Angela Merkel's Leadership Record

For someone whose political leadership has been largely calamitous, German Chancellor Angela Merkel has received very good press.

When President Donald Trump called out Germany for freeloading off of America for its national defense, the media uproar targeted Trump.

When Merkel decided to maintain trade relations with terrorist state, Iran, no one cared.

Now, when Merkel protege, Ursula von der Leyen was exposed for her manifest incompetence over European vaccination policy, no one seems to be able to connect her to Merkel-- even though von der Leyen was previously German Minister of Defense, position in which she failed miserably.

And, we recall that Germany was wildly lauded for its response to the coronavirus pandemic, while the recent upsurge in cases there has been largely ignored.

Anyway, now that Great Britain has wisely jumped ship, Germany leads the European Union. Some people believe that the EU will be competing against America and China in today’s version of the clash of civilizations. 

And yet, if the future lies in 5G and AI, as Kai Fu Lee says, the EU, he has also said, will not be in the running. Whereas China and perhaps even America values innovation over regulation, the EU is all in with regulating the tech industry. If he is right that you cannot regulate and innovate at the same time, the future clash will be the United States and China. This assumes that the new American administration does not throw a regulatory orgy, the better to cripple American industry.

As for Frau Merkel, we recall that she graciously opened Germany’s borders to a flood of well over a million immigrants from Muslim nations. It began a few years ago, so it is perhaps too early to draw conclusions, but a few stand out. 

One consequence of Merkel’s open arms policy is a flood of homeless. Where the United States has around a half a million people who do not have a place to sleep every night, Germany, with a quarter of the population has nearly 900,000. Most, of course, are refugees.

But, that’s not the only refugee problem. As Ayaan Hirsi Ali explains in a Fox News column, the arrival of millions of Muslim refugees over the past few years, most of them being young males, has produce an explosion of harassment and abuse for European females.

About this, you will hear nothing from feminists. Hmm. They are afraid of being called racists. Didn’t we hear the same from Rotherham when Muslim grooming gangs sex trafficked and gang raped high school girls? And when the local constabulary did nothing for years, for fear of being accused of being racist.

Feminists should be leading the march on these issues. If they are not, we might conclude that they are more interested in promoting an ideology than in standing up for women.

Hirsi Ali explains:

However, with the recent influx of refugees and economic migrants to Europe (mostly male, mostly under 35 and mostly from Muslim-majority countries), I have noticed an alarming trend: sexual violence has seen a significant increase in several European countries.

Through careful scrutiny of crime statistics, court reports and interviews with victims, I have been able to establish that this sex crime wave is a consequence of the great surge of migration that had its peak in 2015-16. In cities all over Europe, women’s safety has been reduced.

I’ve spoken to numerous native-born European women who’ve experienced sexual assault or harassment at the hands of migrants. I’ve examined too many cases of women who’ve been stalked, molested, raped and even killed. Each is sickening and heart-wrenching, and several were avoidable.

A local woman explains her experience:

One example is that of Nicola Frank, a 39-year-old editor and mother living in Oldenburg in northwestern Germany. Politically, Nicola leans left, believes in religious and racial tolerance, and even worked for antiracist groups in high school.

"As a young girl," she told me, "I never worried about feeling harassed or unsafe in my surroundings. For me, this started to change in 2015. It is a recent phenomenon that women are not safe here during the day. It’s a problem all over the world that women are not safe at certain times of night. But here during the daylight, being harassed and receiving disrespectful sexual remarks didn’t happen to me before.

Now, women in Germany no longer feel safe walking on the streets. Thanks again to Chancellor Merkel.

And yet, the story would not be complete without mention of the German energy policy. As you know Germany is leading the way toward a green future. Merkel has shut down coal and nuclear power plants. It wants to rely more and more on renewables, and, oh yes, on natural gas coming from Russia. The Trump administration opposed this gas deal, for which Trump was accused of being Putin’s bitch. Hmmm.

Germany’s problem now is quite simple. Cold weather. The current cold wave-- where is global warming when we need it?-- had iced over the solar panels and made the windmills dysfunctional. Thus, Germany has been firing up its own coal plants or importing coal produced energy from neighboring countries.

This, via Zero Hedge:

Germany’s held up as the world’s wind and solar capital. But, at the moment, the ‘green’ stuff can’t be purchased, at any price.

Its millions of solar panels are blanketed in snow and ice and breathless, freezing weather is encouraging its 30,000 wind turbines to do absolutely nothing, at all. [Note: don’t forget about the constant supply of electricity from the grid that these things chew up heating their internal workings so they don’t freeze up solid!]

So much for the ‘transition’ to an all wind and sun powered future – aka the ‘Energiewende’.

Despite being the object of consternation and much vilification over the last 20 years, Germany’s coal-fired plants are now being appreciated for what they are: truly meaningful power generation sources, available on demand, whatever the weather. With a Nationwide blackout a heartbeat away, the German obsession with unreliable wind and solar is like a time bomb set to explode.

Of course, the new tent city being built to house homeless refugees will be powered by the sun. We shall see how that works out.

Here are the facts about solar and wind:

Germany now finds itself in the dead of winter. Much of the country has seen considerable snowfall, meaning solar panels are often covered by snow and thus rendered useless. Even without snow cover, the weeks-long overcast sky prevents any noteworthy solar power generation.

Moreover, this winter there have been many long windless periods, and so Germany’s approx. 30,000 wind turbines have been largely out of operation. In a world 100% reliant on green energies, this would mean near 100% darkness at home.

Will the Biden administration come to its senses? Or will it follow Germany down the primrose path of green dalliance?