Angela Merkel’s Trump-esque niqab ban in Germany is bad for Europe but a million miles from Ireland
Merkel’s bold anti-immigrant plan is a significant moment for liberal Europe
Germany’s Angela Merkel has cracked open an ugly debate with a promise to ban face-covering veils for Muslim women.
The topic is hardly a hot chestnut in Ireland where around 50,000 Muslims live, less than the population of Carlow.
Since so few are ever seen in the face-veil, known as a niqab, a ban would be unnecessary here.
However if Enda Kenny ever wanted to ban those people going to the shops in their pyjamas, I’d vote for that.
The only folks in Ireland who tend to wear face-veils are tasteless brides who dress like human meringues on their wedding day.
Even then it’s often the groom who look like they should have their faces covered.
To be serious, Merkel’s bold anti-immigrant plan (she’s also promising to quicken the pace of deporting failed asylum seekers) is a significant moment for liberal Europe.
Her speech, which goes against her core welcome policy and sounded vaguely Trump-esque, is aimed at regaining ground lost to the far right.
Amid the Syrian refugee crisis, Germany welcomed 890,000 mostly Muslim immigrants in 2015, and 300,000 more this year.
Ireland pledged to admit 4,000 but only a few hundred will have arrived by Christmas. It’s little wonder then that a major European survey showed Ireland was the most welcoming country.
87 per cent of those polled expressed some degree of sympathy towards Syrian refugees arriving here.
It’s doubtful that friendly attitude would be so high if like Germany, a group of foreigners equivalent to 12 per cent of the Irish population landed on our shores.
It would be like receiving more than the entire population of Cork city and county in two years.
The significant difference of course is that Germany is a very wealthy country with vast industry for low-paid workers.
Ireland, on the other hand, is broke and has people who wear pyjamas to the shops.
It makes you wish for more ethnic diversity in our culture, especially in a parliament where we have a Taoiseach who used the word “n****r” in the punchline of a joke during a speech while leader of the Opposition.
Brexit and Donald Trump won respective votes on a platform of anti-immigration, and specifically Muslim immigration after a year of ISIS inspired attacks on western cities.
The irony of Britain conquering the world and then moaning about foreigners and the immigrant nation of the US blaming migrants for everything got lost in the fog.
Merkel, that most sensible and caring of EU leaders, is now following the trend rather than taking it on.
Her anti-immigrant sentiments may be mild compared to the Farage-Trump brand of open malice, but it marks a stark departure.
When the Donald won the election, Merkel stood out from the cowardice of leaders like Enda Kenny who condemned Trump during the election but gushed when he won.
The German chancellor was cool and dignified in her reaction to the Trump victory.
She said “Germany and America are connected by… respect for the law and the dignity of man, independent of origin, skin colour, religion, gender, sexual orientation or political views,” and added: “I offer the next President of the United States close cooperation on the basis of these values.”
Her words are starting to ring rather hollow as she fights for political survival by sounding like Diet-Trump, promising to ban the face-veil, vowing to stamp out Islamic culture that does not conform to German law and deport bogus asylum seekers more swiftly.
She said: “We do not want parallel societies and where they exist we have to do something about them.
"Our law has priority over honorary codes, tribal and family rules, and over Sharia (law). This must be clearly stated.”
In Ireland, we cannot judge our German betters.
It’s easy to be pro-immigrant when so few are arriving here. Merkel’s speech this week came against the backdrop of the arrest of an Afghan asylum seeker over the rape and murder of a teenage German student.
A police union spokesman blamed this and similar crimes on immigration and Germany’s “welcome culture”.
Adding to the chilling language is the rise of the Alternative for Germany party, AfD, an anti-immigrant populist group that is eroding support for Merkel’s centre-right CDU.
They suffered their worst defeat in Berlin’s local elections in September as the AfD won the biggest far right vote since the end of the Second World War.
Far right parties are rising in countries where most refugees are arriving.
The Paris and Bastille Day attacks in France have fed support for the National Front, which is hoping to cause upset in the French presidential vote next year.
In the Netherlands, an anti-EU, anti-Islamic party is leading in polls ahead of the 2017 national elections.
Its leader is on trial for hate speech over comments against Moroccans.
A far right candidate narrowly lost Austria’s presidential election on Sunday after a campaign that was so tight it had to be re-run when an earlier vote in May was nullified.
Other countries with high levels of immigration since the Syrian crisis Greece, Hungary and Sweden have all recorded rising support for anti-immigrant far right movements.
And we thought we had problems in Ireland.
Thank goodness for our commoner gardener corruption, inefficient public service and mild shite-ness. But seriously, deport all those pyjama people out of my supermarket.
Adams: Stacks deserve answers
It’s another week, another Gerry Adams scandal with a wronged family at the centre of political opportunism.
Enda Kenny and Micheal Martin can hardly rein in their glee at again raising Adams’ murky past in the case of the murdered prison officer Brian Stack.
Why bother dealing with the stalemate in Government on a slew of pressing issues, when you can suddenly come over all concerned about a case that threatens to harm a Dail rival?
Unravelling the outrages committed by the IRA will take many more years and should be done for the families of victims rather than electoral gain for the two main parties.
Fine Gael and Fianna Fail seem far more transfixed by Republican atrocities than those committed by loyalists and the British forces.
It’s no mystery why.
The New Politics plan between FF and FG was as much about keeping Gerry Adams and Sinn Fein out of the role as leaders of the Opposition as forming a minority government.
The parties’ foresight is narrow if their attack plan on the Shinners is limited to Adams’ past.
The SF President has one more election in him and beyond that, the civil war parties will have a clean Shinner with no IRA past to attack.
The Stack family deserve answers for plain justice rather than political gain.
They are ill served by a mainstream media that gets hysterical about historic Adams-related cases while giving scant coverage to matters like the shocking INM pensions raid or the lack of charity regulation or low-taxed vulture funds and much more.
Gardai Hound Limerick Gangs
The return of the dog-napped greyhound Clare’s Rocket is a minor detail in a much bigger story about the success of the Gardai in Limerick.
Violence and murder grabs the headlines far more than cases where crimes have been averted by shrewd and effective policing.
Amid the Garda pay dispute, it was easy to forget the major triumphs of the force.
Nowhere is this more evident than in Limerick, where extra garda resources and good policing brought down the city’s gangs in the Noughties.
Organised crime reached a bloody pinnacle around 2007 when Limerick accounted for a third of all gun violence in the country.
There were six murders in both 2006 and 2008.
It took an arson attack on young children and the mistaken identity murder of innocent Shane Geoghegan to direct attention on the issue.
100 extra Gardai were deployed and gang crime abated. There hasn’t been a gangland killing in the city since 2011.
The recovery of Clare’s Rocket so soon after the theft by the remnants of Limerick’s gangs shows how Gardai have a handle on organised crime in the city.
It’s a case that’s being studied by officers in Dublin tackling the Kinahan war on the Hutches, which claimed seven lives in a year but has gone quiet since May.
Dobbo's Dollop
Trade unions are a great bunch of chaps.
As soon as they heard Bus Eireann is on the verge of going bust they were straight on the wireless calling for talks for ‘substantial’ pay increases.
Their beards must now be growing out of their ears, because I don’t think they heard that bit right, about Bus Eireann going bankrupt? Insolvent was the word Shane Ross used, in about two years’ time.
It’s hard to trust a man so plummy you could smear him on your turkey sandwiches.
The first time he ever went onto a bus he probably asked where First Class was, and then ordered roast breast of Swan.
He thinks Bus Aras is a medical condition caused by contracting piles from sitting on a damp coach to Letterkenny for two days.
The company says it needs to cut routes and reduce staff in order to survive. The trade unions think in this apocalyptic climate, they’re actually going to get pay rises like the Luas and Dublin Bus drivers.
Of course, trade unions are of great value to society, look at all the good work they achieved for the Clery’s workers.
Who got a kick up the backside and an interview on Joe Duffy for 30 years service.
And they have as much a chance of winning the pensions war with Independent News and Media as seeing the Sindo print something remotely negative about Denis O’Brien.
Let’s hope it gets worked out soon and the unions go back to what they do best; reading the Racing Post all day and whiling away the afternoon smoking in the jacks.
Bus Eireann provides an important service, mainly delivering much needed students from the countryside into Limerick, Cork and Galway to drink poitin out of Doc Martens for four years.