GERMANY - Hers is a government for undemanding times, with none of the ambition needed to face the giant challenges of today. If Germany is the heart of Europe, then it is currently the slow-beating heart of a well-fed businessman resting on his office couch after an ample lunch. For Europe’s sake, and for Germany’s own, that heart needs to beat a little faster.

GERMANY - The future of Germany's government has been thrown into question after the centre-left Social Democrats elected a relatively unknown left-wing duo who campaigned on a threat to pull out of Chancellor Angela Merkel's ruling coalition. Relative unknowns just days ago, Nobert Walter-Borjans and Saskia Esken were comfortably elected Saturday by the SPD, beating Finance Minister Olaf Scholz and his running mate Klara Geywitz. It's a clear indication of the party's dissatisfaction with its role in the ruling coalition. The "anti-Merkel coalition" pair, as dubbed by German media, have vowed to lead the SPD “out of the neoliberal wilderness” and said they would consider quitting the chancellor's government.

GERMANY - The future of German Chancellor Angela Merkel's coalition has been thrown into doubt after her deputy chancellor lost the leadership race of his party. Olaf Scholz, who is also finance minister, lost his bid to become leader of the centre-left SPD. The party is now expected to vote on whether to stay in the coalition with Ms Merkel's conservative CDU/CSU. Mr Scholz's joint challengers, Norbert Walter-Borjans and Saskia Esken, have been highly critical of the coalition... they want to renegotiate the coalition deal with Ms Merkel's conservatives to focus more on social justice and investment. Poor election results and mixed views of Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, who replaced Ms Merkel as CDU leader in 2018, have led to discontent within the party.

GERMANY - Norbert Walter-Borjans and Saskia Esken, the new leaders of Germany’s Social Democrats (SPD), may be about to do Germany and Europe a favor. That’s not thanks to any inherent qualities they possess; both are colorless and unimaginative left-wingers vaguely resembling Britain’s Jeremy Corbyn, though not quite as reckless. Rather it’s because they may want to take their party out of its coalition with Chancellor Angela Merkel’s center-right bloc, a possibility that has sparked a full-blown government crisis. Anything that shakes the country out of its torpor offers a ray of hope.

GERMANY - The right-wing populist Alternative for Germany party wants to attract "middle-class" voters by pursuing a more moderate path. The idea is likely to be met with opposition from the party's far-right wing. The new co-leader of the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party has called on party members to take a more moderate path as part of efforts to gain more mainstream voters. "We can only reach the middle-class in a reasonable manner," Tino Chrupalla said in a speech at the party's two-day national conference on Sunday. Chrupalla was elected as the AfD's co-leader on Saturday. He replaced Alexander Gauland, a founding member of the party in 2013, who became the party's first honorary member on Sunday. Chrupalla will lead the party alongside Jörg Meuthen, who has also kept his distance from the radical right. "It's all going our way," Meuthen said on Sunday. "That's why we need to be ready, we have to be good."

GERMANY - Germany’s UN ambassador [Christoph Heusgen] has voted again for an anti-Israel resolution, ignoring pleas from the nearly 100,000-member Central Council of Jews in Germany and the Jewish state to change its voting pattern. Rabbi Abraham Cooper, associate dean for the human rights organization Simon Wiesenthal Center, told The Jerusalem Post: “Having Germany again vote for a UN Resolution labeling the Jewish people’s holiest site – the Western Wall in Jerusalem along with Solomon’s Temple Mount and the historic Jewish Quarter of the Old City as ‘occupied Palestinian territory’ – is an outrage and intolerable.”

GERMANY - A new neo-Nazi scandal has erupted in the German military, this time in its Special Forces Command (KSK), according to the Bild am Sonntag newspaper. An officer in the elite military unit is strongly suspected of involvement in the right-wing extremist scene, the paper reported on Sunday. Defense Minister Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer said the military is taking the cases "very, very seriously" and vowed tough action against extremists found in its ranks. "Anyone in the Bundeswehr who appears to be a radical has no place in the Bundeswehr," Kramp-Karrenbauer said Sunday during a visit to Kosovo. She added that the Special Forces Command in particular has a "special responsibility to counter any tendency toward radicalism." KSK is particularly responsible for rescuing people who have been kidnapped, taken hostage or are facing terrorist threats abroad. Pressure is mounting on the German military, with numerous soldiers in its ranks accused of right-wing extremism in recent months.

GERMANY - The election of Tino Chrupalla, a lawmaker from Saxony, is a tribute to former Communist eastern states where the AfD has made big gains in three elections this year. He will lead Germany’s largest opposition party with Joerg Meuthen, an economics professor from the industrial southern state of Baden-Wuerttemberg who serves as a European Parliament lawmaker. “It is time to send a clear signal with a double leadership made up of representatives from both the east and west,” Chrupalla told delegates, who elected him in a run-off with over 54% of the vote.

GERMANY - German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s ‘Grand Coalition’ is under threat from within, as the Social Democrats (SDP) elect new, leftist leaders. Their focus on social justice puts the SDP at odds with Merkel’s center-right CDU. The SDP announced its new leaders on Saturday, following a vote by party members. While Finance Minister Olaf Scholz and Klara Geywitz – allies of Merkel – were tipped to win, the leadership went to leftists Norbert Walter-Borjans and Saskia Esken. Both politicians have called for higher taxes on the wealthy, more government investment in infrastructure and climate change measures, and increased welfare spending, regardless of whether the country’s budget slips into deficit or not. The pair represent a bloc of SPD voters unhappy with the party’s role in Merkel’s centrist coalition.

GERMANY - Chancellor Angela Merkel delivered an emotional speech to the German Budestag this week on the need for limiting freedom of speech. Merkel is the current globalist leader on the international stage. Merkel argued that the government must take away freedom of speech to save freedom of speech... Angela Merkel: "For those who claim they can no longer express their opinion, I say this to them: If you express and pronounce opinion, you must live with the fact that you will be contradicted. Expressing an opinion does not come at zero cost. But freedom of expression has its limits. Those limits begin where hatred is spread. They begin where the dignity of other people is violated. This house will and must oppose extreme speech. Otherwise our society will no longer be the free society that it was."

It doesn’t work that way, Angela.

GERMANY - The German army (Bundeswehr) is preparing for new military interventions. The plans were announced by the German defence minister, Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer (Christian Democratic Union, CDU), on Monday at a Bundeswehr base in Saarland. “We would be able to undertake additional missions today,” she boasted. Five years after the German government announced the end of military restraint at the Munich Security Conference in 2014, the ruling class can no longer hide the fact that it is basing its foreign and great power politics on the militaristic traditions of the German Empire and the Nazis. In his major lecture on foreign policy at the end of October, the president of the German parliament, Wolfgang Schäuble (CDU), described 1945, ie, the date of the downfall of the Third Reich and the defeat of Germany in World War II — as a “catastrophe.”

EUROPE - Departing European Commission chief Jean-Claude Juncker has issued a dire warning to his successors that the Continent is on a “downward slope”. “From the 25 percent of global value added that we account for today, our share, if all goes well, will drop to 15 percent in 10 to 15 years from now. By 2030, it is likely that no European country will still be a G7 member. Demographically, we are also on a downward slope. So we have to stick together, not by wiping out our national identities but by nurturing them, emphasising our common values time and again, as well as our individualities — the things that make Europe what it is.” Europe’s list of challenges includes potential trade conflicts with China and the United States, as well as Brexit. Currently the global trade slowdown is battering the EU the hardest, according to new OECD data. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Developments blamed Brexit uncertainties, Germany’s industrial downturn and disruption from US-China trade tensions.

TURKEY - Vladimir Putin has looked to disrupt NATO's inner-relations in recent months by placing his S-400 missiles in Turkey via a controversial arms deal, but President Tayyip Erdogan may have scuppered Russia's plans as he finally concedes to US President Donald Trump. President Erdogan's Foreign Ministry promised this week to install Russia's S-400 missile systems as a "stand alone system" meaning they will not be integrated into NATO's defence operations. This comes as a surprising concession by Turkey having been defiant in their acquisition of the weapons despite numerous warnings from the White House and even the threat of sanctions.

USA - Climate change alarmists are pushing for a change in vocabulary to scare people into taking global warming more seriously, starting with terms like “global meltdown” and “climate collapse.” Writing for AdAge this week, Aaron Hall argues that in order to get people to “take action” against climate change, “rebranding” is crucial, since people have gotten too used to the idea that climate is changing and need to be shocked into the notion that the world as we know it is ending.

UK - Queen Elizabeth II is supposedly giving serious thought to stepping down and handing over the reign to Prince Charles when she turns 95 in two years time. According to royal succession rules, Queen Elizabeth II can’t retire without abdication, but she can stop all of her royal duties and responsibilities should her health become a concern.