the two core countries of the EU, Germany and France.  Also, while Great Britain was in the EU, it had been able to temper the worst bureaucratic instincts of Brussels. Now that moderating influence will be gone.  And the Brits added some muscle to Europe’s anemic military capabilities. That too will be gone., Then there’s America. For some time, President Trump has been railing against Europe for its unfair and outmoded trade arrangement with America. So far he has been tempered in his actions. Trump’s priorities were to first work out deals with South Korea, Japan, and Canada-Mexico, and of course, the big one, China. With those deals done, Europe is now next up at bat. Europe is a juicy target. It is even a bigger U.S. trading partner than China, running large trade surpluses with America. With its sagging economy, Europe needs access to the American market more than ever. This gives Trump leverage. France recently got a mild taste of what things could be like. Trump forced President Emmanuel Macron to bend a knee by postponing his proposed digital tax on U.S. firms. Trump did this by threatening to put 100 percent tariffs on French luxury goods like wine, cheese, and cosmetics. Sacré bleu! The priorities for Trump right now are still not trade with Europe. Trump is occupied with the impeachment circus and then the upcoming election. Once those are behind him, look for Peter Navarro, Director of Trade and Manufacturing Policy, and Wilbur Ross, Secretary of Commerce, to be turned loose on Europe. And once re-elected, there is little pressure Europe can put on Trump with targeted retaliatory tariffs as China tried.  When the Andrea Gail found itself in the middle of a perfect storm in the North Atlantic, the fishing boat went down with all crew members. That’s not being predicted for the European Union, but it will not escape undamaged in the coming next few years.

americanthinker.com/blog/2020/02/postbrexit_europe_is_sailing_into_a_perfect_storm.html#ixzz6ChATsONi

By Monica Showalter

Brexit goes through today, and Britain is finally independent, free from the clutches of the European Union. It’s a great event regardless of how it happens, but in this case, it was cool beyond description. 

It all ended with a pretty amazing flourish, one that told us a lot about both the European Commission and newly sovereign Britain itself. Chief Brexiteer Nigel Farage made his last speech before the European Commission, which was a great scolding and call to shut down the whole operation altogether, which was subversive enough. But he drove it even further. 

Here was the great final moment:

Farage and his buddies ended the whole thing by explicitly waving the British flag of sovereignty right in the faces of all the angry little European Commission eurocrats, even as they sputtered and cut off his mic. 

 Metaphor, anyone? It was the mother of all metaphors, a Britain that asserted its sovereignty in waving its symbolic flag as its soulless eurocrat masters got angry and tried to stop it, not on political grounds, not because they were afraid the other member states might follow, but on petty rules grounds, little administrative state foot-stamping, insisting on cookie-cutter order and obedience, no exceptions, in the face of a newly freed state that just asserted that it can do what it wants.

The ending was absolutely perfect. The mean librarian-looking woman of no memorable name repeatedly, humorlessly, ordering Farage and his allies to take his waved Union Jack flags down. No flags here! It came off as saying ‘no sovereignty, you’re all the EU’s slaves now. And she had no idea how bad she looked doing it, something that is sure to give other restless states of the E.U. some pause. As she cut off his mic, Farage continued demonstrating his country’s newfound sovereignty by laughing at her and refusing.  Sovereigns, after all, have flags. Vassal states do not.

It’s not the first time Farage has shown such sense of purpose. His preceding speech had it – here’s the whole thing here:

And remember his fierce speech to this same bunch of Eurocrats, telling them they laughed at him once but for that now got Brexit. That, too, was electrifying:

Farage not only has a stellar sense of the theatrical, he seems to understand the importance of creating memorable moments and understands how to do them. In a way the self-unaware eurocrate would never understand, he understands the meaning in his movement. That’s why his Brexit was so powerful – and is sure to redound to future acts of rebellion against this nasty, petty little eurocracy Britain broke away from.

americanthinker.com/blog/2020/01/brexit_nigel_farage_takes_britain_out_of_europe_with_a_stellar_flourish.html

On Thursday a 28-year-old Pakistani woman was found dead in an apartment in Vierschach. The heavily pregnant woman presumably became the victim of a violent crime, according to investigators. The 38-year-old husband of the woman, also a Pakistani citizen, is in custody due to the risk of escape. During interrogation, he refused to testify. The 38-year-old had made no statement regarding the death of his wife.She had been found dead in her apartment in Vierschach on Thursday morning. She showed symptoms of physical violence. The exact cause of death will be clarified by an autopsy in the coming days. A forensic doctor, however, assumed that she had suffocated to death. Due to the suspicion of murder and the existing risk of escape, the Pakistani was transferred to the Bolzano prison on Friday at around 5 a.m.

unsertirol24.com/2020/01/31/tote-von-vierschach-lebensgefaehrte-schweigt/

On Wednesday evening, police were called to the street Tschirchdamm in Brandenburg. There a young man is said to have approached two children. When the officers arrived on the scene, they were able to spot both the teenagers and the adult suspect. According to the girls, the suspect first grabbed them by the buttocks and then handled with a lighter in front of their heads. In addition, the man, in broken German and with gestures, had apparently made it clear to the girls that he wanted to set them on fire.The two girls were then handed over to their parents, where police officers listened to what happened. At the same time, the 22-year-old suspect, an Afghani, was taken into the custody of the Brandenburg Police Department by the police officers. After they had clarified his identity beyond any doubt and he was undergoing identification checks, he was released today. The criminal investigation department is now investigating sexual harassment and threats against the Afghan man.

polizei.brandenburg.de/pressemeldung/teenager-belaestigt-und-bedroht/1811101

Created in 2012, the Generation Identity movement “calls on youth to raise their heads in the face of the standardization of peoples and cultures” and to block the “tidal wave of massive immigration”.

As specialists in media operations, such as the blocking of the mountain pass in the Hautes-Alpes to symbolically prevent the passage of migrants or the premises of the NGO SOS Mediterranean, the movement has been imposing their themes in the public debate.

Identity Generation regularly makes the headlines because of its agit-prop operations, such as the occupation of the Poitiers mosque construction site, the deployment of a banner on the CAF in Bobigny or the “Defend Europe” operation at Col de l’Echelle in the Alps.

In the media, they are readily described as an “extreme right” movement. But they have refused the more or less infamous labels imposed by their enemies.

“We are also wary of university classifications, even if that reassures journalists,”one of the spokespeople told French weekly Valeurs Actuelles.

“We are simply identitarian because we consider that the absolute urgency consists in preserving our identity vis-a-vis the dangers which threaten it. This is the line that we hold and which allows us to bring together young French and Europeans from various horizons since our foundation in 2012.

“At the time, two strong events had marked our entry onto the political scene. First the ‘declaration of war’ addressed to the generation of deconstructors of May 68, which had met with great success and had been translated in several European countries. And then the occupation of the Poitiers mosque.”

Because the observation of the ravages of immigrant settlement is now widely shared, their objective is to constitute a bulwark against the migratory invasion and the erasure of identity and memory. This naturally requires the cessation of mass immigration and Islamization.

“We seek to draw attention to these subjects which we consider to be priority, to raise awareness among our people and bring out political proposals.

The spokesperson explained that the movement should move towards finding solutions. “We see ourselves as an anti-immigration lobby. Our main means of action are the ‘punch’ operations with strong media coverage, which move onlookers.”

Such peaceful operations generally target symbolic places or institutions but can take a wide variety of forms: occupation of buildings, creation of an artificial border in the Alps, chartering of a boat to counter the actions of pro-migrant NGOs in the Mediterranean, etc.

“Added to this is a more discreet but equally effective field work and local establishment to build a real community and pockets of identity resistance.”

Some observers in France have complained that “remigration” would be impossible since a large part of the non-Europeans today are French.

“It is a recurring objection that arises more from emotion than from reason. We must first reverse this postulate imposed by our adversaries: many of these non-Europeans are not French! Do we know for example that the rapper Maître Gims does not have French nationality and that others have never asked for it, precisely for identity reasons?”

The spokesman outlined that remigration will be a gradual process which must begin with the systematic expulsion of illegal immigrants, criminal aliens, jihadists, etc. “It will then no longer be necessary to renew the residence permits of foreigners who do not have French nationality and, at the same time, put in place a battery of incentive measures by removing a whole series of advantages that make France so attractive: social allowances and aids, judicial permissiveness and laxity, tolerance towards the practice of Islam, etc.”

By doing so, the Identitarians believe that many immigrants will then return home of their own free will. “It is therefore necessary to tackle each of these axes, by prohibiting for example the veil in public space, the construction of mosques and the halal, by establishing national preference in all areas.”

He added: “Remigration is the best way to avoid civil war. It must therefore be made desirable. Obama, during his two terms, expelled 1.5 million illegal immigrants from the United States. That didn’t stop him from being considered a progressive president.”

freewestmedia.com/2020/01/31/identitarians-remigration-best-way-to-avoid-civil-war/

Whether one considers the masses of Muslims who have been flowing into Europe as (primarily) economic refugees, proud hijra colonists “quietly” Islamizing the continent, or both, these newly-arrived votaries of Islam express an unabashed Islamic Jew-hatred. Their virulently anti-Jewish attitudes are consistent with the disproportionate three-fold increased rate of extreme anti-Semitism among Western European Muslims in general, relative to non-Muslims, just reported November 21, 2019 in the latest comprehensive Anti-Defamation League survey findings. Germany’s failed attempt to mollify this new Muslim immigrant animus toward Jews by “sensitivity” visits to Nazi-era concentration camp memorials demonstrates its deep-seated intractability.

“The spectacle of brutality on display at Sachsenhausen did not awe [Syrian Muslim] Jamo, a former photographer who had known daily violence in Syria. No matter the direct perpetrator of the violence Jamo had witnessed, the greatest cause of conflict in the region, he said, was Israel…’The Arabs think what Hitler did was a good thing, because he freed them from the Jews.’”

The depressing failure to lessen Jew-hating sentiments in these grassroots Muslims—where it counts—through Holocaust charnel house visits, has garnered little attention. Contrast that with the much-ballyhooed pilgrimage to Auschwitz by what was characterized as “the most senior Islamic leadership delegation” to visit the location of a Nazi German death camp. This interfaith junket, spearheaded by Saudi “reformist” secretary general of the Muslim World League (MWL), Mohammad bin Abdulkarim al-Issa, and the CEO of the American Jewish Committee (AJC), David Harris, took place four days before the 75th anniversary of the camp’s January 27, 1945 liberation.

Far less widely reported, Al-Issa’s Muslim delegation was on a broader Holocaust immoral equivalence, and Muslim proselytization tour to “several sites of injustice,” including Srebrenica, Bosnia. There, during 1995, a tit-for-tat massacre of Bosnian Muslims—bearing no relationship in either scale, or single-target, monomaniacal hatred to the Nazi Holocaust destruction of European Jewry–took place during a bloody civil war between the region’s Serbs and Muslims. Here is the al-Issa/MWL tours’ stated purpose, as described in Asharq Al-Awsat:

“The visit of the Islamic delegation confirms the Islamic values and asserts that Muslims condemn every criminal act. The Islamic leaders will visit the sites and affirm that Islam is a religion of mercy and fairness and that it is against all malicious practices, adding that this is not limited to Muslims, but involves everyone. A large number of senior scholars of the MWL participated in various efforts to explain Islamic justice in its related positions, during several visits, meetings, initiatives, and declarations. This was reflected in the positive image of Islam and Muslims against all forms of extremism and radicalization.”

Moreover, in Saudi Arabia, al-Issa, despite being dubbed the so-called “new face of Saudi Wahhabism,” is viewed with understandable skepticism by genuine Saudi reformers. Political scientist Stephane Lacroix, who studies Islamic authoritarianism within Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States, has noted,

“As one Saudi intellectual said: ‘How can one take Muhammad al-Issa’s statements seriously when Religious bookstores in Riyadh are full of books advocating the exact opposite?’”

Lacroix added this acid observation when referencing that statement: “Interview with a now jailed Saudi intellectual, January 2018.” Other imprisonments of dissident reformers by al-Issa’s powerful patron Muhammad bin Salman (MBS), Lacroix concludes,

“…makes MBS’s (and al-Issa’s) religious reforms look more like a public relations stunt than a genuine transformation. No such transformation can happen without an open and frank debate about the Wahhabi tradition—and this is precisely what MBS is not willing to have.”

Returning to al-Issa’s 1/23/20 Auschwitz junket, and unpacking his statements about the Holocaust, since 2018, demonstrates his rather odious expropriation of the Holocaust’s legacy for Muslim propaganda purposes.

Al-Issa’s putatively “landmark” January 25, 2018 letter to the Director of the U.S. Holocaust Museum, Sara Bloomfield, although decrying the Holocaust as “among the worst crimes ever,” was devoid of any reference to Jews as the victims, yet managed to emphasize, “True Islam is against these crimes.” Al-Issa added, mendaciously, and contra Islam’s Sharia mandates for all non-Muslims, and their historical application across 14 centuries until now, that “Islam has, through long centuries, coexisted with all religions, and respected the dignity of its [sic; their?] followers”. Last April 30, 2019, in a “memorandum of understanding” with the AJC unveiling the then-planned visit to Auschwitz, al-Issa denounced the “heinous attacks in Pittsburgh​, Pennsylvania, in Christchurch, New Zealand, and most recently in Sri Lanka.” Al-Issa’s comments, however, ignored the endless paroxysms of violence by Muslims directed at the Jews of Israel, and the excessive, if more sporadic, ongoing Muslim attacks on European and American Jews. He also refused to acknowledge, let alone condemn, mainstream, institutional Islam’s continuous espousal of canonical Islamic Jew-hatred, and the resulting grossly disproportionate rates of extreme Muslim Antisemitism, and Muslim anti-Jewish violence, worldwide.

There has been a longstanding refusal of Muslim leaders such as al-Issa to recognize the World War II-era Nazi collaboration—punctuated with overt calls for Jew-annihilation, by jihad—of arguably the most influential Muslim of that era: the jihadist, Caliphate-championing “godfather” of the Palestinian Muslim movement, Hajj Amin el-Husseini. Contemporary Muslim leaders of al-Issa’s ilk have proven equally incapable of acknowledging how Muslim leaders such as Anwar Sadat admired Hitler even after WWII, or how post-WWII, escaped Nazis—many of whom converted to Islam (most notably, Johannes “Omar Amin” von Leers, whose conversion el-Husseini himself oversaw!), were granted asylum, particularly in Egypt, and contributed to the incessant Muslim jihad campaigns to destroy Israel and annihilate its Jews from 1948 through (at least) 1973.

That reprehensible legacy of Muslim denial continues, and now has been extended to real-time ignoring of the current global pandemic of Muslim Jew-hatred and anti-Jewish violence. This Muslim caricature of “Holocaust remembrance” further cynically equates the systematic Nazi annihilation of 6-million Jews during the Shoah, with the Srebrenica murders of perhaps 7,000 Muslims during the 1990s Muslim-Serb civil war in Bosnia, a conflict rife with reprisal killings.

What ordinary, sensible Jews should “Never Forget” is that what passes for “Jewish leadership” proudly orchestrated this hideous spectacle of mutual Jewish-Muslim denial.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/01/muslim-holocaust-remembrance-travesty-andrew-bostom/

The US government’s top continental European ambassador Richard Grenell urged the chairman of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s foreign affairs committee in the Bundestag not to sabotage the US effort to help Israel and Palestinians reach a peace agreement.
Grenell, the US ambassador to Germany, tweeted on Wednesday to German MP Norbert Röttgen:”[Mahmoud] Abbas is in his 15th year of a 4-year term. The US didn’t cause this conflict but we are trying to solve it. Maybe some help?”Röttgen, a MP for the Christian Democratic Union party, had tweeted, “The so-called #PeacePlan is to the detriment of #Palestine and presented as an ultimatum depicts a setback in the conflict. It is primarily a contribution to the ongoing election campaigns in the #USA & #Israel and a welcome diversion from domestic crises in both states.”

Röttgen is not known as an expert on the Middle East.Writing an opinion article for Fox News, Eugene Kontorovich, a scholar and lawyer at the Kohelet Policy Forum, a Jerusalem-based think tank, wrote, “Claims that the plan’s release was timed to impact either President Trump’s domestic difficulties or Netanyahu’s reelection are demonstrably false. Democrats have had Trump under investigation since his first days in office, and Israel has been in an unprecedented series of failed elections for a year, with no clear end in sight.”In July, the distinguished Jewish historian Dr. Michael Wolffsohn alleged in a 2019 commentary that Röttgen is working to undermine efforts to stop the growth of the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions campaign targeting Israel. The Bundestag classified BDS as antisemitic in March.“A minority of members of the Bundestag coalition and opposition wants to prevent [a] financial implementation of the anti-BDS decision of our elected representatives,” wrote Wolffsohn, citing Röttgen.Commentators like the former Labor MK Dr. Einat Wilf noted on Twitter that many Arab countries are welcoming and embracing Trump’s Peace Plan, while Westerners are stoking anti-Peace agendas.

“The greatest tragedy and irony is that at [the] precise moment that parts of the Arab world are moving away from their support for Palestinian maximalism and virulent anti-Zionism, in the West some insist on continuing to fuel the conflict by telling the Palestinians to keep fighting,” wrote Wilf on Twitter.Writing for The Daily Wire, Josh Hammer said, “Numerous Arab governments, furthermore, have offered public endorsements of Trump’s plan that invariably refer to it as a welcoming or promising development.”The German Green Party, which has been plagued by allegation of mainstreaming antisemitism, lashed out at the Trump peace plan. Omid Nouripour, the foreign policy spokesman for the Green Party in the Bundestag, said, “The Trump plan does not bring peace, but escalates risk. Not only in the West Bank and Gaza, but also in Israeli society. Trump suggests that Israeli Arab cities be swapped to the State of Palestine if they swap territories. It is a contribution to the ethnic division of Israeli society.”Nouripour helped initiate an anti-Israel document in the Bundestag to sanction Israeli products in 2013. He denies that he supports the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions campaign targeting Israel. BDS advocates labeling of Israeli products.Dr. Elvira Groezinger, Deputy President of Scholars of Peace in the Middle East, German Section, Secretary of the SPME International Board, told The Jerusalem Post, “Nouripour, Iranian-born foreign policy spokesman of the Green Party with a double citizenship, bears a grudge against the US after he was one of the deputies who was not let into the country in 2017.” She added, ”No wonder that as an Iranian subject, he now backs the Mullahs, speaks on behalf of the Palestinian Arabs only, and attacks the peace plan as a contribution to an ethnic schism of the country, pleading at the same time for a two-state solution. I wonder if he does this on behalf of a Kurdish state as well. But given this biographical and legal status, his biased and one-sided opinion is neither serious, nor constructive or relevant in my eyes.”German-Iranian dissidents have criticized Nouripour over the years for showing sympathy toward Iran’s radical clerical regime. Groezinger, who speaks fluent Hebrew, added that Röttgen “actively supports the phantom [Iran] nuclear ‘treaty’ with Iran.”

https://www.jpost.com/Arab-Israeli-Conflict/US-ambassador-urges-German-MP-not-to-derail-Trumps-peace-plan-615987

The no-go area of Alexanderplatz in the German capital of Berlin has recorded over 900 violent crimes in 2019 despite an increased police presence in the area.

The new statistics from the Berlin senate state that there were 910 violent crimes in the area in 2019 — an increase of 198 compared to the previous year — with serious and dangerous physical attacks making up 669 of the reports, Bild reports.

Resistance to and assaults on emergency services were also high in the area with 97 cases altogether. Alexanderplatz is well-known as an area for drug trafficking and pickpocketing with migrant-background youth gangs operating extensively for several years.

The report also recorded 54 robberies, one case of child abuse, two homicide-related cases, and 14 sex attacks.

The number of sex attacks is down since 2017 in which the area saw 36 attacks in the first ten months of that year, nearly double that of 2016.

Since December of 2017, police increased their presence in the area with the so-called “Alex Guard” and in March of 2018, a prosecutor was assigned to specifically deal with cases that occur in the area.

Sebastian Seidel, the prosecutor responsible for the area, processed 454 cases in 2019, 336 more than 2018 but only 71 cases ended with charges being pursued.

According to the Special Police Commission (SOKO) in Alexanderplatz, the origins of the criminals operating in the area still remains highly diverse with asylum seekers from Syria, Iraq, Pakistan, and Iraq making up a large number of suspects.

While Breitbart London has reported on no-go areas in Germany for years, it was not until 2018 that German Chancellor Angela Merkel admitted that such areas exist in Germany.

Chancellor Merkel told broadcaster RTL that the state needed to keep a monopoly on power and said: “That means, for example, that there are no-go areas … where no one dares to go.”

“One has to call them by their name and do something about them,” she added.

https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2020/01/30/nearly-thousand-violent-crimes-reported-berlin-no-go-area-2019/

After the rape of a young woman (32 years old) in Chemnitz, a suspect is now in remand. This was reported by the authorities on Wednesday.
According to the public prosecutor’s office, the crime took place on the 19th of December 2019 around 11 pm. However, the rape was initially concealed from the public at that time “in order not to jeopardize the ongoing investigations”, said Chief Public Prosecutor Ingrid Burghart on Wednesday in response to a request from the newspaper BILD.According to the report, the woman first visited the nightclub “Zukunft” on Leipziger Street – just like her suspected abuser, a 21-year-old man from Nigeria. When she left, the asylum seeker followed her and raped her on a nearby wasteland on the street Matthesstraße.He is said to have threatened the 32-year-old with a knife. When she fled, he was still chasing her and only let go of her when she approached passers-by.He is said to have threatened the 32-year-old with a knife. When she fled, he was still chasing her and only let go of her when she approached passers-by. The latter then waited with her in a nearby hallway until the sex offender had disappeared.
With clues from the victim and other witnesses from the nightclub, the suspected perpetrator could be identified. He was finally arrested on the 18th of January and has been in remand ever since.”Since the accused threatened the injured party with a knife during the crime, he must expect a prison sentence of at least 5 years if convicted,” stated the public prosecutor’s office.

archive.md/6rvOi