Bare Bones

Summer
was still swinging when fugitives flocked to the Turkish beaches to board rickety
boats to Greece, an outer frontier of a unified Europe, a guarded gate at the entrance of a borderless
expanse inside.

Mutti
Merckel, assumedly in a late burst of motherly cravings, thought it was necessary,
and wise, to tell the world that the gates to Germany and the arms of the Germans
would be opened wide, to welcome and embrace all these desperate, war-weary people.
Whether this was necessary is open for debate – as all the talk of
indiscriminate immigration always will be. Whether it was wise is a shut case:
it was plain stupid.

Madame
Merckel has done a great job in Germany as chancellor, she has done it with
angelical zeal, prudent stewardship and sharp thinking. Thousands bobbing
across the narrow Aegean, and subsequently snaking through the Balkan landscapes
drove her to lose her cool and wisdom: in one emotional statement she abandoned
the principles of the Schengen concept and accelerated a steaming stream of
fugitives, fortune seekers and, no doubt, criminals of sorts: a stampeding crusade
that forged a pedestrian highway to Bavaria. The rest is history – with much misery
still waiting in the shadows.

While
one might excuse, or forgive, Merckel for showing her “mother’s heart”, her
decision to throw the Schengen framework out of the window is, inexcusable.
That she, and our mindlessly liberal international media, consequently attacked
Hungary and others for protecting or closing their borders, added insult to
injury and sent the entire European Project into a debilitating fit.

Why?
Simply because a basic principle of the Schengen accords is that entry of
visitors into Schengen Europe is checked and registered at the outer borders.
Until she caused the flood in Greece, this procedure had been followed for
years in Italy and Spain, notwithstanding these countries’ financial and
economic difficulties. Exactly because, and only because these outer borders have
barriers and gates and red lights and guards, we were in a position to
dismantle the controls at the internal borders. Declaring from her pedestal, as
Chancellor of Germany – assumedly the most powerful head of state in Europe,
that hundreds of thousands can simply walk unimpeded to the Bavarian non-border
guards, must be considered, certainly within a political and legalistic
context, as a blasphemous and utterly irresponsible statement.

The
broader consequences of this tragic error – European unity, social fabrics,
economical effects, war and peace – will become clear, and largely troublesome,
with time, after the human stream in the Balkans has dried up. An immediate and
at first glance surprising effect of the crumbling of the outer frontiers of
Europe has become evident over the past months. Indeed, many Belgian cities have
now placed advanced cameras on all approach roads into the city, all geared towards
early identification and recognition of malignant intruders: intelligent
detection that can trace and track movement.

All
of sudden we need to protect our cities and villages, simply because we don’t check
borders: on a sunny afternoon in 2015 Merckel put us all back into the Middle
Ages, or so it seems. It is an eerie feeling for law-abiding citizens in a
free and democratic society to see all coming and going watched, and spied on, all
the time as one drives on country roads. It adds an Orwellian twist to this
need for “protection” for, no doubt, the information thus gathered can easily and quickly be (ab)used
by the powers-that-be to control and suppress the citizenry.

If
the Schengen community lets go of its outer border checkpoints, and migrants
march wherever they want, every village will want to, and will have to, deploy their
own “border patrols”. That is not very efficient, nor will it prove to be effective.
To avoid this nonsense the existing law must be applied and checks at the outer borders must be re-instated! Rather than
being uncritically celebrated for heartfelt compassion, Angela Merckel should be
prodded to climb onto her pulpit to apologize for her misguided messianism and
reconfirm her commitment to European accords.

Grimburger,

November 8, 2015

In
the past week we were witnessing an interesting episode in the unrelenting speed
with which our civilized world is declining. And no, I am not even referring to Elton John
parading his non-synthetic child in front of willing and wheeling cameras, nor
about a real or tricked Greek middle finger in a German tv show. In the end, they are only side
struggles, interesting only for the synthesized media community.

Instead
I am talking about the aftermath of the Israeli elections. Indeed, two facts are
highly relevant for understanding how far we have wandered away from essential democracy
and honest-enough politics.

First,
the US government blamed Netanyahu for having stolen the election by stating
that those who would vote for him could rest assured that there would come no
two-state solution. Apparently that simple, non-clouded nor cloaked, easy-to
understand statement drove many more people in Israel to vote for him than
the pollsters had forecast (for weeks on end). Lots of Israelis must have
switched their intended vote in favor of such a policy overbight. How more democratic can
an election be? A majority of people in Israel ostensibly want a prime minister that proposes
a solution for their troubles that does not include a two-state framework.
Moreover, many Israelis must have thought that this particular issue – the shape of the state of Israel – trumps all
others, including economic issues.

Surprise
starts when the US government, on the “morning-after”, did not lose time to
denounce this last minute statement of Netanyahu as a disgraceful “tactic”, and
destructive for the democratic ideal and process! While the United States in general,
and its political scene in particular, is undoubtedly the most advanced nation
in the world in practicing speech fabrication (in the White House with
TelePrompter) and inventing truth-proof spinning, it is difficult for a neutral
observer to arrive at any other conclusion than the fact Netanyahu made a simple, “unspun” statement.
And many people in Israel said “yes”, yes we understand and we want it that way. One might
call this a populist slogan (born out of despair perhaps), but one cannot deny
its democratic merit: not money or defamation of opponents, nor clever redrawing
of electoral boundaries have gotten Netanyahu his majority, but an
easy-to-understand proposition. Democracy in action, even though our European
or American self-anointed standard bearers of “Democracy” do not like it.

Surely,
the second fact brings us back to basics. Indeed, a day (or two) later,
Netanyahu – perhaps not coincidentally on US television – returns to the fold
of politics as usual by constructing a statement that creates and leaves some room
between “yes-two-sates” and “no-two-states”. To stay in the spirit of the
Promised Land, it sounds now like: many settlements are perhaps not in Israel
proper, but, if you look closely and with the right glasses, you will see
nevertheless that they are definitely in Israel. Obviously this is the
democracy that we experience every day, and all over the world. It is the
democracy wherein the “resident democratic powers’ scheme to hang on to power.
And indeed, if all competing factions agree to follow the same strategy, then what choice does the
voter have?

None.

Democracy
is not of this day and age. The political system that we are living today is a
weak, dark shadow of what enlightened minds hundreds of years ago have put
forward as an advanced system of government. Marx may have been wrong on many
things, but he nailed it on corruption! And after a few centuries of democracy,
the power of the democrats has corrupted the democrats, more and more, and still more.

Grimburger,

March
20, 2015