GER politics thread [Archive] - Page 6 - SUBSIM Radio Room Forums

Catfish

04-26-21, 11:43 AM

I wonder if people really have red and understood what the greens have written in their program. Its a declaration of war on löiberty, freedoms, and private property, and a declaration of intent to destroy social cohesion and financial maintainability of private households. [...]

The Greens' party program (shortened, translated from here:
https://www.deutschlandfunk.de/bundestagswahlkampf-was-im-wahlprogramm-der-gruenen-steht.2897.de.html?dram:article_id=494383,)

"An "immediate climate protection program" is planned.
The climate target is to be raised: 70 percent fewer greenhouse gases in 2030 than in 1990. The target is currently 55 percent.

The CO2 price for transport and heating introduced in January is expected to be 60 euros (currently 25 euros) per ton in 2023. In order to relieve low-wage earners and families in particular, energy money is to flow back to the citizens.

The Greens want to “campaign” for the coal phase-out to be “completed” in 2030 (currently 2038).

From 2030, only emission-free cars are to be registered. The purchase of emission-free cars is to be promoted through a bonus-malus system in the vehicle tax. A “fund for transformation grants” is to help low-income commuters switch to an emission-free car.

A speed limit, called "Sicherheitstempo", of 130 kilometers per hour is to apply on German autobahns. An expansion of the railway should make short-haul flights superfluous by 2030. In addition, a massive expansion of cycle paths is planned.

The Greens want to rebuild the debt brake in the Basic Law in order to finance additional annual investments of 50 billion euros through loans - in fast internet, cutting-edge research, climate-neutral infrastructures, charging stations, expansion of the railways, emission-free buses, modern urban development.

In order to relieve small and medium-sized incomes, the basic income tax allowance is to be increased. To finance this, the top tax rate for high incomes increases in two stages by three and six percentage points.

From an income of 100,000 euros for a single person (200,000 euros for couples) the top tax rate would be 45 percent and from an income of 250,000 (500,000) euros it would be 48 percent.
A wealth tax of one percent per year should apply to assets above two million euros per person.

The Greens want to limit the rise in housing costs with a nationwide rent cap that enables “rent ceilings in existing buildings”. Regular rent increases should be capped at 2.5 percent per year within the rent index.

Hartz IV, introduced by the former red-green federal government, will be replaced by a "guarantee protection" according to the draft, the standard rates for monthly payments would be gradually increased and sanctions would be removed. A basic child benefit is intended to bundle previous benefits such as child benefit, child benefit and basic security.

The state-subsidized private old-age provision based on the Riester pension model is to be replaced by a “publicly administered citizen fund”.
Vegan milk alternatives are to be equated with dairy products for tax purposes and receive the reduced VAT rate.

Migrants who previously only had a temporary tolerance status are given a safe right to stay after five years of residence.

In security policy, the Greens reject the “arbitrary” NATO two percent target, according to which member states should spend at least two percent of their economic output on the military budget."

Regardless those other ideas, but an Autobahn speed limit in Germany? NEVER. :O:

Rockstar

04-26-21, 12:25 PM

Regardless those other ideas, but an Autobahn speed limit in Germany? NEVER. :O:

Unlike a gas-powered vehicle, an EV's consumption increases dramatically as speeds rise. No need to regulate and post speed limits, just install the charging stations farther apart. :D

Jimbuna

04-26-21, 01:22 PM

In security policy, the Greens reject the “arbitrary” NATO two percent target, according to which member states should spend at least two percent of their economic output on the military budget.[/I]"

Regardless those other ideas, but an Autobahn speed limit in Germany? NEVER. :O:

The NATO two percent will go down well with the US no doubt :) Not to mention the other NATO members :hmmm:

The speed limit I fully understand....back in the day I lived in the Netherlands, I recall driving my parents to Schiphol Airport at the end of one of their visits and my father remarked at the speed of the German registered vehicles overtaking at great speed. A few miles down the road I was pulled over by Traffic Police and issued with an eighty Guilder fine (as was the Dutch currency back then) despite the fact I was confident I was not speeding.

My father being a veteran of WWII remarked to one of the young officers "I hope you and your country never feel the need for my help again because I won't be bothering"

I apologised, took the ticket and carried on to Schiphol.

Catfish

04-27-21, 02:18 AM

^ :haha: great story. We once made it from Germany to Amsterdam on two Vespa scooters. We were not very fast but we used the dutch motorway for some time, which was of course forbidden, for such comparably lame vehicles.

So we were pulled over by two policemen driving a Porsche 911 in full police colours. They were very friendly though, just told us to leave the motorway at the next exit, and explained which rural roads to use to get to Amsterdam.

Their german was very good, and when i wondered that i never saw police Porsches in Germany they just said it was the only way to catch up with all those pesky german speeders.. made sense :yep:

Jimbuna

04-27-21, 01:54 PM

^ Nice one :up:

Skybird

04-29-21, 06:57 AM

https://www.dw.com/en/german-climate-law-is-partly-unconstitutional-top-court-rules/a-57369917

Gott steh uns bei, egal welcher. This will break the middle class' financial-economic backbone, and drive industry away to less restrictive places. It will be like it alraedy is with nculear power: Germany has banned it, and so imports it from others with far more dnageorus powerplants than ours were.

I know why I always was against joining the Paris climate thing. I always feared that sooner or later this ^ would happen.

Those being young now, in the future will be old. And then see how poverty tastes that is due to their own demands and actions. Those activists, none of them works productively anywhere, they all get financed from others, and donations, and so forth. They are young, have often no job training, no job experience, never had responsibility, never were liable for their own living. They never have learned to maintain their own house and home, but are set to regulate the whole wide world outside. Gotta love that.

Skybird

04-29-21, 11:37 AM

^Adding to the above. The unacceptable implications of the verdict given by the Federal Constitutional Law. Both the law and the court have become a threat in themselves.

https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&u=https://www.achgut.com/artikel/bundesverfassungsgericht_grundrechte_jetzt_nur_noc h_unter_klima_vorbehalt

Skybird

04-29-21, 04:07 PM

The Neuer Zürcher Zeitung writes:
https://www.nzz.ch/meinung/bundesverfassungsgericht-klimaschutz-wird-zum-diktat-der-richter-ld.1614612

Germany's climate protection is becoming the dictate of the constitutional judges

The Federal Constitutional Court is expanding the responsibility required by the Basic Law for the preservation of the natural foundations of life to include specific, drastic measures for climate protection. Germany's highest judges ignore the global dimensions of global warming. -

In terms of the immediate effects, the decision of the Federal Constitutional Court seems almost ridiculous: the legislature is obliged to make it clear in 2022 - instead of until 2025 as previously provided by law - according to which timetable Germany wants to further reduce annual greenhouse gas emissions after 2030. The (next) federal government can live well with this arrangement. But on a fundamental level, the court decision goes much further, with potentially far-reaching consequences for Germany. It is therefore understandable that the representatives of the German climate youth movement belonging to the plaintiffs cheered loudly on Thursday.

Even if the judges repeatedly try to relativize this in their justification and refer to the legislature's scope for action, they essentially state an absolute, legally enforceable constitutional duty of the German state to implement measures that are deemed suitable to protect the global climate. The court explicitly states a constitutional mandate for the state to implement the goal formulated in the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement of keeping long-term global warming well below 2 degrees. -

In doing so, the court accepts that the measures adopted for this purpose can be so drastic that “practically any freedom protected by fundamental rights is endangered”. Not only is that okay with the judges, it is the state's duty to adopt such extreme measures. They derive this from the well-known scientific studies, which estimate the maximum permissible emissions of greenhouse gases worldwide in this century, which are barely compatible with the Paris climate targets. From the beginning of the next decade, according to these calculations, the judges concisely stated that Germany would only have such low emissions that "almost all areas of human life (...) Are threatened by drastic restrictions". -

The judges base the very broadly formulated duty of the state to climate protection on Article 20a, which was added to the Basic Law in 1994 under the Kohl government. This created a responsibility for the state to «protect the natural foundations of life». So far, this article had been regarded as a dead letter because of its general wording and the priority of the legislature explicitly mentioned there. With the decision of the Federal Constitutional Court, it suddenly becomes the sharp sword of climate protectors. -

This is questionable for three reasons. Firstly, with these orders, the judges unduly intervene in the structuring rights of future parliamentarians and governments. Climate protection is certainly a very long-term business. However, it is presumptuous and inefficient to establish the annual emission quantities and the corresponding measures in a binding manner for decades. Too much can change in this time, on an economic, financial, technological and global level. Why the judges believe that the legislature must make the relevant decisions for the period after 2030 at the latest by 2022 is incomprehensible. -
Second, the court overlooks the fact that the measures mentioned and now criticized by the German Climate Protection Act of 2019 are in any case unsuitable for guaranteeing the “protection of the natural foundations of life” required by the Basic Law.Global warming is a global phenomenon. Germany only contributes a share of 2 percent to global CO2 emissions, with a decreasing trend. Whether Germany actually meets the Paris climate targets and will be climate neutral from 2050 onwards has a minimal impact on the climate. Much more important than the precise setting of reduction targets several decades in advance would be measures by Germany that would contribute to a more rapid rethink in countries like China or India with their much higher and rising emissions. Germany could put pressure on this as an important trading partner, as a leading EU state and as a major investor. -

Thirdly, it is astonishing to what extent the judges take for granted extreme encroachments on the civil liberties to protect the climate in the coming decades. In a democracy, these weightings and decisions must at all times be left to the citizens or their elected representatives, not to a few constitutional judges, who are then probably no longer in office.

------------

The implications of this verdict are desastrous. Not just econiomically, but espoecially for civil rights, and freedoms. They paved the way that in the name of "climate protection" - no matter whether the topic at hand is effective ion supporting that or not! - peope can be ruined, existentially and financially destroyed, can get locked away to blackmail unlimited compliance and total surrender to the dogma. They paved the way for punishments that are beyond imagination- in priciple for even not agreeing with a wanted, claimed paradigm.

It could lead into a total dictatorship. I am shocked that nobody sees this, especially in the industry - they even applaude.

"This is how liberty dies - with thundering applause."

Always the Germans who think the world is just waiting for them to save it and to show the way, and then the world will follow. The endlessly repeating basic sin of German history and mentality. The perfect, superior plan, the divine, infallible best-possible intention.

Skybird

05-02-21, 06:15 AM

After last sundays poll establishd a Green lead over the former CDU, this weekend's poll for the sunday question shows that the Green have increased their lead. The former CDU is still diving and has increased the acceleration for the dive.

Meanwhile:
https://www.dw.com/en/germanys-cdu-under-fire-over-nomination-of-controversial-ex-spy-chief/a-57400322

Back then he was crucified because he rejected to follow the at that time already hyperbolic exggeration in the narration that foreigners were being chased through the street by wild mobs. As far as I recall and remember the videos shown back then, they indeed were very much blown up in proportion, like turning a car crash into a city-wide slaughtering festival of car owners. What they do not forgive Maaßen is that he reminds the former CDU that before the 16 Merkel years it considered itself to be a not as left party as it is today. His comment that in the future maybe a coalition with the AfD might be possible, imo is just radical realism - if the CDU wants to stay in power in the future from time on. I think it will share the SPD's fate some time not too far away, having rendered itself meaningless and irrelevant. And like Maaßen did with his comment on the AfD, the SPD also once claimed to never ever form a coalition with the former SED... and now fliorts with bthe idea openly. For the new leadership in that SPD, that is no longer engraved in stone. Far from it.

Maaßen maybe just is a realist, a stubborn man with a thick skin. To call him a rightwinger, is hilarious. A conservative, yes. But for the post-Merkel CDU, that description of itself already is an offence.

And in Germany, EVERYBODY not howlign with the wolves automatically gets called a racist or/and a Nazi.

Skybird

05-03-21, 01:35 PM

The Neue Zürcher Zeitung writes:
https://www.nzz.ch/feuilleton/nationalismus-vom-deutschen-beduerfnis-das-kaiserreich-schwarzzumalen-ld.1614551

New nationalism? About the German need to paint the German Empire black

The interpretation that the current interest in the empire is accompanied by a new nationalism is a caricature. The lack of intellectual self-recognition of the united Germany as a nation-state manifests itself here.

The German historians argue again. This is nothing unusual in itself. Debates about national positioning take place between the Alps and the North Sea more than elsewhere in the form of arguments about the past. For this reason, historical controversies in Germany are often highly politicized and have a tendency towards moralization that alienates foreign observers. -

What is new is that the historical self-discovery discussions are not, as is usually the case, about the German dictatorships of the 20th century. The focus is not on National Socialism, World War II and the extermination of European Jews, nor on Communism, the GDR and the Stasi. Instead, a past without contemporary witnesses heats the minds: the German Empire of 1871 moves back into the focus of a broader audience. -

The emotional charge could already be felt in 2014 in the controversy about the causes of the First World War, which was particularly poisonous in Germany. It is currently repeated in the specialist books, feature pages and blogs on the founding of the Empire in 1871 and on the question of how the Hohenzollern Reich proclaimed in the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles should be assessed. -

Even the Federal President ennobled the subject by inviting four historians to a history lesson at Bellevue Palace on January 13 to discuss the founding of the German Empire 150 years ago. Why, one wonders, is a community moving closer to us in this way, which a quarter of a century ago was still called the "past kingdom" (Klaus Hildebrand)? -

A common explanation is that Germans are tired of debates about guilt and turned to a supposedly glorious and historically unencumbered national past before the civilization of the Nazi dictatorship. They saw in the empire, so the diagnosis, the model of a self-confident and tightly governed state, internally and externally powerful, without party bickering, but economically potent and scientifically at the top of the world. Based on this spirit of national apology, the garrison church in Potsdam is being rebuilt and the Hohenzollern Palace is being reconstructed in the center of Berlin. -

In order to defend against such tendencies, the Marburg historian Eckart Conze wrote a book about the “Shadows of the Empire”, which he would like to see explicitly understood as “historical-political intervention”. In depictions that did not paint the picture of the empire dark enough, he saw a new nationalism at work that wanted to place the Berlin republic in a "black-white-red tradition". Who sets the accents differently, the accused Conze and other representatives of this reading of an attempted "self-exoneration", which is "politically dangerous". -

But their interpretation of the renaissance of interest in the empire is a caricature - and twice. It not only distorts recent historical research on the topic. She also fails to recognize the mood in Germany today. A glorification of the empire as the "good old days", as it did in the early Federal Republic after the crimes of National Socialism and the devastation of two world wars, can hardly be ascertained. Calls for a restoration of the monarchy cannot be heard outside of tiny splinter groups from Kaiser Wilhelm fans. -

In the debate about the Hohenzollern legacy, the German public is overwhelmingly on the side of their critics. Imperial pride in the military has given way to a pronounced disinterest, if not mistrust, of German soldiers in the Bundeswehr. The neighbors and allies of the unified Germany do not fear its military strength or supremacy, but diplomatic indecision and a free-rider mentality in security policy. -

It is also misleading to label historical studies that paint a more nuanced picture of the empire as neo-nationalistic or national apologetic. If something connects the more recent research, it is not an apology but an ambivalence. No serious historian denies the authoritarian side of the Hohenzollern monarchy or the incomplete parliamentarization. The dark chapter of colonial history is being explored more and more. The tension between an early and far-reaching democratization at the imperial level on the one hand and the tenacious adherence to the traditional three-class suffrage on the other hand, which made Prussia a stronghold of political persistence, is also undisputed.

In addition to the economic upswing, cultural productivity, and excellence in many areas of the natural sciences and humanities, current research also emphasizes the dynamics of political change more clearly than before. The plurality in the social discussions is striking. The politicization of broad sections of the population, from workers to women, is given greater attention and the practice of democratic practices is recognized as progress. Younger historians like Oliver Haardt see the constitutional order drafted by Bismarck no longer just as a rigid bulwark against change, but as an astonishingly flexible framework that did not develop into a parliamentary system based on the English model, but made considerable adjustments possible within the framework of the constitutional monarchy. last but not least, a considerable increase in the importance of the Reichstag. -

It is the connection between the pace and ambivalence of change in all possible areas of life that explains the increased interest in the empire. It comes less from a dangerous longing to glorify the past, but more from the fact that the years between 1871 and 1914/18 are fascinating as an era of enormous and contradicting modernization, dynamization and polarization. At the same time, they appear to our present - as a time of media revolutions, European crises, international tensions, increasing global networking and a considerable lack of clarity in international relations - despite all the strangeness in their gray tones, even more familiar than the comparatively well-ordered black and white world of the Cold War . -

The fact that the empire is getting closer again in this way also explains a large part of the historiographical defensive reflexes. Since the 1960s, historians have interpreted the history of the Hohenzollern Empire under the sign of a German special path, primarily as the prehistory of National Socialism in order to understand how a totalitarian dictatorship could be established in Germany. The critical turn in national historiography was an important contribution to the internal ties to the West in the Federal Republic. She emphasized the break in 1945, emphasized the rapprochement with Western ideas of state and society and emphasized the democratic new beginning in West Germany. In this respect, the Sonderweg thesis contributed to the intellectual self-recognition of the Federal Republic as a community with its own success story that began in 1945/49. -

The more recent research on the empire no longer fits easily into this pattern of interpretation. In many fields they relativize the special path by placing German developments in a European comparative perspective. All too simple notions of uniform Western standards and patterns are dissolving. The idea of a role model function for the West has suffered anyway in view of the greater emphasis on the dark side of Western modernity. -

1933 and 1945 are no longer the only lines of flight of interpretation. More recent interpretations show the empire not only as a prelude to the "Third Reich", but also as the prehistory of the old Federal Republic, the GDR and the unified Germany. Characteristics and path dependencies dating back to 1933 or 1918 are named more clearly: in the history of democracy and parliamentarism, in federalism and in the social security systems, in the regulatory models for the state and the economy. -

Above all, however, since 1990 the question of a German national history has arisen again beyond the post-national self-image of the old Federal Republic. Not only are historians alienated by this, but also large parts of the political establishment. In his speech on the 150th anniversary of the founding of the German Reich, it was not by chance that the Federal President used terms with negative connotations such as “nationalism”, “national egoism” or “national arrogance” from the word field “nation”. -

The fact that a German nation-state tradition was also established in 1871 took a back seat. The need to paint the empire and the founding of an empire in black results, it seems, not least of all from a persistent discomfort at living in a nation-state again, which may not be a transitory stage for a European republic, but will remain for the foreseeable future. The warning against placing the “national state of the Federal Republic in the tradition of the Reich of 1871” is at the heart of Conze's historical intervention. You don't have to speak of a new “lie of life” (Tilman Mayer). But a lack of intellectual self-recognition of the unified Germany as a nation-state in a world characterized by nation-states can be diagnosed.

---
The author Dominik Geppert is professor for the history of the 19th and 20th Century at the University of Potsdam, and President of the Commission for the History of Parliamentarism and Political Parties.

Skybird

05-03-21, 01:46 PM

Warning of the day: the German Greens want to let excessively explode the porices for CO2 emission beyind the realm of madness. It should be pushed upowards from now 23 to 60 Euros. And not in 2030, but 2023. This was annoucned by their party leadership today, in form of the Hafermilchmann Robert Habeck.

They are as bad as Trotzky and Lenin.

Also good to know: their party programs makes severla references to the need to fight agaiunst the violence form the right.

Not one single remark that violence from the left even exists (like to be seen on May 1st again, and on so very very many other occasions). Not one word. And they do like this almost always, even when commenting actual acts of violence, arsonings and others, and after pressure agree to condmen them in mild language: even then they almost never do lose one word on from what direction the violence came if it was from the left - but they start slobbering when it is right-wing violence.

The Green party program is a massive shift to the left , a huge rise in "Verboten!", a formualted wet dream for private property expropriations and destruction of the mere concepts of "private" and "property", and left-based totalitarianism.

More of Merkel politiucs, versus more of this. ^ I wonder how any thinking man of class and format still can morally justify to give his ballot to , his legitimation forgarbage like this. But then, I ask myself that during every election.

Skybird

05-05-21, 02:59 AM

The Frankfurter Rundschau writes about the latest FORSA poll:

10.6 million eligible voters would choose the CDU / CSU - two million fewer than for the Greens (12.8 million). With 6.4 million, the SPD would have half as many votes as the Greens. The FDP could expect 5.5, the Left 2.8 and the AfD 4.6 million votes.

There are four options for forming a government: Green-Black (together 386 mandates), a “traffic light” coalition of the Greens, SPD and FDP (405 mandates), a green-red-red “left alliance” (360 mandates) or a coalition of the Union, SPD and FDP (together 371 mandates).
-------

Germany's total population is at around 83 million. So any party's voters always only represent a small minority.

Skybird

05-05-21, 05:27 PM

https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&u=https://www.focus.de/politik/deutschland/weitergedacht/weitergedacht-die-wagenknecht-kolumne-gruene-wohlfuehlpartei-verspricht-sauberes-leben-aber-sankta-annalena-behuetet-nur-die-reichen_id_13261539.html

This woman time and again surprises me, I must admit, her analysis, like quite often, is right on the mark. Surprised I am because she is member of the SED-follow up party Die Linke, and in earlier times identified as a radical communist and Stalinist. But I must say she is probably one of the by far smartest and rational heads in German politics. I would not say such a thing about many names in German politics. She is of German-Iranian ancestry, and grew up in the GDR. During her party career she rose to profiled positions in two or three platforms and organsiation that were rated by the Verfassungsschutz as potentially hostile to the constitution, and described herself as pro-Stalinistic and orthodox-communist.

I formidable and classy opponent to have a debate with, I think.

Rockstar

05-06-21, 04:43 PM

How to stop Nordstream2. First try sanctions, then poison Nalvany blame Russia. Next back the Green Party. Now for this, the UN report. :yep:

A sweeping U.N. report says methane is far worse for the climate, human health than previously thought.

https://news.yahoo.com/sweeping-u-n-report-says-153029303.htm (https://news.yahoo.com/sweeping-u-n-report-says-153029303.html)

Climate politicians from the left and the Greens have long criticised Nord Stream 2.

https://forum.eu/article/nordstream-2-pipeline-is-a-climate-killer/661

Coal is starting to look pretty good again :D

Catfish

05-06-21, 04:52 PM

Of course methane is worse. We had that theme more than ten years ago, in this very forum.
Methane set free happens when the climate changes to higher energy levels, read: temperature. Frozen methane hydrates everywhere, Gulf of Mexico, Siberia. Which is exactly why mankind should try to stop global warming.
But you can be happy, it cannot be stopped anymore. And it will not be your problem, nor the one of your children.
It will be the problem of your grand-grand children, and you will not live to see them anyway.

mapuc

05-06-21, 05:11 PM

The highest concentration of this Methane should be in Siberia(northern Russia)

Locked in the frozen something.

Markus

Skybird

05-07-21, 05:52 AM

I warn of methane-hydrate since years and years in this forum. Its several dozen factors more potent a climate warming gas than CO2.

Severla regions of the deep sea bottom are full and full of it. Once the warming water reaches down there, it unfreezes and locks up. And then say good night, I think.

The permafrost regions only hold a fraction of the global reserves. The bigger problem is down at the ocean's bottoms. Their unfreezing maybe could also lead to huge tectonic "movement". Tectonic acitvity + ocean = Tsunami.

I agree with Catsfish, the thing has an inherent self-dynamic that is beyond the fail safe point now. It most likely cannot be stopped anymore.

Thats why I say over and over again we must not waste time and money and ressources in infantile attempts to please Swedish spoiled brat choires and populistic Green terror policies of wanting to turn back the clock and make the last 100 years undone, but we must learn to surf the changing waves and adapt to a much warmer world. And maybe learn how to use methan hydrate as an energy carrier in an ecology-compatabile way. Technology is part of human evolution, its an evolutional tool specific for our species, our way to adapt and survive by becoming fit for it. But the current Zeitgeist simply is too infantile and dumb to understand that. Populism is so much more - well, popular. What georg Kreissler once said about the Austrians, is true for all of us: we are a people of "Blumengießer".

My generation will have to deal with the financial and economical tsunami. The generations after that will have to deal with the ecological tsunami - when all economic, time and financial reserves have run thin or out, and then the real eco tsnumaiu breaks loose. Good luck with that job. I consider myself to be lucky to be of the age I am and to not have children. I got the best of the old world and era, and must not live long enough to endure the violent fall of the new one. Perfect timing. It was a golden era, and now it is at its end.

Honestly said, I think homo sapiens is one of the many dead ended strains on evolution's experimenting table. And no, I do not believe one second that "stellar colonization" is a realistic way out. The idea is just the holy book of another escapist religious cult that promises salvation in the realms of the imagined and the fantasised.

Thats not pleasant to hear and its not what people want to hear. But it is what it is. I think I am beyond the need of illusions. Don't want them, don't need them - can't believe in them anymore even if I would want. But why would I want that? That would be like wanting to go back to the days of my childhood and start believing in Santa Claus and fairy queens again and that the stork brings the babies. I cannot bring myself to believe in that again.

My advice is simple. Enjoy the time you have, do no harm to others intentionally, enjoy every day as if it were your last. Becasue your loife or the world can end just any moment, and you have no reason to take the next day for granted. Since I finally managed to internalize this, my debating and fighting in this forum has become less bitter and angry, and I can forgive easier what in the past would have angered me, and can more easily ignore occasions where in the past I would have fought on and on and on.

Skybird

05-07-21, 04:25 PM

Former migration- and Islam-critical movement Pegida has been so completely hijacked by Nazis that it now is being officially rated as "hostile to the constitutional order" and set under surveillance by the office for the protection of the constitution BVS.

https://www.dw.com/en/germany-intelligence-agency-labels-pegida-anti-constitutional/a-57461336

Two main movements against the Euro, migration and Islam in past years, and both AfD and Pegida being ruined by Nazi takeovers not being fought off with determination from beginning on. Two lost chances. In both cases, members should have smashed in the faces of every brownie showing up on the firt day of appearance already.

Be choosey with whom you march together.

P.S.
First parts of the anti corona movement "Queerdenker" have been rated as case of suspicion, too (in Bremen), due to Nazis winning more and more influence amongst these conspiration theoreticists.

Skybird

05-08-21, 02:58 PM

E-Cars being the probably most inefficent and costly form of climate policy. We throw stellar amounts of taxes and private property wealth out of the window with both hands. Germans are hobbits that never have left the Shire.

https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&u=https://www.focus.de/auto/news/umweltbilanz-im-vergleich-experte-verreisst-elektroautos-als-ineffizenteste-form-der-klimapolitik_id_13198969.html

Skybird

05-17-21, 03:16 PM

The Neue Zürcher Zeitung writes:

About "Never again!" - This Saturday was a day of shame for Germany -

After the anti-Jewish demonstrations in several cities, politicians expressed outrage. But Muslim anti-Semitism has been tolerated for years. And the self-declared anti-fascists are silent. -

In numerous German cities, sheer hatred of Jews erupted this Saturday, masked as a makeshift criticism of Israeli politics in the Middle East conflict. Thousands of people took to the streets to wish the state of Israel doom, to curse Jews as child murderers, to burn Israeli flags. -

Police officers who opposed the mob were insulted and attacked, stones, lighters and bottles were thrown at them, and in Berlin even heavy paving stones. Almost without exception, the perpetrators came from the migrant milieu. The outrage of many politicians afterwards is just as cheap as the announcement that they will now take action. Muslim anti-Semitism has been tolerated in Germany for years. -

State and society very rightly look closely when right-wing extremists play down the Nazi regime, shout xenophobic slogans, rant about the “great exchange” or plan attacks. The Federal Republic is not blind to this eye - and where there is a risk of becoming one, numerous initiatives speak out loudly and quickly. After the racist attack in Halle, which began with the attempted assault on the synagogue there, the Federal President spoke of a "day of shame and shame," and he was right. But this Saturday was also such a day. -

Frank-Walter Steinmeier [the German federal president, Skybird] said after the anti-Semitic riots in Gelsenkirchen last week: "Hatred of Jews - regardless of whom - we will not and will not tolerate in our country." Unfortunately, the opposite is true. Hatred of Jews is tolerated in Germany - provided that migrants practice it. The rejection of “Islamic fascism” (Hamed Abdel-Samad) is much less pronounced than the rejection of right-wing extremist fascism, although both are equally misanthropic. -

In large parts of politics and society, quiet treading still rules when Israel is demonized not by the locals but by immigrants and their descendants. Especially to the left of the center, the fear of being perceived as xenophobic is obviously greater than concern for the Jews. -

This weekend, too, nothing was heard from many who otherwise eloquently defend democracy. Through their silence, the self-declared anti-fascists de facto stand on the side of those who demand a Jew-free Palestine. They make themselves helpers of Islamic fascism. -

How now? The pictures and chants on Saturday raise the question of whether the anti-totalitarian consensus really applies in the Federal Republic. Why, for example, did a Frankfurt administrative court approve a demonstration after the ban by the regulatory office, the organizers of which had previously openly called for an armed struggle against Israel? Why are the same Palestinian network called Samidoun allowed to demonstrate in Berlin? Israel has classified Samidoun as a terrorist organization. -

Why do Muslim associations condemn the riots late and with the knee-jerk hint that the mood towards Muslims and migrants in Germany has also become “rougher and more ruthless”? Why does German foreign policy stand by Tehran's side to this day, even though the Iranian regime is coordinating and financing Hamas' terrorism against Israel? When does the Chancellor speak personally? Why does the Chancellor only let her press spokesman say that anti-Semitic rallies will “not tolerate our democracy” instead of speaking up personally and just as clearly as the North Rhine-Westphalian interior minister, for example? Herbert Reul said after the riots on Saturday that young people of Arab origin and Turkish right-wing extremists were using the Middle East conflict as an outlet to spread hatred of Jews. That's the way it is. -

If you want to solve problems, you have to name them and then act accordingly. A country whose state representatives and social actors shy away from it, surrenders to the problems - and should stop its solemn "Never again!" to lead in the mouth.

Catfish

05-17-21, 03:41 PM

Germany will simply forbid the hate, and the rest will settle by itself.
Question is what "the rest" will look like.

Skybird

05-17-21, 03:54 PM

Lets forbid crime. Police budget can be saved then, there will be no crime. Crime problem solved, money saved - wonderful German way.

France, Sweden, the UK had and have the same illusions, grounded on a false premisse (the Quran allows secularism, antisemitism can be forbidden, we all are just one happy family) that is believed due to lacking understanding of history. Islam has an inherent hate for Jews since the very life of Muhammad himself, since Muhammad'S formdiable ego suffered a big offence from the hand of the Jewish pharisees that showed to be superior in the wanted theological dispute he sought with them to show that he were an equal to their arguments. Heck, the Jewish tradition of hairsplitting thinking was feared and was proverbial already at the times of the Roman empire! It made the Greeks and Romans roll their eyes over...

1,600 years of hatred and revenge and conquest and cultural and ethnical genocide on several continents - and at the beginning of it there was just one man's narcissistic offense who snapped and overcompensated. Great. Well, scientology started with a lousy SF novel.

Skybird

05-26-21, 06:06 AM

Destroyed high tech supply chains: Germany is left behind. Just another example.

https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&u=https://www.achgut.com/artikel/zerstoerte_lieferketten_deutschland_ist_abgehaengt

mapuc

06-04-21, 01:42 PM

In the news here, they have told us that AfD could win the German state election in Sachsen-Anhalt.

A party doesn't become a winner in election just because, so what is the reason, when many Germans see them as neonazis.

Markus

Skybird

06-04-21, 02:56 PM

Reasons compare to why Americans go with Trump's assault on democracy.

They are pissed. And the numbers of people being pissed, is growign daily.

By the Democrats in the US, by the CDU - and the EU (enforced migration) - in Germany.

In quite some regional town halls in Eastern states, cooperations between CDU and AfD are already reality. Nobody speaks about it, everybody tries to hide it from national-level-awareness, but it is fact. CDU and SPD simply have nothing to win in the Eastern states anymore. Because people are pissed.

mapuc

06-04-21, 03:03 PM

^ Thank you.

So it should be seen as a protest against the politics CDU and other parties have done until now.

Markus

Catfish

06-04-21, 03:04 PM

I would not call them neo'nazis' (not to praise but i guess Hitler would have made short work of those idiots); but greater parts of the "AfD" are indeed right-wing and they have the abolishment of democracy in their party program.
If you did not notice yet, the right wing is all the rage, and on the rise almost everywhere.

Skybird

06-04-21, 03:42 PM

^ Thank you.

So it should be seen as a protest against the politics CDU and other parties have done until now.
Its more than just a protest movement, because mere protest of this kind usually does not last long, is short-lived. The contemporary AfD however is expression of the pendulum also swinging at the other direction. Without the Merkel party CDU having turned so mercilessly left and pro-EU and without the massive Islamic culture enrichment project by the EU, this "pendulum in swing" would hardly be noticable, and without the early founder of the party - a burgeoise economy professor! - having been too naive and not confronting the Nazis hijacking his party project from beginning on, it still would be just a small protest movement against the Euro (but in favour of the EU, as the founder back the insisted, which imo was a contradiciton form beginning on).

Pegida movement also was hijacked by Nazis, and is now under surveillance by the office for the protection of thze constitution, BVS.

Its also that the AfD is very strong in the Eastern states where the people already made it through one huge currency reform and economical turmoil that shook the very grounds of their existence: the German reunification. Many still feel disadvantaged and somewhat betrayed. Many still earn less money (but forget to mention that in many regions living costs also are much lower), but the general living standards, I mean options to chose from and infrastructure possibilities, still may lack behind (while in the West many regions have eroded due to the enormous costs of reunification that now many Western communities have sunk below the living level of blossoming Eastern modernization projects).

Identity still means something different in the East than in the West were it has become practically meaningless and randomly exchangable. In the West, it is formality, in the East still more something that is being felt. In such an "anti-progressive" climate, the migration desaster that Germany never really has digested until today since 2015 and the enormous and negative effects of Islam in Germany necessarily - and imo rightfully - trigger reactions that the social lab engineers in Berlin and Brussel simply do not understand to be lived and living realities. This widens the gap between the political caste, that moves further and further away from reality, and the ordinary people it wants to rule, but about whose living conditions it has no longer any clue, has no connection to.Thjat critics and opponents of thje Merkel and Brussels potlics get defamed as most extreme of extm reists and immedioately are declared free for huntign seaosn in the media, doe snot help either of course. You are either for Brussels and MNerklism, or you are a racistm, a Nazi, a xyz-phobe, you are mentall ill, derranged, a potlcial radical, a dangerous being.

Polarization.

Mutual alienation of the people and the political caste.

The internal quarrel over Laschet as the CDU-CSU candidate for the chancellory adds to the anger. Even amongst CDU voters. Atz the national elections this autumn, quite some of them will not vote, or vote for the FDP this time. Or simply give back their party books, what already has happened. Thje CDU got hit by a record of memberhsop cancellations in recent weeks, since the CDU conspired against Söder and inf aovur fo their own man Laschet.

I never support any party or politician, but I cannot remember that a national election had only so totally unsuited , incompetent dilletantic and retarded suckers runnign for office, like this one. Baerbock (Greens), Laschet (CDU/CSU), Scholz (SPD)- a panoptikum of political and anti-intellectual horrors. Never has the range of candidates be as bad as this time. An absolute low in all 30+ years I follow politics.

Thats why I will not say a single bad word about anyone voting for AfD. Even if I don't vote for them, and enver will, and dislike the AfD like any other.

To me, these parties all are to be treated like nuclear waste.

mapuc

06-04-21, 03:57 PM

^Thank you so much Skybird for this in-deep analysis.

Markus

mapuc

06-06-21, 02:25 PM

It looks like the citizens in Sachsen-Anhalt wasn't that angry after all.

In the news I heard Frau Merkel's party seem to be the winner.

It could also mean-Voters is briable.

Markus

Catfish

06-06-21, 02:28 PM

The AfD got far too much votes for comfort :hmmm:

mapuc

06-06-21, 02:57 PM

The AfD got far too much votes for comfort :hmmm:

I say the same as Skybird-In my own words that is.

When a far right party gets many votes isn't a sign of people has turn to nazisme-Well some may.

NO it's signal to the ordinary parties a signal send by these voters-Change your politics.

Markus

Catfish

06-06-21, 03:16 PM

Skybird

06-07-21, 09:12 AM

The most amazing thing is the sheer, dramatic extent of the misjudgments of professional pollsters. Polls are never entirely correct, of course, but actually they usually reflect trends and tendencies quite well. But the extent to which one was completely wrong this time, is dramatic by German standards.

Just recently, the Greens looked like the sure winners in the next federal election, all markers pointing steeply upwards. It currently is a turkey shoot instead. Within days, it changed all by 180°. Within days. Maybe people started reading the Green election program. That the Greens want to destroy car driving in Germany while on European level they are the break for rising fuel prices due to demands form poor countries, maybe was what in the car-lover-nation Germany was the wrong detail to see the light of day.

Germany has just become electricity price champion again, btw. Nowhere else in the West electricity costs so much, than in Germany. Another record year!

Yes indeed, maybe people, have started to read the Green program - and started to realise how ruinous for ordinary private households it is. The cheating exaggerations in the biography of their candidate may have been another point.

Jimbuna

06-11-21, 12:02 PM

Rockstar

06-11-21, 02:09 PM

Can't say for sure how true this is but if it is true then the EU appear to be getting too big for their boots.....talk about the dog that bites the hand from which it feeds.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s7mBwmfC-wg

Wait a minute I thought Germany was pro E.U. when it came enforcing laws in Poland. Poles were expected to abide by the E.U. courts ruling. But Germany hides behind the flag of far right nationalism when it comes to the sovereignty of their courts. lol thats too funny

Skybird

06-11-21, 03:19 PM

^
https://www.subsim.com/radioroom/showpost.php?p=2751793&postcount=122

The EU has sued Germany because the - formally politically independent - German Constitutional High Court dared to criticise the European High Court over its state-financing policies, which they de facto are: state-financing money policies - that by rule and European treaty and Maastricht criteria and laws are illegal and not allowed. The EU now says that this reflection on and criticism of the European Court is not allowed and illegal and has sued Germany over it. What it implies is that the European institutions are infalliable and can never err, and of course can never be corrupted. What do the EU gangsters expect the German government to do now? The government gagging the court?

I see also a psychological issue at hand here. Super-Uschi, the carricature of a commission president, is German by nationality, and like many German politicians she looks down on her Germanness as if it were the plague. To demonstrate her anti-German Germaness, to call it this way, and her neutrality, she now opens fire at Germany, like she already helped anti-German Merkel in preventing Germany doing its best to secure vaccination doses by its own, and instead turning it into the EU vaccination deaster where instead the "community" buys doses collectively - all under the caretaking and wonderful caring hand and supervision of the EU, of course.

There have been since years ambitions in the EU parliament to make any criticism of the EU, its policies and institutions, a punishable crime. There are those who want an official EU institution where criticism gets filed, and then this EU institution decides whethere the EU can afford to allow this criticism, else the person voicing it gets persecuted. When I first red about this group of politicians (from all party blocks in the EU parliament, btw!) over ten years ago, I had my lunch dripping off the monitor afterwards. Gangsters and ideologists do not want to stop their evil doing. They just want to ban calling it evil doing. Who does so, becomes the offender. The real offender - themselves - always is beyond doubt. Dont we have rules to settle such things in a civilised manner? Dont we have law and order? Aren't there official, government-certified valves to steam off anger and rage? Isnt fight ing against money laundering and tax evasion a good thing so that it justifies to destroy freedoms ever more? Isn't the war on drugs working well? Isn't Bromides and Flourides in your food and water positive for your teeth and health?
Arten't you a socially responsible, honest citizen?

If you have nothing to hide, you must not fear control. Obey, submit, hand yourself over, and be safe. :yeah:

Gorpet

06-12-21, 02:33 AM

Skybird, Uncle Joe is in Europe and he is there to make sure that Merkel is still a part of agenda 2030. American dollars will be rolling in. as uncle Joe stated The Demorat party is back.Orange man is gone , and Europe is in good hands and you have absolutely nothing to worry about.As Long as the party gets its kick backs.If not well.. What the hell if your country should have a problem. Guess what we are going to say they should have saved some dollars we gave them to defend themselves.We will not risk our LGTansV forces, Are you crazy. Long Live Uncle Joe and Kammela.

August

06-12-21, 08:18 AM

If you let the people alone decide via direct democracy and have no qualified or educated layers switched between them and making laws and maintaining a society, mankind will soon be back in the middle ages. See Qanon, anti vaxxers and all that. After what happened in the last five years i think most of mankind is rather primitive.
What does a relatively small and insignificant religious group like Qanon and the billions of people around the world who have nothing to do with them but just don't want to be forced to take the experimental covid vaccine (and "all that") with the problems of direct democracy Catfish? I'm sure you can explain those vital links for me please because I fail to see your point. Are you just trying to take two political shots with one stone so to speak?

The problem that our increasingly authoritarian governments have with such people is not their beliefs but rather that free thinkers are inherently difficult to control and regiment. Casting your favorite political boogymen as the reason why democracy doesn't work puts you in that camp.

Catfish

06-12-21, 04:27 PM

What does a relatively small and insignificant religious group like Qanon and the billions of people around the world who have nothing to do with them but just don't want to be forced to take the experimental covid vaccine (and "all that") with the problems of direct democracy Catfish?
Am i the only one who sees a problem with what happens if people believing in unhinged theories from qanon or whatever become the majority?
Or anti vaxxers? deciding that vaccines are bad so democratically deciding to stop research and production of vaccines, and killing some hundred thousands in the process? There are more idiots and weidos by the minute after the "social" (lmao) media hand over a soap box to anyone wo likes to hear himself talking.

Free thinking is good if people are able to think logical and resonably enough, if they only think they are right out of egoism and care for their own beliefs, criticizing anything (by lack of understanding) done by a government or medical organisations, things get ugly.

"Relatively small group"? From what i saw the last years a majority voted for someone who was an unhinged popstar of talk show "fame", embracing all opinions as long as the people believing them would suppport him.

Skybird

06-12-21, 09:02 PM

:yep:
There are reasons why Qanon has gained especially popularity amongst
German neonazi "Reichsbürger". Their narratives of alternate realities compare. The basic psychological mechanisms behind their intellectual syndromes compare, too.

The only thing I miss in it all is the tale of messianic aliens from a distant planet. But maybe this ominous "Q" is.

Some people think that free speech automatically implies that the argument voiced thus automatically is right. Thats like assuming that buying a spoon in a shop already makes you a three-stars-chef.

Skybird

06-13-21, 01:49 AM

Welt am Sonntag writes:

The largest part of the armed forces, the army, is neglected financially by the federal government. According to statistics from the Ministry of Defense, which are available to WELT AM SONNTAG, the Bundestag approved armaments proposals from the Defense Department from 2018 to 2020 with a total volume of 26.335 billion euros. The army's share of this totaled 13 percent, although 63,000 out of a total of 184,000 soldiers are employed in the land forces.

The lack of consideration of the army in armaments investments also has an impact on German obligations in NATO.

The army has already reduced its ambitions: instead of two heavy and one light divisions, according to the key issues paper of the Defense Ministry on the future of the Bundeswehr from mid-May, NATO is only to be given one "large group" with “heavy / mechanized forces” such as the Leopard II and Puma chain armor , plus one with "medium / mobile" and one with "light / air mobile".

But even for this reduced ambition there is still no equipment. The heavy division would require 266 Puma infantry fighting vehicles with the most modern armament. Only 194 are financed in the budget. And hundreds of armored armored vehicles Boxers are missing for both the heavy and the medium division.

Germany has promised NATO a division capable of intensive combat with three brigades by 2027, and three divisions with nine brigades by 2032. In the key issues paper, these points in time are now called into question, they should be “redefined if necessary”. Former NATO General Heinrich Brauss, on the other hand, warns the Federal Government: "For German credibility in the Alliance, it is important to make three divisions really visible and fully equip them - as promised: by 2032," the Lieutenant General (out of service) told WORLD ON SUNDAY.

Jimbuna

06-13-21, 06:53 AM

^ They may be holding back on NATO to equip the EU army instead :03:

Rockstar

06-13-21, 08:11 AM

https://responsiblestatecraft.org/2021/06/09/euro-tour-notes-for-biden-listen-on-china-dont-tell/

As to Washington’s hopes of turning NATO into an important help in confronting China, President Biden should remember the last part of Eysken’s aphorism, which was that Europe is a military worm. The only war that NATO as such has ever been engaged in has been Afghanistan, and its performance there was nothing short of pitiful. The British, French and Canadians did at least fight bravely (if ineffectively), but as to the rest, the less said the better.
As more honest European officials sometimes admitted in private, the reason for their forces being in Afghanistan was not because Afghanistan as such was of any importance for them. These forces were a kind of tribute paid to Washington to ensure America’s continued military commitment to Europe, which the Europeans regard as necessary because of a combination of fear of Russia and a total unwillingness to pay and mobilize seriously for their own defense. It therefore made perfect sense for America’s NATO allies to do the absolute minimum required to secure that goal. The same is true of the NATO plan to deploy a single warship to the Indian Ocean and Far East in support of U.S. strategy against China.

Skybird

06-13-21, 08:39 AM

^ True.

The whole article hits the nail on top. What angers me, as somebody living in Germany amongst Germans, is the endless avalanche of words, words, words, and more words. The Germans and their endless stream of announcements. Their perfect plans. Their superior intentions. Words, words, words.

If the US would call it a day and quit over Europe, Germany, I really would an could not think bad of it.

Skybird

06-13-21, 04:34 PM

The Deutsche Welle writes:

According to an analysis by the Bundeswehr think tank GIDS, Germany is hardly equipped against attacks with combat drones. This is a danger for the military, but also for the population in the event of terrorist attacks.

For their analysis, the experts from the German Armed Forces think tank GIDS examined the international market and the course of the fighting over Nagorno-Karabakh, where Azerbaijan defeated Armenia with drones last year.

"To put it very drastically: If the Bundeswehr had to fight against Azerbaijan in this specific conflict, it would hardly have had a chance," states Lieutenant Colonel Michael Karl, GIDS expert on modern warfare and new technologies. "With weapon systems that were used such as combat drones and kamikaze drones, we would not have been able to defend ourselves adequately. The lack of army anti-aircraft defense alone would have been our undoing."

The GIDS (German Institute for Defense and Strategic Studies) is a cooperation between the leadership academy of the Bundeswehr and the Helmut Schmidt University / University of the Bundeswehr in Hamburg. The institute examines security policy problems and advises politics and the military leadership.

In order to survive in a modern conflict, the Bundeswehr needs technologies that Germany basically has, but that are not used in the military. So far, the Bundeswehr has only used the unmanned missiles for reconnaissance and observation.

Allies and possible opponents have armed drones with which areas can be observed and missiles can also be fired at targets via control commands.

According to Lieutenant Colonel Karl, kamikaze drones or so-called disposable drones are themselves weapons, i.e. equipped with explosives. "Unlike a rocket, in which you enter target coordinates, these types of drones pursue their target," explains Karl. According to him, a swarm of such drones can be programmed to attack a formation of battle tanks. Drones could also learn about artificial intelligence and ultimately find their target without human control. The expert also sees the danger in the possibilities this opens up for terrorism, since the technology is now widely available. A commercially available drone can be restructured and programmed into a combat drone. "It's not just about protecting our soldiers from drones, but also about protecting the civilian population."

It is clear that the heated debate between the Union and the SPD about arming the Bundeswehr with drones has been overtaken by reality. The armament alone might no longer be enough. The Greens no longer categorically rule out the use of armed drones. With a lead of only four votes, a majority voted at the online party congress to examine the conditions for this.

Gorpet

06-17-21, 12:55 AM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dV3AziKTBUoAfter today's meeting with Biden and Putin.I think Your best course for the future of your country. Is take the money and run. Anyway it is clear the government of the USA is in shambles and we are heading towards civil war. So lets play a song for Joe and Jill. cause right now i think it's a bunch of 80 year old hippies from the 60's. That are still hell bent on getting rich keeping their families' in power and politics. Yes Jill Biden did wear her Love jacket to the G7. What was that all about? Its not climate change that is a threat to this Globe we live on.... It's the Americans. The real Dog Face Pony Soldiers.

August

06-17-21, 09:16 PM

Am i the only one who sees a problem with what happens if people believing in unhinged theories from qanon or whatever become the majority?

Probably not but you haven't proved to anyone whatever it is about their theories that is such a problem it is worth gutting everyones rights to free speech either. Just like those new age woke McCarthyites over here you're very general with your accusations, rarely mentioning specifics, but rather using ill defined scary terms like "unhinged theories", even tossing a "whatever" in there to widen the generality net even more.

Or anti vaxxers? deciding that vaccines are bad so democratically deciding to stop research and production of vaccines, and killing some hundred thousands in the process? There are more idiots and weidos by the minute after the "social" (lmao) media hand over a soap box to anyone wo likes to hear himself talking.
That's exactly what I mean. Oooh the evil "anti vaxxers", always murdering gazillions of innocents by their mere refusal to take unproven, barely, tested, rushed into production experimental drugs which may or may not be effective in preventing disease and has an increasing number of negative side effects, more cases being reported nearly every day. What savages.

Free thinking is good if people are able to think logical and resonably enough, if they only think they are right out of egoism and care for their own beliefs, criticizing anything (by lack of understanding) done by a government or medical organisations, things get ugly.
Life can be ugly. It always has, but you're talking about silencing people who don't meet a standard here. So who decides what logic is reasonable enough to be heard? Who determines that ones thinking is pure and motivated enough by all the right reasons so that what they say is suitable for public consumption? How will you prevent these new arbiters of free speech from using such an enormous power for the very same egoist reasons you want to avoid?

"Relatively small group"? From what i saw the last years a majority voted for someone who was an unhinged popstar of talk show "fame", embracing all opinions as long as the people believing them would suppport him.

:hmmm: Hmmm. I didn't realize that merely voting for Donald Trump automatically made one a member of one (or more) of your evil right wing organizations. Thanks for enlightening me. Is there an initiation or something because, I tell you, I got nothing from them yet. Still waiting for my barrel of Iraqi oil too.

Catfish

06-18-21, 04:10 AM

I stand to my statement that Qanon and Pizzagate believers are nuts.

That's exactly what I mean. Oooh the evil "anti vaxxers", always murdering gazillions of innocents by their mere refusal to take unproven, barely, tested, rushed into production experimental drugs which may or may not be effective in preventing disease and has an increasing number of negative side effects, more cases being reported nearly every day. What savages.But this is not what i mean. What i wrote is that if anti vaxxers become a majority and abolish vaxxing altogether, this is not a desirable outcome.
Your freedom of dying of covid because it is all a conspiracy or you do not believe in it, is your personal decision and fate, but if you infect others by doing so there may be a problem for others, with your way of thinking and acting.

If you talk about "unproven, barely-tested, rushed into production drugs" and so on, you can surely post an example? Not even the Sputnik vaccine was "untested" Or do you mean hydroxychloroquine (https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/trump-taking-hydroxychloroquine-unproven-drug-touted-covid-19/story?id=70751728), or Trump saying that covid 19 is harmless and will be gone in summer 2020?
Imho people with the power to decide should maintain a basic knowledge or listen to their advisors, not rejecting science, perpetrating shortsighted populistic bs and killing thousands in the process.
:hmmm: Hmmm. I didn't realize that merely voting for Donald Trump automatically made one a member of one (or more) of your evil right wing organizations.Trump was or is not evil, he is just a blithering but dangerous rabble rouser. I have not seen much non-trumpers believing in Qanon. Also Mrs Greene is not the brightest lamp in the political landscape.

August

06-18-21, 06:26 PM

What i wrote is that if anti vaxxers become a majority and abolish vaxxing altogether, this is not a desirable outcome.
Your freedom of dying of covid because it is all a conspiracy or you do not believe in it, is your personal decision and fate, but if you infect others by doing so there may be a problem for others, with your way of thinking and acting.

Your argument fails on the fact that anti-vaxxers are mostly about not being forced to take vaccination. I have never heard any of them advocating that anyone who wants to take a vaccine should be prevented from doing so. Basically you have a strawman argument here. Let's see what else you got.
If you talk about "unproven, barely-tested, rushed into production drugs" and so on, you can surely post an example? Anti-covid vaccines. All of them. None of them even existed a year ago. If that doesn't qualify as "rushed into production" and "barely tested" then you aren't being honest. What studies have been done on long term side effects? Oh that's right, there haven't been any because they haven't been around long enough to provide a result. Except that here and there people keep getting sick with complications. Mostly younger people whose danger from covid is miniscule. I guess they're going to do the full testing for us.
Not even the Sputnik vaccine was "untested"I never said UNtested. RCFTFW dude.

Or do you mean hydroxychloroquine (https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/trump-taking-hydroxychloroquine-unproven-drug-touted-covid-19/story?id=70751728),The same drug that has been taken by uncounted millions of people as an anti-malarial with little side effect? That's the one you support preventing people from taking or even talking about it's potential? It certainly is not dangerous for anyone to take if their doctor agrees. Whether it would have been effective as a preventative for covid I guess we'll never know, unless of course our government figures out allow it without risking proving Trump was right. They're getting their noses buried in their hypocrisy right now with their about turn on covids potential lab origins. I imagine there will be more such revelations coming too so maybe it will happen.

Trump saying that covid 19 is harmless and will be gone in summer 2020?Just when did Donald Trump say that Covid was "harmless", and i'm assuming that you mean that he meant harmless to everyone right? Was it before or after he instituted those travel bans?

Imho people with the power to decide should maintain a basic knowledge or listen to their advisors, not rejecting science, perpetrating shortsighted populistic bs and killing thousands in the process.Stop repeating falsehoods. Trump did not delay or hinder our nations anti-covid efforts in any way. In fact it was his initiative that got those vaccine shots out in such record time, not Bidens and certainly not the Democrats completely absorbed trying to destroy his presidency at any cost. Had the present administration been in power last year i'd bet dollars against donuts that our body count would be much, much higher. While Trump was instituting travel bans and appointing task forces the Dems were encouraging people to squeeze into subway cars and to freely move about.

Trump was or is not evil, he is just a blithering but dangerous rabble rouser. I have not seen much non-trumpers believing in Qanon. Also Mrs Greene is not the brightest lamp in the political landscape.You haven't seen much Qanon people period. That's because their numbers are insignificant in a nation of 350 million and what there are of them are not even close to the established, regimented para-military organization that you imagine them to be. All you have seen is hyper exaggerated scare mongering by those who want to treat them as political boogeymen, much like your countries former rulers once used the Jews.

It's an old trick of tyrants to outlaw the opposition. We're seeing it attempted here. Prove me wrong.

Catfish

06-19-21, 12:37 PM

Your argument fails on the fact that anti-vaxxers are mostly about not being forced to take vaccination.
So, what do unvaccinated people do to others? Infect them. If you throw a stone because it is your freedom to do so, but you hit a passer-by, your freedom should be limited at least for this kind of action?

All those vaccines have been tested, thorougly and statistically significant. Even the Sputnik one. Long term effects are not yet known, as have never been when a new vaccine being introduced. Long term effects are being researched and it seems there will not be much to care about. Seems you want to talk bad of anything that takes the virus serious.

RCFTFW dude
No idea what you mean (not even google brought up anything), if it is regarding reading your text i did it and answered to it, while you abstain from answering what does not suit you.
You will never get a hundred percent effectivity and no side effects or complications with vaccine, it is almost always around 90 percent effectivits; as you said "life is ugly". Still a lot better that downplaying it and telling people it's the flu. We have had that.

re hydroxycloroquine this is maybe a fine medicament, maybe even help a bit to ease the Corona effects if you are infected. Taking it before like T. advertised has as much effect as Aspirine. Which is also a good medicament, just not helping against covid, but T. only has interests in hydroxycloroquine (https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2020/apr/09/facebook-posts/trump-has-tiny-financial-stake-company-manufacture/) :shucks:

Just when did Donald Trump say that Covid was "harmless", and i'm assuming that you mean that he meant harmless to everyone right? Was it before or after he instituted those travel bans?
"Trump claims 99% of US Covid-19 cases are 'totally harmless' as infections surge"
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jul/05/trump-claims-99-of-us-covid-19-cases-are-totally-harmless-as-infections-surge

"trump says covid is harmless"
916.000 results in 0,68 Seconds (Google)

Stop repeating falsehoods.
:haha: "Falsehoods", lol. I'm out of here, you may shift this to the US thread if you want.
It began with that i said false intel like denial of certain facts can be damaging if believed by the voting majority, and while this was meant for Germany the parade example of the last five years has been the US.

Rockstar

06-19-21, 02:08 PM

"Trump claims 99% of US Covid-19 cases are 'totally harmless' as infections surge"
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jul/05/trump-claims-99-of-us-covid-19-cases-are-totally-harmless-as-infections-surge

"trump says covid is harmless"
916.000 results in 0,68 Seconds (Google)
.

If you look at U.S. statistics for 2020 and did the math you would see his 99% is a pretty damn good estimate.

Speaking of anti-vaxxers hows Germany's vaccine rollout coming along? Delta varient on the way you know and you all havent even come close to getting enough vaccine to take care of your own yet.

August

06-19-21, 02:14 PM

So, what do unvaccinated people do to others? Infect them.

By others do you mean vaccinated people? Because if so then what is the point of getting vaccinations if they do not work to protect one from infection?

If you throw a stone because it is your freedom to do so, but you hit a passer-by, your freedom should be limited at least for this kind of action? A false analogy. It implies there is no protection from the stone when in fact to use your analogy vaccines that supposedly shield us from random stone throwing are exactly that.

All those vaccines have been tested, thorougly and statistically significant. Even the Sputnik one. Long term effects are not yet known, as have never been when a new vaccine being introduced. Long term effects are being researched and it seems there will not be much to care about. Seems you want to talk bad of anything that takes the virus serious.They don't feel so and given the unheard of rapidity that they were invented, mass produced and distributed I can't fault their logic.

No idea what you mean (not even google brought up anything), if it is regarding reading your text i did it and answered to it, while you abstain from answering what does not suit you.
Reading Comprehension For The Freaking Win. Next time you false quote me like that I will report you. Back and forth banter is one thing but deliberate misquoting someone is plain wrong and I believe you did it deliberately so knock it off.

You will never get a hundred percent effectivity and no side effects or complications with vaccine, it is almost always around 90 percent effectivits; as you said "life is ugly". Still a lot better that downplaying it and telling people it's the flu. We have had that.So maybe the real truth lies somewhere in between. It was more than a flu but still not the world destroying pandemic it was made out to be.

re hydroxycloroquine this is maybe a fine medicament, maybe even help a bit to ease the Corona effects if you are infected. Taking it before like T. advertised has as much effect as Aspirine. Which is also a good medicament, just not helping against covid, but T. only has interests in hydroxycloroquine (https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2020/apr/09/facebook-posts/trump-has-tiny-financial-stake-company-manufacture/) :shucks:I didn't realize you were a doctor to say what is effective and what is not. Apparently some actual real doctors would disagree with you but then your corporate media will let you know what to think right?

"Trump claims 99% of US Covid-19 cases are 'totally harmless' as infections surge"
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jul/05/trump-claims-99-of-us-covid-19-cases-are-totally-harmless-as-infections-surge

"trump says covid is harmless"
916.000 results in 0,68 Seconds (Google)

:haha: "Falsehoods", lol. I'm out of here, you may shift this to the US thread if you want.
It began with that i said false intel like denial of certain facts can be damaging if believed by the voting majority, and while this was meant for Germany the parade example of the last five years has been the US.

Fine, last word to me then. The mods can do what they want but i'm fine with discussing it right here just like you and your pal Skybird like to crap up our political thread all the time.

Just remember that in actuality 99% of the covid cases ARE harmless. Most people do not even realize that they had it and in others, like myself, it was the equivalent to a case of the flu.

Catfish

06-19-21, 02:35 PM

If you look at U.S. statistics for 2020 and did the math you would see his 99% is a pretty damn good estimate.
So you also say it is just the flu, and don't mind a few dying. Ok.
Speaking of anti-vaxxers hows Germany's vaccine rollout coming along? Delta varient on the way you know and you all havent even come close to getting enough vaccine to take care of your own yet.
Yes, we gave it to the US and the UK, and noticed how thankful and altrustic they were, especially Johnson. Maybe thinking twice next time.

August

06-19-21, 02:41 PM

So you also say it is just the flu, and don't mind a few dying. Ok.]

No, he said that Trumps estimate was pretty accurate. Moving your goal posts like that doesn't bolster your argument.

Catfish

06-19-21, 02:46 PM

By others do you mean vaccinated people? Because if so then what is the point of getting vaccinations if they do not work to protect one from infection?
No, by others i mean antivaxxers infect other people that have not yet been vaccinated, and you know exactly what i meant right from the first post.
Reading Comprehension For The Freaking Win. Next time you false quote me like that I will report you. Back and forth banter is one thing but deliberate misquoting someone is plain wrong and I believe you did it deliberately so knock it off.
Wtf, "RCFTFW dude" is what you wrote and what no one i know of had any idea about, but please go on and tell it to the moderators.
Just remember that in actuality 99% of the covid cases ARE harmless. Most people do not even realize that they had it and in others, like myself, it was the equivalent to a case of the flu.
Then i do not understand what it is all about, 1 percent is obviously nothing, Italy and all those countries were hysterical and Trump had it all right. Must all be a bad misunderstanding or conspiracy, and China should of course never be blamed.
I propose you give away all your vaccines to the rest of the world since you do not need it.

Rockstar

06-19-21, 02:51 PM

So you also say it is just the flu, and don't mind a few dying. Ok.

No, I didnt say it was fine. Though by your own governnents lack of action, it might be something they're thinking. I said the 99% estimate was pretty damn close to being correct.

Yes, we gave it to the US and the UK, and noticed how thankful and altrustic they were, especially Johnson. Maybe thinking twice next time.You gave it away? You never had it. Because your pathetic useless government failed to act.

August

06-19-21, 03:24 PM

Wtf, "RCFTFW dude" is what you wrote and what no one i know of had any idea about, but please go on and tell it to the moderators.

Keep misquoting me and I will. It was wrong of you to do so and you know it.

Then i do not understand what it is all about, 1 percent is obviously nothingIt is what it is. Don't let your hatred of Trump continue to blind you to the fact that of the death rate fir the disease is something like .005%.

I propose you give away all your vaccines to the rest of the world since you do not need it.Well I do believe we have given away some of our vaccine stockpile but Israel also tried that with the Palestinians and it didn't work out so well for them. It turned out that the Palestinian leaders would rather let their people get sick than take help from the dirty Jews. Maybe they'll give those doses to you folks instead.

Catfish

06-20-21, 06:35 AM

[...] You gave it away? You never had it. Because your pathetic useless government failed to act.
In the EU health was considered a member state competence, so it was not prepared for this. It was about avoiding competition to generate a more even distribution.

"The member states’ approval of the European Commission vaccine plan on June 17, 2020 — which set aside the vaccine “alliance” initiated by France and Germany, later joined by Italy and the Netherlands, for a joint procurement led by the EU’s largest economies — stemmed from the idea of avoiding competition over vaccines inside the EU.

Yet, this put a huge burden on the unprepared commission, which then treated vaccines as a trade matter rather than an emergency negotiation, preferring lower prices over timely deliveries.

Widespread vaccine skepticism was also a problem, and when negotiations were carried out last summer, Europeans thought they largely had the pandemic under control, so they were not desperate for a vaccine. But COVID-19’s variants proved them wrong and ultimately the EU fell behind in the rollout, especially compared to the speed of the United Kingdom or Israel."

https://www.brookings.edu/blog/order-from-chaos/2021/05/20/eu-learns-from-mistakes-on-vaccines

Some things could have been better, but there was at least an idea, and they supported 27 member states and others.
The US is one country. From january '21:
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-usa-klain-idUSKBN29T0FY

Rockstar

06-20-21, 08:03 AM

Catfish

06-22-21, 03:13 AM

Keep misquoting me and I will. It was wrong of you to do so and you know it. [...] .
I will not write what i think of this, i just quote what you wrote:
That's exactly what I mean. Oooh the evil "anti vaxxers", always murdering gazillions of innocents by their mere refusal to take unproven, barely, tested, rushed into production experimental drugs which may or may not be effective in preventing disease and has an increasing number of negative side effects, more cases being reported nearly every day. What savages.A bit of a rant, or is it not? Then you wrote
I never said UNtested. RCFTFW dude.Not far from it though? It is perfectly clear what you say with all that. So you meant "barely tested"? Misplaced a comma? So sorry.

August

06-23-21, 09:13 PM

I will not write what i think of this, i just quote what you wrote
Nowhere in there was the word UNtested. Your use of it was a deliberate exaggeration and nothing you have said since makes me doubt that one bit.

A bit of a rant, or is it not? Then you wrote

Not far from it though? It is perfectly clear what you say with all that. So you meant "barely tested"? Misplaced a comma? So sorry.
I was paraphrasing what I thought so called anti-vaxxers felt about being forced to take the covid vaccine and maybe a little sympathy to the plight of anyone under government coercion leaked out. So "sorry".

It was only in response to your ridiculous suggestion that Anti vaxxer forces would somehow take over governments and prevent vaccines from being given to anyone. Coercion is not what they are about and you should know better, and I think you do but it was just another attempt to get a rise out of someone that you couldn't pass up.

You do realize that I am NOT an anti-vaxxer right Catfish? Heck i've got a vaccine record that i'll bet includes shots against more weird diseases than yours does. It also lists that I got the covid shot a month or so back which I have not kept a secret from this forum either. I did have some reservations about taking it when it came out early on but I have never advocated against taking vaccines in general and I like I said, ended up getting it myself like most of us have.

But I guess this doesn't fit your rigid German sense of order that must categorize everyone and everything you see into neat labeled packages, so it's easy to miss right? Forget it, i'm still waiting for you to explain how the non vaccinated are a threat to the vaccinated, I mean aside from potentially banning vaccine development. :)

Catfish

06-24-21, 02:55 AM

^ Ok thanks for answering, but for not being an anti-vaxxer you pick a strange point of view. And yes, no one should be forced to be vaccinated in an ideal world, this is even common sense here. But what to do with anti vaxxers that threaten other people who want to be vaccinated, but are not yet for whatever external reason?

And most anti-vaxxers seem to be quite determined, or better aggressive, when it comes to discussion and reasons. It is very hard to remain calm towards some of those arguments and conspiracy theories offered in an often aggressive and very dumb way. A lot are opposing science for whatever reason. Thinking of Mrs Taylor Greene, but also a lot of such over here.

Also i understood you have had covid 19, and i mean to remember you somewhere wrote that you would not need to be vaccinated after this, which makes sense. So you got a jab after the infection?

"Ridiculous", well i saw a lot of he-who-shall-not-be-named supporters who embraced his first statement that the virus was not dangerous, or if not worse than the flu. He changed his mind, but it was a close thing. He of course made so many turnarounds in his presidential career that it is hard to nail any of his statements down without instantly finding another that contradicts it. He made a lot of followers that way.
So you say there is no danger that anti vaxxers ever came to power – good.. if you say so.

(a bit OT but not much: instead of admitting an error or someone of his cronies criticizing the president he and the right wing blame it all on "fake news" and science, and scientists like Fauci. Certainly, whoever dared to openly disagree with the greatest president of the USA or the chosen one or whatever he said about himself, was a "traitor" and fired. Fauci survived but he is still being blamed in the right-wing media. Must be my "german sense of order" that looks through all this bull and finds it ridiculous? So be it, the rest of the world also seems to have this sense then.)

I wrote "So, what do unvaccinated people do to others? Infect them."
So you misunderstood or i was not exact enough, i certainly mean "what do intentionally unvaccinated people do to other yet unvaccinated people (waiting for their jab)". But I thought this was obvious?

So once more: What i mean is when e.g. the bubonic plague is raging, and people carrying the bacteria do not want to be vaccinated or isolated, they are a threat to the others that have not been vaccinated yet. Not yet because of too few doses of the vaccine available, because of organisation problems, because of delays, whatever.
So what do you say about those probably carrying the disease and their right and freedom not to be vaccinated? Quarantine them? Tell this to Mrs Greene. Freedom ends where it threatens the freedom of others. And their health.

Skybird

06-24-21, 05:53 AM

Freedom incldues the right to take risks - for oneself. And it is oneself who has to accept and come up for the consequences, one shall not impose these "costs" onto the others.

That means the freedom to take risks ends where one exposes others to the risks one has chosen for oneself. People can decide to not get vaccinated. But then they have the hell to stay away and stay out. There is no right they could claim that others nevertheless must interact and do business with them.

Common sense.

Catfish

06-24-21, 08:38 AM

None of your statistics or old links about people who dont matter are of any interest too me. What matters in my book and far more interesting is in the US, 377, 215,060 doses have been distributed so far, with 83% or 314,969,386 of the doses used. States of emergency are being lifted, business are open and life seems to be getting back to normal.
Enjoy your lockdown.
I really did but the last (all were quite short, unfortunately) ended around mid-may.
Regarding what happens in the US will depend of how much of the anti vaxxers (consisting of a good part of Trump voters) can be convinced to be vaccinated.

"The scale of American reluctance to get vaccinated remains a source of global curiosity, particularly as many nations are still scrambling for doses to protect their most vulnerable populations."

“The hesitation among younger Americans and among Trump voters has been too hard to overcome,” said GOP pollster Frank Luntz, who has worked with the White House and outside groups to promote vaccinations. “They think they are making a statement by refusing to be vaccinated. For Trump voters, it’s a political statement. For younger adults, it’s about telling the world that they are immune.”

https://apnews.com/article/why-the-Biden-white-house-will-miss-covid-vaccination-target-e3985c9958b579a44a168cb6e0649349

So back to Germany, or do you want to keep discussing US conditions and the virus only here?

mapuc

06-24-21, 01:59 PM

A FB-friend says he has foreseen the economical collapse of EU.

Here is what he wrote
"
The EU is not the solution to Southern Europe's economic problem, the EU is the cause!

It went completely wrong when the Euro was pulled down over the Southern European countries. The euro in no way suits the economies of the southern European countries, something that politicians do not want to talk about. When the economies of southern Europe were forced into the northern European price level, tourism in Spain, Portugal and Italy was halved. In Greece, things went horribly wrong.

To solve the problem, the European Central Bank buys worthless Southern European government bonds on a large scale, in an attempt to keep the price of the Euro artificially high.

The problem is that the countries are locked in, they must not devalue to get back on their feet. The Euro prevents the countries of Southern Europe from doing so, a devaluation of the Euro in the Southern European countries would be a devaluation of the Euro as a whole, something that the EU does not allow.

We are facing a gigantic EU bubble, and all Member States are liable for the EU's gigantic loans and purchases of worthless Bonds when this bubble bursts.
"

My point on this.

I'm not an expert on economy-so I can't say if he's wrong or not.

I personally hope he's wrong, ´cause it would affect each and one of us.

Markus

Catfish

06-24-21, 02:25 PM

Rockstar

06-24-21, 02:37 PM

So back to Germany, or do you want to keep discussing US conditions and the virus only here?

I think you should be asking yourself that question. Doesnt take much research to see I didn't start any posts about the U.S. in the German forum, YOU did. In fact I was quite clear I was talking about the E.U. and German leadership. Now you posted even more damn near repeating the same crap about people and statistics that I already said dont interest me here. Its the German politics thread try staying on topic.

mapuc

06-24-21, 02:59 PM

The EU would only be working to its full extent and possibilities when nations like Greece or Italy had a working financial system, where not more than 70 percent of the taxes are stolen, from Onassis to Berlusconi.

Yuu are right, as Skybird, that some nations should not have been allowed to join the union. But a lot of bank fraudsters now make a lot money, because the way things are handled in some southern europen states, and these will sink more and more into debt, and bankruptcy.

From having watched many hours news program on Danish and Swedish tv and read about it in the newspaper I say following.

I'm 150 % convince that Scandinavia, UK, Benelux, Germany and some other country in northern Europe would be stronger if they left EU and created their own "Club"

Markus

Skybird

06-24-21, 04:33 PM

The EU would only be working to its full extent and possibilities when nations like Greece or Italy had a working financial system, where not more than 70 percent of the taxes are stolen, from Onassis to Berlusconi.

Yuu are right, as Skybird, that some nations should not have been allowed to join the union. But a lot of bank fraudsters now make a lot money, because the way things are handled in some southern europen states, and these will sink more and more into debt, and bankruptcy.

https://www.ortneronline.at/griechenland-boomt/

For better or for worse.

Skybird

06-24-21, 04:51 PM

From having watched many hours news program on Danish and Swedish tv and read about it in the newspaper I say following.

I'm 150 % convince that Scandinavia, UK, Benelux, Germany and some other country in northern Europe would be stronger if they left EU and created their own "Club"

You are in my head.

However, even here there would be economic differernces in competitiveness strong enough to justify to NOT have one united currency that again gets manipulated by a club central bank an dgets inflated and gets designed as a FIAT currency. A real commodity money, thats what I want. With governments and political parties having no influence and control over it, being unable to inflate it at their will.

Therein lies the rub: that such a revolutionary separatist project again would be footed by the same political caste that ruined it already the last time(s). Can these cirminals be expected to deconstruct the basis oif their ver yxown powers and controls? They formed the last system so that it serves right their own interests. Can we really expect them to suddenly turn into better, honest, altruist super-humans?

What we have in poltical constructions today, is just the most malicious form of organised crime. The reigonal difefrences of these systems only lie in the ammount of shamelessness by which they display their brutal violance openly, or try to hide it.

mapuc

06-24-21, 05:15 PM

I know! Our politicians here in Denmark and in Sweden are so addicted to EU-that they can't figure out to think freely. Their mind is one EU-tracked-minded.

Between the lines they are saying to us

(German)
EU tut gut für uns, aber das weißt du es nicht

Markus

August

06-30-21, 11:13 PM

^ Ok thanks for answering, but for not being an anti-vaxxer you pick a strange point of view.

As I have said already it wasn't my point of view. I was just stating what I believed their feelings on the matter and you took that as being my own opinion. Was it just too realistic for you?

And yes, no one should be forced to be vaccinated in an ideal world, this is even common sense here. But what to do with anti vaxxers that threaten other people who want to be vaccinated, but are not yet for whatever external reason?Well ideal world or not obviously you recommend that they be forced in some way since you think something must be done about them.

And most anti-vaxxers seem to be quite determined, or better aggressive, when it comes to discussion and reasons. It is very hard to remain calm towards some of those arguments and conspiracy theories offered in an often aggressive and very dumb way. A lot are opposing science for whatever reason. Thinking of Mrs Taylor Greene, but also a lot of such over here. You claim its they that are being aggressively determined (apparently not to comply with your demands) and then you make veiled threats about the difficulty in remaining calm while opining that something be done with the refusniks? Seems like you're the one with the aggressiveness problem not them.

Also i understood you have had covid 19, and i mean to remember you somewhere wrote that you would not need to be vaccinated after this, which makes sense. So you got a jab after the infection?Yes, I got the J&J shot about a month after I came down with the disease. As I said in the vaccination thread I got it because it was made known to me that my job would be in jeopardy unless I complied. They sweetened the deal with $250 bucks in bribe money but I made a judgement call based not on my own safety or my belief in the safety or effectiveness of it but rather for the continued well being of my family that depends on the money that I bring in.

"Ridiculous", well i saw a lot of he-who-shall-not-be-named supporters who embraced his first statement that the virus was not dangerous, or if not worse than the flu. He changed his mind, but it was a close thing. He of course made so many turnarounds in his presidential career that it is hard to nail any of his statements down without instantly finding another that contradicts it. He made a lot of followers that way.

So you say there is no danger that anti vaxxers ever came to power – good.. if you say so.What makes you think President Donald J. Trump is an anti-vaxxer, did the leftist media tell you that? You do realize that President Donald J. Trump got the covid vaccine shot very early on after getting and surviving the disease as well. You make a lot of insinuations here with little or nothing to back it up. Is this any different than Faucis early statements that masks don't work or what he is telling people these days? He hasn't had much to say lately since those damning emails about his collusion to obscure covids ChiCom origins became public.

(a bit OT but not much: instead of admitting an error or someone of his cronies criticizing the president he and the right wing blame it all on "fake news" and science, and scientists like Fauci. Certainly, whoever dared to openly disagree with the greatest president of the USA or the chosen one or whatever he said about himself, was a "traitor" and fired. Fauci survived but he is still being blamed in the right-wing media. Must be my "german sense of order" that looks through all this bull and finds it ridiculous? So be it, the rest of the world also seems to have this sense then.) "Science", especially bureaucrats like Fauci were wrong or reversed themselves so many times that anything they say just cannot be believed at all but you want me to blame Trump who was just repeating what he was being told by the so called experts? Amazing.

When President Donald J. Trump (sorry I just have to do that from now on to tease you over the "he-who-SHALL-not-be-named silliness), was banning travel from China and later Europe, was he being anti-science then? When his sainted opposition like Speaker Pelosi and Mayor Diblasio were telling people to come on down to Chinatown and that going out to lunch at a busy restaurant or taking a packed subway train was safe to do, Trump was appointing pandemic czars and talking about the dangers of the disease in his State of the Union address (that Democrat Pelosi dramatically tore up) who was following the science then?.
Given the constant attempts by the Democrats to derail his presidency at every turn it's a wonder he was able to get that much done but it's still way more than you claim.

So once more: What i mean is when e.g. the bubonic plague is raging, and people carrying the bacteria do not want to be vaccinated or isolated, they are a threat to the others that have not been vaccinated yet. Not yet because of too few doses of the vaccine available, because of organisation problems, because of delays, whatever.

So what do you say about those probably carrying the disease and their right and freedom not to be vaccinated? Quarantine them? Tell this to Mrs Greene. Freedom ends where it threatens the freedom of others. And their health.What do I say about them? Nothing. You are the one who is trying to put people in Covid Concentration Camps for being unwilling to, as I put it, take a rushed into production, barely tested drug that they have absolutely no legal redress for if it turns out to be harmful, or for that matter, useless as has been reported in some cases already. In order to make your labored point you have to upgrade covid to the threat of a real killer disease like Bubonic Plague, (which BTW I have also been vaccinated against). That's just weak man.

If you are not vaccinated yet and you fear getting the disease from a Refusnik, your cat, or in any other way, then just stay home until it's your turn to get the shot. Very simple to do and something that people have already been doing for a whole year. You didn't seem to have a problem with it then. Maybe you do but you have to admit it would be much more effective and easier than trying to tear the nation apart by forcing it on everyone.

One final thought here bud. You're so concerned with those who refuse to get the vaccine but what about those where getting the shot will never be medically advisable for whatever reason? Are you going accept a doctors note in place of a vaccine card, especially when they start selling them online like they do Medical Marijuana cards? How do you intend to verify either shot record or doctors excuse note? These "Involuntary Refusniks" (to coin a term) whose welfare that you claim to be so concerned about, they will still be potential carriers. What do we do about them? Permanent quarantine? Mandatory vaccination regardless of health risk? The curious want to know!

Catfish

07-01-21, 03:38 AM

^ well this makes more sense than before
So it all is not your opinion, but what you believe are the refusniks' feelings (lol nice name b.t.w.). Yes i understand the instant urge to be against anything or anyone who wants to lecture me, even (or especially!) if that is obviously right.
Like putting a sign next to a lamp post with "You should not pee at this post", just wait what happens next.

But I do think something has to be done so the "refusniks" do no infect others, right, This is e.g. what a quarantine is for. If they do not see the necessity, if they do not understand, realize it, or just protest because they think democrats invented this virus hoax, screw them.
If people do not want to understand that robbing a bank, infecting others or generally hurt other people is not tolerated by law, in this case you put them into prison, and why the hell not? Because of THEIR freedom? What about mine? What about them hurting others?

Regarding aggressiveness i only remind you of anti vaxxer rallies and Taylor Greene, this is a) aggresssive and b) her sheer dumbness indeed gets on my nerves.

What makes you think President Donald J. Trump is an anti-vaxxer, did the leftist media tell you thatNo, all media told me that, the left being concened, the right proud to be dumb.

"The anti-vaccine message may have found a particularly receptive audience among some fervent Trump supporters, many of whom flout wearing masks and contend the lethality of the virus is overblown.
"It's marketing at a basic sales level," said Imran Ahmed, CEO of the Center for Countering Digital Hate, which has analyzed the strategies of anti-vaccine advocates. "Conspiracism that allows you to connect anything together if you want to, because it doesn't require fact."
Contrary to the statements of vaccine critics, the two vaccines authorized for emergency use by the US Food and Drug Administration have been shown (https://www.cnn.com/2021/01/26/health/covid-19-myths-vaccine-wellness/index.html) to be safe and effective."

https://edition.cnn.com/2021/02/04/politics/anti-vaxxers-stop-the-steal-invs/index.html

Just read it, very good article of how things are, and why.

Of course Trump had to do something, to show leadership actively doing some.thing. Like forbidding travel or visits, how long do you think they would have let him in charge without him reacting to the pandemic? But he did it late and because (imho) he had to, not because of real insight. He never publicly supported the scientific "point of view" (what others call truth or at least a reasonable handling), which is why his followers still feel assured with their view that it was all a hoax and all those other conspiracy theories.

But then it does not matter what he said yesterday, or today, because a day later he said something contradicting all he said before, when it suited him. Supporters picking what suited them best and willingly ignored all else he said. But then this is how you get a majority, obviously.
He followed reason and science as long as it would get him supporters and would make him look better, it never was about "you" or "the people". When Trump felt threatened by Fauci's obvious degree of esteem in the media, he tried to block him.
"Science", especially bureaucrats like Fauci were wrong or reversed themselves so many times that anything they say just cannot be believed at all but you want me to blame Trump who was just repeating what he was being told by the so called experts? Amazing."The so-called experts"? like "Fauci was wrong"? (https://www.politico.com/news/2021/06/04/fauci-attacks-personal-conspiratorial-491896) "Bureaucrats like Fauci", you might even say unelected bureaucrats, like Farage? Fauci is an intelligent man, believing in reason and science, dedicated to his lifelong cause of protecting, inventing vaccines and understanding diseases to fight them. Painting him as a "traitor" and a "bureaucrat" because he cares more for people than for politics and the economy, can really only be thought out by the lowest proponents of mankind.
You are the one who is trying to put people in Covid Concentration Camps for being unwilling to, as I put it, take a rushed into production, barely tested drug that they have absolutely no legal redress for if it turns out to be harmful, or for that matter, useless as has been reported in some cases already.No i am not the one wanting to put them into c. camps, this is an invention of your fantasy. Godwin much? I said they should have been put in quarantine or fined, not concentration camps. The rest, just wow.
If you are not vaccinated yet and you fear getting the disease from a Refusnik, your cat, or in any other way, then just stay home until it's your turn to get the shot. [...] you have to admit it would be much more effective and easier than trying to tear the nation apart by forcing it on everyone.Wasn't it expresident Trump who tore up the nation? Why didn't he support wearing masks for all, why did he try to play down the pandemic as "the flu" which will be "gone in summer"? Why was he constantly trying to arouse people of all sides against each other?
And, one moment: I did stay at home. Your Trump supporters did not, they made rallies into villages, organised multispreader events and behaved like uneducated children just to show.. what? How FREE they are?
Trump wanted to reopen the economy asap, and no one was forced to stay at home, instead all deniers were FREE to walk around. What do you want to say? So you tell me i was right and they were wrong? Fine.

Why does anyone here or in the US have to "accept a doctor's not[e] in place of a vaccine card"?
Huh? We get vaccine cards here, indeed there are vaccine passes for all if they bother to have one. Most do.
So there is an illegal black market for vaccine fake cards or passes. Must be the fault of the democrats? Fauci? The EU?

Rockstar

07-01-21, 08:30 AM

Hey look someone is discussing U.S. politics in the German political thread again.

Catfish

07-01-21, 01:32 PM

"Germany orders maritime patrols for 1.1 billion euros"
Google translation:
https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=de&tl=en&u=https://www.spiegel.de/politik/deutschland-bestellt-bei-boeing-seeaufklaerer-fuer-1-1-milliarden-euro-a-1db456f7-ff1c-4248-a83c-4659fb5da9d8

Skybird

07-01-21, 02:01 PM

Second order US companies sacked from European customers this week. A few days ago the Swiss have decided against the Rafael, Hornet and Eurofighter and inf aovur of the F-35 as a replacement for their aging air force flying stuff. The Europeans are very angry, thats why I like it. Not only is the data infradstrriuctiure of the F-35 more advanced than that of the other three - but it was also the cheapest offer, cheaper than th Eurofighter, the Swiss say. Who would have thought that!

The F/A-18 is still in the race as a replacement for the Tornado as a carrier of nuclear Germany-stored US bombs, however. But resistence from the Bundestag and even more: the French, is very robust.

The French. Once again...

Recently I read that the new French-German-Spanish fighter development will be hopelessly outdated already on the day it gets delivered, and that the French know it but want to milk German budgets to finance their won financial industry problems with that German money, thats why they push the project. The cooperation between the manfucaturers of the French MBTs and the German Leopard also favour French interest for transfer of know-how.

I really have started wishing there would be fra less indiustrial copperaiuton between Germany and France. The past holds some lessons on these kind of projects, and often they did not ran nice for Germany.

The whole German procurement bureaucracy of the Bundeswehr is described to be a desaster.

August

07-01-21, 09:05 PM

Just read it, very good article of how things are, and why.I won't bother Dude. That's CNN. They have deliberately lied about Trump so many times that I just couldn't believe anything they said about him.

Doctor Fauci is a bureaucrat, that's what directors are, bureaucrats. I see him as anything but a saint. He engaged in a coverup of covids origins and funded ChiCom biological warfare research being done at the very lab where the outbreak occurred, which kinda explains his coverup efforts.

He never publicly supported the scientific "point of view" (what others call truth or at least a reasonable handling), which is why his followers still feel assured with their view that it was all a hoax and all those other conspiracy theories.That's just not true Catfish. Trump ramped up production of ventilators, got two Navy hospital ships refitted, built temporary hospitals in nearly every major city and pushed the development of the anti-covid vaccines, all on the advice of scientists. We would not have those vaccines now if it weren't for Donald Trump but fake media like CNN and their democrat masters will never acknowledge that because to do so would be just another example how hollow their anti-Trump lies have always been and illustrate yet again just how far they will go to regain power.

From day one Trumps presidency was under siege and it continues even today with the politically motivated investigations in new york state.
When Trump felt threatened by Fauci's obvious degree of esteem in the media, he tried to block him.More lies. He could easily have fired Fauci if he wanted to block him.

like "Fauci was wrong"? (https://www.politico.com/news/2021/06/04/fauci-attacks-personal-conspiratorial-491896) "Bureaucrats like Fauci", you might even say unelected bureaucrats, like Farage? Fauci is an intelligent man, believing in reason and science, dedicated to his lifelong cause of protecting, inventing vaccines and understanding diseases to fight them. Painting him as a "traitor" and a "bureaucrat" because he cares more for people than for politics and the economy, can really only be thought out by the lowest proponents of mankind.Kiss the bureaucrats butt if you wish but you'll have to avoid the truth...

Fauci wrote: "Masks are really for infected people to prevent them from spreading infection to people who are not infected rather than protecting uninfected people from acquiring infection. The typical mask you buy in the drug store is not really effective in keeping out virus, which is small enough to pass through material. It might, however, provide some slight benefit in keep out gross droplets if someone coughs or sneezes on you."
He added: "I do not recommend that you wear a mask, particularly since you are going to a very low risk location."

Fauci said that in February 2020 the same time that Trump the science hater was banning travel from the epicenter of the outbreak and talking about the dangers of the disease in his state of the union address that the Democrats were so quick to tear up.

No i am not the one wanting to put them into c. camps, this is an invention of your fantasy. Godwin much? I said they should have been put in quarantine or fined, not concentration camps.Oh really its all my imagination, I see. Just a harmless quarantine you say, nothing to worry about, but what if the Refusniks refuse to quarantine? I would refuse if I were them.

To pursue the policy you suggest they are going to have to physically incarcerate these people in some way. When that happens are you going to hide behind godwin then?

The rest, just wow.
Wasn't it expresident Trump who tore up the nation?Nope, that's rank democrat propaganda. His political opposition have done far more to put Americans against each other than Trump would do in a dozen presidencies, and they continue to do so now that he is gone.

Why didn't he support wearing masks for all, why did he try to play down the pandemic as "the flu" which will be "gone in summer"? Why was he constantly trying to arouse people of all sides against each other?Trump wasn't doing anything that his enemies weren't already doing. As I recall the Dems were organizing mass protests against him starting on his inauguration day and they continue turning half the country against the other now that he is out of office.

And, one moment: I did stay at home.Well I didn't stay at home. Being in the Telecom industry I was considered an essential worker and so forced to work all through this pandemic. Over the past year I have worked at hundreds of job sites in several US states.

Your Trump supporters did not, they made rallies into villages, organised multispreader events and behaved like uneducated children just to show.. what? How FREE they are?
Trump wanted to reopen the economy asap, and no one was forced to stay at home, instead all deniers were FREE to walk around. What do you want to say? So you tell me i was right and they were wrong? Fine.I remember there were plenty of unsubstantiated claims that Trump rallies were superspreader events but these were from the same people who claimed that BLM riots, err i mean "mostly peaceful protests" were not.

Why does anyone here or in the US have to "accept a doctor's not[e] in place of a vaccine card"?
Huh? We get vaccine cards here, indeed there are vaccine passes for all if they bother to have one. Most do.
So there is an illegal black market for vaccine fake cards or passes. Must be the fault of the democrats? Fauci? The EU?You misunderstood what I said.

What I was asking is what kind of card or proof will these OTHER unvaccinated people, you know the ones that you are willing to incarcerate, erm excuse me "quarantine", a goodly portion of my vaccine hating fellow citizens in order to protect? What else besides a doctors note would they have to carry or display in order to prove that they should be allowed to walk around unprotected among the vaccinated.

But why should exceptions even be made in the first place? After all they are unvaccinated right? So regardless of the reason however reasonable, they are still potential unknowing carriers of the covid disease. That means you will still have to quarantine them regardless of what you do to the Refusniks. Think about that. In this light does it make sense to quarrantine half the country instead of those few people?

Catfish

07-02-21, 03:42 AM

I'd love to see evidence of what you claim, because for me this is the usual Fox news lies parroting.
You misunderstood what I said.
What I was asking is what kind of card or proof will these OTHER unvaccinated people, you know the ones that you are willing to incarcerate, erm excuse me "quarantine", a goodly portion of my vaccine hating fellow citizens in order to protect?I admit i don't understand what you write. The unvaccinated have their normal vaccine card only with the covid shots missing on them. If some general anti vaxxers have ever been vaccinated, and have a card at all, their problem. I take it most have a card, most want to be vaccinated, just have not yet.

Anyone who gets covid will have to self-quarantine. If they do not and continue to try to infect others, indeed put them into forced quarantine/hospital until they die or get over it. If the latter happens, sue them right afterwards for dangerous negligence or whatever is the term.

You cannot force people to be reasonable (especially not with the Fox and qanon indoctrination), you can force no one to get vaccinated of course. But if anti vaxxers die it is their problem. If they infect others, what do you propose? Just let them do it?
And if all the rest is vaccinated i have no problem with that, let the deniers walk around and infect themselves, and suffer and die if they want. But as long as the rest is not through with vaccination, what do YOU propose?
...allowed to walk around unprotected among the vaccinated [...] they [unvaccinated] are still potential unknowing carriers of the covid disease [...] Exactly, so do you have an idea or solution?

August

07-02-21, 02:57 PM

I'd love to see evidence of what you claim, because for me this is the usual Fox news lies parroting.
I admit i don't understand what you write. The unvaccinated have their normal vaccine card only with the covid shots missing on them. If some general anti vaxxers have ever been vaccinated, and have a card at all, their problem. I take it most have a card, most want to be vaccinated, just have not yet.

In my country people don't walk around with a vaccine card but forget it. I give up trying to make you understand.

Anyone who gets covid will have to self-quarantine. If they do not and continue to try to infect others, indeed put them into forced quarantine/hospital until they die or get over it. If the latter happens, sue them right afterwards for dangerous negligence or whatever is the term.

Sue :haha:, I see. And how will you know that any particular person gave it to you? Your idea is completely unworkable.

You cannot force people to be reasonable (especially not with the Fox and qanon indoctrination)

:roll: Just couldn't resist eh?

, you can force no one to get vaccinated of course. But if anti vaxxers die it is their problem. If they infect others, what do you propose? Just let them do it? And if all the rest is vaccinated i have no problem with that, let the deniers walk around and infect themselves, and suffer and die if they want.

Yes, just let them do it I say, because I am not willing to live in a fascist society where everyone has to show their papers to some government minder just to walk out their own front door. That might the German way but not here in the good old USofA, at least not yet.

But as long as the rest is not through with vaccination, what do YOU propose?

Exactly, so do you have an idea or solution?

I believe I have given you a perfectly valid solution several times but you have repeatedly ignored it. So let me repeat myself one last time: If you are one of the dwindling number of people that hasn't got the vaccine yet then either stay home and self quarantine until you do get it or go out and take your chances.

Catfish

07-02-21, 03:51 PM

August

07-02-21, 05:08 PM

Ok seems i misunderstood you - still when the last willing "vaxer" has got his jab at last and assumed they will all stay at home voluntarily until then, what do you do with the intentionally anti vaxxers?

I take it it is not a problem when those make up 3 percent of the population, but what if there are 30 percent or more

There are now around 54 percent of the population vaccinated in the US, how much are waiting to get a jab and how much will prefer to oppose it, by whatever reason? :hmmm:
It won't still be 54 percent when, as you said in your first paragraph, every willing "vaxer" has already got his jab, but even if it was it makes no difference, either way everyone who wanted the jab will have gotten it. So who are you trying to protect?

Jimbuna

07-03-21, 07:01 AM

Catfish

07-03-21, 04:30 PM

This channel is really trying paint the EU in the worst possible way, with arousing nationalist feelings using ridiculous exaggeration. "Well done" from an academic point of view, apart from this primitive and lowest niveau :03:

mapuc

07-03-21, 04:38 PM

Yesterday I read a story, a story I have read before.

It's about a Danish politician, Dan Jørgensen, in EU-Parliament.

He is fighting for the animal rights. He wanted a ban on very long animal transport from Denmark/Sweden and other EU countries in the north to South Europe or Turkey.

The EU commission demanded 1 million signatures from x different countries in EU. He manage to get it, he got these 1 million signatures from X different countries. He gave these signatures to EU commission...who...just reject it. From what I remember he tried 4-5 times without success.

Only people who has something to say is leaders in big companies and they can talk directly to the head of EU.

Today they have made some regulation on animal transport, but it's not enough though.

Markus

Catfish

07-03-21, 04:44 PM

mapuc

07-03-21, 04:52 PM

Bad outcome, if this is true. Do you have a link?
I do not quite believe this, too, maybe there is a formal fault in the petition?

But do you think there would have been even a try about such without the EU? With single nationalist governments only caring for their shortsighted individual views :hmmm:

Found an English article

http://animalwelfareandtrade.com/animal-welfareone-million-signatures-against-long-distance-transport

This article is about Dan Jørgensens 1 million signatures and how the animal is transported.

Can't find any article who describe how EU reject these 1 million signatures.

I found a Danish article Hope you can use google translate

https://sn.dk/Danmark/Dansk-EU-parlamentariker-foeler-sig-haanet-af-kommissaer/artikel/340714

Markus

Catfish

07-03-21, 05:04 PM

No time to read this all now, will do this tomorrow.

Lobbies should be forbidden, disposed off, some individuals of those organisations deserve to be shot, or worse. We have quite a lot of those in Germany.

Just a thought. imho the EU is the only international organisation that gives at least one or two thoughts about animals and species-concerned transportation and 'humane' killing of animals, which is the reason why this individual Dan Jørgensen(?) tried to convince them. The EU.

The fact that the EU is being undercut by lobby organisations means that it has not the power to stop this. You and the right wing would say they are bribed, and so on, and yaddayadda. The system is obviously not perfect.
But is this the fault of the EU, or should it be set into a state and power of law, able to fight those lobbies?
If, if there would be even one proposal of this kind, to 'arm' the EU in a way to really be able to fight this, every nationalist organisation plus the international ones would virtually "explode", and try to destroy the EU.
Which is what is just now happening.

So i take it you demand a better system (and imho rightly so), where do we begin?
Destroy the EU? Improve it? Do you think there will be a better organisation if we destroy it, or will it be not a fallback into nationalist interests; and petitions as Dan Jorgenson tried would never even be tried at all?

mapuc

07-03-21, 05:17 PM

Ok I'm not exactly happy about EU, so I am by definition a right wing.

Interesting.

Markus

Catfish

07-04-21, 05:46 AM

No, I'd say a nationalist will be probably against the EU, but if you are against the EU you are not necessarily a nationalist or right-wing.

But I would say that a nationalist is by definition more right-wing than left-wing?
And nationalists are usually for their country alone, and against international above-state oganisations that might meddle or interfere with their nation's 'isolated' laws. Like denying standard basic pay for workers, scientific exchange, and at least looking at other opinions.
Example being Hungary, or Poland who gladly take the money from the EU, but do not necessarily accept democratic or ethical concepts.
I guess it is hard to blare against the EU 24/7 but conceal advantages, bit it worked with brexit and we and they will see where the advantages are, or not.
You could argue that the EU is only a trading organisation, but after the old EG which indeed was only about trade, it is now much more.

Skybird

07-04-21, 10:12 AM

When political systems and institutions fail and players are corrupt and lobbyists dance on the tables, to widen their reach and increase their influence and blow up political systems' proportions will cure that and protect against even greater damages.

Logical. :doh:

Catfish

07-04-21, 12:23 PM

So what do you propose? I am all against lobbies, but tell this to the automotive industry, big pharma and all that.
I wonder if companies suddenly have the insight to stop their bribing, if the EU vanishes.

Skybird

07-04-21, 12:50 PM

https://www.ardmediathek.de/video/tele-akademie/prof-dr-jared-diamond-kollaps-was-wir-aus-dem-untergang-menschlicher-gesellschaften-lernen-koennen/3sat/Y3JpZDovL3N3ci5kZS9hZXgvbzExNTMwNTk/

Plenty of typos, I know I know...
https://www.subsim.com/radioroom/showthread.php?t=159065

Brilliant book, intelligent man. So much to learn from it to answer your question, Catfish. Not that I haven't answered this your same question many times before.

"Small is beautiful".

Catfish

07-04-21, 02:58 PM

The video is interesting, though i see no connection here.
There is much better connection and comparison to the past, the fate of the Minoans and the backfall from the bronze to the stone age, because vital supporters of other civilisations and TRADE ran into problems. They had made themselves dependent in a way that a sudden cut of resources finally led to terrible conditions. If there is a connection to the EU in the video (which i outright refuse), then it could be that the EU does not work close enough to backup member nations running into problems. Because of still too much jingoism, and egotism.
Yes, if in ancient times a great cvilisation "died" or lost its leading role, you could say it only concerned them, so a separation into nations is better than a bigger one, since only this smaller one will "die". But the video with Jared Diamond exactly describes how wrong this view is. Single isolated "nations" or tribes without conection to other partners will die out when they run into too much problems.

Regarding your own quote i may recite:

"1. All human behaviour is egoistical in that even any rational decision-making and weighing of options depends on standards seen as valid by the individual – even where assessing if own standards shall bow to standards (or demands) of others.

2. Rational behaviour tends to be destructive in the long run, since it is based on egoistical mo-tives in the meaning of point 1.), and beyond, it favours the strong at the cost of the weaker. An economy basing on egoism as it’s prime motivation aims at preventing competition, dis-connects itself from it’s service for the community, and ultimately destroys both the com-munity and itself – doing so rationally, and as a result of rational, reasonable decision-making.

3. Rationality therefore needs complementation by altruism to evade destructive effects caused by itself, and ultimately to evade rational suicide. The weighing of altruism versus egoism again includes an egoistic element (see 1.) ), as long as altruism is no represented in a “truly self-less love” for the interest of the other, which “agape” in the understanding of Christian tradition comes the closest to. We want to differ between general altruism and agape, there-fore."

If there ever was a pro-argument for the EU by you, it is here :hmmm:

I agree that "we are too many". This "monoculture" supports the spreading of viruses, as the destruction of this planet's ecosystems, fueling wars for resources and so on. Most western nations have no problem with overpopulation, because as a materially and food-wise saturated community or civilisation you do not need to rely on big families to support each other, but e.g. China follows a completey different path. Do you want to solve this problem of over-population by wars, or by education, and support of a certain level of material wellbeing for fewer people(s)?

Skybird

07-04-21, 03:38 PM

We will always disagree on whether more political commanding leads to more solution (you) or more political commanding is part of the problem and will prevent solutions (me).

The link between the topic and the video is that the author there is talking about his book "Collapse", and all what I said in that old thread is a summary of that book's conclusion on what politics (=administrative responsible acting) must be about. The EU is the exact opposite to that, and accumulates powers for the purpose of being more powerful. In that it is not one bit different than any other tyranny out there - and disconnects itself from the people more and more. Diamond points out the importance that political systems are not bigger than the members/citizens of them can overlook them and can see what consequences anybody's actions (including one's own) has on all others' (including oneself), and that rule makers must not be allowed to free themselves from the consequences of their rules, he also illustrates the dramatic relevance of the tragedy of the commons (Tragik der Allmende) and in generla is showing why always bigger political systems and social/communal systems and administration seals their fate to fall and go extinct, last but not least by becomign the more ineffcieint the bigger they become and the more disconnected from reality they become by right that. The whole book is about that: how very reasonable reasons like the ones you give in defence of the EU time and again lead to exactly the opposite of what is hoped to achieve by "following reason". The EU , potlicians in general, all the time argue with "rteason". 'On can debate whether it is that, but that term and label is what everybody claims for himself: I want to do the reasonable thing. In the book Diamond gives over a dozen examples for cultures that fell due to thinking they had good reasons for doing what they were doing. Some relgious reaosns. Soime reaosns based on insufficient kknowledge that was htoguzt to be complete. Mostly reasons based on assumed "reason". He aolso gives exmapels for how totalitarian regimes like the Shogunat in Japan prevented the worst right due to its centraliozation of control, th Shoguns were the reaosnw hy Japan today is such a green country with so many forests - without the shoguns, it would look like Spain today, or Greece: dry, desolate, desert-like.

I red three books by him. Collapse was the one that impressed me the most. The Pulitzer he won for another one, however (Guns, Germs and Steel).

Catfish

07-04-21, 03:47 PM

This is not what he says in the video.. your text seems more like drawing the wrong conclusions from the same arguments.

I will not be here forever but i guess i will have a look on his book "Collapse", i don't think it will change my view. If you do not learn how to work together internationally and fast, no one will be left to argue. You are missing the chance.

Skybird

07-04-21, 06:16 PM

I did not conclude, but summarized the book. His reasonings there became part of my arguments on and against certain things. Including the accumulation of ever more powers in tbd hands of politicians thinking that that is reasonable, like the EU. Diamonds book is about how cultures fell for reasonable motives, and how sometimes non-freedom was the precondition for avoiding the fall. The democratic zeitgeist hates to see that. I sometimes touched upon that too, when reminding of that ancient greek democracy was nlt a modern democratic free order of state, but pure feudalism.

Catfish

07-06-21, 04:08 AM

[...] how cultures fell for reasonable motives, and how sometimes non-freedom was the precondition for avoiding the fall. The democratic zeitgeist hates to see that. [...]With China and brexit being your favourites the recent not-so-democratic Zeitgeist will soon put an end to better living conditions and democracy, the leftist ecology movement will be crushed, temperatures will go down again just by not talking about it, and then they all lived happily ever after :O:

Catfish

07-06-21, 06:40 AM

"Man charged in Germany with spying for China"
https://www.reuters.com/world/man-charged-germany-with-spying-china-2021-07-06/
So there is still something left that Huawei phones have not transmitted yet :hmmm:

Skybird

07-10-21, 07:20 AM

The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung writes:

Now Germany's model construction site finally is getting cracks. When Tesla announced an electric car factory in Grünheide, Brandenburg, in November 2019, the state government was full of ambition. After the BER breakdown airport, Tesla should become an example that Germany can do differently. Modern, fast, unbureaucratic. It was like that at the beginning. With the help of provisional individual permits, Tesla pulled up the first halls at lightning speed.

But meanwhile it has stalled. The State Environment Agency is still examining hundreds of objections from environmentalists. Economics Minister Jörg Steinbach (SPD), once Schering manager and President of the TU Berlin, is doing everything possible not to show his impatience. The fact that Tesla is meanwhile building tanks that have not yet been approved doesn't make things any easier. American hands-on mentality collides with German thoroughness.

Because the approval procedure for the battery factory, which is also planned, is now starting all over again, the most recently announced start of production at the end of 2021 should be more of a hope than a realistic forecast. With today's knowledge, would Tesla set up its factory again in Germany? Doubts are in order.

Skybird

07-12-21, 04:43 PM

Tax payer memorial day in Germany.

Until today, the statistically average, normal employee/worker has worked only for paying fees and taxes to the state and social system. None of his earned loans he was allowed to keep until here.

In the remaining time of the year he will work for getting paid himself and keep his loans.
Germany his a maximum taxation country. In practically no other country in the world, citizens need to hand over as much money for taxes and mandatory social fees, like in Germany. Belgium is en par. Statistically average private wealth/savings/property, is higher than in Germany. Its also higher in Spain and Greece and Austria. Two of these get plenty of money transfers via the EU and ECB, last but not least from Gemany.

Arrogant politicians even claim that German people like to have it this way and love to pay. There are indeed were a couple of names from the big parties who on various occasions indeed claimed this, believe it or not, amongst them the current German finance ministre (SPD). Bastards.

Raping a victim, and afterwards generously asking "Was it good for you, baby?"

Skybird

07-15-21, 06:15 AM

Schwer was los in Germany.

https://media0.faz.net/ppmedia/3709568052/1.7438462/width610x580/in-koeln-schaut-nur-das-dach.jpg

https://media1.faz.net/ppmedia/aktuell/2604970463/1.7438613/width610x580/in-altenahr-mussten-einige.jpg

https://media1.faz.net/ppmedia/aktuell/3477749613/1.7438501/width610x580/verheerende-lage-in-schuld-im.jpg

https://media1.faz.net/ppmedia/2441371874/1.7438471/width610x580/in-aachen-ist-ein-boot-der.jpg

https://media0.faz.net/ppmedia/1594306915/1.7438466/width610x580/in-altena-in-nordrhein.jpg

https://media0.faz.net/ppmedia/aktuell/1296059862/1.7438624/width610x580/teilweise-eingestuerzte.jpg

https://www.dw.com/en/at-least-20-dead-after-floods-in-germany-several-missing-live-updates/a-58270820

https://www.dw.com/en/mass-destruction-as-floods-sweep-across-western-germany/g-58272774

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-57846200

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/5-dead-many-missing-germany-houses-collapse-floods-n1274014

https://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/dead-missing-germany-floods-78856930?cid=clicksource_4380645_12_comic_strip_sq _hed

Skybird

07-15-21, 06:53 AM

Some more.

https://edition.cnn.com/2021/07/15/europe/germany-deaths-severe-flooding-intl/index.html

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https://amp.rundschau-online.de/image/29451460/max/1920/1080/d1c2440f5b356a63e8459f82a405170a/Ic/hoechststand-rhein-koeln.jpg
https://www.rheinische-anzeigenblaetter.de/image/38898762/2x1/940/470/e3e4b663f296407eabc350ce63426660/XU/urn-newsml-dpa-com-20090101-210711-99-338958-large-4-3.jpg
Where they are now, my hometown has been seven years ago. I still had kind of luck and had the water knees-deep in the cellar, one door further the neighbouring house: water in the basement up to the shoulder and higher. Costed me a good part of my library.

Catfish

07-15-21, 08:19 AM

I did not know it had been that bad :o. Seems we here in the northern flatlands were lucky this time ..

mapuc

07-15-21, 08:47 AM

Here on our island and in the rest of Denmark we are melting in the heat.
They have promised rain and thunder during the day though

Markus

Skybird

07-15-21, 08:53 AM

At least 45 dead. At least 75 missing.

Skybird

07-15-21, 09:49 AM

However, there is something positive in all this mess, and I mean that serious. The deep ground water levels and deep soil reservoirs in the West should be filled up, and the soil should be soaking wet, which must be a great relief to nature, trees and life. I see since two years how the Teutoburger forest, the small remains of it that is, are in a terrible, depressing state, with huge areas being plowed under and cut down due to need (dry weather, parasites). Last year on my first bicycle tours into the region, I did not recongiose some places anymore, and this year it even was worse, and new such places had been added. Terrible. It could make you cry. This water flood will not help the damage done to forest already, but slow down the death of the remaining forest by one or two years. A delay.

But the dry summers of the past three years in the main have affected the East of Germany much more serious, and unfortunately the East did not get much rain at all.

In the coming near future, pratcically all forests in Germany will be needed to get cut and repklaced with other tree species more robust to withstand the hotter lcimate here. This measn that many animals, esoecially squirrels :wah:, will not have trees feeding them and giving them places to live for decades tio come. Thats why I say that red squirrels will dissappear in German ywithin the coming 20 years or so, and will be replaced with the expanding population of Greys form Italy and Switzerland. And again it could make you cry. By the end of this century sciurus vuilgaris will be found only in regions in the far North and Russia anymore, I think. In Europe, it will be gone. It could suriviv einc tiies, but there it will be driven out by the Greys, like in the forests.

Skybird

07-15-21, 03:04 PM

A river dam threatens to break. Towns down the river are being evacuated since early afternoon. I saw images of it, it looks as if Godzilla had his prank stroking the dam, leaving scars from his claws. Doesn't look good, this could get become ugly. Very.

58 dead now. Many more missing.

In some of the devastated regions it has started to rain again. Heavily.

The low pressure zone does almost not move at all, stays in place. The same problem that causes the fires in America'S West: jetstream weakened due to warming at the poles and lacking global temperature contrasts, not moving the air pressure zones sufficiently around, so they stay in place, may they hold heat, may they hold water.

Catfish

07-16-21, 02:09 AM

I heard there are a thousand people missing, though it is not clear whether they just cannot answer due to the breakdown of telecommunication in the areas, but it looks bad indeed.

Skybird

07-16-21, 03:12 AM

Minimum 81 dead, minimum 1300 missing.

https://img.welt.de/img/vermischtes/mobile232546915/0071627047-ci23x11-w1600/Nach-dem-Unwetter-in-Nordrhein-Westfalen-Erftstadt-Blessem.jpg

https://cdn.prod.www.spiegel.de/images/7cd8bff3-6d45-4f06-a551-8eb6de95b7ee_w948_r1.778_fpx33.32_fpy49.99.jpg

https://cdn.prod.www.spiegel.de/images/0ffd2521-0002-0004-0000-0000f3850beb_w948_r1.778_fpx59_fpy53.jpg

Skybird

07-16-21, 04:57 AM

The counter is ticking upwards. In human sacrifices, this is much worse than the Elbe "century flooding" 2002.

https://www.sueddeutsche.de/image/sz.1.5353977/974x731?v=1626428716&cropRatios=0:0-BiGa-www&cropRatios=3:2&cropRatios=2:3&method=resize
https://www.fr.de/bilder/2021/07/16/90865063/26535517-nach-dem-unwetter-ist-die-zahl-der-vermissten-unklar-2lssVH93kLee.jpg

Skybird

07-21-21, 07:21 AM

https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/wireStory/us-germany-deal-russia-pipeline-upsetting-ukraine-78951757

Nordstream 2 has been agreed to to get finished. Nobody is really happy, apparently, but it was out of the question to really expect Germany and Russia would stop it. The US squeezed out concessions that were in the game, and not more. After all, this never has been their business to stick their nose into.

What worriesd me more is recent info on how Russia uses pipelines like this for anti-sub sonar detection. This has so far playe dno role at all in debates, not from the German, not from the American, not from the EU or NATO sides. Either it is just science fiction, or they again suffered a major intellectual fail, them alltogether.

Catfish

07-21-21, 01:29 PM

mapuc

07-21-21, 01:58 PM

^ well i take it the Russians will be very frightened by the six german subs from which 4 are always in repair .. an attack on Russia via the baltic would be unwise to say at least, as would be a russian invasion via this pond.
I also take it the technical control of the pipeline will not only be in russian hands.

I don't think Russia should fear Germany On the other hand I think Russia has their attention pointed in another directions.

Neither Germany or Russia is interested in a conflict.

Markus

Skybird

07-21-21, 03:27 PM

There are the Swedish subs, too - very silent ones.

The issue, the technical side, also affects the Black Sea.

Needless to say: a sonar system capable to track submarines also is potent enough to track all surface traffic, civilian and military, as well.

I posted a link some weeks ago. But the authors of the alarm all are three ukrainian experts who of course also are suspicous to act on behalf of the interests of the Ukraine.

Again, the link, whatever the story may be worth:
https://www.nzz.ch/meinung/nord-stream-2-russland-koennte-pipeline-militaerisch-nutzen-ld.1634007

The Russian side of course dismissed the publication as an attempt to sabotage Nord Stream 2. Marine experts in Germany and NATO, on the other hand, take the problem very seriously. Nord Stream 2 is understood there as a gigantic chain of sensors that can be used by the military and that can become critical in the event of a crisis. The federal government neglects this aspect, however, because this skepticism does not fit into the policy of the federal government.

The autors say that the Russian ambitions do not stop at sonar surveillance, but that these are part of a bigger project for increasing capability of naval non-conventional warfare that aims at interrupting cable and pipeline connections for information and ressource transportation, communication, etc. Ironically the project name is "Harmony".

Skybird

07-22-21, 01:16 AM

https://edition.cnn.com/2021/07/21/politics/us-german-nord-stream-2-deal/index.html

Skybird

07-23-21, 07:00 PM

Random find of the day.

"A country whose government wants to prevent global warming by more than two degrees in a hundred years, and ignores the warning of 200 liters rain per square meter for the next day, has one thing above all: a serious problem with reality."

:D

From Roger Letsch's blog:
https://unbesorgt.de/die-uebermorgenretter-sind-heuteschlaefer/

Skybird

08-01-21, 09:59 AM

https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&u=https://www.focus.de/panorama/welt/fregatte-bayern-deutschland-schickt-kriegsschiff-in-region-um-china-will-aber-konfrontation-vermeiden_id_13547543.html

I have a question on this, just one:
What the heck is this folly supposed to mean...??? :stare: I cant stand this idiotic symbolic mumbojumbo, and this euphoric Germna love for always "ein Zeichen setzen". Who cares...?

Okay, that were two questions.

Not even others in the West seem top understand what the Germans hope to acchieve there. Or is is maybe just a self-promotion project of AKW (the German girly playing defence ministress) for her career chances after the elections...?

Catfish

08-01-21, 03:19 PM

Random find of the day.
"A country whose government wants to prevent global warming by more than two degrees in a hundred years, and ignores the warning of 200 liters rain per square meter for the next day, has one thing above all: a serious problem with reality." [...]
That is your and the human problem. But this problem is not that you can or cannot solve instant poblems, the main problem is the complete human inability to imagine what will happen a hundred or more years ahead.

Skybird

08-02-21, 06:23 AM

That is almost a reinterpretation of the quote. That quote however just means that a country that already fails because of small, everyday banalities, must fail even more because of infinitely more loudmouthed goals. Germany dreams of a future of hobbits on bicycles and without nuclear power, and China meanwhile is building the fastest bullet train in the world, building nuclear power plants, and in the third world coal power plants and oil and gas power plants are mushrooming around and "overcompensating for " the selfdenying German self-flagellation. We see that at EU level, too. Its plans and ideas - often thankfully - fail time and again. It does not become more realistic and more modest, no - it still adds difficulties and demands an even greater challenge and a lot more responsibilities. If you allow to prepare for such idiots, who already fail in the small, an even bigger stage, than their failure has far wider, costlier consequences - what is the result of this as an even bigger failure catastrophe ...?

Think smaller. Do not extend the reach of policymakers, but limit them. Its called "preventive damage control". Policymakers have no answers, and they are not the solution. They are part and root cause of many many of our problems. Why ? Because they have infinte amounts of counterfeit money, toy currency tokens that delay the bill we have to pay for them, and second reason: time. One could see their terms as careers as commons, and thinki of nthe problem here as the tragedy of the commons, a variation of it. Because it is claimed they take turns and rotate in and out (in fact they are almost impossible to get rid of, spend all their lives in their careers in politlics, and often cannot even be voted for or against: on EU lead levels, that is), time is a sparse commodity, and they want to to make - selfish - use of it to the best of their interests for thier careers and power hunger. They spend thta time in ever raising promises and ever raising expectations, even if these already are beyond the reaosnable and realistic. Cijmate poltlics is a perfetc exmaple. The ambitions in palce already are unreloasrtic now, no matter whether therte realisation is necessary or not - they won't be met, becasue it is not possible without totally crippeling the continent and igniting civil wars in a dozen places. And what happens? To win the popularity competition, these demands get raised more every year.

The world will not take Europe as an exmaple to follow, that simple it is. It already does take Europe as an exmaple of how not to do it. America, India, China, Indonesia, and all te other upclimbing biog economies in the third world - they all see now their time coming to reach for a seat at the table of kings. They all push their industries and economies. We have dumped the oil price becasue we produced less in the past 18 months in Europe. What happened? The refining capacities for crude oil climbed to an all time high and all the oil that went cheap because of of our reduced production, was bought up by these uprising economies who now could buy it cheaper, and so: more of it.

Thats the effects the EU does not have on its planning board. Or Germany. Just recently the German govenrment had to admitt that they planned with way too low electric power demand in the future, and that the trend for it seems to be at the reverse direction that was propagated: upwards, not downwards. And steeply so. Real experts tell that since many years! BTW, the European powergrid just weeks ago has suffered another almost-desaster, the second this year already, again the shockwave originated in Spain. Our beloved state media did not mention it. And this altough we were just short off a blackout that could have hit huge parts of the continent and could have lasted for DAYS. And then the consequences from that. The European powergrid doies not gain stabulity. It desintegrates, and at accelerating and frightening pace. Since years.

The german authorities recently showed unable to even just react to the clear warnings for the weather hammer that was falling. But they claim to have the perfect plan for climate saving? Decades into the future, and they foresee it in all its imoplicitons and inner chaotic self-dynamcis? They know how to manage it so that the world stands in awe, but they cannot even complete a small airport within 15 years? Cannot have realistic projections for near future energy demands?

Traumtänzer. And nobody wants to watch their show.

Großmäulige Trottel.

Rockstar

08-02-21, 05:58 PM

Germany is the biggest consumer of energy in the E.U. Seems to me it relies too much on imports to satisfy its energy needs as it is. I can understand maybe ridding yourself of coal fired energy plants. But nuclear power too? Your own national security is just as important as cleaning up the environment. There is absolutely nothing wrong with maintaining some degree of energy independence otherwise your suppliers may walk all over you and cause undue hardships for your own citizens.

Skybird

08-02-21, 06:38 PM

You are right. You must not tell me. But you see, in Germany, wellmeaning counts heavier than competence, and Wellmeaning made in Germany is a world standard the world envies us for. At leats that's what we think.

The Greens acitvely push for freeing us of our gas powerppoants, too. And especially those with cold&black dark start capcity, the few we have still left. ike CVortez burnt hgis ships on the beach they think they can enforce the better energy future if they destroy all alternatives to wind and solar. Just that wind and solar are highly instabile, and already now do not suffice.

All my "prepping" is done not due to war, meteor or pandemic concerns of mine, but - a continental blackout. If that happens, the disruptions will last FOR WEEKS to come. I can hold out from now to the next moment, without further notice, for 10-12 weeks. I am not convicned that that would be enough, especially. And recent floods over here showed a failure of communications of emergency agency's radios and civila communicaiton systems like VoIP telephone and cellphones (we have destroyed most of our sirens and cable-based telephopne grids), that you can only feel frightened.

Also, nowhere i Euriope and almpost nowehre in the world you pay as much for electric energy, than in Germany. The costs are hilarious, and the system is designed to have the costs growing the more renewable energy is getting produced on a day. Whjat? You said that make sno sense, it shoudk eb the other way around? You are right again, it should be, and at the energy marketz for nthe corprpate players, it is. But then comes the state-.commanded intergference by modifiers aimed at artificially pushing the costs for private household consumer the higher the more sun shiens and the stronger the winds blows.

No kidding, no exaggeration, no irony. Its really this insane over here. Its wnated madness and wanted destruction. Quite some dream of a deindustrialised Germany that then they could call like Tolkien's Shire.

Plus the insane yearly raise of energy costs due to the CO2 penalty schemes. It adds every year a punishing strike against priovate hpouseholds. Manyx peopel who applauded the idea still have not realyl udnerstood what they were applauding for. And many backbenchers in parliaments have not, too.

I can live with brown coal going out. Black coal as well. But oil? Gas...? Cold&black relaunch capacities of the powergrid...?

I think there is a strong causal link between these political goals, and the quality of German public school education. When students try to divide by zero, and do not know the difference between the political systems in West and East Germany anymore, and gender is being chosen by daily feeling and will, not decided by genetics, then nothing should surprise you anymore. Such a stupid bunch of people can be told everything, just anything, and they will think its a great idea and will applaude if somebody holds up a sign reading "now clap hands". Their future is never further away than the next summer holiday on Mallorca.

Skybird

09-04-21, 01:46 PM

Of Ebola, Anthrax and the Plague.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-56821462

Candidates, your names are Ridiculousness, Insignificance, Infantility.

Unelectible, ineligible. All three, unelectible and ineligible. Their parties, unvotable as well, all there are. Legitimising any of these, means to make oneself guilty. It compares to conducting brain surgery on oneself.

mapuc

09-04-21, 01:49 PM

....No specific changes in German politics whoever take over after Merkel.

Markus

Skybird

09-04-21, 02:00 PM

I am not so certain. It could become ruinously costly for private households and house owners. The gate to an acceleration of creating a EU superstate could be pushed wider open than ever.

What will stay is the merciless trend for infantilisation and stupidifying of the plebs.

I have nothing but utmost contemtp for all this and all them. And ice-cold rage that grows with every year.

Chances are high for a coalition of SED, SPD and Greens. Leftier it cannot get. The SED has just silently deleted their demand for dissolving NATO from their planning paper for coalition negotiations, which has always been a main demand by the SPD to them. A clear signal where the SED's intention is aiming at. Governing.

Currently with the actual polls, a small, tight mathematical majority also exists for - a continuation of the Merkel horror, a great coalition under leadership by the SPD.

No matter how the elections solve up, the results will be a desaster. There is no scenario that could be preferred to any other. They all are worst case scenarios, every single one. And if against all expectations Laschet still wins, I predict Merkel will be still in office beyond New Years Eve. Just remember how bad it was last time. Almost one year.

Buddahaid

09-05-21, 02:28 AM

... I think there is a strong causal link between these political goals, and the quality of German public school education. When students try to divide by zero, and do not know the difference between the political systems in West and East Germany anymore, and gender is being chosen by daily feeling and will, not decided by genetics, then nothing should surprise you anymore. Such a stupid bunch of people can be told everything, just anything, and they will think its a great idea and will applaude if somebody holds up a sign reading "now clap hands". Their future is never further away than the next summer holiday on Mallorca.

Where do you draw a line between education and indoctrination? That would appear to be only in the eyes of the beholder.

Skybird

09-09-21, 10:12 AM

The CDU's nosedive maneuver with Laschet as the pilot pays off: the ground is finally in sight and is quickly approaching. For the first time in the history of the Federal Republic of Germany, ALL survey institutes in Germany have the CDU at well below 20%, and the SPD has hurried away from the CDU at all survey institutes. When it comes to personal preferences, things look even worse, Laschet is in real danger of only receiving single-digit approval values at the end of his death loop. -

That the SPD will very likely be the winner, and with it Olaf Scholz, cannot be reassuring. In practice, the party cannot ignore the serious examination of a left-left-left alliance. And Scholz is still remembered as politically responsible for the biggest financial and banking scandal (CUM EX) of the German post-war history and for his endlessly uncomfortable trivializing babble as the ruler in Hamburg during the civil war-like unrest in some streets during the G20 summit. The man can do nothing, is far more left than he seems, the man will lead Germany even deeper into the EU debt union, but for some reason the future German pensioners love his endless avoidant behavior, his Teflon skin and his blasé arrogance, by means of which he even doesn't even answer direct questions or evades them, but simply ignores them when the answers don't suit him. He copies many superficial optical tricks from Merkel's behavior and shamelessly emulates her in this. The Germans' love for the familiar rewards him for this insolence. -

And the assault of the Greens into the Chancellery? It was not long before Annalena the incompetent and her manicured poodle Habeck, house-trained by the party's emancipation wing, exposed themselves to be the hollow cardboard displays that they really are. Personal mistakes, fudged résumés and impostures brought her green majesty very quickly back to the funny little format that she actually calls her own, intellectually. And the poodle? Gives the watered one, growls, but doesn't dare to let it be heard. Not even a poodle. A mini-poodle. But very docile. And just, well, house-trained, that's something too. -

One could throw up with so much insolence on the part of the parties to allow themselves these personnel and content-related impositions. -

Mother Angela has a fair amount of shared responsibility. Her catastrophic political mistakes as well as her brutal erosion of the CDU in order not to endanger her position of power have practically transformed the CDU into an empty torso, which is no longer capable of any personnel renewal: anyone who had even a scrap of meat on their bones that could have risen against her, was eaten by her, the bone gnawed off and thrown away. Heavens, how much I detest this FDJ-socialized functionary hag from the GDR. The last three years after a year of coalition strangulation (the next round will get worse, watch out ...) were a single debacle, especially the foreign ministry led by this titsy-tiny funny SPD-Fiffi actually emerged through particular bungling and ignorance. If reunification hadn't got in the way of her, she might have become the first female SED and State Council chairwoman in the GDR, who knows, she knows the ambition and the political self-image of how to make democracy appear where in truth there is a dictating of opinion and attitudes exactly (there were two surveys in germany this year that resulted in the finding that a majority of Germans think you can no longer frankly tell your real views and opinions withoutr risking diffamation and social sanctions, thats why many Germans, these surveys found, do not dare to speak out free anymore: mind you, a majority thinks so), and Germany garottoed it for 16 years. No merits, no gains, just an lame administration with simultaneous depletion of resources and maximization of German obligations for the shining beacon of the torch that shows us the way into the future: dear EU, here we come, may we in the future all be equally miserable in your light! Oh no, the EU goal was far too small for all these big egos, no, now we have the climate revolution. In the next few years, there will be a massive increase in lawsuits from active groups against large industrial groups that are still running the store; it has already begun. And these big players will not take part forever, but they will turn off the light and move away. -

What did the completely taken by surprise leftier-than-left chairwoman Saskja Esken say when she was accused of having fantasies about expropriation and maximum taxation dreams would lead to the fact that the bourgeoisie, toth who still have something to get plundered, would simply leave Germany and the planned robbery revoke? Right - she said nothing, just stared in amazement. This scenario does not appear to be envisaged. Maybe she does the same thing as the Taleban and simply forbids skilled workers to leave the country. -

One could also build a wall again.

(I typed this in German and let Google translate it, then corrected the worst mishaps it created.)
------------------------

Edit.

While I write this, there is a public signature campaign in Berlin running, demanding the expropriation of all house owning companies. Its likely that they will reach the needed numbers. Policymakers then will be forced to use tricks and cheats to avoid turning it into real policy and law. Whether they want that, is something else - the Senate in Berlin is both extremly incompetent and a extreme left-left-left triple coalition. No other of the 16 federal states gets this massively misgoverned, than Berlin.

Skybird

09-09-21, 10:31 AM

https://www.tagesspiegel.de/images/knaller_ts/27594564/2-format1007.jpg

Skybird

09-10-21, 09:45 AM

Nordstream 2 is completed, says Gazprom. The last piece has been put in, the two loose ends have been connected. Next comes the certification process by the German authorities. First deliveries are scheduled for Octobre.

mapuc

09-10-21, 09:51 AM

Hope the story in the Swedish novel Midwinter Darkness doesn't comes true

(Russia accuse Sweden for being behind sabotaging the Gas line and they believe the terrorist has their base on Gotland)

Markus

Catfish

09-11-21, 02:06 PM

I did not hear about sabotage? :hmmm:

mapuc

09-11-21, 02:15 PM

I did not hear about sabotage? :hmmm:

No it's from a book by Lars Wilderäng. Who wrote two books about the invasion and the liberation of Gotland. First book had title Midwinter Darkness, second book midsummer dawn.

Back to real German politics.

Markus

Skybird

09-18-21, 11:05 AM

https://www.dw.com/en/bloated-bundestag-trouble-for-german-democracy/a-59188371

No end in size for growing of German parliament. It already is the second biggest parliament in the world, only the Chinese People's Congress is bigger - so is China's population, a little bit bigger than Germany's.

Jimbuna

09-18-21, 12:06 PM

Look for the positives: The more expenses you pay the politicians, the less you'll have left to pay for the EU :)

Skybird

09-18-21, 04:57 PM

https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&u=https://www.welt.de/wirtschaft/article233736110/Der-deutsche-Atomausstieg-naht-doch-jetzt-regt-sich-neuer-Widerstand.html

Germany will soon shut down six [nuclear] power plants that will generate 64 billion kilowatt hours of climate-friendly electricity per year. More than all German solar systems and almost half of all German wind turbines. The effect is as if the climate contribution of 15,000 of the currently 30,000 German wind turbines would suddenly disappear.
It would be many years before new wind and solar systems could replace this electricity, at least in terms of quantity. Time that many experts believe is no longer available. In order to replace the base load of nuclear power, which can be called up at any time, huge storage facilities for the weather-dependent green power, which do not yet exist, were also required.
For now, coal and gas power plants have to fill the gap. “Shutting down the available nuclear capacities in the middle of a climate crisis,” wrote the British “Guardian” author and environmental activist George Monbiot, was “a refined form of insanity”.
(...)
Germany will not emit less CO 2 than before in two years , but 50 to 70 million tonnes more.

Hopeless. The therapy to cure German hysteric romanticissm still awaits to be invented. I doubt it ever will.

And the electric power costs - traditonally made as well as renewables - for private households climb and climb and climb and climb. They are the highest amongst all European nations, they rise when renewables produce more on a sunny, windy day (a wanted design feature of the German "system"), and are amongst the highest in the whole world. The price raises when more gets produced, it does not drop - it rises.

The costs for oil also intentionally climb and climb and climb, or better they are wanted to explode from now on, every year more. Additonal to the price explosion caused by economic recovering from covid lockdowns. The gas price soon will explode as well - LINK (https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&u=https://www.dw.com/de/meinung-deutschland-ignoriert-den-erpressungsversuch-von-gazprom/a-59216301)- due to a time delay in price fixingds at the spot market, becasue Russia tries to blakcmail Brussels for getting an immediate and unobstructed operation permit for the new Nordsstream 2 by withholding dleiveries via the Ukraine and by this having pushed the prices upwards, they just have not yet reached private households, but will. German reaction: complete silence, complete ignorration.

Its a madhouse, this Germany. A mental asylum. And everything is set to get much worse soon, after the elections in one week, no matter the result.

Skybird

09-21-21, 05:44 AM

The Russians are at it again...
https://www.tagesspiegel.de/images/verdacht_ts/27630982/1-format1007.jpg

mapuc

09-21-21, 09:54 AM

^So Skybird seems like you next chancellor is Putin and not one of the other three candidate.

Markus

Ostfriese

09-21-21, 11:58 PM

^So Skybird seems like you next chancellor is Putin and not one of the other three candidate.

Markus

If you consider that none of the three candidates is convincing...

The German election is like a visit to the doctor where you have to choose which nasty and contagious disease you'll get next.

Skybird

09-23-21, 04:54 PM

Germany this year will pay almost 20% more to the EU than ever before. And next year: even more of "more".

France, Italy, Greece and Spain already demand more. Much more.

Skybird

09-24-21, 02:45 AM

This man is possibly becoming next chancellor in Germany, possibly in a red-red-green coalition. Not certain, but very possible. I always knew he was a far left wolf in sheep's fur, but I did not know how far left he really has ticked all his life.

FOCUS writes:

The SPD's candidate for chancellor has a long party career behind him. But only a few know that as a young socialist he worked closely with the communist youth organization in the GDR. A search for traces in the legacies of the FDJ.

Annalena Baerbock (Greens) knows how to sing a song about what it is like when journalists set out to illuminate a political life. Even the smallest details can massively change the public's view of a person.

It is all the more astonishing that so far hardly any journalist has been interested in the biography of Olaf Scholz - especially in the early days of his political career in the SPD, when he not only fought fiercely against Helmut Schmidt and NATO, but also formed a close relationship with exponents of the developed power apparatus of the GDR. This chapter in his résumé is of particular interest, after all, Scholz could enter into coalition negotiations with the heirs of the SED after the election. This story should therefore be told here.

Let's start in 1980. At that time, Scholz was still a fuzzy head, studied law in Hamburg and fought in the Young Socialists against the “right-wing” SPD leadership. The Soviet Union had just invaded Afghanistan and US President Jimmy Carter called for the Moscow Olympics to be boycotted for this reason. During this time, more precisely: on May 23, 1980, the then Juso chairman Gerhard Schröder received the head of the communist youth association in the GDR, Egon Krenz, for a visit to the Federal Republic for the first time. At that time it was agreed that the FDJ and Jusos would establish official relations.

Two years later, Scholz became deputy federal chairman of the Young Socialists - which also brought him into the focus of the SED. At that time, with enormous financial, personnel and secret service efforts, it pursued the goal of bringing the Federal Republic into position against a NATO decision to deploy similar weapons on West German territory in response to the stationing of Soviet medium-range missiles.

The Young Socialists were an important lever because they had a direct impact on the ruling SPD and were significantly more credible than the communist brother organizations in West Germany. Scholz was particularly interesting for the SED because the then 24-year-old not only excelled as a vehement critic of NATO, but also belonged to the Marxist Stamokap wing of the Jusos.

In fact, Scholz became an important reinforcer of GDR positions on the board of the Young Socialists. On the rearmament question, he wrote in the “Zeitschrift für Sozialistische Politik und Wirtschaft” after his election, “there can only be a decided NO for the progressive democratic forces in this country.” In the discussion with other parts of the peace movement, young socialists should be included Make it clear "that armament and the danger of war are necessary side effects of imperialism and that therefore lasting peacekeeping is only possible if the capitalist social system is replaced by socialism."

The Central Council of the FDJ, in which the left-wing politician and today's Vice-President of the German Bundestag Petra Pau once worked, was responsible for contacts with the Young Socialists. A number of informative documents about Olaf Scholz can be found in the FDJ legacies. One registered attentively in the GDR that the youth association of the SPD moved to the left after its election to the federal executive committee. In a piece of information about the federal congress in March 1983, it was emphasized, for example, that the Jusos had invited a delegation from the DKP-affiliated youth organization SDAJ for the first time, despite an existing incompatibility decision. In addition, they had unanimously made "the USA responsible for the extremely dangerous worsening of the international situation".

At the Juso Congress, the question of whether the Federal Republic should leave NATO was also discussed - a demand that should play an important role in possible coalition negotiations between the SPD and the left after the federal elections. At that time, the Jusos had opposed "wanting to do the 5th before the 1st step," it says in the FDJ report. In December 1983, however, Scholz declared in the SPD federal executive committee that “because of the changed position in parts of the peace movement, the issue of leaving NATO could now also be discussed as a Jusos”. And in March 1984, in an essay on “Aspects of socialist peace work”, he affirmed that “in the long term, the question of the military integration of the FRG into NATO would also be on the agenda”.

During this time, the Young Socialists took part for the first time in an international youth camp that the FDJ held every year for left-wing youth functionaries from the Federal Republic and Austria. The six-day event in Werder near Potsdam consisted of lectures by experienced SED agitators, which were garnished with evening music performances, film screenings and excursions. The head of the Jusos delegation was Scholz, who, however, skipped the evening leaders' meetings several times. As the then Federal Treasurer of the Young Democrats recalled, he first had to bring Scholz over so that he would “kill” the intention of his Young Socialists to draft a joint final declaration. As a punishment, Scholz would then have had to go to the sauna alone with the “FDJ grandees”.

After the Bundestag approved the installation of new missiles on West German soil in November 1983, the GDR wanted to reverse this decision by all means. The first opportunity to use the Jusos as useful amplifiers came in January 1984, when Scholz traveled with other members of the federal executive committee to the FDJ in East Berlin.

In a preparatory paper, the FDJ praised the role of the Jusos in the Federal Republic. "As the most consistent part within the SPD", you had spoken out in favor of a clear no to missile stationing from the start. They belonged to those forces "which are oriented towards the further struggle for the dismantling of the stationed nuclear systems of the USA and support a corresponding referendum on June 17, 1984." It was noted that Scholz belonged to the Stamokap group, which is often more prepared was to "work with communists".

At the request of the Jusos, in addition to the talks with FDJ boss Eberhard Aurich, there was also a meeting with the then Central Committee secretary for security, Egon Krenz. The GDR news program “Current Camera” showed Scholz sitting across from Krenz in front of a bowl of fruit. The SED central organ “Neues Deutschland” published a photo on the front page the next day, which shows the group under a portrait of the KPD leader Ernst Thälmanns, who once called the SPD a “social fascist”. The importance the SED attached to the meeting could also be seen from the fact that the person responsible for Honecker's German policy, Herbert Häber, was also at the table.

In the period that followed, there were numerous other encounters between Jusos and FDJ. In 1984 alone, six delegations passed the inner-German border. The highlight was Aurich's “return visit” on December 17, 1984 in Bonn, where Jusos and FDJ agreed in a joint communiqué “decidedly in favor of the immediate stop of the missile stationing” and called for the dismantling of the existing systems. In a further declaration two years later they also called for the "normalization" of relations between the two German states. They also formed a joint working group on peace policy. Between 1985 and 1988 there were nine top-level meetings alone; It is not known which of these encounters Olaf Scholz took part in.

In a ten-page analysis of relations with the Young Socialists from 1988, classified as confidential, the SED functionaries summed up: "The Jusos became partners of the FDJ in the peace struggle." "They prove to be willing and predictable dialogue partners." In this context, it is pointed out that Olaf Scholz had meanwhile also become Vice President of the World Association of Socialist Youth Organizations IUSY. Last but not least, the “recognition of the unrestricted statehood of the GDR” was honored, which was attributed to the group consisting of the Stamokap parliamentary group and anti-revisionists in the Juso federal executive, which has dominated the majority since 1986.

According to another document, Scholz traveled to the GDR again in May 1988. The FDJ had invited to a seminar with the title: “On the responsibility of youth organizations from states of different social systems for the maintenance and security of peace. Possibilities and Necessities of Cooperation between Young Communists and Young Social Democrats ”. The appearance of the Juso delegation was marked "by the obvious will to constructively continue the current state of relations with the FDJ (sic)."

The document is the latest document from the GDR power apparatus in which Olaf Scholz is mentioned by name. The opinions expressed by his delegation are also presented in detail. The dismantling of generalized enemy images, the Jusos would have explained, does not mean “that the real enemies of peace should no longer be named”. These are "in the military-industrial complex of the USA" as well as in the "Stahlhelm faction" of the Union parties. In contrast, the “peace offensive of the socialist countries” would have broken up the anti-communist image of the enemy in the Federal Republic. The Jusos would not take part in the “bogeyman discussion against the GDR”.

At one point Scholz's remarks are also reproduced verbatim. The Juso functionary is quoted as saying that it is legitimate to develop “ideas about a different development in the other system” - which does not mean, however, that the SPD would ever open an “eastern office” again. He then expressed the conviction that “in the course of the development of the socialist countries, socialist democracy would take on features of bourgeois parliamentarism.” -year-old young socialist Olaf Scholz had expected.

----------
The author: Dr. Hubertus Knabe was Scientific Director of the Berlin-Hohenschönhausen Memorial from 2000 to 2018. The author is currently a research assistant at the Chair of Modern History at the University of Würzburg.

Skybird

09-24-21, 03:44 AM

And on the Greens.

German version: https://austrian-institute.org/de/blog/gruene-klimapolitik-moralismus-ideologie-und-dirigismus/

The recent elections in various countries have shown that the issue of climate change can mobilize voters, especially young voters, and bring the Greens considerable success. Above all, climate policy has long since become a reservoir for fundamental criticism of society and capitalism, in which the central characteristics of the thinking and acting of the Greens become particularly clear.

The Greens describe themselves as the “most moral of all parties in Germany” - according to Boris Palmer, Lord Mayor of Tübingen and (still) party member of the Greens. Indeed, the Greens pursue a strongly moral policy based on clear (implicit or explicit) value judgments.

The Greens see the widespread “low” and “evil” attitudes of many people as the cause of the climate crisis. The world climate is destabilized because malicious and reckless people intentionally endanger the climate in order to pursue their selfish goals. This view creates a clear moral enemy image and allows the Greens to divide the world according to a good-evil scheme and to emphasize their own moral superiority over others. Because from the perspective of the Greens, good action is expressed solely through a good attitude and not through positive consequences of action. This ethical point of view releases the well-meaning people from informing themselves about the actual consequences of their own actions and from justifying them.The good intention alone legitimizes one's own actions, whether the actual purpose of the action is actually achieved is then largely irrelevant.

The political offer that the Greens are making to the voters is a morally caring state. This offer is particularly popular when social problems, crises or catastrophes are actually threatening or are being painted on the wall by politics and the media. A central political element of the Greens is therefore to first outline supposed social crises and threats and then offer state protection.

The Greens experience the legitimation of their actions primarily through the protection of the climate and the preservation of the earth itself. They see it as their highest obligation to do everything to protect the climate and to subordinate everything to this goal, since a climate catastrophe is imminent.

The politics and especially the climate policy of the Greens is strongly ideological, since climate protection is elevated to the all-important "question of human survival" and is made absolute as the highest and most important social goal to which all other goals have to be subordinate. The Greens are calling for a “climate-friendly economy” in which the wishes and needs of the people only play a subordinate role. Compromises with other social goals must and must not be made if the climate goal is made absolute. And of course all means and instruments are just and fair to achieve this goal - if necessary also the conscious violation of democratic and constitutional principles.

The ideological burden of green climate policy is also expressed in the fact that many of the measures proposed by the Greens do not contribute to a rational solution to the climate problem, but only serve to propagate their own worldview. After all, many energy and climate policy projects turn out to be pure wishful thinking and an illusion when confronted with the hard facts of economic and scientific reality. Climate protection as a mobilization strategy is therefore much more important for the Greens than asking about the efficiency and effectiveness of climate policy instruments. To quote Robert Habeck: "The climate crisis or the question of what means should be used to fight it is not only conducted as an economic debate, but also as a cultural one."

The Greens combine moral standards and ideological conviction with a pronounced constructivism and a tendency towards dirigism. They have very specific ideas about how which areas of society should function and which societal results are desired. The Greens think primarily in terms of bans and government regulations, with which they want to bring about what is politically desired immediately and as quickly as possible on numerous issues and in many areas of society. The Greens' ban and exit list is so long that their representatives have to try to belittle it. Katrin Göring-Eckardt does not speak of bans, but of “radical-realistic demands” and Robert Habeck immediately reinterprets the Greens as a “design party”.

This striving for "creation" is motivated by the understanding of justice and the idea of mankind of the Greens. They criticize the distribution results of the market per se as unjust and unsocial and thus reject fairness of performance and fairness of rules as social principles. The Greens focus their gaze on the results and demand fair results or equal social equality. In doing so, however, they lose sight of the process of generating the results, i.e. the actual production process, which they are only marginally interested in. The fact that state intervention in the price mechanism inevitably leads to a shortage of supply, combined with queues and bureaucratic allocation, they generously ignore with reference to their lofty goals.

This direct focus on social outcomes gives the Greens a lot of leeway in a moral interpretation of market outcomes and their rejection. This is accompanied by an open or covert criticism of growth and capitalism. Climate policy is therefore seen by many as a suitable way of undermining private entrepreneurship and competition that has always been undesirable for other reasons.

It is not without reason that the election manifesto of the Greens reveals - according to the Federation of German Industry - a "pronounced dirigistic understanding of the state that aims to replace the principles of the social market economy with concepts of state control and redistribution with a very narrow perspective on a national goal of climate protection."

The multitude of bans, restrictions and technological requirements and the state micro-control in all areas of life, as demanded by the Greens, are elements of a different social order in which the state controls people's lives and economies - regardless of economic feasibility. The previous social market economy of Ludwig Erhard and Alfred Müller-Armack needs to be overcome through a "global socio-ecological transformation" - with the aim of aligning all economic activities with "overall social prosperity" (according to the Green Basic Program of 2020).

Such results can only be achieved, however, if the state intervenes massively in the competition and determines the competition result according to its ideas of fairness. Annalena Baerbock also admits: “We have to be radical and openly demand a system change.” And nothing is more suitable for this system change than climate policy, with which liberal and market-based principles can be overridden and a renaissance of state management ideas can be initiated. These tendencies can already be observed today; they will increase significantly in the course of the EU's Green Deal. We are well on the way to an ecologically and morally founded paternalistic society, the ecological dictatorship that many Greens long for.

The Greens do not want to fail shortly before their goal. That is why they forbid any criticism of the majority opinion in climate science and their basic moral positions. They are less interested in an open-ended discussion and in the search for the most suitable climate policy instruments than in a confirmation of their ideological ideas. The discrediting of critics as “climate deniers” is evidence of a less democratic understanding of society and a poorly open understanding of discourse.

Whether the Greens actually achieve their goal depends on the voters. As long as they continue to be satisfied with convictions and morals and demand inappropriate solutions, the Greens have no incentive to deviate from their ethical strategy. The voters - and the media public - must demand an open and unprejudiced discussion and value responsible and critical reason and judgment. Only in this way is there the prospect that an appropriate relationship between ethos and responsibility and between morality and reason will be restored in politics.

Skybird

09-24-21, 04:02 AM

And Laschet and the CDU? Are so contourless and overwhelmed that there is simply nothing worthwhile or unmasking to report. Like all other parties, they ducked positions on Islamism, migration and violent crime, and foreign policy was also absent. Pension problem? Nothing. Cost explosion for electricity, energy and heating? Platitudes. China, Russia, North Stream? Nothing new on the Eastenr front, they are all "partners". Cracking conflicts in the EU, growing extremism and hostility in national populations to it? Deafening silence. Everything is wonderful, keep it up, Germany!

Oh, maybe this one. A mask refuser was upset over here that he was asked to wear a mask at the gas station. He went back home, got a pistol, came back and shot the young cashier in the head, killing him. Afterwards he said he "wanted to mark a sign." Comment Laschet on the killing act, and I am giving it in German because the ridiculousness and nullity of this statement in English translation suffers: "Ich fordere jedne auf, das nicht zu tun"

Well. Possibly the next chancellor of Germany, who knows. I think Germany is ripe for somebody like him, Mummy bred this country well.

National elections in Germany this weekend.

mapuc

09-24-21, 10:23 AM

Monday or Tuesday next week we will know who's going to be your next chancellor.

Markus

Skybird

09-24-21, 11:48 AM

Monday or Tuesday next week we will know who's going to be your next chancellor.

Markus
No.

Its all about coalition forming, and even the looser can become chancellor. Even secondary people and vice chairmen could become chancellor, theoretically. The chancellor is not directly voted by the population, only parties, and a represnetative for the voting district. The German voting system is very complicated and imo idiotic, and it makes sure the parliment grows and grows. It could become over 900 members htis time. They say even over 1000 is possible. Originally it should be between 500 and 600, and that already is very huge (and costly, since some ministries still maintain offices in former capital, Bonn).

The German parliament is the second biggest in the world, bigger than the eU parliament and second only to the Chinese pseudo parliament.

As I said, a hopelessly idiotic system.

Its bitterly fought over and its complicated this time. It could last well into the next year to form a government, like last time. The next New Years Eve speech maybe still will be held my Merkel. And I am not kidding. In fact I would be surprised if they are done at christmas already. I dont think so. Spring? Summer? Absolutely possible. It was an awful desaster already last time, and the super-lousy governing of the past three years shows it.

Skybird

09-26-21, 11:59 AM

SPD and CDU head by head, SED very weak, FDP slightly behind AFD.

I think nobody wants another great coaltion, so although SPD and CDU would have the majority of seats I do not think this will happen.

Good news: a left-left-green coalition seems to be not possible.

That leaves as possibilities:
SPD-Greens-FDP

CDU-Greens-FDP

Lose-lose for Germany.

mapuc

09-26-21, 12:45 PM

From what I understand the winner of the German Wahl(Election)has the serve right to find a coalition of parties beside their own to create a government.

This may take days or even weeks before the winner of the election can present a government to the German people and who's going to be their next chancellor

Markus

Jimbuna

09-26-21, 01:19 PM

Projections give the centre-left Social Democrats a narrow lead in the race to succeed Chancellor Angela Merkel.

Their candidate, Olaf Scholz, said the country had voted for change, and that he was ready to form and lead the next government.

The Christian Democrat candidate (and Mrs Merkel's chosen successor) Armin Laschet, said he too wanted to lead the next government - although he acknowledged his party's result was not what he had hoped for.

The Greens came third in the election, with the liberal FDP behind them. With possibly three parties needed for a majority, the coalition talks are expected to be long and difficult.

We could be waiting weeks to find out who will be Germany's next leader.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/world-europe-58644812

Skybird

09-26-21, 01:43 PM

From what I understand the winner of the German Wahl(Election)has the serve right to find a coalition of parties beside their own to create a government.
Thats is a habit, a custom at best I think, and not enshrined into law. The loser Armin Laschet for example right now on TV proclaims the demand that he becomes chancellor of a new coalition government.

This may take days or even weeks before the winner of the election can present a government to the German people and who's going to be their next chancellor
Days? No chance. Weeks? Unlikely. I expect months.

The win of the SPD means little. The real winners are FDPÜ and Greens. They are kingmakers, they can call the demands.

And the biggest fights will be between these two.

mapuc

09-26-21, 02:12 PM

Sounds like your heading towards a political chaos

Markus

Skybird

09-26-21, 02:23 PM

In the end it means nothing. The plundering will be the same. The rush for continental collectivism will be the same. Germany's servility will be the same. The irrelevance of the Bundesbank and the Constitutional High Court and the parliament will be the same, because they all are subordinate to EU equivalents now, legally or illegally: Brussels does not mind anymore, but tries to kick the doors in.

In principle nothing important has happened today. And no matter the outcome, it will make no real difference. Poo stinks, no matter what eau de toilette you spray on it.

mapuc

09-26-21, 03:22 PM

Skybird

09-26-21, 03:25 PM

Unfortunately the turnout could be even higher than 2017, since the number of mail votes is much higher this time.

Skybird

09-27-21, 09:19 AM

Turnout in the end showed to be 76.6%, with a very high share of mail ballots.

The so-called "true voting results" with including the nonvoters thus would be this:

Nonvoters: 23.4%
SPD : 19.7%
CDU/CSU: 18.5%
Greens: 11.3%
FDP: 8.8%
AFD: 7.9%
SED: 3.6%
others: 6.7%

I expect quite some CDU-voters having voted for SPD or Grees or FDP just so to not vote for their own candidate. Even the party base of the cDU did not want Laschet, by huge majority. He was enforced by a small handfull of old fat cats at the very top of the party, against all odds, reason, and demand.

FDP and Greens are kingmakers now. The FDP will insist on getting finances. The Greens will claim ecology.

If both would agree to go with the CDU, it would be an even bigger desaster for the CDU than four years ago when it handed all key ministries to the SPD - the second in the election - and thus saw itself shifting even further to the left. If the party ever wants to become meaningful again, it needs to dramatically renew and go back to its conservative values that Merkel has so brutally betrayed. And it needs a revolt against its old fat cats and their replacement.

What remains of Merkel:
- no nuclear powerplants although germany was amongst global leaders in nuclear tech security
- therefore instabile powergrids now with mountign risks every year
- Nordstream 2 with all its implications and consequences
- a massive growth of German financial liabilities for other states' mismanagement
- zero resistence the total overtsepping of the ECB of its mandates
- a strong disgust for German idfentiy, best shown when some years ago after some eleciton success an poltical collegauze held a German flag and she angrily ripped it out of his hand and threw it away
- a continuation of the German tradition of appeasing tyrants like Russia and China by "change by trade" illusions
- no tackling of the pressing issues of pensions, demographic change, brain drain (practically all Germsn turnignt heir bakc on Germany and leaving it for a life somewhere else, are highly specialised academics and other specialised workers of high income)
- Germany still is the highest-taxed country in the EU and globally
- no serious adressing of pressing issues like havign no foeign policy worth to be taken serious, and no military capable to fulfill alliance poblöogaitons, not even defending the borders
- no tackling of masisvely risne crimes rates due to uncontrolled mass migration into german social systems, and tolerance for Islamic racism and parallel justice and parallel culture

- having made Europe susceptible for blackmailing by Turkey, Russia, China, and originator states of mass migration.

Impressive. I do not list a single positive. Not one.

Skybird

09-27-21, 09:52 AM

Oh, and one positive thing to report. amongst young people who were allowed to vote for the first time in their life, Fridays for Future and similar hysteric mass movements claiming to represent all the youth, did not sore too well. The young first-time voters mostly voted for - the FDP. Big surprise for me.

Jimbuna

09-27-21, 10:06 AM

No possibility of a vote to remain in or leave the EU?

mapuc

09-27-21, 10:08 AM

Skybird

09-27-21, 10:41 AM

No possibility of a vote to remain in or leave the EU?
Hahahaha, thats a good one! You don't know many Germans, do you? Germans get raised from the cradle to the grave to believe in state authority - and the EU. Its the holy grail nobody dares to touch over here. Prussian legacy.

I am a stranger in this land now. Do not think I am a typical German. I am not.

Skybird

09-27-21, 10:51 AM

They gave us an explanation on how the rules goes when it comes to voting and the Parliament-Bundestag.
While sitting in my armchair listening I became more and more confused.
The Parliament grow from 700 to 735 I think it was.
The German voters has two votes If I got it right.
I also came to think on what Skybird wrote earlier about the German election system.

Markus
Let me add to your confusion. :03: The SED has failed to qualify by surpassing the 5% hurdle, they have only 4.9%. One would think they are out, then. Not so in Germany. Becasue that was just the first of voters, where they vote for parties. They also vote on candidates in their districts, and the SED unfortunately got three such direct mandates. Voters have two votes.

You may think now they thus send 3 people, and the 5% hurdle is just called that but means nothing. These three people that got voted for. You are wrong again. They send 39 instead. Yes, thirty-nine, and they get full fraction status. Their defeat at the election thus is nullified and turned into a de facto victory: they form a party group although they are not qualified to form a party group by voting result. You are confused now? Well, you are not alone.

And the issue with the so-called "Überhangsmandate" leads even further. If there is kind of a discrepancy between first vote and second vote results, and a party wins more direct adate seats than it won by party votes, it gets the additional seats but all other parties get additional seats to compensate and "balance" :doh:, too. This is the reason why the Bundestag becomes bigger and bigger. Originally it had only less than 500! There was a chnage that this time it could scratch the 1000 mark, but many long etsablished old fat cats got shot down by the voters, epsecially in the CDU, and this helped to keep the number of direct ,mandates lower than feared. Its still a raise, however, and the Bundestag thus has greown again.

All that money for all these overpaid freaks that nobody needs. Wonderful.

Trust me - many Germans do not understand this, too.

Jimbuna

09-27-21, 01:08 PM

I am a stranger in this land now. Do not think I am a typical German. I am not.

I gathered that a long time ago :03:

Jimbuna

09-27-21, 01:11 PM

German election: Seven things we learned.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-58705286

Catfish

09-27-21, 01:17 PM

German election: Seven things we learned. [...]
"* Lord Palmerston famously said, "Only three people understood it: the prince consort, who is dead; a German professor, who has gone mad; and I, who have forgotten all about it."
Which is how you may feel after reading about the number of possible coalitions that could govern Germany."
:haha:

Jimbuna

09-27-21, 01:54 PM

"* Lord Palmerston famously said, "Only three people understood it: the prince consort, who is dead; a German professor, who has gone mad; and I, who have forgotten all about it."
Which is how you may feel after reading about the number of possible coalitions that could govern Germany."
:haha:

I've been following as best as I'm able but one conclusion I've definitely come to is the fact German politics appear to be crazier then even ours :)

Skybird

09-29-21, 04:11 AM

Hehe. Achse des Guten has this today:

Central council without Jews

A board member told me that half of his Jewish community wanted to vote for the AfD. The Central Council of Jews called for a fight against this party. Find the mistake.

A few days ago I met an old friend who was a board member in a Jewish community in Germany. I keep further details to myself because I know about the rigidity and vindictiveness of the members of the “Central Council of Jews in Germany”. We talked about the situation of his congregation, about the decline in membership, the emigration of young people who are tired of being used as decorations for state funeral and memorial events, while in truth nothing is being done for them. The Central Council used the money paid by the Federal Government for itself and its self-image, for the maintenance of its apparatus and its functionaries. The mood in his community is desolate, said my friend, one does not expect anything good from the established parties. About half of the members would vote for the AfD on September 26th.

Meanwhile, the “Central Council of Jews in Germany” feels obliged to call for the fight against this very party. His latest statement after the federal election calls for "banishing the AfD from the Bundestag and from all state parliaments." We do not want to dwell on little things like the one that reveals an embarrassing lack of understanding of democracy, "banishing a democratically elected party from parliaments." " to want. Amusing choice of words: the ban, in Hebrew cherem, actually existed in Judaism, it was pronounced by rabbis and boards against apostates, lawbreakers and heretics. Today, in the age of many pluralistic communities, it is ineffective. The Central Council, programmed entirely for rigid centralism, has evidently not yet understood this.

He would then also have to "banish" a considerable part of the members of his communities, because the AfD is elected by many German Jews. They see it as the only party that names and addresses their most existential problem: the threat to German Jews from militant Muslims. There are still around 9,300 Jewish children in Germany, and the trend is falling, thanks to the inability of the highly endowed Central Council to secure a future for the communities under its control. These few thousand young Jews face half a million to a whole million young Muslims, in schoolyards, in local transport, in public spaces. Without bodyguards and armored limousines, as the Central Council officials claim for their protection. If it goes on like this, the Central Council's problem with the AfD will be superfluous because there are no longer any Jews in Germany who could vote for this party. And the Central Council is allowed to devote itself entirely to its perceived task: to be the mouthpiece of the federal government, to sit on its feet for further instructions.

mapuc

09-29-21, 01:37 PM

Earlier today I heard a professor in German history telling about the creation of the State Germany- Among other things, he mentioned the predecessor who was a loose trade agreement between Prussia and 25 other states this was in 1867.

What he did not mentioned and which I would like to know is:

Where does the word Deutsch come from ?

Markus

Catfish

09-29-21, 02:30 PM

German: ethnic name given in areas of mixed population to inhabitants speaking German rather than a Slavic language, from German Deutsch German (Middle High German tiu(t)sch, Old High German diutisk, from diot, deot, ‘people’, ‘nation’, from a Germanic root theudo).
Theudo also refers to Teutons (Teutonen), and then there's the Teutoburg and the Teutoburger Wald (forest), where the Romans have been beaten repeatedly :03:
"..eu.."´spoken like "ewe" in english sounds " ..oi.." in german.
Angles and Saxons were also germanic tribes.

mapuc

09-29-21, 02:36 PM

Skybird

10-04-21, 05:31 PM

Austrian blogger Andreas Unterberger writes:

Since Austria is economically highly dependent on what is going on in Germany without being able to influence them, it can now only hope after the elections: firstly, that Germany will soon get a functioning government, secondly, and even more so, that this government recognizes the dangers the German ship is heading towards and threatens to crash.

Above all, it would be necessary to have the courage to change fashionable but wrong decisions again. The most important of these concerns above all energy. We are permanently confronted with a global and dramatic energy shortage, which has been significantly exacerbated by Germany's previous policies.

The steep rise in electricity and gas prices is the forerunner of a great crash. The gas supplies are sinking in almost all storage facilities. And in more and more third world countries, power shutdowns due to a lack of energy are already increasing.

The causes of this development are not evil conspiracies in Russia. These are above all the revival of the world economy after two years of disaster, the sustained growth of the world population, the legitimate claim of underdeveloped peoples to participate in global prosperity and the simultaneous politically motivated restriction of more and more types of energy generation, especially in Germany.

If Europe's previous economic leader, in addition to this global crisis, turns off both nuclear and coal-fired power plants in the next few years, if more and more cars are powered by electricity, then this can never be compensated for by solar panels and windmills.

It is not just about defending the current level, it is also about enormous challenges for the billions of people from all over East and South Asia, it is about major new investments that must be decided now. In the steel and automotive industries, for example, they will all migrate from Germany and Europe without a secure energy base. The situation is even more dramatic for the chemical industry: By 2045, it expects an energy requirement that corresponds to Germany's entire current consumption. All of Germany, mind you, and not just today's chemical consumption!

So far no signs of intellectual healing in Germany. Maybe people have to get it really hard and brutal in the face and hit the bottom of reality soaking with blood in order to come to their senses again. We have real big problems now with stabile power and hetaing, the costs are exploding, and no, that is not just the evil Russians, that is home-made, and ideologically commanded.
Dämliche Trottel.

Catfish

10-05-21, 01:43 AM

Hehe. Achse des Guten has this today:
Ah Broder, the man trying to make Nazis and their thinking socially aceptable.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nupzSsJ43m8

Skybird

10-05-21, 02:08 AM

Oh dear, got drugged again, Catfish? Be patient, that too will pass, then you feel better again.

Catfish

10-05-21, 04:42 AM

Oh dear, maybe read something else than populist blogs like "Achgut"?

https://www.nachdenkseiten.de/?p=10216

https://uebermedien.de/16125/afd-broder-und-tichy-verleumden-margot-kaessmann/

https://www.derstandard.de/story/2000098079070/henryk-m-broder-die-provokation-ist-sein-geschaeft

Skybird

10-05-21, 05:51 AM

I know whom I can read at the Achse and whom not, they are a mixed bag.

But you, Catfish, specifically implied that Henryk Broder does Nazi stuff and talks their interests. And that is a malicious lie of you. You are not the first doing that, and you are not any less wrong than your left and politically correct predecessors. But if it is against an opponent of the left and politically correct Zeitgeist, anything goes, eh? No rules attached...?

Catfish

10-05-21, 06:20 AM

https://taz.de/Weblog-Die-Achse-des-Guten/!5330795/

http://der-semit.de/ist-broder-der-bessere-blockwart/

https://www.heise.de/tp/features/Das-tut-man-nicht-Herr-Broder-4298543.html?seite=all

What about PI News? The current populist "ZEITGEIST" is to please the right wing because ordinary life seems so boring. Conspiracy theories everwhere. It's hip to be right wing, to please the AfD, to be against immigration no matter what exactly, and generally to use right wing fake news to discredit neutral media and rational thinking and common sense, and especially science, with some cloudy misguided nationalism as an Ersatz for pride or whatever some people miss in their life.

Broder mixes some truth with massive bullsh!t and provocation, and he's clever with this, i'll give you that. Some people still see through the bullsh!t but Broder gets more attention than he deserves.

Yes he used to have some good points too, but he is getting more off his trolley with the years passing.

Skybird

10-05-21, 08:22 AM

I forgot. Not complying with the lefty Zeitgeist and the left leaning establishment opinion = Nazi.

And the TAZ not liking him? What a loss. You forgot Claudia Roth, she does not like him, too. And all the many others of her likes.

The left and the Islamophiles and the Merkel halflings. Who does not agree with their marvellous socialist agenda, is a Nazi, a racist, an Islamophobe and God knows what. Hamed- Abdel-Samadh? Islamophobe. Seyran Ates? Islamophobe. Ralph Giordano? Racist. Ayaan Hirsi Ali? Islamophobe AND racist. Bassam Tibi? Stupid. Necla Kelek? Stupid, racist and islamophobe. They all seed hate and racism, becasue they do not believe in stupid illusions and uneducated lies, but know the topics by their biographies and professions way much better than the do-gooders.

Yeah, sure. All Nazis. Ask the commie-paper TAZ. They know it.

Skybird

10-06-21, 05:17 AM

After 8 days in which the Greens, FDP, SPD and CDU/CSU talked in all possible 1-on-1 combination to see what is possible, the kingmaking small parties Greens and FDP will start negotiations for a 3-party coalition with the SPD.

If they overplay their cards, there is still a chance for ANOTHER 4 years of big coalition of SPD and CDU.

Meanwhile energy prices over here become unaffordable, and coal has a come-back, an expensive one. The last three of once 25 nuclear powerplants nevertheless should be switched off next year. With no replacement for their then missing capacities.

Not just a wrong sequence of steps (first abandon nuclear, then start to realise alternatives in sufficient capacity). Also the wrong goal (end of nuclear power), embedded in a context of even bigger misled, unrealistic goals (climate policy, EU "Green Deal").

That the wind did not blow enough and the sun did not shine sufficient this year, is nobody's fault, and could not have been taken into account preemptively. Impossible to forsee that. Absolutely. How could one imagine that in advance...?

This is what you get if the superminds of the planned economy elite has its ways. We better get used to it, they will not voluntarily go away after having marched on the seats of power since my school days. And there are still some functional things left that can be broken, and other home-made crisis could be so much further deepened.

It aint not broken until it is all and completely broken. Take a bigger hammer, if you get impatient.

Skybird

10-12-21, 10:40 AM

Bombastic news: EON,one of Germany leading energy providers, has stopped offering contracts to new gas customers. It says the market situation forces the ocmoany to no longer accept new customers for gas supply.

EON provides energy to 21 million Germans, that is roughly one quarter of the German total population.

While this still is not the beginning of Ragnarök, it shows where the voyage is heading if the super-dooper-mega stupid german energy policies do not get fundamentally corrected at the very basic root level already. I mean I know no other industrialised country that affords such a maximum incompetent energy policy, as Germany - for nothing but ideology and intellectual stupidity and in total denial of the international realities all around.

Vollpfosten.

And no, it will not get better next years, "after corona". Coropna we will ge tiver with, but the insane energy policies will worsten. And wantedly so.

VOLL-PFOS-TEN.

Catfish

10-17-21, 12:20 PM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xW2bgxyD--M

August

10-18-21, 03:51 PM

Are these blue haired people a large segment of German society?

Skybird

10-18-21, 04:00 PM

https://www.faz.net/aktuell/feuilleton/medien/serien/die-serie-blackout-bei-joyn-17589224.html

Marc Elsberg's novel "Blackout" has been turned into a 6 episodes - mini series.

Catfish

10-19-21, 03:13 AM

Are these blue haired people a large segment of German society?
Yes, all of them lol

Well he does not have this hair in the video, and a lot less.. :)
english subtitles can be enabled, a bit garbled but hey

re Skybird
Thanks, I will be watching this

Skybird

10-19-21, 05:30 PM

Zum Haare raufen.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LVc9Y7ZlpPc

ZUM HAARE AUSRAUFEN. Doofheit in ihrer pursten Form.

Made in Germany.

"Wenn wir das spüren, dann wird das zwei, drei Jahre dauern, das werden ganz harte Jahre, so 2023 bis 2026, wo wir wirklich durch ein tiefes Tal von Energieknappheit durchmüssen. (...) Wir kriegen diese Kurve zur Realität nur hin, wenn es zu Erfahrungen kommt, und das werden bittere sein."I think that is a understatement. It will destroy major parts of the energy-intensive industry branches, with all social fallout from that. And it will cost private households as well, way much more than many households can afford.

Deutschland schafft sich ab.

mapuc

10-23-21, 04:44 PM

The German ambassador, and 9 other ambassadors from Norway, Sweden, Finland, Denmark, France, the Netherlands, the United States, Canada and New Zealand.

Has been declared Persona non Grata by the Turkis President Erdogan.

Markus

August

10-23-21, 06:06 PM

Yes, all of them lol

I just ask because I have a German cousin that seems to favor similar hair shades. She makes it work though... :03:

Catfish

10-24-21, 09:43 AM

Astonishingly enough it has been a fashion some 30 years ago, my grandmother also had her hair dyed in a light blue at the age of 80+ ..

Skybird

10-25-21, 07:36 AM

Der Spiegel writes on another act of German servility towards China:

At the University of Duisburg there was supposed to be a reading on a book about China's head of state Xi Jinping - but the People's Republic apparently intervened.

The organizers were two Confucius Institutes that have been criticized for a long time.

Actually, an online reading on the book "Xi Jinping - the most powerful man in the world" should have taken place this Wednesday at the University of Duisburg. The authors - Stefan Aust, former editor-in-chief of SPIEGEL and today publisher of "Welt", and long-time China correspondent Adrian Geiges - wanted to present the biography there. But the reading was canceled. Apparently there was pressure from China. This is what the Piper publishing house, where the book was published, announced.

The organizers were the Confucius Institutes at the University of Duisburg-Essen and the Leibniz University of Hanover. There, too, the same reading should be shown in a stream. Tongji University Shanghai, which the Confucius Institute operates jointly with Leibniz University, is said to have intervened in Hanover. In Duisburg, according to the publisher, the Consul General of China in Düsseldorf intervened personally.

An employee of the Confucius Institute is said to have summarized the reason for this as follows: "You can no longer talk about Xi Jinping as a normal person, he should now be inviolable and unspeakable."

Author Stefan Aust believes the incident confirms the basic theses of the book: "For the first time, a dictatorship is in the process of overtaking the West economically and is now also trying to enforce its values that are directed against our freedom internationally."

Piper publisher Felicitas von Lovenberg called the cancellation "a disturbing and disturbing signal". The other readings on the book should take place as planned, including on Tuesday in the city library in Freiburg and on Thursday in a tea house in Hamburg.

Despite massive criticism, many German universities are still working with the Chinese Confucius Institute. At the end of December last year, the “Human Rights for China” association asked 17 German universities to end their collaboration with the Chinese Confucius Institute.

According to the official interpretation, the institutions should make Chinese culture and language accessible abroad. But the Chinese institutions abroad cannot be compared with the German Goethe Institutes. Human rights activists see them as a propaganda and espionage tool for the Communist Party. The USA, Canada and Sweden ended the cooperation, as did universities in France, Belgium and even Russia. In Germany, Hamburg and Düsseldorf have already withdrawn.

mapuc

10-25-21, 08:17 AM

Was planning on posting following in our CHN thread, but after reading your comment I feel it fits here better.

Dictatorships only understand the language of power, and therefore it will be blatantly naive if we believe that we can resolve the conflicts with China in a circle around the campfire, writes former Minister of Defense Claus Hjort Frederiksen.

Denmark is a part if EU and I believe he's right the way EU is acting towards China is wrong.

Markus

Skybird

10-26-21, 06:05 AM

The proverbial German "Angst" - the Neue Zürcher Zeitung writes this opinion piece about the irrational German climate hysteria and the moralising brainwashing behind it:

Fear of the climate is booming in Germany - the political and media barrage in the media is having an effect. The Germans are always afraid. But more than anything else, they are currently afraid of climate change. This has to do with the fact that there is a disproportionately large amount of climate reporting. This is morally charged and sympathizes with activists.

In Germany, debates are currently rapidly turning into radical irreconcilability. Image of a bicycle demo for more climate protection.
In Germany, debates are currently rapidly turning into radical irreconcilability.

Someone in Germany recently ordered that climate change is our only really important problem from now on. If we don't immediately subordinate everything else to this problem, the world will end.

Without wanting to deny the urgency of the problem, I always sit up and take notice when a topic seems to trump everything else, when it becomes morally charged, when doubts or incomprehension become taboo, when everyone is so terribly in agreement. Then it is often not far to ideology.

In this respect, whenever I hear «Climate», I would like to raise a few additional questions: What about an EU that is either disintegrating or sinking into debt? How do we react to possible Russian aggression? What do we do if China occupies Taiwan, no matter? How dependent on other countries does Germany want to make itself in the energy sector?

How functional are the state and administration in Germany, how long will the transport infrastructure last? Will our economy survive the planned “decarbonization”?

Climate activists see such questions as an attempt to relativize what they call "whataboutism". By saying “But what about. . .? " say, distract you from the actual topic. In the attention economy in which we live, the answer has to be: There are, with all worries about the climate, other problems, the neglect of which in the here and now can have harmful long-term consequences.

According to a representative study by the Konrad Adenauer Foundation (KAS), Germans are currently - more than anything else - afraid of climate change. The UN climate conference in Glasgow next weekend will once again provide plenty of pictures, graphics, activist appeals and journalists' comments that will not calm anyone down.

Thomas Petersen from the Allensbach Institute for Demoscopy is not too surprised about the economic upturn in climate fear. In the past, environmental protection was ranked among those goals that were dutifully and abstractly described as "important", he says. In the meantime, respondents ranked the topic very high in surveys among personal concerns. The pollster has a sober explanation for this: "The media drum fire on the subject of climate protection was not without consequences."

Climate researchers, greens, moving journalists and activists from Fridays for Future are likely to see it the other way around: they perceive global warming as the most explosive human problem. In this respect, broad-based reporting is not a “barrage”, but only appropriate. "Of course there are other topics in German politics besides climate protection," reads "Spiegel", "but no other topic that defines all other topics." With “Die Zeit” one dreams of a “competition of radicalities”.

Nikolaus von Bomhard, as the former chairman of the board of directors and current chairman of the supervisory board of the reinsurance company Munich Re, a recognized risk expert, has pointed out that the sheer presence of a topic in the media can lead to a “distortion of the assessment of risks”.

Up to now there has been no media research that deals with the size and intonation of radio and press reports on the climate crisis. But we can already claim that there is a disproportionately large amount of climate reporting. She is morally charged and sympathizes with activists.

And the committed reporting transfigured the climate youth. There could be several reasons for this. If one examines reports on youth in Germany from the past few years, then at least since the Fridays for Future protests of 2019 one gets the impression that the entire young generation is united in the condemnation of their climate-ignoring parents and grandmother who runs the children's choir of the West German broadcasting as "environmental pig" sang. With the future hopes of pure, unspoiled children, one can excellently compel the elderly to renounce and to consent to an overriding climate protection policy. Who doesn't want the best for children and grandchildren?

What was more astonishing for many climate-affected contemporaries, however, was the realization that in the recent federal election, relatively most of the first-time voters had voted for the FDP, not the Greens and certainly not the SPD or the CDU. To speak of a «Generation Greta», which gathers behind the battle cry «We want you to panic», would be a gross simplification.

But in public broadcasting, science programs deal with green issues above average. “Is that still the weather or is it already climate change?” Asks the WDR magazine “Quarks” on its website, for example, the presumably young, or at least dozen, viewers: “Here you can check whether the weather in your region is still normal or whether it is due to climate change comes." Real climate researchers would probably not dare to judge this on a daily basis.

In the ARD's “framing guidelines” it says: “Facts are central. But they only become good ammunition in a public debate where their moral urgency is communicated. " [Skybird: that is the official self-regulating working premisse of the official state run broadcasting in Germany!] Throughout public television, prominent moderators are making a noticeable effort to emphasize the moral urgency of their subject when it comes to climate issues. However, the question is whether moralization is actually a journalistic task. Anyone who contradicts or even just lacks appropriate fear will quickly be labeled a “climate denier” and, by definition, no longer open to discourse.

In the case of the climate fear respondents at the KAS, it is not clear whether they are concerned with an abstract fear or a personal concern. What is clear, however, is that you can only be afraid of something that you think you know something about. Thanks to the wide coverage, most politically interested citizens should feel well informed about the dangers of climate change - and that is precisely why they are afraid. According to the KAS study, on the other hand, very few people are interested in foreign and security policy, and it is not imposed on them in the media - the fear of external threats is correspondingly low.

The bias in favor of the climate issue is likely due to the fact that many journalists sympathize with green or social democratic positions. The Hamburg communication scientist Siegfried Weischenberg found in a 2006 study that more than 60 percent of the editors were located in the red-green spectrum. A survey of all ARD volunteers from 2020 shows a further aggravation: In the meantime, almost 60 percent of up-and-coming young journalists tend towards the Greens.

Karl Popper, the great theorist of the open society, warned in his pioneering essay "Forecasting and Prophecy in the Social Sciences" against postponing the fight against current social grievances in favor of "new ways to happiness" that are "theoretical and unreal". Perhaps this should also apply analogously to the great fears of the future that we conjure up and to which we subordinate current politics. Especially in Germany, where everything that is too big and too moving can quickly tip over into the radical irreconcilable.

Skybird

10-27-21, 02:41 PM

The Wirtschaftskurier writes about the German state media:

Our media are too close to the state

The majority of Germans no longer dare to express their opinion freely. The excessive political correctness is increasingly undermining democracy. Media suffer a credibility crisis. Especially the public broadcasters are simply too close to the state

By Wolfram Weimer

A recent Allensbach poll comes to the conclusion that the majority of Germans see freedom of expression in jeopardy. As a result, only 45 percent of Germans have the feeling that political opinion can be freely expressed. That is the lowest value in such an Allensbach survey since 1953. But who is narrowing the corridors of opinion? It is not the government, a censorship agency, or an overpowering party. Political power does not prevent us in Germany from reporting critically about everything and from being able to exchange ideas openly. And if someone like Otto Schily has an editorial office searched out of anger about criticism (as happened in my case with the magazine Cicero), then we defend ourselves and at the latest the constitutional court guarantees freedom of the press and the protection of sources.

Our problem today with freedom of expression and freedom of the press is different. It is we ourselves who weaken press freedom because we do not use it. We media too often lapse into majority opinion, self-censorship and opportunism, and some of us see ourselves as lobbyists for the good. But that is a mistake and undermines the freedom of the press from within.

“You can recognize a good journalist by the fact that he is not in common with a cause, not even with a good cause; that he's there everywhere, but doesn't belong anywhere. ”This demanding observation by the journalist legend Hajo Friedrich is as wise as it is correct - only it is increasingly being disregarded. In the past few years, the German media have relished the allegedly good things. Whether climate policy or the euro bailout or insulting Pegida or fighting a pandemic or a welcoming culture for migrants - too many media were too busy not just keeping the microphones of the official government policy, but turning up their own amplifiers. Not that the government would be fundamentally wrong on these issues, but when the media no longer perceive their critical control function, but instead make common with power and their alleged virtue - then they downsize themselves to perceived propagandists, then they deform the political culture, then they lose credibility and legitimacy. Then a repressive climate of opinion emerges in the country, which everyone who criticizes the pandemic policy, for example, is immediately placed in a right-wing or crazy lateral thinker corner. In the end, conformism to the good harms freedom of the press and democracy.

Because if everyone only reproduces the supposed good of the authorities, then an authoritarian form of political correctness emerges. Too much of a good thing becomes bad itself. Because in a democracy in which the media mutate into reform institutions for the nation, suddenly “the unsaid becomes the real thing” (Martin Walser). Millions of Germans from the middle of society believe that one must be careful in Germany to express one's opinion on the refugee issue. Half of the population does not currently consider freedom of expression to be guaranteed - a catastrophic finding for the media, which should actually make diverse opinions visible, and also for the state of our democracy. Obviously the media have defined a communication field in which there are those who cheerfully welcome the refugees at Munich Central Station and those who march angrily with the AfD. But what about the vast majority in between?

When left-wing conspiracy theorists or right-wing extremist dumbbells defame Germany's media as a collective “lying press”, then that is of course demagogic and a lie in itself. Nonetheless, the word strolls through the country with such suspicious success because it directly leads to a widespread and growing distrust of the population in the media appeals to. It makes a difference whether Sigmar Gabriel insults protesting East Germans as a “pack” or whether the majority of the media follow him afterwards in a collective dismantling of Saxony. According to a study by infratest dimap (on behalf of “Zeit”), the clear majority of Germans, a total of 60 percent, have little (53 percent) or no (7 percent) trust in the media. The Allensbach Institute for Demoscopy also measures that just under a third of the population sees themselves as "balanced" information in the media, and almost half of the population perceives the reporting as "one-sided".

Now one could hope that the deformation of our media freedom was a temporary phenomenon of the migration crisis. In fact, however, the same finding has also been found in other major issues since then. In pandemic or climate policy, the media are too happy to pursue monocausal world improvement, want to be part of a rescue operation for the good here too and follow all possible announcements of the respective government position in great uniformity. For months, the media hardly wanted to report that the corona virus might have escaped from a Chinese state laboratory. A Hamburg professor who published a collection of facts on this thesis became a leper of society. Another example: Germany’s media are largely uncritical about Berlin’s claim that the world will say goodbye to nuclear energy and thus follow Germany’s radical example. The fact that the exact opposite is the case and that more nuclear power plants are being planned around the world than ever before, that even Japan is restarting the reactors and our immediate neighbors are also building new ones, has no public visibility. It is similar in the euro, Syria or Ukraine crisis. The mainstream of our media blindly follows the Berlin government perspective on these conflicts. This then leads to the fact that - according to a survey commissioned by the NDR - a disturbing 63 percent of German citizens no longer trust the media when it comes to reporting on Ukraine.

Very many German citizens (44 percent) now seriously consider our media landscape to be controlled "from above". This raises the question in which parts of our media operations this is possibly the case Country decisively determined, perhaps too powerful, dominant and patronizing? Isn't this system of political party interests simply too close to the state, as the Constitutional Court has already warned? Is it not detrimental to the diversity of opinion if this state-oriented, super-supported system every Annually receives more than 8 billion euros in compulsory contributions, on the other hand free, independent media like the FAZ suffer badly economically? Why are political reports in ARD and ZDF so one-sidedly red-green? Shouldn't we privatize the ZDF better and out of the clutches of the parties finally free? Our public service see themselves too much as patronizing people educators and supernannies of the good? The current debate about reforming ARD and ZDF [first and second German state TV channels, financed by capitation taxes, Skybird] is therefore more than just a readjustment of refinancing. It's about the balance of opinion in the republic - and it urgently needs to be broader and more open.

Skybird

11-11-21, 07:32 AM

Manfred Haferburg writes for AdG:

The German media likes to make it look like nuclear power is a dying technology. The opposite is the case. But now the wind is turning in Europe. Rapidly rising prices in the energy sector, caused by a politically intentional shortage of energy, are making voices in favor of nuclear energy louder.

Climate Chancellor Angela Merkel visited Emmanuel Macron, who gave her the highest French award, the Grand Cross of the French Legion of Honor ("Légion d’honneur"). It was pussied and hugged without a mask, as if there was no Corona in France and as if one were agreed on everything - peace, joy, crepes.

In the Burgundian town of Beaune, the first lady and first gentleman were privately met for a luxury dinner, according to the Burgundian motto: “Bon appétit et large soif (bon appétit and blessed thirst)”, which “Anschela” is supposed to have. There was eggs and beef in red wine sauce from the star chef and local wines from the best locations and the best vintages. Some French are even said to have shouted “vive mutti”. All of this has been extensively recognized by the German media. On the accompanying photos you could see that only the poor interpreters and domestics had to wear masks.

Nobody knows exactly what Macron might have cuddled with Merkel over red wine in Beaune, for example that nuclear energy is classified as a “green energy source” by the European Union. Ursula von der Leyen actually said: "that the EU needs nuclear energy as a stable energy source in addition to renewables, as well as natural gas during the transition to climate neutrality". Who thinks that she would say something like that officially without consulting your boss?

Yesterday the French President made another address to the nation. In addition to the corona policy, there was also a much more tangible topic, nuclear energy. And see, suddenly most German journalists no longer understand French and can therefore unfortunately not report that Macron unmistakably showed the wrong-way drivers behind the German nuclear phase-out the outstretched middle finger.

President Emmanuel Macron announced on Tuesday November 9th that France would build new nuclear reactors. He emphasized the advantages of this energy, especially from the point of view of the climate. "We will resume nuclear reactor construction in our country for the first time in decades and continue the development of renewable energies," he said in a televised address.

Macron emphasized that this should be done "in order to guarantee France's energy independence, secure our country's electricity supply and achieve our goals, in particular carbon neutrality by 2050". France, which derives most of its electricity from nuclear power, is currently building the new generation prototype nuclear reactor, the EPR in Flamanville (EDF), construction of which began in 2007 and is still ongoing. At the same time, France is modernizing its 56 nuclear reactors with a billion-euro program in order to make them fit for a 20-year extension of their service life.

In Germany, wind power generation collapsed by almost 20 percent in 2021 despite the addition of hundreds of wind turbines. Now it is not as if 2021 was a "low wind" year. But after the windy years of 2019 and 2020, the wind was blowing normally again in 2021, i.e. rather weak. The remaining six nuclear power plants, coal and gas power plants often had to step in as a wind substitute, otherwise the lights would have gone out.

Just as a reminder, in case the energy transition calculator Kemfert speaks up again: In France, with over 70 percent nuclear energy, electricity costs only half as much as in Germany, but the average French only emits half as much carbon dioxide as their German neighbor. And don't forget: the CO2 footprint of the Germans, like the price of electricity, will increase even further when the last nuclear power plants are shut down in 2022. The 12 large 500 MW gas-fired power plants that will then be missing to replace nuclear energy will not exist, as their project planning has not even begun.

In addition, various coal-fired power plants are to be shut down by 2030. That means the need for another 15 gas-fired power plants. The time for the planning and construction of a gas power plant is approximately eight years. These almost 30 gas-fired power plants would have to be built by the state, since their construction in the energy transition subsidy scrub is not profitable and no investor who is with Consolation - we are talking about more than 35 billion euros in total - invests there. Everyone can decide for themselves how long it will then take and whether there is any delivery capacity for it. And when they do run at some point, where does the gas come from and what does it cost?

At the same time, there is the expansion of the grid for 35 billion (excluding underground cables, according to the federal government) and the erection of 10 wind turbines and 500 solar systems per day for the next 10 years, just to cover the currently published official "Renewable expansion plans" announced by Minister Altmaier , to realize. The looting of taxpayers and electricity customers certainly has a limit somewhere, as does the destruction of all base load power plants. How did Henryk Broder say? “The madness, when it becomes epidemic, is called reason”.

Germany is at a dead end with its energy turnaround, and there is no turning point in sight. As of December 31, 2022, Germany's electricity industry will be in the valley of tears. Then a few thousand megawatts are missing in the German grid, namely six large base load power plants to cover demand in calm and darkness. Woe if the neighbors then need their own electricity.

Germany has hopelessly maneuvered itself into a veritable energy crisis. Well then: Bon courage Allemagne for the coming dark doldrums.

Manfred Haferburg was born in Querfurt in East Germany in 1948. He studied nuclear energy at the TU Dresden and made a lightning career in what was then the largest nuclear power plant in Greifswald. Because of the cheeky singing of Biermann songs as well as some thoughtless remarks at the carnival, he was named a hostile-negative element of the GDR and consequently spent some time under the care of the Stasi in Hohenschönhausen. After the fall of the Wall, he took care of the safety culture of nuclear power plants for an international organization and saw more nuclear power plants from the inside than almost anyone else. But it still cannot glow in the dark.

mapuc

11-11-21, 05:25 PM

Read in the news some hours ago that the leader from Belarus is threatening to cut the gas that flow through his country.

If he do so, how much would it impact on our needs here in Europe and isn't there mere pipelines than the one that goes through Belarus ?

Markus

Skybird

11-11-21, 05:43 PM

https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/640/cpsprodpb/EAA8/production/_121527006_natural_gas_pipelines_v5_640-nc.pngAll existing pipelines wit the exception of Nordstream 2 lead thorugh belarus or the Ukraine or Turkey. I want all three countries not being able to blackmail Europe with cutting gas, or stealing from the transits.

Nordstream 2 has it charms, regarding this.

Nuclear powerplants would beat all this. It would be best to get Russia, China (as a rivaling consumer), and the US out of the equation.

mapuc

11-11-21, 05:54 PM

Can Nord stream 2 handle all the needs if we get a hard winter in Western Europe ?

Markus

Skybird

11-11-21, 06:11 PM

I assume everything including and west of a line Denmark-Germany-Italy. But I do not know, I assume.

I have 100l of good petroleum stockpiled now, that could get me 475 hours of heating, +/- 25 hours. Thats 6-8 weeks. If heatign stability is of concern for your place, I recommend you dso what I did: buy a good (Japanese) petroleum oven, and petroleum (the best you can find, due to the odor!) according to its consummation rate that you find in its specs.

mapuc

11-11-21, 06:15 PM

Going to be interesting to see whether he does as threaten or if EU will give in for the pressure.

Markus

Skybird

11-11-21, 07:32 PM

Merkel forced Europe into an absolutely weak position and prone to blackmailing with her migration policy 2015. And this folly now takes revenge. Turkey, Russia, Belarus, China... German foreign diplomacy is an insanity and it fails because it has no strategic longterm undestanding, just a rescuing of oneself from one day to the next.

Rockstar

11-12-21, 09:08 AM

Can Nord stream 2 handle all the needs if we get a hard winter in Western Europe ?

Markus

Nord Stream 2’s annual 55 billion cubic meter flow can’t even come close to supplying Europe 200 billion cubic meter demand. I don’t think Gasprom can afford to be seen as an unreliable partner either and has the power to keep Lukashenko in line.

IMO the gas will continue to flow. What Luschenko’s threats accomplish is they affect the markets and drive energy costs up. Which is a good thing for Russia, Gasprom and Belarus.

As Ukraine is slowly squeezed out of the picture I expect we’ll hear more from Lukashenko.

mapuc

11-12-21, 12:29 PM

Nord Stream 2’s annual 55 billion cubic meter flow can’t even come close to supplying Europe 200 billion cubic meter demand. I don’t think Gasprom can afford to be seen as an unreliable partner either and has the power to keep Lukashenko in line.

IMO the gas will continue to flow. What Luschenko’s threats accomplish is they affect the markets and drive energy costs up. Which is a good thing for Russia, Gasprom and Belarus.

As Ukraine is slowly squeezed out of the picture I expect we’ll hear more from Lukashenko.

It is said the man behind is in fact Putin. Wonder if he would let the leader of Belarus close the two gas line.

An interesting winter lay ahead of us, that's for sure.

Markus

Jimbuna

11-13-21, 08:52 AM

Belarus's threat to cut off gas supplies to Europe would be a breach of contract with Russia, President Vladimir Putin has warned.

In a TV interview, Mr Putin said President Alexander Lukashenko may have made the threat in a fit of temper.

Mr Lukashenko is facing new sanctions over a growing migrant crisis at the country's western border with Poland.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-59274351

Rockstar

11-13-21, 09:22 AM

Games people play. :nope:

https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/european-gas-extends-gains-after-belarus-warns-of-pipe-shutdown-1.1680376

(Bloomberg) -- European gas prices rose after Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko said he might consider shutting down a key pipeline linking Russia to Europe.

Benchmark European natural gas futures reversed earlier losses after the threat, which came in response to further sanctions against Lukashenko’s regime. About 20% of Russian gas flows toward the European Union passed Belarus territory so far this year, mostly via the Yamal-Europe pipeline, which also crosses Poland and ends in Germany.

Skybird

11-18-21, 10:57 AM

The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung writes:

----------------------
Difficult times are ahead for the German Ministry of Defense. Because despite growing tasks and necessary investments, the budget is expected to shrink substantially in the coming years. After around 50 billion euros in the coming year, the budget is to decrease gradually to 45.7 billion by 2025. This is what the medium-term financial planning that Olaf Scholz (SPD) presented as finance minister provides.

The union with Chancellor Angela Merkel and Defense Minister Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer has agreed to this. At the same time, however, the Ministry of Defense had calculated for the Bundestag that it would actually need at least 62 billion by 2025 to fulfill its mandate. Should the budget remain as planned, Germany would break its promise to its Western allies to spend 1.5 percent of its gross domestic product (GDP) on defense by 2024. In fact, after Russia's annexation of Crimea and the attack on Ukraine, an agreement had been reached to increase defense spending to two percent of GDP.
-------------------------

No comment.

Skybird

11-24-21, 08:19 AM

That went much faster than I expected. The coalition treaty should be introduced to the public today.

The Green will get a new super minstry for economy and climate, the FDP will get the key ressort of finance, also educaiton and traffic infrastructure. Defence will be an SPD minstry.

So far so good, but here is the joke: Green Baerbock shall become foreign ministre. That means a helpless clash with China. With Russia. With the US. Ready your popcorn, ehjoy the show when the Germans oince again get educated on the difference between what they want and what they can acheive. German lecturing nevertheless will raise to new heights not seen before.

With defenc ebeing in SPD's hands and a decline of defence budgets by 10% over the coming 4 yeras alreeady decided, do not put too much hope into Baerbock achievinb a stenghtening of a French-German-EU front against Russian aggression.

Whether or not the new coalition will stop Nordstream 2 remains to be seen. SPD and Greens at elast enver were fans of it. But fact is Germany cannot afford to piss the Russian this drasticaly in this winter. Nor in the coming ones. Question is: does her Empty-Headedness Dame Baerbock understand this? So far my search for signs on intelligent life in her was not overly successful.

The FDP seems to have negotiated extremely clever, and seem to be able to prevent the worst of threats from the Greens and the SPD.

Whether the Green party convent will agree, remains to be seen. Some commentators predict a violent radicalization of the Green youth and climate activists due to the Greens having failed to live up to their high flying promises and announcements.

Skybird

11-24-21, 10:05 AM

The Swiss Neue Zürcher Zeitung comments:

------------------------

Every nation thinks of itself as something special. The Americans see their country as a divine promise, the French believe in their civilizing mission and the Swiss in the superiority of direct democracy. And the Germans?

After the break in civilization, you put together a substitute identity in whose canon of values economic efficiency and political stability are high up. May the US Democrats and Republicans fight each other in unanimous hatred, in France every halfway popular politician may found his own party, Germany was not impressed by that. It was a role model for solidity and predictability. Maybe that's changing right now.

For the first time in recent history, the Federal Republic will receive a government that presumably consists of three parliamentary groups. Never in the past has a Federal Chancellor assumed office in such a weak starting position as Olaf Scholz finds.

Of course, the next Chancellor will also have the authority to issue guidelines. The constitution has deliberately focused on the head of government, who is only third in the unofficial ranking after the President and President of the Bundestag. But the political foundation of the office is crumbling.

For the first time, the two prospective coalition partners, the Greens and the FDP, together have more percent of the vote and Bundestag mandates than the Chancellor Party. Even in the grand coalition, which by definition consists of two almost equally strong partners, the Union weighed more heavily than the SPD.

Greens and liberals ostentatiously meet in a friendly atmosphere, their party leaders shine harmoniously into the cameras, just to make one thing clear: we are more united than the Social Democrats. The commentators are already wondering whether the tail is wagging the dog or vice versa. We'll see, Scholz won't want to be degraded to a loyal dachshund.

In any case, the power structure is a first. The last Social Democratic Chancellor, Gerhard Schröder, proclaimed in his inimitably prepotent manner: "The older one is a cook, the smaller one is a waiter." This order from the times of the red-green coalition no longer applies in a red-green-yellow alliance.

This shift can be seen in the distribution of ministerial offices, but even more so in everyday political life. In the coalition committee, the two waiters can insist that another menu be cooked.

Angela Merkel, too, was only able to make solitary decisions in selected cases, otherwise she would have risked breaking her coalition. But their leeway - especially in the second half of their era - was greater because they had the stronger battalions. Wedged between the two coalition partners and his left wing of the party, Scholz has to act more cautiously.

Of course, the two left parties can unite against the liberal troublemaker, but in the long run that leads straight to the end. In an interview with the NZZ, political scientist Frank Decker rightly stated: "The FDP is trapped." Because she let the Jamaica coalition burst in 2017 and received a lot of criticism for it, she couldn't help but get involved with the SPD and the Greens.

The analysis applies to the coalition negotiations. Christian Lindner would like a traffic light alliance, also because the framework conditions are better than in 2017. At that time, Merkel told him that the liberals should get rid of any change in the government's current course of action. Scholz cannot afford categorical bans on thinking, otherwise he will find himself in the unloved grand coalition. She knew best about lack of imagination.

But once the coalition is in place and has worked for a while, the FDP will regain its freedom. She will always find a reason to terminate the Faustian pact with two notoriously state-loving parties. The Liberals are not in Babylonian captivity.

They are just not allowed to sell themselves below their value, as they did when they last participated in government, when they watched the undesirable developments in the euro without doing anything, so as not to endanger ministerial posts and company cars. The voters punished so much discouragement by being expelled from the Bundestag after the party started with an even better election result than it is today.

What comes together now does not belong together by nature. The triple alliance is a mesalliance; born from the compulsion to form a government that should not end in a grand coalition, carried by the hope that the three partners will succeed in convincing climate protection.

However, the world cannot be reduced to a single policy area. It is an often repeated truism that climate protection is of existential importance. But the future of the welfare state and the safeguarding of prosperity are also existential questions.

The coalition is therefore just as measured by what it brings about in terms of taxes, pensions or the debt brake. Here all three parties have to bend over the top in order to come together. The necessary formula compromises are likely to burden the coalition just as much as the precarious power structure.

So will Germany become more unstable, will it even become weaker in the new constellation? The will to power still prevails, which creates unity between the future partners. But how far will it go, given the considerable differences? And above all: what can the trio achieve in terms of content on this narrow basis?

To condemn the alliance as a “future coalition” is not enough. Before you know it, the future is the past again. Rather, Germany needs a present coalition that does not postpone the big problems into the future, but instead solves them now. It is worth taking a look at international developments, although the election campaign remained trapped in the provincial logic of domestic politics.

After reunification, Germany slipped in terms of economic power. It was considered by many, especially the Americans and the British, to be the sick man of Europe. Then the rapid ascent followed. The years from 2010 turned into a real German decade.

Schröder's social reforms worked. The euro crisis and the Russian annexation of Crimea made the Federal Republic of Germany the European financial hegemon and once again the control center of Ostpolitik. The turbulent Trump years and Brexit made foreign observers even more confident in Berlin as an anchor of stability.

The twenties will hardly be a German decade. In the major conflict between the USA and China, Berlin is playing a passive role, anxious to avert the worst for its foreign trade. The anti-Beijing alliance between America, Great Britain and Australia reminds continental Europeans that they are extras in Asia, the powerhouse of the 21st century.

The EU, the political foundation of German influence in the world, will not find its way out of the crisis mode. Whether the ongoing dispute with London or the alienation of the Eastern European members: the Union is becoming a burden that costs a lot but brings less and less.

At the same time, the competitiveness, which forms the economic foundation of supremacy, is eroding. Germany has recorded significant increases in productivity and value added since 2000 and is well ahead of France, Italy and Great Britain. But this means that Germany is no longer top of the class, but only the EU average. In addition, the country is still benefiting from Schröder's reforms. Since then, it has done little to improve its position. Merkel's years were lost years. At the same time, their international charisma whitewashed the creeping loss of meaning.

The grand coalition has not turned the corner. It would be almost a miracle if the traffic light coalition, with its much more fragile construction, succeeded in doing this. Most importantly, voters don't seem particularly keen to shoulder such challenges. The federal election with its fragmented result is not a clear mandate, but rather an expression of perplexity.

---------------------------

Earlier, in Octobre, the NZZ called Scholz the "male Merkel". There is much truth in that, he has no profile and thus is so featureless that he offers no attackable trait or characteristic, apparently, just is covered with a thick coat of grease and teflon. So far, so much Merkel. But he is, different to Merkel, weak, his party is outnumbered by the two coalition partners, Merkel during the "grand coalition" at least had the strongest batallion behind her, though at decreasing dominance. He is also unscrupulous and, last but not least, far more red and left and pro Euro and pro EU and pro money inflating and pro debt collectivization than he tries to let the public believe. His time as mayor of Hamburg and durign the extremely violent riots during thats summit back then are spelled a desaster, and he weaseled himself out of it like he weasels regarding his responsibility of the enormous and very costly in German so-called Cum-Ex scandal that costed the state billions. I see him neitehr as honourabnle nor trustworthy nor driven by principles of any kind, but he is a merciless opportunist, and ticking very strongly left. He is only clever to not boast with the latter.

But the FDP holds the finance ministry, and that is a foot on the break of quite some wet dreams the SPD and Greens might have had.
SPD 6 ministries, Greens 5, FDP 4.

Baerbock as foreign minister will be a desaster worse than the SPD-Heiko. He at least hasd entertainment value in his hilariousness. Baerbock has not even that.

mapuc

11-24-21, 10:19 AM

Will there be any changes for the individual German citizens ?

Will the politics under Mrs Merkel remain ?

Markus

Catfish

11-24-21, 10:42 AM

Will there be any changes for the individual German citizens ? Will the politics under Mrs Merkel remain ? Markus
The administration does not care much, which elected parties rule under it. :03:

Skybird

11-24-21, 11:04 AM

"Voting age down to 16", the treaty says. They discriminate kindergarden kids and patients in coma. :o

"Feminist foreign policy", says the treaty. Russia and China and North Korea and Iran and many others LTAO. Maybe there is more entertainment value in Baerbock than I gave her credit in my previous post.

"Coal ends 2030", says the treaty. Think I need more batteries and petroleum.

mapuc

11-25-21, 08:53 AM

The administration does not care much, which elected parties rule under it. :03:

Reading between the lines in Skybird's comment on his countries politics gives me the hunch that he has very little trust.

Markus

Skybird

11-25-21, 10:53 AM

How did you get it...? :D

I fear them to become very inefficent, but extremely costly. Scholz' handling of desasters (Hamburg) are deasasters in themselves, and textbook exmaples of how to weasle yourself out of respnisiblity and liability. The Greens are not so much driven by reality, but ideology and want to notoriously lecture and educate other people - to make them dream for the things in their minds. Whether what they have in mind and what reality is and recommends are in congruence, they do not be interested in that much.

At the same time this coalition is so fragile that it can only hold if everybody does not push for anything too hard. That can be good regarding some things if the things being pushed for are stupid things anyway, but it can be a tremendous waste of opportunity and time if those things get prevented that might be useful to achieve, but cannot be acchieved due to coalition and party interests. Conflict-avoidance and fear of the voters will be the driving motives for this coalition. And Scholz' habit to copy Merkel in not offering any profile for any criticism or attack, resulting in indifference, self-paralysis, and lack of drive to push for indeed real innovations.

No, I do not expect much form this government (or any other), but raising costs and being exploited for green ideological propaganda purposes.

Also, they have not said so far how they want to pay for all the promises they made.

The lousy quality of contemporary potlial culture is such that I already would already be satisfied these days if a politician would tell me: "If you vote for me, and I win, I promise you will never hear and see of me again, I will do nothing that brings me back on your mind, and I will not make your pay one Euro more or less than before." Such a politician would immediately get my vote. If times are this shabby as they are, you need to lower your standards and expectations, you see.

mapuc

11-30-21, 12:41 PM

Here is BBC with an little article and a video about our island I live on.

It's about energy.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/reel/video/p09tpk67/the-small-danish-island-that-makes-more-energy-than-it-uses

Markus

Catfish

11-30-21, 04:33 PM

Ah, Aeroe (sorry for the wrong spelling)
We have docked in Aeroeskoebing several times when sailing in the baltic, beautiful island, people and houses :)

But it has been 15 years or so since the last visit. Very nice to see that they have become self-sufficient "in a way". With this i mean you need materials, and technology, that have not been found, or invented there (thinking of rare earths for batteries, the plastice, ball bearings and generators for the wind turbines, and so on).
Still, a road on the way to become independent, and self-sufficient :up:

Skybird

11-30-21, 04:41 PM

Interesting, the key sentence is when the mayor (I think) said: "The benefit stays on the island." And he said something like "Everything looks better when you own it." I applaude both sentences.

I doubt however that the model can work on a bigger scale with bigger distance covering and higher levels of industrialisation.

Sweden has its many trees, they can afford to burn wood for heating, because they plant 1.7 trees for every tree they cut, and have huge forests and a tiny population for a big country. Denmark has the "windfarms" nearby to where they are needed, especially on this island, but all of Denmark is a small country. Austria has mountains and thus plenty of small waterfalls and rivers with cascades and thus plenty of opportunities to win electric power formt he waterstream.

Germany has none of that. It plans huge windparks in the Northsea with the power being needed in the highly industrialised production hotspots in the far south. The loss of power to get it down there, is around 65-75%. So 3-4 times more power needs to be produced - or bought - to actually get the net ammount of energy that actually is needed, isn'T that insane? Cutting trees to burn them fpr heating we cannot afford, too amny people and too small and little forests. Waterpower will always remain a minor plaything, our rivers are not strong enough for that, there is not enough elevation change. And solar?

Well solar. :) I have seen it with my own panels how easily solar power can be messed up by the weather not complying. Not to mention time of day. Storing it in batteries again causes huge losses. And this month, November, with this year showing normal winds again (different to the excessive winds and storms in 2020 and 2019) and overcast skies, renewables contributed only an itsy titsy tiny fraction to the overall energy mix, with 40% of the demand i total power needed to be imported for expensive money for France and others. Over the year, Germany sometimes exports energy, yes - but if you compare import and export totals, the imports outclass the exports clearly, and our exprts are chepaer to have than we have to pay for the imports, and even a doubling of solar panels on house roofs over here would not change anything in that signficantly. Our great green leaders simplyl cannot do math. No wonder when you see how they have brought down the German schools nt he alost 30 years. Today a headline in a newsmagazine: a study comparing 18 countries in the West for how their schoolkids got along in the homesschooling during Corona school shutdowns, Germany scored - last place, 18th. The study said nowheere are the deficits as hige as in germany. Some time ealrier, German students showed a terrible decline again in their competence in math in international, global comparison. Well, a population that cannot calculate anymore, cannot criticise criminal finance policies, so that may be welcomed. Problem is you see more and more peoplele in politics as well who cannot calculate.

And next year our last three remaining nuclear powerplants go offline.:dead:

Their missing capacity for years to come will not be compensated. Gas powerplants I do not expect to be build soon, due to their now lacking attractiveness for investors: they have all reasons to fear that they can write off their investements some years later, becasue is, by will of the EU, only an interim solutioin of a very few years: too few yeras as if the porfits possible in these few years could compensate for the investements, and France now wants to make them even more unprofitable to boost its nculear energy. Gas powerplant investors will not see their money coming back, not to mention: a profit. Nobody goes into an investment that has a limited lifetime written on it, by political will. So, the taxpayer has to pay them, if they are ever to be build, and it will be a verym very deficitary "investement".

The frnehc aölweay spose as beign oh so European. Nonsense, they are not at all, for them Europe, or better the EU, only is a vehicle to transport the French will for dominance to the top of the political food chain. Germany, so very busy with its feeling of guilt over the past, simply does not understand this unconditional will to power. Its too toothless and too kind.

So, France pushes hard to have nuclear and gas being labelled as regenerative energy by the EU, but it wants criteria beign very light for nuclear, but maximum criteria and obligations and definitions for gas so to make building gas powerplants very costly and unattractive. That way they want to earn the reputation of pushing for green energy while maximising Europe's and especially Germany's dependency on french supply of energy so that they can dictate the prices and keep Germany on a short line. Now that Germany finally, finally!, is as weak as they always wanted it to be, they have no intention to ever let it grow strong again. An extremely sinophile new German chancellor with great sympathy for collectivising European debts at the Germans' costs for France is the one big chance in a generation, thats why they close ranks with Italy currently so very obviously. With the Greens in germany wanting to make many debts for their green deal policies, now is the time to implement some wounds and weaknesses into the German industry so that german economy never can dominate as clearly as they did before, since decades. The key branch of Germ,an industry, cars, already has recieved lethal wounds. France can dominate the EU, and Germany pays for the French dominance. that is the French plan, since decades. Germany- cannot even count from one to three, and to plan over decades is expecting hopelessly too much from it. That would need strategic vision and forsight, and in that German diplomacy since always has failed miserably. Gemran diplomacy hgas somehtign is assumes to be better: it means things well. Aren't the Germans kind by heart?

mapuc

11-30-21, 05:00 PM

^ The solution may be think local while being national.
Let each town or area be self-sufficient with energy supply

Markus

Skybird

11-30-21, 06:55 PM

^ The solution may be think local while being national.
Let each town or area be self-sufficient with energy supply

Markus
Exactly, and not just regarding energy - taxes in general! Power back to the local regions, away from national centres and supernational organisations. When i must pay taxes, i want the money being spend in my vicinity, my sphere of life, my living place and beyond that only on those purposes that I order, support, want to see being conducted. I do not need my taxes being channeled to some foreign people four hundred kilometers away in some other regions capitol and there being distributed on purposes that have no link to my own life and place anymore. Why must I pay for the building of some bridge in Bavaria? if I want to go to that foreign place, I am ready to pay for the purpose and services there - but not by taxes, but fees to be paid the time when I order or use them. Like you pay a parking ticket when you enter a poarking house. a Maut system, so to speak. You pay on use, you do not use it - you do not pay.

Needless to say, career politicians living of other peoples' money and political parties in general hate such thinking like mine, no mmatter their ideolgocial backgorudn, they hate it. It eradicates the basis of their own existence. It renders them useless and unneeded. They are men in the middle that push their wonderful presence in there without there being any need for them,a d for this they dmand money. Hilarious! The world would be much better off without them, it is them not being the solution to problems, but problems' origin in the first. At least very, very often.

Administrative districts should not be bigger than what any citizen in them can overlook and oversee. Thats the "local" in "local regions". That is transparency. The only transparency worth to be called that.

National taxes and administrative structures are not popular in Greece for one reason, a historical one. The ancient city states did not raise taxes. Paying taxes was seen as a gesture of submission and a form of tribute payments to a tyrant or foreign power. So in the end, pride was what stood against allowing a tax system. Instead, the rich and noble class - the only ones who indeed were free citizens - was expected to come up for paying for keeping and maintainign the absic city interests, from building and maitnain in frastrructure to waging war and defending the city. In return, it were these paying classes who had a say in administring the city, if they qualified.

But today every Peter and every Paul contirbtuign nothing to anythign can rais edemands and insist to be heard as if he ahd anythign to say.

No, I want fair deal between equal sides. Give and take. Rights and obligations defined by a contract. Contract violations being sanctioned. Contracts being signed fully voluntarily. Not one side being allowed to break contracts at will and not being held liable, instead getting away with it! Every state is a criminal cartel, every state inevitably leads into growing tyranny, no matter the ideological founding myth.

To me, a state has only one purpose to exist for: caring to defend what is defined as the outer border of the "tribe's" living space. Everythign else, every other function that states today claim for themsleves, could be - better - done and more economically done by private business with which customers - citizens - sign treaties that include passages that the parties have certain rights and certain obligations, and if the service offering company fails to deliver, it can be sued for damage compensation. Not at a state court, but another company, one that is specialising in jurisdiction. Police is security, can be done by private companies. Crime is dmaaging priofiuts, it is in the itnerets of bioth such policing and juristical companies to think about how to keep it low and design their service accordingly. even mor so when there is market competition. The state of today - has no competitor thats why states usually offer the lousiest service for the most expesive price and then show how terribly awful business entrepreneurs they usually are.

Schools, must not besome state's schools, can be schooling as a service provision by a company.

People pay no taxes. People pay for services and products. Prices for items of common usability, road maintenance for example, get priced into the prices for products, and the planning is done not by a state, but by interested business men/companies who need an infrastructure for shuttling around ressources, products, reach consummers, allowing consumers to reach their shops. The state needs roads and access to private property for only one purposde: to get to people and collect taxes from them.

A state is not needed in any of this. A poltical party is not needed in any of these. Only defence is something of a size too huge probably to leave it to regional companies. But if a central government refuses to defend borders like the German does, for exmaple, then such a state and government has forfeit its right to exist and its claim for loyalty. The problem is, the state makes rules and submits others to them, but if he breaks rules himself and fails himself in delivering what he raises taxes for, he cannot be held accountable. the citizen is always disadvantaged, the system is by design corrupted.

In the end, nothing has changed since the feudal system of the past. Citizens are subjects being owned by states. That simple it is. "Small is beautiful". Power away form central natiuonal govenbrment, and back to the local regions.

BTW, nice place you seem to live in, that siland in the film looks like a place poretty much laid back. When i was a boy, 12 yera or so, we had some days on Bornholm durign summer vaccation, and we bought many, many of those oretty, colourful candles that are beign amd ein denmark so much. At kleats back ion those times. I liked being there, just that we had terribly many mosquitos. And I did not know that "Tak" means not "Tach, Tag, Tach auch", a German greeting (Guten Tag), but means "Danke/Thank you". I thought the Danes were kind people but a bit crazy running around greeting others endlessly and repetitively all day long. :)

mapuc

12-01-21, 10:27 AM

Skybird-I would not for all the Gold in the world move from this island.

Except during summertime. we are 6000 habitants on this island in summer we are around 70-80000 or more. Most of them around 70 % is Germans

Sometimes it can be too much

Back to discuss German politics and what else happens in your society.

Markus

Skybird

12-01-21, 10:30 AM

Yes, its all about overwhelming man- and firepower. :D

mapuc

12-03-21, 03:04 PM

Talking about energy supply in the future

Using a graphene sheet that measured 10 microns across, the researchers said they were able to produce about 10 microwatts of power continuously, without any loss. So it does sort of raise the possibility of a clean and somewhat limitless source of energy.

https://www.iflscience.com/technology/graphene-loophole-could-provide-clean-and-limitless-energy-in-the-future/

Markus

Skybird

12-08-21, 07:47 AM

The new government has been sworn in this morning.

I have a worse feeling than usual when I think about politics. Germany wil change, of that I am quite certain. But not for the better. Too many ideological freaks aboard.

The big surprise is how fast the colation forming went. I expected it to last long into the next year. If somebody would have told me after the election "before christmas", i would have laughed.

Jimbuna

12-08-21, 10:14 AM

Olaf Scholz has been been sworn in as Germany's new chancellor, formally taking power after Angela Merkel's historic 16 years as leader.

He promised he would do all he could to work towards a new start for Germany.

As she left the chancellery, ending a 31-year political career, Mrs Merkel told her former vice-chancellor to approach the task "with joy".

His centre-left Social Democrats will govern alongside the Greens and the business-friendly Free Democrats.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-59575773

mapuc

12-08-21, 10:18 AM

One may wonder how far this coalition will work together before there will be scratches in the cooperation between these three parties.

Markus

Skybird

12-08-21, 12:11 PM

The Neue Zürcher Zeitung writes:

------------------------
For the first time in 16 years, Germany is being ruled by a Social Democrat. With 395 of 707 votes cast, the Bundestag elected Olaf Scholz as the new Chancellor on Wednesday. As expected, Scholz made it smoothly in the first ballot, even if he received 21 fewer votes than the new government coalition of the SPD, Greens and Free Democrats has MPs.

The 63-year-old is the ninth Chancellor of the Federal Republic and, after Willy Brandt, Helmut Schmidt and Gerhard Schröder, the fourth SPD politician in this office. After his election, he and the ministers of his cabinet were appointed and sworn in.

Scholz ’predecessor Angela Merkel received a standing ovation from the MPs; only the representatives of the right-wing alternative for Germany demonstratively remained seated. The resigning Chancellor followed the election in the visitors' gallery. Those MPs who were not vaccinated against the coronavirus sat on another platform. They also had their own voting booth.

In the short term, dealing with the unvaccinated is arguably the biggest challenge the new government faces. Scholz is in favor of a general compulsory vaccination and expects that this will be introduced in February or March, the Greens see it similarly, and the FDP leader Christian Lindner has meanwhile also swung into this line, for which he was scolded as a "faller" .

The current infection process can be traced back to the unvaccinated, Scholz had declared shortly before his election as Chancellor and in this context also contradicted the frequently expressed thesis that German society was divided on this issue. In fact, according to surveys, a clear majority supports the introduction of a general compulsory vaccination for adults. Nevertheless, the government could soon be faced with the question of how to deal with a vocal minority, which is likely to become even more radicalized, should vaccination actually occur.

A coalition of the SPD, the Greens and the FDP is a novelty in Germany at the federal level; their creation is a consequence of the new, more confusing majority relationships. All three ruling parties are trying to dispel the impression that it could be an alliance of convenience: They emphasize that they want to govern together for more than just four years. This is remarkable, at least in the case of the FDP, as the Union has so far been seen as the political force that is programmatically closest to the Liberals.

In fact, it could prove difficult for Scholz to hold the alliance together for even one legislative period. Conflicts threaten to break out, especially in social and financial policy: Projects such as citizens' benefits, basic child benefits or the construction of 100,000 state-subsidized apartments per year will cost money; at the same time, the liberal finance minister Christian Lindner will endeavor to be the guardian of budget discipline.

There could also be frictions in foreign policy: the Green Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock stands for a tougher course towards Russia and China, while a more yielding stance is widespread among Social Democrats, but also in the FDP. On the day of Scholz's election, there was a first clash about foreign policy: This is controlled “especially in the Chancellery”, said the SPD parliamentary group leader Rolf Mützenich; a Green MP wanted to see a degradation of the foreign office in it.

Further handling of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, which is supposed to bring Russian gas to Western Europe bypassing Ukraine, could prove to be a touchstone for the new government; Baerbock is against putting the line into operation, the SPD is for it. How Berlin will position itself on this issue in the future is likely to have an impact on its relationship with the USA - and with Germany's Eastern European neighbors.

The tense relations between Germany and Poland are unlikely to improve in the foreseeable future anyway, because in the dispute between Warsaw and Brussels over Poland's handling of EU law, Baerbock will hardly appear more indulgent than her social-democratic predecessor Heiko Maas. The fact that Berlin is now expressly aiming to create a European federal state should not only meet with reservations in countries such as Poland and Hungary.

The first tests at the ballot boxes are due for the new German government in the spring: A new state parliament will be elected in Saarland in March, followed in May by Schleswig-Holstein and the most populous state of North Rhine-Westphalia. In Germany, regional elections are always viewed as a plebiscite about federal politics. Should one or more coalition parties be punished by the voters, Scholz could face stormy times.
------------------------------

Skybird

12-08-21, 06:03 PM

Group portray of a new government. Notice the big painting - or smearing if you want - on the wall behind them. I find it extremely symbolic and representative for German political and national self-understanding. Vague. Nebulous. Unclear. Foggy. Lacking contour, indentification, contrast, orientation.

https://p6.focus.de/img/fotos/id_24499479/kabinett.jpg?im=Resize%3D%28630%2C232%29&hash=c7f2a2d3f24f8dbbd91367ee7a1a48555695a5f2ad693 5166e1a7a5ca642cde3

Jimbuna

12-11-21, 07:44 AM

Hopefully they will do better than the current shambles we are stuck with.

Rockstar

12-11-21, 08:58 AM

mapuc

12-11-21, 09:21 AM

Not sure if this really belongs in German politics thread.

It’s getting crazy.

Can’t remember where I mentioned the new German government may no longer host NATO nukes opening up the possibility of moving them closer to Russia. I thought if true and that were to happen it would certainly seem like a little overkill against a country that has a GDP less than the state of New York.

Now I ran across some intel saying NATO has developed and stationed in Mainz-Kastel a battery of 4,000 miles per hour; 1,750 mile range Long Range Hypersonic Missiles which can reach Russian targets in under 21 minutes.

“Every inhabitant of this planet must contemplate the day when this planet may no longer be habitable … The weapons of war must be abolished before they abolish us.” — John F. Kennedy

Reading you comment made remember this Danish article
(Translated of course)

"
RUSSIA WITH STRICT REQUIREMENTS FOR NATO
Russia demands that NATO abolish a
promise to Ukraine and Georgia that they
two countries can one day become members of
the Western Defense Alliance.
Moscow also wants the NATO countries
does not promise to place weapons in countries
which borders Russia and which can
threaten the security of the Russians, writes Ritzau.

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg rejects the Russian demands.
Every nation has the right to choose
its own course - also concerning the
security agreements as it will be one
part of, he says.
"

Markus

Skybird

12-11-21, 09:29 AM

The 56th, a cold war era artillery unit, has been reactivated and deployed in Mainz Kastel. It is planned to receive the Mach 5 to Mach 17 Dark Eagle missile.

Please note: "is planned".

No such missiles already are there, it seems. Not one word on it in any German media, too. Internaitonal media vary in ther wpording on whether the unit already has these weapons deployed, or awaits their deployment.

I am surprised that German press has nothing on it. And that the SPD and the Greens are silent, too.

Skybird

12-13-21, 12:31 PM

So now it starts: the new government has presented a supplementary budget with which it takes on new debts that should have benefited the Corona aid funds and programs - but are now being pushed into a parking position from which they can be redirected to this coalition's favorite topics : energy transition, transformation of society, mihgration, the whole unworldly blah blah.

Amount of this such embezzled national wealth: 60 billion euros. Until now.

If you deal with liars and criminals, lies and crimes are what you get. Nobody has an excuse to pretend he is surprised.

Skybird

12-17-21, 08:11 AM

Friedrich Merz becomes new chief of the CDU. Already in the first round of the member survey he got 60% of the votes.

Catfish

12-18-21, 04:47 PM

^ maybe, i still hope he will be gone soon, togther with his friend Koch.

Meanwhile (defense ministers):

https://i.imgur.com/t7rGhnll.jpg

August

12-19-21, 07:19 PM

^ maybe, i still hope he will be gone soon, togther with his friend Koch.

Meanwhile (defense ministers):

Looks like she's related to our Secretary of "Health".

Rockstar

12-22-21, 07:50 AM

Looks like it’s going to be a very cold and very expensive winter.

Russia Cuts Gas Supplies to Europe as Temperatures Drop.

https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2021/12/20/russia-cuts-gas-supplies-to-europe-as-temperatures-drop-a75881

Skybird

12-22-21, 11:36 AM

^ Indeed, confirmed by Euronews as well.

https://de.euronews.com/2021/12/21/jamal-pipeline-in-brandenburg-russland-stoppt-gas-lieferung

Shows how bad relations have become. During the cold war, they never violated their contracts this way, but stuck to them even during crisis.

So this part of the cold war is dead.

Most of the gas in that pipeline just gets transfered through Germany, further West, and back to Poland.

Rockstar

12-23-21, 05:06 PM

Seems German regulators are for whatever reasons delaying the commissioning of the NS2 pipeline. This might be Russia’s response to force and end to those delays.

mapuc

12-26-21, 03:11 PM

How much should we put into this ?

The head of Poland's ruling party Jaroslaw Kaczynski said on Friday that Germany was trying to turn the European Union into a federal 'German Fourth Reich'.

Speaking to the far-right Polish daily GPC, the head of the Law and Justice (known by its Polish acronym PiS) party said some countries 'are not enthusiastic at the prospect of a German Fourth Reich being built on the basis of the EU'.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10343891/Polands-ruling-party-leader-says-Germany-trying-turn-EU-German-Fourth-Reich.html

Markus

Skybird

12-26-21, 03:20 PM

Its the PiS.
'nuff said.

August

01-01-22, 11:25 AM

Germany's new government thinks it's subjects aren't paying enough for their food. :doh:

German Agriculture Minister Calls for Higher Food Prices

Germany's new agriculture minister, Cem Oezdemir, took to the country's biggest tabloid over the weekend to call for higher prices for food and agricultural goods, telling Bild am Sonntag that "junk prices" drive "farms into ruin, prevent more animal welfare, promote the extinction of species and pollute the climate."
While that push is in line with his Green party's standard repertoire, it comes at a time when inflation is at a three-decade high.

Compared with European Union peers Germans already paid more than the bloc's average, according to Eurostat data for 2020.https://www.independent.ie/business/farming/agri-business/agri-food/german-agriculture-minister-calls-for-higher-food-prices-41194136.html

Skybird

01-03-22, 05:43 AM

An outlook on 2022, from German, in parts Western perspective. Alarming and not pleasant at all, but I see almost all points by the author the same way. Germany will continue to run under full steam against the wall that it has build for the mere purpose of crashing itself against it.

https://www-focus-de.translate.goog/finanzen/boerse/f100/gastbeitrag-von-finanzexperte-matthias-weik-x_id_29252510.html?_x_tr_sl=auto&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=de

The forseeable future will become expensive. Very. Not just for state budgets - but for the ordinary households. Lets see if the millions of idiots who voted for getting raped this way will still love it in one, two, three years. I woudl expect that if the fire reaches the bed they lie in, then at the latest they should start to yell and scream, or not...?!

Rockstar

01-11-22, 06:09 PM

I’m a bit confused. German leadership has been shutting down its Nuclear power plants, investing heavily in solar and wind. On top of that the it seems the new German administration has delayed NS2.

Now the E.U. leadership comes out and label nuclear, natural gas energy as 'green' investments.

Has Germany shot itself in the foot, what’s going on?

Catfish

01-12-22, 04:13 AM

^ if you want to achieve the impossible, a bit of twisting the facts and frame definitions may help you :03:

Shutting down nuclear and coal plants while at the same time needing more energy than ever for electric cars and the like will not get us far.. so the idea was to just import "dirty" energy from e.g. France, which has been instantly called out as a backdoor lie violating the promises the greens have made.
Next idea was to declare nuclear energy as "clean", but it was instantly called out as BS as well.

Yesterday there was a presentation about the goals to achieve zero CO2 levels around 2030, at the same time showing graphs and background info that it will be impossible. The greens have some good ideas, but.. "Klappen muss es" (Das Boot quote :)), and it won't.
They have now agreed to think it all over and at least make the best possible effort until better ideas are being found.
To be true this is indeed one of the greatest challenges and whatever is being invented, it will not be easy and maybe not possible while keeping up the standard of living as we are used to.

Now that they are part of the government the awakening to harsh reality and the pressure to deliver must have been a hard landing :rolleyes:

Skybird

01-12-22, 05:59 AM

Has Germany shot itself in the foot, what’s going on?
Yes. And all Germans. Saying this since long.

Else, what Catfish said. Ideology and irresponsibility crashes on the ground of reality and government participation now. Possisble that amny private households and small-scaler landlords of small apartments who let these by numbers of just one or two, will face either fincial ruin, or are forced to sell them. Which means more flats get accumulated in ever fewer hands. The EU wants all 230 million house sin eurooe being turne dinto moonbase-style fully isolated and environment-sealed bunker buildings, with no air exhange, rotting isoaltion, and big money spend for chemcial industries and producers of isolation materials. The air inside buildingd will get bad this way, since ther eis no air exchnage with the envrionment, the materials will rot, and sooner rather than later need to be disposed of.

France will win tremendously in influence. And no, they will not stop nuclear energy. Not at any costs.

Nowher are the taxes as high as here. Nowhere int he west does electriocty cvost as mucz as here. Nowhere in the West does house building cost as much a shere. Nowhere than here is house building such an overregulated, bureacratically haunted effort, than here.

There is a need for investors investing into gas powerplants. But they would be stupid to do so. There is need to build flats and housing, of socially affordable costs for renters. It becomes more and more unattractive, complicated, overregulated, and unprofitable to buid socially affordable housing. Ther eis grpowing dpeendency on power imports from our neioghbours - wh often run coal (Poland) and nuclear (France) energy. GHermany does expret power,t hey proudly say. At times, it does. But over the year, counting not just widny sunny days but the dark seasons of the year as well and the nigh times, Germany imports more power than it exports. Offical statistics try to hide it, but these are lies. And in our house where I live, me and the other owners have calculated already that at current legal status the demanded "investments" in the low 100 thousands (!) would pay of not before 25 years at thge earliest, and only if the state subsidies do nto get cut, and only if the schemes do not get tightened, and only if no further demands by the state get raise din the coming 25 years. Unrealistic.

And they want to make it all ever ore complicated and costly. Intentionally! Add to this the stupid CO2 cetitfctae scheme, and other nonsense. Too costly. Too overrgulated. Too ideolgicically drioven. Too irrelevant for adapting to life in as much wanted world.

Thats what it must be about: adaptation. instead they want to - metaphorically - build a time machine and move time back by a hundred years or so.

Sie werden krachend scheitern. neither the laws of nature and physics nor the laws of economics ever bend to human hybris. And when all time and ressources have been wasted, and need gets seen to adapt - then there will be no more time and ressources left for actually adapting. Evolution is about adaptation, not reversing.

The world will get much warmer, we are beyond the point of no return, the internal dynamcis of thse physics cannot be stopped, not to mention: reversed. And the process will accelerate, not slow down by stopping cows to fart.

In the end the Greens are as dumb and shortsighted and bigoted as the other parties. What they want, cannot socially and economically be maintained.

Thse costs add to the immense costs for Germany due to the EU, and evehjn more due to the ECB, the Euro, and the Target-2 saldo problem.

All these measurements will drive inflation. And the state'S effort to be of help and raise loans and duistriubute money, will pusz inflation further. German inflation is fofically 5.3% now, the real inflation is much higher. The mass anihilation of private wealth has begun. It will make its effect felt brutally.