1/ Ralph Ghadban was born in Lebanon in 1949 and emigrated to Germany in 1972. For decades, he has been a part of networks helping Lebanese refugees adapt to life in Germany. He has also studied the dynamics of Arab (mostly Lebanese) welt.de/regionales/nrw… 2/ criminal clans in Germany. The more polite word for them, which most German mainstream media feel obliged to use, is "large families". The clans are usually named after their most senior leader or found, for instance the "Abu Shaker" clan.

1/ I've been predicting a Trump win for a while, but I didn't think it would be this big. This looks like a referendum on the modern Democratic Party. Harris ran an OK campaign, but was a terrible candidate.

https://x.com/KamalaHarris/status/1322963321994289154?lang=en

2/ She had won elections only in deep-blue states and accumulated the most liberal voting record in the Senate.

1/ The state of Berlin, whose finances are a catastrophe, has rented a hotel complex with three high-rises for €143 million over ten years to house 1,200 asylum-seekers, most of whom are unemployed. A meeting where local residents were confronted welt.de/politik/deutsc… 2/ with this fait accompli was turbulent, with local residents complaining that local resources in the area such as playgrounds and grocery stores were already strained, and that they had not been consulted about the move.

1/ "90% of young doctors are foreigners, and 75% of them don't speak adequate German". A German doctor pseuodnym "Bernd Ahrens" gives a frank, anonymous interview. Like so many other German institutions, the health-care system here is quietly collapsing. welt.de/politik/deutsc… 2/ There aren't enough places in German medical schools, and the best students often leave Germany because conditions here are dire -- earning potential is low, funding is scarce, and the bureaucracy is stifling. So Germany is dependent on foreign doctors.

1/ A few thoughts about the state election in Brandenburg. Brandenburg is the state surrounding Berlin. Not very large but somewhat important geographically. Greens drop below the 5% barrier, as in Thuringia, meaning they drop out of the state parliament.
dw.com/en/germany-bra… 2/ This is the latest disaster for the Greens. Brandenburg is more liberal than many East German states, and the Greens were over 10% in the last election. Failing at the 5% barrier is a major catastrophe for any state party.

1/ --German Protestants Want to Keep a Tajik ISIS Member here in Deutschland--
Here's an amusing tale which summarizes the German asylum system. After multiple attacks in Germany by people who were supposed to be deported but weren't, the Green Party welt.de/politik/deutsc… 2/ "Minister for Integration and Flight (Flucht)" (the title is a bit of virtue-signalling meant to imply that all migrants are "Flüchtlinge", or refugees) decided to grit her teeth, swallow her pride, and actually start deporting dangerous foreigners from Germany.

1/ The German way is often: First the government makes something unaffordable, then it forces you to buy it. Case in point, veterinarians. Germany, unlike almost any other country, has a federally-mandated fee schedule for veterinary services. juraforum.de/news/kastratio… 2/ In November 2022, the vet lobby won a gigantic financial windfall: The Fee Ordinance for Veterinarians (GOT) was changed to drastically increase vet bills. Prices in general had only risen 19% since the last time it was updated, but the new GOT increased fees by 30-40%

1/ Yesterday's elections highlight a flaw in Germany's political system. During the Weimar era, there were constant shifts in the political winds, which brought a succession of shaky coalitions to power. The Chancellorship changed hands almost every year, alphahistory.com/weimarrepublic… 2/ bringing a new cabinet, and there were 9 general elections in 14 years. After WW II, the framers of the modern constitution, the Basic Law, saw the Weimar Reichstag's instability as one cause of the Nazi rise to power. So they created a system designed to be much more stable.

1/ The revelation that the Syrian Islamic extremist Issa al H. who killed three people and injured eight in Solingen was a failed asylum seeker who should have been deported is making some waves. But how likely are such attacks? Let's do the math.
faz.net/aktuell/politi… 2/ Last year, 351,000 illegal immigrants were allowed into Germany after saying the word "asylum" either at the border or when they walked into a local police station. That's literally all you need to do.

1/ Here's an incomplete list of things that would be happening right now if the murder rampage at the Solingen Diversity Festival had been committed by a right-wing German: 2/ 1. Politicians would have already promised to allocate hundreds of millions of Euros for "right-wing radicalization prevention" measures. tagesschau.de/inland/faeser-…

1/ If you're wondering why news about the Solingen knife rampage suddenly disappeared from the mainstream media overnight, it's because a suspect was identified and was, predictably, a Muslim foreigner. 2/ At that point, mainstream journalists suddenly lose all curiosity and move on to more important stories such as gay penguins or Ozempic prices.

1/ 8000 SEXUAL ASSAULTS BY ASYLUM SEEKERS IN GERMANY SINCE 2015

Back in 2015, as a million young males from the most unstable and sexually repressed nations on earth streamed into Germany without any background checks, I predicted we might have a problem. welt.de/politik/deutsc… 2/ You see, these young males would have basically never seen any woman in public with her ankles or hair uncovered, much less her midriff or legs. But they *do* get Western pornography on their cellphones. So, I asked, what are we to expect when arrive in Germany?

1/ So, a short legal primer. I am a US lawyer who has lived in DE for 20 years and translated German constitutional-law treatises, so I am an expert. Like most European countries, Germany has laws prohibiting group libel (Volksverhetzung). 2/ Article 5 of Germany's post-war constitution, the Basic Law, protects freedom of speech.

1/ 400,000 YOUNG AFGHAN MALES IN GERMANY -- WHAT DID YOU EXPECT?

One of the many taboos in the German immigration debate is why it's mostly young males (73% males, 78% under 34) who apply for asylum in Germany -- a trend which is becoming more pronounced.

2/ If you point out this fact, you will be met with feel-good moralizing ("Asylum has no gender") or puerile strawmanning ("Oh, so you're going to exclude them just because they're males. Great. Now I understand who I'm dealing with.")

1/ HOW GERMANS GET HYPNOTIZED BY RULES

A tendency of Germans and especially their bureaucrats is a fixation with enforcing rules to the exclusion of common sense and (in certain eras) basic humanity. Wait for the 2 stingers at the end of this insane tale. swr.de/swraktuell/bad… 2/ This is a story told by Boris Palmer, the Green Party mayor of Tübingen, Germany. Former Green, actually -- he was basically forced out of the party for questioning Green orthodoxy.

1/ Federal crime stats for Germany from 2023 have been leaked to a German newspaper prior to general publication. Here are the year-on-year increases over 2022:
✅ Overall crimes: +5.5% vs. 2022, +9.3% vs. pre-pandemic 2019,
welt.de/politik/deutsc… 2/ ✅ # of criminal suspects: +7.3% (2,246,000)
✅ # of suspects w/o German nationality: 41% (+ 17.8% yoy)
✅ % of recent immigrants among suspects: 18% (+ 29.8% yoy)
✅ Burglaries: 77,819 (+ 18.1%); burglaries in Berlin: +35.2%
✅ Violent crimes: 214,099 (+8.6%)

1/ WHY GERMANY CAN'T DEPORT ANYONE

Die Welt just published an important article on why Germany can't deport anyone. Currently there are 250,000 people living in Germany who have no right to be here. welt.de/politik/deutsc… 2/ Most of these are rejected asylum seekers or people who have committed serious crimes. They're called "Ausreisepflichtige" because they have been informed they have a "duty" (Pflicht) to leave the country. Only a trivial fraction leave voluntarily, since life in Germany

1/ MY PIECE ON ANTISEMITISM IN GERMANY

I'm chuffed to reveal that Quillette has published my piece on antisemitism in Germany, which I think highlights some pretty serious journalistic malpractice. quillette.com/2024/02/13/nar… 2/ If you read English-language press coverage of Germany in the New York Times or Guardian or NYRB or almost anywhere else, you've probably come across the claim that according to German government statistics, "90%" or "the overwhelming majority" of antisemitic hate crimes in…

1/ About a year ago, I predicted that Germany would soon start seeing the kinds of protests that often topple Third-World governments, in which masses of people protests cuts to fuel or food subsidies. In poor countries, dw.com/en/germany-far… 2/ millions of people live from jobs which require them to use fuel, but which don't pay enough to allow these people to buy fuel at market rates. So millions depend on the government to provide them fuel at artificially low prices. These subsidies of course have a distorting

1/ Die @Welt has an interview with a co-author of the groundbreaking Dutch study on the net economic costs of immigration, which has sparked a huge controversy in the Netherlands. The top line finding is that immigration has cost welt.de/politik/auslan… 2/ the Dutch state an average of €17 billion per year since 1995, mainly in providing generous welfare benefits to unemployed migrants. Work migrants from Western (blue) & non-Western (black) are the only net contributors. Asylum seekers are the biggest net drain.

1/ One reason "populist" parties are gaining ground in Europe is the feckless, mealy-mouthed response mainstream politicians have to terror attacks. A 26-year-old French guy (2nd generation immigrant) just stabbed a German tourist to death in Paris. welt.de/vermischtes/ar… 2/ He was shouting "Allahu Akbar" as he attacked people near the Eiffel Tower with a knife and hammer. He had a previous criminal conviction for planning a similar attack, for which he received a sentence of...four years. He was on a terrorist watch list and had pledged to ISIS.