> and constantly sabotaging "solidarity" policies like refugee resettlement out of pure racism and egoism.
No. This is mainly payback to Germany for how we treated all other countries, especially Italy and Greece, during the financial crisis. The refugee influx is the way for everyone else to "stick the finger to Germany", as Varoufakis once said...
Germany did not show any solidarity at all with the worst-off countries, only with their banks (where, again, German banks are shareholders in, or have significant amounts of money loaned to/invested in these banks) and the arms industry. In fact, the French and German arms industries actually extorted that they be paid, or else Greece would get no cash (source: https://www.heise.de/tp/features/Griechische-Milliarden-fuer...).
> Like us idiots in UK, they'll soon find out that life outside is not that great.
You Brits are not idiots, only your government is a spineless bunch of idiots. Fix that and I believe UK will be welcomed back into the EU - although I have to admit I'm glad there won't ever be a "British exception" any more, your politicians have held the EU back for far too long.
> Germany did not show any solidarity at all with the worst-off countries,
That's political propaganda. Germany has shown a lot of solidarity in the EU over decades. Greece and Italy are not the 'worst of' countries in the EU or Europe and Germany is not responsible for much of their economic policies.
> Germany has shown a lot of solidarity in the EU over decades.
That doesn't matter, because we Germans did all our best to fuck up Italy and Greece - it began with insisting on the Dublin Agreement so that IT/GR would be stuck with the refugees while Germany could continue to live without refugees, and it continued during the financial crisis and afterwards - hell, Germany made in 2017 1.3B € by loaning money for cheap on the markets and then loaning that money for more interest to Greece (source: http://www.zeit.de/politik/deutschland/2017-07/griechenland-...)!
Fleecing a dead economy like Schäuble still does... well, I'm not surprised at all that other EU countries want to hit on Germany.
Greece needs more money, where do you think it comes from? Greece didn't get any more on the markets, that's why countries like Germany had to step in and rescue them.
No, sorry Germany is also not responsible for the economic crisis in Italy. That's mostly homegrown. Germany is also not responsible for destabilizing the middle east and north africa. Libya was an Italian colony and in 2011 Italy took part in the military invention in Libya. Since then Libya is a failed state and many refugees/immigrants are coming via Libya. The big players were the US, Italy, France, the UK,... those did take part in the regime change, but failed to bring peace to the region. Actually the situation in Libya is worse than it was before.
Germany did not take part in these things and is not a big player in the middle east / north african politics and military interventions.
> Greece didn't get any more on the markets, that's why countries like Germany had to step in and rescue them.
Rescuing a country is a different game than threatening "no rescue until you revert the cancellation of arms contracts", or to make 1.3B € profit off, essentially, loan sharking. If Schäuble had intended a real rescue, he would have passed on the (at some times negative!) interest rates to Greece.
> Germany is also not responsible for destabilizing the middle east and north africa
Germany is a HUGE provider of weapons of all sorts, right into the middle of conflicts. Many dictators use German (and Swiss)-owned banks to launder their illegitimate assets. Also, Germany as the leading nation in the EU has failed multiple times living up to that role. Merkel's policy has long been "don't do anything until the situation gets out of control".
Sorry, you make up a role of Germany which does not exist and which is not grounded in reality. The reality is that Germany is in the area of security policy and military actions only a minor player. It's also not located in the region and has not many historic interests: no former colonies in the region unlike France and Italy. It's also not a protector of countries in the region, like for example the US or Russia.
Let's come back to the specific situation I mentioned: Libya. The largest weapon seller to Libya were Russia (by far) and Italy.
Not Germany. German weapon exports to Libya were minor.
The situation in Libya was neither caused nor fueled by Germany. It was Berlusconi (prime minister of Italy) who was a big friend of Gaddafi, not Merkel.
That there is chaos in Libya and that people are fleeing to Europe is nothing where Merkel or Germany in general has contributed much, compared to many other countries who were directly involved in Libya. That was contributing in a big way to the chaos there and the refugee crisis, not German policies.
Here is a nice articcle about Italy's involvement in Libya before the civil war and before the military inntervention...
Hey dude, while I agree Germany was not involved in Libya, let's not throw mud around.
Italians have been close to Gaddafi since the '80s - the alternative at the time was actual war, which the country did not want and could never win. The Italian plan was basically to wait for Gaddafi to die and then take that chance to promote an ordinary transition to a more presentable form of government, which would have safeguarded Italian interests and security for everyone. It's what worked for Spain, after all.
The governments who really fouled things up were France and UK, with US support behind the scene, who first recklessly promoted the "arab spring" and then attacked almost unilaterally, dragging NATO into it. Italy was involved as a token gesture; the Italian government at the time was extremely weak and nearing the end (which happened 6 months later) as Berlusconi was engulfed in more and more scandals. They had no interest whatsoever in making waves - whereas Sarkozy thought it would have ensured his re-election the following year and earned a new country for the French "sphere of influence".
Everyone in Italy knew that nothing good would come from the war, because Gaddafi was the only barrier between the country and waves of sub-saharan migrants. For years, we literally looked the other way as Gaddafi disposed of migrants in brutal concentration camps (or worse); as long as we kept paying "development aid" funds, he'd keep illegal boats to a minimum. Like Erdogan is now doing in Turkey, there is profit to be made by being the buffer zone between prosperous "cities on the hill" and starving people. And before that, Gaddafi was one of our "ins" in the world of Arab "movements", which helped mediation efforts in scenarios like Lebanon and ensured Italy was spared the worst waves of Palestinian terrorism, for example. (These policies predate Berlusconi, by the way, even though he brought them to a farcical pinnacle when he let Gaddafi camp out in Rome.) We had absolutely no upside in trying to get rid of Gaddafi, let alone doing it as rashly as the French did.
Responsibility for the Libyan clusterfuck sits squarely with Sarkozy and Cameron, with Obama right behind.
Comrade, the relationship with Gaddafi was a bit too close, don't you think? The article specifically mentioned that Italy failed help building up structures/people who could take over control after Gaddafi was gone... Italy was caught on the wrong foot.
The relationship with Gaddafi was providing lots of strenge encounters. Here he was preaching Islam to Italian 'glamour girls':
Generally I agree that the role of the US, UK in the whole destabilization effort was way worse. Can't say much of the French role. Didn't read much about it.
Because there was no plan to replace him in the short term. He was in good health, had a relatively solid grip on power structures, and was busy realigning with NATO on the common ground of fighting Saudi-financed extremists and the Muslim Brotherhood - as exemplified by the agreement Blair struck only a few years earlier. The plan was to have the country in a better position some time down the line, letting him establish better trading links and so on. The acceleration from Sarkozy was not expected and very unwelcome.
Britain had the best deal in the EU: they got to keep their own currency which is a tremendous concession. It's the ultimate leverage to protect their own economy. And they blew it up because of ... sorry, too many Polish drinking halls?
I believe the Brexit votum succeeding had the same reason as the first smoke-banning referendum succeeding in Bavaria: those opposing had thought their opinion to be "mainstream" anyway and didn't care to go vote while a small but loud minority actually brought their people to the booths.
I believe that similar effects caused the vote of the Orange as POTUS...
The political situation is quite different. The UK had for long a very negative public opinion about the EU, fueled by politics and the press. It was for a long time on a trajectory which brought it into the brexit situation.
People like Farage would have not accepted a failed referendum and would have worked harder to influence public opinion to leave the EU. Thus leaving the EU was not a surprise decision because some voters did not show up, but based on a decade of politics.
No. This is mainly payback to Germany for how we treated all other countries, especially Italy and Greece, during the financial crisis. The refugee influx is the way for everyone else to "stick the finger to Germany", as Varoufakis once said...
Germany did not show any solidarity at all with the worst-off countries, only with their banks (where, again, German banks are shareholders in, or have significant amounts of money loaned to/invested in these banks) and the arms industry. In fact, the French and German arms industries actually extorted that they be paid, or else Greece would get no cash (source: https://www.heise.de/tp/features/Griechische-Milliarden-fuer...).
> Like us idiots in UK, they'll soon find out that life outside is not that great.
You Brits are not idiots, only your government is a spineless bunch of idiots. Fix that and I believe UK will be welcomed back into the EU - although I have to admit I'm glad there won't ever be a "British exception" any more, your politicians have held the EU back for far too long.