BULKING UP THE BUNDESWEHR

The number of German soldiers is declining  (https://www.economist.com/europe/2024/06/06/germany-is-thinking-about-bringing-back-conscription)

Germany is considering the return of conscription.   The chancellor is reluctant. 

“Kriegstuchtig” does not trip easily off the English tongue.  Nor does it fall easily on German ears.  Translated roughly as “war-ready,” it is a word deployed by Boris Pistorios, the defence minister, to describe his favored destination for the long under-resourced Bundeswehr or armed forces.  Money is now pouring in, and Mr. Pistorios is overhauling the Bundeswehr’s Structures.  But like many of its NATO allies, Germany is struggling to find enough willing recruits.  The minister is among many who want Germany to consider restoring conscription, suspended since 2011, to get the numbers up. 

“Under plans drawn up in 2018 Germany aims to boost the Bundeswehr to 203,000 troops by 2031, up from around 181,000 today.   This is a fraction of the size or the men under arms during the cold war.  But the army is ageing and shrinking; given attrition, it needs to recruit 25,000 soldiers a year just to stand still.”  (The Economist, 8^th June, 2424)

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UKRAINE AND MELONI TAKE CENTER STAGE – Leaders from the G7 countries met Thursday in Italy’s Puglia region, where the future of Ukraine aid was high on the agenda

Who’s there? The meetings are hosted by Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, who is at the height of her political power after European Parliamentary elections last weekend. She stands in contrast to other G7 leaders from Canada, the US, the UK, Japan, and Germany, all of whom are on shakier ground domestically.

Meloni also invited an A-list of non-Western leaders like President Volodymyr Zelensky, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, and Brazil’s President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.

The highlights:  President Joe Biden and Zelensky affirmed their partnership at a bilateral press conference. The group agreed to loan Ukraine $50 billion to rebuild its devastated infrastructure with the understanding it would be paid back by interest earned on the frozen Russian assets. They also passed a new round of sanctions aimed at countering China’s effort to remake Russia’s defense industrial base.

Looming over the group’s progress on Ukraine was the possibility that Donald Trump, who has spoken openly of pulling out of NATO and against further Ukraine aid, could be back in power by the time the group next meets in 2025. Several present — including Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and President Emmanuel Macron — are facing elections that could redefine Europe.  (Gzero Signal, 6/14/2024)

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LEFT IN THE DUST:  EUROPEAN VOTERS SWING RIGHT

Europe took a hard right turn in European Parliament elections this weekend, dealing a substantial blow to key EU leaders German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and French President Emmanuel Macron, prompting the latter to call early elections.

In France, Marine Le Pen’s far-right National Rally party surged to 31.4% support – more than twice as much as Macron’s Renaissance coalition, with 14.6%. Close behind are the Socialists and their lead candidate Raphaël Glucksmann with 13.8%.

A sober-looking Macron took to French television to dissolve parliament and called for elections on June 30, with a second round on July 7. The outcome of the EU elections, he said, was “not a good result for parties who defend Europe.” This is a gamble for Macron: A similar far-right wave in the French parliamentary election could see his party lose its majority.

In Germany, projections show the far-right Alternative for Germany set to secure second place with 15% of the vote, a record high. Support for Scholz’s Social Democratic Party and coalition partner Free Democratic Party declined, securing 14% and 5% of the vote, respectively. And Germany’s Greens took the biggest hit, dropping a whopping 8.5 percentage points to 12%, as cash-strapped voters spurned costly environmental policies.

Coalition time:  Post-election, European political parties realign in blocs in the EU Parliament. The largest, the center-right European People’s Party, has  recently shifted right on issues of security, climate, and migration, and could swing further to the right if joined by Giorgia Meloni’s far-right Brothers of Italy. Another scenario would see Meloni’s group and other far-right parties such as Viktor Orban’s Fidesz party stay with the more hard-line European Conservatives and Reformists group, or become part of a new hard-right group that could form the wake of the elections. We’ll be watching the horse trading as coalitions take shape.  (Gzero Signal, 6/10/2024)

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WESTERN WOMEN IGNORE ATROCITIES COMMITTED BY PALESTINIANS

• Today, June 19, the United Nations will observe the annual International Day for the Elimination of Sexual Violence in Conflict. Yet, it took the UN five months to document and condemn Hamas’ sexual crimes on October 7.

• These crimes are reminiscent of the crimes ISIS (Islamic State) committed against Christians and Yazidis during and after their violent takeover of large parts of Iraq and Syria in 2014.

• Sexual assault as a military tactic has commonly been used by Islamic terrorists since the seventh century, worldwide.

• More than 2,600 abducted Yazidi women and children are to this day still waiting to be rescued from the hands of ISIS terrorists.

• Teenage girls abducted by Islamic State terrorists in Iraq and Syria were sold in slave markets “for as little as a pack of cigarettes,” the UN envoy on sexual violence, Zainab Bangura, said.

• “Since October 7th, the media has suppressed your [Israelis’] story, even going so far as to claim it never happened while others justified it as warranted resistance to Israeli oppression. Someone please tell me where children bound and shot to death with their guts cut out constitutes a warranted resistance…  We live in a time where intelligent people are being silenced so that stupid people are not offended…. The media is actively suppressing the events of October 7th to rewrite history according to their chosen narrative….  It all boils down to likes, views, and revenue for them.” — Steve Maman, founder of The Liberation of Christian and Yazidi Children of Iraq.

• “[On October 7], humiliation, mutilation and murder took place during those rapes. Woman raped in front of their loved ones and then shot. Knives inserted into their private parts. Scalped heads. Nails inserted into woman’s private areas. Indescribable pain must have taken place before death….  Attacking innocent people and subjecting hostages to torture is not an act of freedom fighting…. The global response to victims of radical Islam has consistently been one of silence, allowing such atrocities to continue unchecked, perpetuating a cycle of violence.” — Steve Maman.  (Uzay Bulut, Gatestone, 6/19/2024)

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EUROPE’S EXTREME RIGHT MEETS

An international conference in Hungary is promoting cooperation between conservative and extreme right-wing parties in the European Union. CPAC Hungary was opened on Wednesday 25 April in Budapest by Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán and will end on Friday. The event brings together politicians from parties organised in the conservative European People’s Party (EPP), which includes Germany’s CDU and CSU, and parties such as the Belgian Vlaams Belang or the French Rassemblement National, which are classified as extreme right-wing. The event has been organised against a background of efforts in the European Parliament to tear down the longstanding cordon sanitaire between the EPP and the far right. The anti-fascist firewall has in any case been crumbling for a long time in the EU. We see here another initiative to forge a broad right-wing bloc. On Wednesday, the EPP together with the two far-right groups, ECR and ID, combined to jointly reject a motion in the European Parliament. Some observers see this as a test run for further collaborations. CPAC Hungary is an offshoot of the Trump-affiliated CPAC in the United States. Its members include US Republicans as well as far-right figures from Latin America and Israel.  (German Foreign Policy 6/13/2024)

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BRIEFLY

• Children In West Bank Celebrate Eid Al-Adha By Brandishing Weapons, Wearing Hamas And Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) Headbands; Preschoolers In NJ Islamic School Learn To Slaughter Toy Sheep As Part Of ‘Mock Hajj’. (MEMRI. 6/17/2024)

• Hamas Official Baraka: North Korea Is Part Of Our Alliance; Hamas Official Basem Naim’s Message To Samidoun ‘Resistance Festival’ In Belgium: I Salute Each And Every One Of You; We Will Celebrate The Victory Of Our People, From The River To The Sea. (MEMRI, 6/19/2024)

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BIBLICAL SOLUTIONS

Constantly, we hear of somebody who is missing.    A couple of weeks ago, a well-known TV personality had gone off for an afternoon walk on a very hot afternoon on a Greek island.  He then disappeared.   When he was found, he was dead.  

Today, a UK teenager is missing on Tenerife.   After a party, others had found their way home; this one got lost.  He’s now been missing for over 60 hours.   He has no water with him despite the intense heat.   The search continues. 

Both of these people, and countless others, would have experienced different outcomes if they had taken somebody along with them when they set off on the journey.

In the Biblical book of Ecclesiastes, the author observes that: 

   Two are better than one,
    because they have a good return for their labor:
   If either of them falls down,
    one can help the other up.
   But pity anyone who falls
    and has no one to help them up.  (Eccl 4:9-10)

It seems so obvious. 

Women are especially at risk when they go off alone, and not just from the natural environment.

The last point made is that if you fall and have no one to help you up, the outcome can be disastrous.   That is what happened with the first man mentioned.

People should never be over-confident.   They should always realize the risks.  Walking with somebody else minimizes the risk.  Always.