* Look on the bright side:
1/ This comedian will get great publicity (at the cost of a slap on the wrist)
2/ Other jealous comedians (and comedians can get plenty jealous-remember the anti-Leno mess) will copy him.
3/ People will actually hear about a German comedian.
4/ There’s proof that the German fastidiousness about rules still remains. Paleos and HBD’ers should be happy.
* Countries that have genuinely friendly, or at least non-adversarial relations, with each other have no need for laws like these. George W. Bush was relentlessly parodied, criticized and made fun of in foreign countries and no one thought to prosecute the comediens. If a statement was made that defames Erdogan personally, the civil courts of Germany are open to him. This type of a law might be useful only for countries on the ragged edge of war, where a personal insult might push an adversary over the edge, but a prosecution could defuse things until diplomacy resolves the underlying conflict or war begins (at which point insulting the enemy leader is encouraged). Perceived personal insults were a part of the chain of events leading up to the Franco-Prussian War of 1870, although I don’t remember the precise circumstances–I think that Bismarck edited a French diplomatic communication to make it appear more insulting to the King of Prussia than it actually was intended to be.
A frank conversation about the Zeitgeist? Probably not–the inability to have such a conversation is an essential part of the Zeitgeist. The rot in western Europe, the U.S. and Canada goes so deep that probably only a cataclysm will change it.
* Am I the only one noticing how petty this makes Erdogan look? Throwing a tantrum over what some B-list comedian said about him in a country 1,000 miles away? I simply can’t imagine being the dictator of a major country and getting upset over what civilians in other countries say about me. What a pitiful child Erdogan is.
* The bigger question is how the German constitutional democracy has allowed one person to have such unfettered power.
* Never put childless women in charge of anything.
* Merkel is totally overrated. She basically screwed up every major policy issue in which her initiative was required (Energy reform, Eurocrisis, Greek crisis, refugees, banking crisis, Ukraine, Syria). Apart from that she lived off the labor-market reforms instituted by Schröder, an industry which was humming along, the credit expansion of the early EU years, and a fawning media landscape.
Now that issues are becoming trickier, and require initiative and even force, she flails and intuitively places herself and the country into potential blackmail situations, be it the ECB, the banks, Greece or now the refugee issue and Turkey.
There are nefarious issues such as her rumored Stasi activities, her ancestry and true religious loyalty (Bnei Brith masonry), but apart from that the media have been hyping her as an example of powerful female leadership. Many career women, riding the quota bus, were buying into this. But now her sheer incompetence and cowardice is becoming an embarrassment and security risk for ordinary Germans and Europeans, many of whom are disgusted with this woman.
* What’s becoming even more obvious is that Merkel has a hard time admitting she made a mistake. That’s a very German trait, but I think especially powerful women fail in this area, since they regard admittance of failure as a sign of weakness, which has always been the argument against letting women run important public offices. Leadership weakness is especially frowned upon in Germany.
Merkel was not able to admit that inviting the world was a bad idea, and in order to fix it along back channels, as a last resort after the EU solution failed, she tried to make a deal with Erdogan, who was one of the prime instigators of this situation. Of course that could only go south, but it shows how desperate she was. Now she got into the next mess, and again is not able to admit her mistake, so she passes the buck onto the courts, which she otherwise does not take particularly seriously.
The media has been a foul weapon in the hands of operators such as Erdogan, Soros and the immigration lobby.
* All the talk these days is that Germany has some sort of long, deep bond with Turkey, an ancient bond of ‘blood and affection’.
This is pure nonsense.
Mass Turkish immigration into Germany only started in the mid 1960s. After the mass immigration of Italians, Greeks, Yugoslavs etc. Yes, for a brief period, 1914-18 the German Empire had a tactical alliance with the Ottoman Empire. But apart from that Turkey to Germany is a foreign country as a foreign country can be. No ties of blood, history, culture, language, religion etc – or even geographic border.
It is central and eastern Europe where Germany has or had its destiny. Unfortunately, the Germans were – and still are – very fond of crapping on this region from a great height from time to time.
Indeed, Turk ‘gadtarbeiters’ only came because Poles were unobtainable, back in the day.
* I’m somewhat conflicted about this…Böhmermann is a narcisstic piece of **it, totally on board with the mass immigration project and in general part of the left-leaning German mainstream (apart from Erdogan, other bogeymen for him are Donald Trump, Wladimir Putin, Marine Le Pen, Victor Orban, Poland’s Beate Szydlo and Pim Fortuyn…though I assume he meant Wilders by that since Fortuyn, as we know, was murdered by a leftie activist in 2002). His “satire” of Erdogan was also vulgar and almost without political content…what’s the point in making absurd accusations up about Erdogan like “watches child porn, f**ks goats, goes to gang bang parties” when you’re too cowardly to face the real issue…that Erdogan is a nasty anti-Western demagogue who combines Islamism with Turkish ultra-nationalism, and that a very large percentage of Turks are totally fine with this. Also, in general I do think it’s problematic when some “satirist” who’s employed by a quasi-state broadcasting agency like Germany’s ZDF (financed by a licence fee that is obligatory for all German households…you can go to prison if you refuse to pay) attacks foreign heads of state in such a vulgar manner.
So Merkel’s decision by itself could be justifiable. But the speech the woman gave, was disgusting with its bizarre pro-Turkish platitudes…Turkey is our “friend and partner”, NATO ally and prospective EU member, and there are close ties between the countries because of millions of Turks living in Germany…when an honest assessment would be that large-scale Turkish immigration to Germany was a costly mistake and that Turkey is a deeply unpleasant country with a history extending to the present of persecuting minorities and causing trouble in its neighbourhood (think Cyprus, now Syria), and that a large percentage of its population are Islamists and/or ultra-nationalists. It was an embarrassing display…typical German politician cringe mode.
* Böhmermann is from a clique of new comedians who do 70% political lecturing about how dumb, ridiculous and evil racist are and 30% other comedy. It is quite ironical that somebody who´s mane concern is bashing european racists for months and years without any threatening reaction one time makes fun of a non-European muslim and now has to hide, stop his show in TV etc. because serious threats of violence. Because in the end islamists and antiracists have elements in among them who are willing and able to enforce islamist and antiracist aims by violence.
It is exactly this asymmetry which makes people voting for right-wing parties in the first place. Böhmermann now experiences this asymmetry.
* Why does Europe allow itself to be colonized by millions of Muslim men? Why after 13 centuries of resistance does it succumb now?
Imagine that Europe was one person, and the the total war it suffered in 1914 was a life-threatening cancer. Europe went into remission for two decades and then the cancer recurred. In desperation, Europe chose a kind of chemotherapy which prevented another war by suppressing national pride, tradition and self-defense. But those things were Europe’s immune system, and an immunosuppressed patient cannot mount a response to invading bacterial cells. That is why Europe now cannot defend itself from being colonized by millions of Muslim men.
