No not opinion, since Merkel has insisted on her refugee policies,
nationalist parties, I would hesitate to call them right wing as they
are not particularly conservative, in either the European or American
sense, have gained unbelievable ground in Europe. Le Pen of the Front
National has higher poll numbers than either of her major party
opponents. With France's system it's unlikely she'll win the 2017
election for president, but she'll easily make the second round. The
Austrian nationalists came within a whisker of winning that countries
presidency, that's not to mention newer members of the EU putting up
border fences and setting up border patrols that are just short of
re-militarizing them.
The UKIP may not be able to win actual elections to the British
Parliament, but they were able to get a clear majority to vote the UK
out of the EU, do you think that would have happened without the refugee
crises?
All of that can be laid at Merkel's feet.
The cost to her isn't just personal, it's also weakening her party and
it's major coalition partner. What will that do to Germany? Me? I don't
know, I don't understand German politics well enough to guess, but it
cannot be good.
Tell me what she's done, to stop Putin's advance in the Ukraine? Has he
pulled his troops, (the so called little green men), out of the
conflict? Returned Crimea to the Ukraine? Stopped him from
demonstrating his contempt for NATO? Anything at all that can be
attributed to any of Germany's actions?
The only thing that is holding Putin back is his lack of funds to
continue modernizing the Russian military. Merkel had nothing to do
with that. For that, you can thank the Saudis keeping the price of Oil
and Natural Gas low, causing no end of budget problems in Russia, and
they're mainly doing that to hurt the Iranians, though they're none to
fond of the Russians either.
I'm not even sure that Germany would send troops to defend Poland if the
Russians rolled over the Ukraine, and decided they wanted Poland back as
well*. Let alone send help any of the Baltic States. All of them are
NATO members, (an attack on one is an attack on all), and that would
break NATO, which in turn would crack the EU, as if the EU wasn't
already showing cracks.
*I'm not at all sure we'd send troops either, but that's another story.
On 7/15/2016 9:03 PM, Daniel J. Matyola wrote:
On Fri, Jul 15, 2016 at 7:11 PM, P.J. Alling <[email protected]>
wrote:
You may disagree, it doesn't change the facts.
They are not facts, but your opinions. You are, of course, entitled to
your opinions, but that does not make them facts.
Dan Matyola
http://www.pentaxphotogallery.com/danieljmatyola
--
I don't want to achieve immortality through my work; I want to achieve
immortality through not dying.
-- Woody Allen
--
PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List
[email protected]
http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net
to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow
the directions.
