GER politics thread [Archive] - Page 7 - SUBSIM Radio Room Forums

Skybird

02-01-22, 07:01 AM

The Neue Zürcher Zeitung writes on a yearly polling of Germans on their moods and priorities:

The "Security Report 2022" takes the pulse of Germany's citizens. Economic fears dominate, while health risks are losing their terror. The proportion of those who would like to see a more liberal approach to the Corona crisis has increased.

While German Health Minister Lauterbach is trusted very much, Foreign Minister Baerbock - here with her Russian counterpart Lavrov - has to make do with low scores.

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz is able to contain his passion. On several occasions, however, he has turned out to be a passionate speaker in his still rather short time in office - always when he countered the view that Germany is torn apart. "To that end," he said in the Bundestag, "I state: our society is not divided."

The "Security Report 2022" published this Tuesday could make Scholz ponder. After all, 56 percent of all Germans, and thus 4 percentage points more than last year, are "very worried" that society could become "more and more" divided. A high 70 percent would like to see more action by the state to counter these divisive tendencies. And that is not the only revealing finding the report has in store.

Since 2011, the Allensbach polling institute has been producing the annual Security Report on behalf of the Hamburg-based Center for Strategy and Higher Leadership. Its purpose is to gauge the fears and risks that concern German citizens. For the current edition, a total of 1090 people were interviewed in person and orally between January 6 and 20, "representative of the German population aged 16 and over".

In addition to the growing concern about a social divide, another figure turns out to be less than flattering for the "traffic lights." The number of those who fear that "our government" could prove too weak in the face of multiple problems shot up from 24 to 35 percent within a year. On the other hand, concern that overall political stability could decline fell from 44 to 33 percent. Does the third year of Corona indicate a decoupling of social sentiment and trust in executive performance? Is Germany depoliticizing itself for the good of politics?

At the very least, the capital of trust is earning different rates of interest. As of mid-January, 62 percent of respondents trust Health Minister Karl Lauterbach to do a "good job," but only 23 percent trust Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock. At 15 and 13 percent, the approval ratings for the new Federal Interior Minister Nancy Faeser and the new Defense Minister Christine Lambrecht, both of whom belong to the SPD, are catastrophic.

Baerbock may grudge her poor ranking all the less because her Green cabinet colleague Robert Habeck receives a remarkable 43 percent. From this, one could draw the no less striking conclusion that Habeck is perceived far more as a climate protection minister than as a federal economics minister, which he also is. At the same time as he is held in relatively high esteem, the Germans surveyed also said that they were most concerned about inflation at the moment.

Against the development that "money is worth less and less," 84 percent would like to see greater commitment from the state, and 70 percent name inflation as their greatest concern. In his first government statement as economics minister, Habeck admitted that high inflation is "a particular burden for low-income households.

A year ago, Germans were primarily concerned about the economic impact of the Corona crisis. This fear slipped to second place, but at 66 percent instead of 70 percent, it is still a significant source of tension. A geopolitically unpredictable situation continues to worry 62 percent and climate change 54 percent - at an equally stable level.

In general, the Corona crisis is losing some of its terror in the general perception. Threats from new global pandemics are felt by 31 percent instead of 43 percent, and by 30 percent instead of 34 percent from an infection with the corona virus. This, too, expresses a paradox: Governments are trusted less, but the results of their actions are becoming less important.

Security also has a foreign policy component, and there the weights have shifted enormously. A year ago, North Korea was rated as the greatest threat to world peace, ahead of Iran, China and Turkey, and the Russian Confederation, which was far behind with 32 percent. Now Russia ranked first with 66 percent, China retained second, North Korea fell to third and Iran to fifth. Afghanistan slipped in between.

For all their realpolitik inclinations, Germans still seem to follow the principle of the bear who wants to have his fur washed without getting wet. 72 percent overall instead of 58 percent previously - but only 54 percent in the eastern part of the republic - consider NATO membership important "for the security of our country." At the same time, only 44 percent demand that Germany fulfill its membership obligations and participate militarily in the defense of a NATO state under attack.

Thus, at the beginning of this year, the Germans are still wrestling with themselves and their principles. Sometimes they are relaxed about problems that they hardly trust anyone to solve, sometimes they are very worried. The only thing that remains stable is the longing for stability - albeit with slight tectonic shifts.

In 2021, 77 percent agreed with the thesis that the greatest possible security is the most important thing in Corona times and that the freedom of the individual must take a back seat to protection against infection. And 25 percent instead of 17 percent agree with the rather un-German statement that freedom comes before security. One in four Germans says that everyone should decide for themselves which protective measures they will take and which they will not.

Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (http://www.DeepL.com/Translator) (free version)
https://www.nzz.ch/international/sicherheitsreport-deutsche-sorgen-sich-um-inflation-und-russland-ld.1667505 The priorities the german population has obviously differs significantly fromn the perception of things that politicians and ideologists want to command.

Skybird

02-03-22, 09:21 AM

Russian state propaganda station Russia Today (RT) operated in Germany by a foreign license, which is not allowed. Not mentioning that it is the voice of the Kreml like Prawda was the organ of the party. Germany has prohibited th eoperaiton of RT therefore. russia now retaliates by prohibiting Deutsche Welle in Russia, and releasing sanctions that are not further specified against German personnel of "media and public relevance".

The quarrel of lovers is the renewal of love. :D

Skybird

02-16-22, 07:23 AM

Germany is more or less unprepared for Russian cyberattacks aiming at putting Germany'scritical infrastructure into a Blackout. Politicians also actively prevent - at least do their best to delay - to change that. To knock out Germany, it would not take one single Russian tank and not one single bomb dropped.

https://www-focus-de.translate.goog/wissen/blackout-analyse-blackout-analyse-wenn-putins-hacker-zuschlagen-wird-es-in-deutschland-duester_id_53967313.html?_x_tr_sl=auto&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=de&_x_tr_pto=wapp

Skybird

02-19-22, 04:45 AM

The Süddeutsche Zeitung (!) writes:

"Voll erwischt"

Germany is stumbling unprepared through a world beset by a historic number of crises. Its previous foreign-policy beliefs are no longer suitable - and it hardly dares to adopt new ones. This weakness makes external aggression possible in the first place.

The past few years have been extremely irritating for the Germans' self-image in foreign policy. The country that found its balance in the world in good deals and good advice has found that one certainty after another is waning, influence is waning and the oh-so-comfortable stability is melting away. A sense of insecurity, sometimes even hopelessness, has taken hold.

In the last few months alone, the catalog of decline has encompassed the entire cosmos of foreign policy self-evident: The U.S. is ruled by an anti-democratic narcissist and narrowly escapes a democratic collapse, France's neighbor declares the common defense alliance brain-dead, nationalists and populists drive the EU apart, the most important economic partner - in the Far East - destroys the globalized trade world out of national interest and en passant builds a new world order. Ah yes, almost forgotten: After 20 years, a military mission in Afghanistan ends in flight and collapse. And now Russia is preparing to wage a war to its liking in order to underline its blackmailing will - simply because it can.

It's no surprise, then, that the ever-pandemic nation reacts intolerably to the overdose of crisis, that it demands guidance or, in the worst case, gives up its bearings because the compass has been out of adjustment for far too long. The never-ending series of dramatic world events, fits of weakness and defeats has triggered a great sense of helplessness and helplessness - and this testifies to naiveté and despondency in dealing with the world.

One of the ritualized demands of the Munich Security Conference, and not just since German President Joachim Gauck's appearance, has been the sentence that Germany must assume more responsibility in the world. This sentence, delivered with great determination, usually ended: nowhere. Because whenever this Germany strived for more responsibility, it happened according to the formula "more of the same". More money, more talks, more reminders, more demands. German foreign policy is the master of the middle, of balance, of timidity, of caution.

These qualities are usually also well invested, especially when foreign policy is conducted in the derivative of the Germans' most important interest: Europe, the EU, is Germany's guarantor of peace and prosperity, which is why the powerful country in the middle should be as careful and constructive as possible in cultivating the unity and cohesion of the community.

But there are just a few other assumptions that the country faithfully follows without having questioned their suitability for the year 2022. It was the German diplomat Thomas Bagger who named the two most important ones in a sensational essay three years ago. Is it true, then, that the road leads to ever more democracy, liberality and the rule of law, that these forms of government are superior and irresistible, and to that extent will sooner or later be accepted by all? And is it correct that military power no longer plays a role, precisely because one is surrounded by friends?

This basic trust in the good and the true, in the power of example, can already be considered arrogant. Today, in the crisis vortex of the time, it is dangerous to form foreign policy with the ideas of the post-reunification years and otherwise take refuge in moral superiority. Let the others buy weapons - for Germany, the likelihood of war is ruled out because common sense forbids it. The problem is that this is not the first time that Vladimir Putin has considered war to be an effective means of asserting his interests. The world that Germany prettifies for itself usually shimmers in harsh black or white.

So the moment had to come when this merciless world would also seize the timid Germany by its greatest weakness: morality. Is it reprehensible and even war-promoting to provide the threatened Ukraine with weapons for its own defense? Or is there not an obligation to help one of the biggest victims of Nazi atrocities to repel an invasion by its Russian neighbor?

It is indeed characteristic of the German debate that it is conducted almost exclusively in moral categories, but is not decided along the question of what helps to assert German interests? What do the classic military principles of deterrence and a credible defense capability still mean? And what does it say about the world's perception when this nation, filled with peacefulness, questions the logic of nuclear deterrence every four years at the Bundestag elections and pretends that none of this is any longer its business?

As the world becomes rougher and more unpredictable, Germany takes refuge in an ideal landscape, true to the principle that good will prevail. The extent to which this attitude is now seen as a weakness and a burden for the alliance was amply documented in the Ukraine crisis. The real bill, however, is due in Germany itself, where this historic crisis density comes up against a largely unprepared population that simply lacks the tools to deal with blackmail, coercion, military threats and attacks on the political system. Insecurity is created by an aggressor. But it becomes dangerous only through weakness.

Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (http://www.DeepL.com/Translator) (free version)

Catfish

02-19-22, 06:55 AM

With more than 30,000 foreign troops stationed you cannot call this a sovereign country anyway.

Skybird

02-27-22, 11:05 AM

Focus writes:

Putin's war has changed Germany. It took Germany a whole four days to shift its foreign policy axis. It is a historic course correction. If one were to give this Sunday a headline, it might be this one: February 27, 2022, is the day of Germany's self-liberation.

In any case, it is far more than what the chancellor in the Bundestag called a "turning point in time." It is nothing less than Germany's biggest course correction since the country's rearmament in the 1950s.

The "end of all illusions," Christian Lindner [German finance minister, FDP, Skybird] has called it. The end of this "special form of German restraint" in foreign and security policy. Which has now been "left behind." Germany's Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock [Greens] put it this way, as if a burden had really fallen off Germany.

Perhaps the clearest illustration of this sweeping change can be found in the two Green protagonists: Baerbock and Robert Habeck [minister for economy and climate]. But one thing is clear: It is a necessary change, but one at the very last minute. One that did not happen of its own free will. Germany's self-liberation was preceded by days of painful self-imprisonment to the limits of a German "Sonderweg" [special way].

Germany, before it corrected itself, disgraced itself to the bone. With its long refusal to even talk about the Putin-Schröder pipeline, it maneuvered itself into the sidelines among its alliance partners. Has made itself ridiculous with these 5000 helmets of shame.

And with its refusal to supply weapons to the victim of the attack, Ukraine, it has displayed an arrogant, self-centered, national-obsessed cold-heartedness that will continue to reverberate for a long time to come. This 180-degree turnaround had to be all the more dramatic now. This turnaround becomes clear at four strategic points: Security now becomes the first state objective.

Energy security becomes the yardstick of national sovereignty. A European defense community becomes conceivable. And the realization that Germany's security cannot be defended without nuclear weapons was openly expressed by the German chancellor. A Social Democrat.

Annalena Baerbock brings Ukraine into German living rooms. "That could be us in these subway shafts." And "our children." Putin has done more than, badly enough, invade a neighboring country with the aim of subjugating it.

He has broken the international order, of which Germany sees itself as the guarantor. This breach justifies this, as Baerbock puts it, "historic hour." The Green Party then justifies the delivery of German weapons to the Ukrainian war and crisis zone.

It is a triple historical break: no weapons to crisis areas, German weapons must never again be used to shoot at Russians, and: Pacifism can be a mistake. The latter is a break with the history of the Greens, which emerged from the peace movement at the end of the 1970s.

Robert Habeck recalls this analogy, outrageous at its core, that Putin made when, recalling a nursery rhyme, he threatened in the direction of Ukraine: "you will have to submit, my beauty." Habeck calls what Putin is doing in Ukraine a "military rape." Anyone who stands by and watches this, is guilty.

This is followed by a short, clear reckoning with pacifism, which once made the Greens possible in the first place. He respects pacifism, but considers it "wrong." For pacifism, too, is subject to an illusion. As if one could preserve one's innocence with the right attitude. Habeck: "We won't get out of this with clean hands." The ancient Greeks called it tragedy - no matter which path you take, you make yourself guilty.

Baerbock and Habeck, two Green ministers in wartime, thus place themselves in the continuity of Joschka Fischer. The first Green foreign minister had justified Germany's participation in the Kosovo war at the turn of the millennium with the Nazi atrocities in Auschwitz.
Self-liberation Day was also a day of corrections

The day of self-liberation was a day of corrections for the left-of-center parties. A farewell to illusions cherished for decades.

For the Social Democrats, who now no longer want to be Putin-understanders. For the Greens, who no longer want to be pacifists. For the Left [=SED], which still believes that "arms races do not create security. But which clearly states: "We have misjudged the intentions of the Russian government.

The Christian Democrats' correction turned out to be smaller - in the slipstream of the big turnaround by the Reds and Greens. But spending 100 billion on the Bundeswehr means a correction even for Christian Democrats, Christian Lindner drew attention to it.

Merkel is not only an architect of the Russia policy that is now in ruins, but she, together with today's German President Frank Walter Steinmeier, tinkered for years with the illusion that "dialogue" could exist without military deterrence.

Amira Mohamed Ali, head of the Left Party parliamentary group, told the Bundestag about a telephone conversation with her aunt Hilde, 95 years old. She was now "afraid of war again." Two hours after this very special Bundestag session, the report runs that Putin has put his nuclear forces on alert.

Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)

mapuc

02-27-22, 11:11 AM

Throughout the day I have seen many Danish politician speaking warmly about your chancellor Scholz.

One of them wrote that he, Scholz, is Germanies new Helmut Kohl

Markus

Skybird

02-27-22, 11:30 AM

Please not, one Kohl was enough.

Also note that Scholz did nothing without being bitterly pressed to do it. Scholz never does, he never starts moving before he has absolutely no other choice anymore to stop his paralysis. Its fair to say he does not move himself, he gets moved by the events rolling over him. That respect is not justfied!

He absolutely hates to take a position that he then is identifiable with and that he can be held accountable for, poltically. He enver accepts that withotu beign mericelssly forced to do that by the veents.

That is not acting. That is reacting, and alway reacting late, and often not at the last minute but one minute later.

I will not applaud a man who hesitated and hesitated more and hesitated again and then, when reality rolled over him and left him no other choice, reacted to it. He does neither lead, nor act! He trails behind, and reacts! Because he can no longer afford not to do so! The others left him no other choice. If he had his way, we would still not deliver weapons, would still block others to send German made weapons, would still not excldude Russia form SWIFT, and the lite version of that that was agreed on was due to germany - who again has already watered it down a bit.

If you want to applaud German politicians, three names: Ludwig Erhard, for his lacking party bias and economic competence, Helmut Schmidt for his sense of realism and active pragmatism, Richard von Weizsäcker for his general modesty, educated mindset, and noble inner quality.

The most overestimated politicians in Germany since WW2: Adenauer, Brandt, Kohl, Merkel. And a legion of clowns in their wake.

Thank you Markus, now I am angry again.

:O:

Catfish

02-27-22, 12:19 PM

^ :haha: so true

Sorry Markus, i think what Scholz did was right, but it took a loong time. Of course he has to do what is best for his country, so hesitation and discussions with advisors are mandatory.
Anyway this has put Germany directly into Putin's fire line. We will see what happens next.

mapuc

02-27-22, 12:24 PM

Catfish

02-27-22, 02:10 PM

It is all right, am also sure Skybird did not mean this seriously :)

Skybird

02-27-22, 02:42 PM

I do not applaud any German politician or politician in general. I just posted a story about our Danish politician talking highly about your chancellor.

It was not my intention to make Skybird angry.

Markus

No harm done, Markus, dont worry. You find it sometimes difficult, maybe, to recognize irony as such? Because thats what I was: ironic.

Catfish

02-27-22, 04:11 PM

Vladimir, i dare you!

https://i.imgur.com/z0cbN7hl.jpg

Skybird

02-28-22, 08:07 AM

From May 2018. Things have not become better since then. This underscores how dramatic the race will be to catch up with what the Germans have announced yesterday in parliament: exceeding the yealry dfeenc ebudget of 2%, and throwing a special budget at the Bundeswehr in 2022 worth 100 billion. The announcements made will take years before consequences from it will have started to make a perceivable difference in the real world.

Until then Germany is more or less - defenceless. I would not count with the Germans being a respectable combat force factor in NATO again before lets say 8-10 years. Its an intimidating amount of work ahead.

https://www.stripes.com/news/as-germany-prepares-for-nato-crisis-response-role-its-military-readiness-is-abysmal-1.527253

Jimbuna

02-28-22, 09:52 AM

You'd better hope Vladolf doesn't see your post :)

Catfish

03-02-22, 06:19 AM

"Germany’s Deep Change Will Echo Far Beyond Ukraine" :hmmm:

https://www.barrons.com/articles/germanys-deep-change-will-echo-far-beyond-ukraine-51646168214?mod=read_next

Skybird

03-02-22, 06:37 AM

IF the deep change really takes place, so far it is only announcement. It gets reported today that the even-leftier wings in the Green and SPD party prepare to revolt against Scholz' 100 bn special budget for the Bundeswehr.

Why that matters? Ask Helmut Schmidt SPD). He got "gemeuchelt" by his own party because he was not left enough.

A quote by Paul Naumann (a liberal in German meaning of the term, in plain English: a libertarian) on my mind, red it yesterday somewhere, 120 years old:

"Of what use are our social systems if the cossacks are coming?"

Skybird

03-02-22, 04:15 PM

https://www.nzz.ch/international/aufruestung-der-bundeswehr-ex-general-fordert-von-scholz-fuehrung-ld.1672469

German pacifism: At times Switzerland had more tanks than Germany

Former Brigadier General Erich Vad has advised Chancellor Angela Merkel on military policy. He believes that the Bundeswehr's plight has many mothers and fathers. The generals, too, have gone along with the path to an army that is not ready for action without any audible grumbling.

Mr. Vad, the Bundeswehr is not considered operationally ready. A huge special fund of 100 billion euros is now supposed to fix it. How did this misery come about?

The causes go back a long way. The decisive factor was the end of the Warsaw Pact and thus the end of the bloc confrontation. From then on, national and alliance defense was considered anachronistic. As a result, heavy equipment was neglected. For example, the number of battle tanks was reduced to such an extent that Switzerland at times had more battle tanks than Germany.

Politicians wanted to pocket the peace dividend.

That's the way it is. The defense reforms since the end of the Cold War were not aimed at making the Bundeswehr better, but cheaper. This was at the expense of personnel and material. Many barracks have simply gone to waste. Structural problems have not been solved either.

Which ones?

Inefficiency and duplicate structures above all. And the Bundeswehr remained extremely staff- and top-heavy. Since 1990, we have reduced it from 500,000 soldiers to 180,000. The number of generals and staff officers, on the other hand, has risen slightly.

There was no lack of reform proposals from various commissions to make the army more efficient.

That's true, but hardly any of them were implemented. Soon, the focus on foreign missions was added. In addition, the Bundeswehr had to scrounge up personnel and material from hundreds of locations in order to be able to keep the foreign missions dictated by politicians running.

With the annexation of Crimea in 2014, however, that changed. National and alliance defense once again came into focus. Since then, defense budgets have also risen again. Nevertheless, even with just under 50 billion euros a year, it is apparently not possible to put an operational army on its feet. Why?

An Israeli general friend of mine once asked me: How do you Germans manage not to be operational with almost 50 billion euros? The Israelis have only half that and are ready to go day and night.

Russia, too, has hardly any more defense budget.

That's true, although in Russia the personnel and material costs are lower. In that respect, you can't compare it directly. But the country comparison of defense budgets shows that something is fundamentally wrong. The Bundeswehr doesn't just have a money problem. The problems go deeper. Former defense commissioner Bartels used to talk about "responsibility diffusion. He has a point.

What did he mean by that?

For example, that the Army Chief of Staff is only responsible for training, but not for the maintenance of equipment, logistics and procurement. In addition, we have slow material procurement and considerable personnel shortages. More than 20,000 positions are unfilled in the Bundeswehr. In addition, there is an excessive bureaucracy. There are even decrees on waste separation in the field. This density of rules does not exactly strengthen initiative. It encourages hedge thinking and inactivity.

Do you share the assessment of Army Inspector Alfons Mais that the Bundeswehr is in a bad way? That recently caused quite a stir.

Everyone knows that, and has known for years! The Army has at most one brigade that is operational and only limited ammunition stocks. We have an air force where the situation has improved somewhat in recent years, but where even now only a third of the aircraft are ever ready for takeoff. And we have a navy whose operational capability is below 30 percent. Germany has fewer ships in service than the Netherlands.

Why didn't the German generals sound the alarm earlier?

The army leadership has gone along with the years-long path toward a non-deployable army without any audible grumbling. Among the top generals, unfortunately, a high degree of willingness to adapt prevails. There is little willingness to confront the political leadership with criticism.

What responsibility does Angela Merkel bear for the developments of recent years? After all, she headed the government for sixteen years. You advised her for eight years.

When Angela Merkel became chancellor in 2005, the transformation of the Bundeswehr into a lean intervention army had long been decided and was in full swing. The focus was on Afghanistan. And she was very committed to it. She traveled to the Hindu Kush several times, even at personal risk. Her predecessor Schröder was never there. There was no talk of national defense in her first years.

But that changed with the annexation of Crimea.

That's right - and from there on I would also criticize the former chancellor. Despite rising defense budgets, it was obviously not a political priority for her to accelerate the upgrading of the German armed forces. We have therefore lost seven valuable years. The chancellor also made a mistake by staying too long in Afghanistan. The failure was foreseeable early on. The French already left in 2011. But Afghanistan tied up the Bundeswehr's resources enormously. It was important to Merkel that the mission went ahead. It did, but at the cost of the rest of the Bundeswehr languishing.

What role did Merkel's defense ministers play? They were all appointed by the CDU/CSU, which has always presented itself as the party of the Bundeswehr.

The last defense ministers who were in control were the Christian Democrat Volker Rühe and the Social Democrat Peter Struck. After that, the office of defense minister became more and more of a political burden for its holder. And with Ursula von der Leyen, we had a defense minister who was more concerned with daycare centers, smaller parlor sizes and the compatibility of family and career than with the operational readiness of the Bundeswehr.

Von der Leyen wanted to make the Bundeswehr an attractive employer. There's nothing wrong with that.

Yes, all well and good. But the Bundeswehr only becomes attractive if it can fulfill its mission. Otherwise, frustration is the result. Of course, there were also good political decisions under von der Leyen's leadership. They were just not backed up by personnel, material and funding, a kind of Potemkin village, easy to sell politically, but as far removed from reality as her call for a European security union or a European army today. But we also have to be fair to the defense ministers.

In what way?

They operate in a public sphere that treats the army with complete disinterest. The suspension of compulsory military service in 2011 made things even worse. Since then, the Bundeswehr has disappeared from the countryside and from people's minds. Barracks have been abandoned. There are many constituencies of members of parliament where it is no longer present. This has also led to a massive drop in political interest.

That is changing completely. Chancellor Scholz is spending billions on the Bundeswehr, and Finance Minister Lindner wants to expand it into one of the most powerful armies in Europe.

It's up to the chancellor now. The upcoming upgrading of the Bundeswehr cannot be left to the apparatus, otherwise the money will seep away in additional staff positions or committees and offices. Scholz must make this a top priority. There must be clear guidelines at the strategic level. It will take years to implement them. It won't be implemented next year.

What must the goal be?

We are currently providing a brigade for the NATO task force. That only works because we make it operational with material and personnel cobbled together from all locations. That has to stop. We need three fully equipped, combat-capable divisions. That's the equivalent of about nine brigades. The Navy needs new frigates and corvettes, the Air Force a successor to the Tornado, heavy transport helicopters and much more. One hundred billion euros is a finite sum. And at the latest since Putin threatened to use nuclear weapons, we need the F-35 as a combat aircraft for nuclear sharing.

Are you in favor of reintroducing conscription?

The Bundeswehr currently lacks 20,000 positions. That alone is not enough to justify compulsory military service, but a change in the security situation is. However, setting up district military replacement offices would cost a lot of energy. In addition, many instructors would be tied up. For the time being, the priority is to increase readiness. In the medium term, however, we will have to rethink conscription.

Because?

Since the suspension of conscription, the army and the population have grown even further apart. We can no longer afford that. Look, my youngest was the only one in his year to join the mountain troops after graduation, while the rest went to Australia to chill out. I don't begrudge everyone such experiences. But the German structural pacifism that is expressed in it no longer fits into the new age, because it leads to defenselessness. You can have as much material as you want: If you as a country do not want to be defensible, then you cannot guarantee an operational army in the long term.

Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)

Skybird

03-03-22, 08:09 AM

We must stop importing gas oil, coal, ore from Russia NOW. Even if it hurts us, and it will, and seriously. Germany, Europe, aemrica - all of our countries need to stop doing any business with them at all. Sperbank is still freed from the SWIFT boycott! Oligarchs are still allowed to escape much if not most of the sanctions!

We are still directly paying the Russian war machine.

If doing what I demand costs us dearly - well, we then have deserved it. nobody forced us to be stupid two decades long.

How much I hate and dispise Merkel, this stupid unscrupulous thing. A chain of utmost desatrous decisions by her that have ruined it for Germany. Have maximsed Germany's dependecies and weaknesses and vulnerabilities to unprecedented levels. Hubris - or a deep rooting dispising of Germany? Does it even matter? The results are the same.

She has systematically maximized German vulnerabilities and dependencies. She has placed Germany (and Europe) increasingly at the mercy of Turkey and Russia, building on Schröder's preparatory work in this regard. She has shut down nuclear power without a replacement. She has maximized Russian imports of gas and ore. Directed the largest migration of peoples in modern history to Germany and Europe. Ignored the inherent opposiiton of the newcomers to our values and culture and laws, marginalized the victims of this influx of also violent criminals and women-haters. Massively pushed the devaluation of purchasing power. Let Germany take over more and more debt liabilities of other countries. Without any opposition and ultimately with their wishes, let the rise of the ECB run its course and accelerated it further and further, while she lied to the Germans about it, and thus helped to establish the regime of net debtors over net payers. She watched the decline of the Bundeswehr idly, and encouraged it with senseless symbolic policies (Afghanistan, Mali) and let these missions run to avoid the debate about their failure. The French got out of Afghanistan in 2011 or 2012, when they said: it won't work, and they also admitted popintlessness in Mali and got out - the Germans are still hanging on, expensively and pointlessly, because the debate about the failure of the mission in Germany is being shied away from and therefore it is being allowed to continue pointlessly: it costs a fortune. And she practiced a mercilessly opportunistic blind faith in the effectiveness of treaties and the rationality of religious despots and political tyrants, and both are now falling on our feet with a crash and and overwhelming force.

Cursed uneducated power-hungry bumpkin. Why is she so celebrated all over the world? She belongs on trial for her string of country betrayals and proven incompetences. No chancellor before her has such a long list of disastrous mistakes, as Merkel. She is also largely to blame for the situation that now prevails between Germany and Putin; she has done everything possible to extend Germany's weakness vis-à-vis Russia as far as possible. Just days after the invaison of the Crimea, Germany signed the contract for NordStream 2.

My goodness, I now have a bit more respect even for Baerbock after only 90 days than I could ever muster for Merkel in 16 years.

:down::down::down:

mapuc

03-10-22, 04:54 PM

We really don't have an EU-Politics thread so I use this GER politics instead-Since Germany is the one with the strongest economy in EU.

The Danish government has decided that the Danes shall have a referendum on June 1.

It is about one of Denmark's 4 reservations in this case the defense reservation

Already now there's lots of fake stories from both side-Those who wish to remove this reservation and those who don't.

One of the biggest story-which some say is fake while other say it isn't.

EU have a plan on creating an EU-army
It is in the EU a wish to create an army of 5000/50000 men.

Is this true or not-Is it a wish from EU to create such an army or not ?

Markus

Skybird

03-11-22, 04:55 AM

Its being talked about since years, but is a paper tiger so far. Parrallel military structures to NATO cost much more.

I often saud before that we should instead strengthen and focus on NATO and keep more and more of its duties over from the Americans. If we cannot do that, why would we assume we can better with a second military structure? It just makes no sense to me.

First we must gain strength and military relevance. Then we can start thinking and discussing about the colours of uniforms. The other way around would make it all just a stage play.

Skybird

03-14-22, 07:26 AM

Suddenly it goes quickly: Germany plans to buy up to 35 F-35 that will replace its fleet of 80+ aging Tornados. Both planes are certified to carry American nuclear bombs of which 20 should be stored in Germany (Büchel, Eiffel: it never was confirmed, but is an open secret). Arolund 15 Europfioghters will also be reequipped for specialised roles for the ELOKA role (wild weasle and such)

The F-35 was thougth about before, but France did not like the idea, and so the Germans fell back formt he idea...

Currently the plane costs 80-85 million per piece. Maintenance is done by American technics crews exclusively, so in a way new dependencies are being accepted here. I did not know this detial, and I don't like it. Sounds like the planes are not being bought, but leased only, and German pilots are only cab drivers for a foreign company. It also means that German poltical deciisons can in principle not made against the cooperation of Lockheed Martin, and Lockheed Martin obeys American law makers.

Yes, it means an increasing of dependency.

But there is no alternative, apparently. The planned joint program for a German-French-European fighterbomber is still many, many, many years away: way too long. And it is unclear whether the Americans would license them for carrying US nukes. They have endlessly delayed the certification of the German Eurofighter for the same purpose, so to force the Germans to buy Americna planes instead, although the German Eurofighters in principle can carry these bombs. The Ukriane war now has taught the "stubborn Germans" an lesson that American pressure so far failed to teach.

One thing is clear: a greater independence of Europe from the US will not be reached this way.

Several other European nations have ordered the F-35 as well.

I can live wiht the plane. The political implications I like much less, but I think we must be pragmatic due to our current obvious weaknesses.

Tante Käthe in the defence kitchen announced some days ago that less still to be developed super-individual platform and weapon project designs should be used to emergency-fast-equip the Bundeswehr, but more already existing ready-to-use solutions for the shelves should be bought instead.

Germany also gets P-8 submarine hunters from the US.

Since long it is rumoured that a replacement for the Leopard-2 should be done, too. The Russian Armata T-14 MBT realyl rang some alarm bells, reminds me a bit of the T-72 with its firepower showing up and equalizing the superiority of the fast, agile Leopard-1. The German-American cooperation on a joint MBT had broken up already before, but the Leopard-2 can be seen as a reply to the T-72. The Armata's design has some revolutionary features. Teething problems and the Ukraine war I think better should nobody fool about the Armata's qualities.

Jimbuna

03-14-22, 02:32 PM

I understand your reservations but the decisions taken in these troubled times are probably the most pragmatic.

Skybird

03-14-22, 03:25 PM

Yes, and I said so.

I hope more such deals follow - not endlessly developing some special individual typically German Europe-glorifying own design that costs time and three times more money, but buying already available stuff from the shelves. I hope so, though I may not like it in every individual such case.

"Pragmatism." But in the long perspective it probably comes at a cost by its own. May evenb lead to more longterm strategic decline of German and European industrial and hightech and defence tech competences.

mapuc

03-14-22, 04:11 PM

Even little Denmark has decided to increase its military funding...slowly so it is 2 % of the countries BNP in 2033. Right now Denmark use around 1.16 % of its BNP on the military.

And even Sweden who once used around 3-5 % of their BNP(60-89) on the military will increase it so it match these 2 %.

Markus

Skybird

03-15-22, 08:23 AM

Intel invest 17 billion in Germany and builds a chip factory at Magdeburg.

Thats something, after Tesla having built a megafactory near Berlin with a huge battery construction.

We need to bring more such key industries back to Western countries. That includes securing supply chaisn for needed ressaources. Russia an dchina unfortunatekly have too much control on many needed ressources and agents. Our longterm stratgey must include to find replacements that allow us greater autarky. That also should mean: researchign and developing new production methods and components where imp0orting such vital key ressources are not needed anymore, or in much reduced quantities only.

We must learn and understand that neither Russia nor China are or can be again ordinary partners, in trade or beyond. They are rivals, and enemies. And they want our fall. With Islam in general, that gives us an hostile alliance of three now that tries to bring us down, even if they are not the closest of friends amongst themselves.

Skybird

03-15-22, 10:46 AM

Chancellor Olaf Scholz wants to equip the Bundeswehr for its core mission with 100 billion euros. The defense report shows that the money is sorely needed. Nevertheless, Germany will remain a very vulnerable country over the next five to ten years. This has to do above all with the "Putin basic mistake" made by Gerhard Schröder and Angela Merkel.

"Bundeswehr" it is when mountain infantry waits for skis. Or combat swimmers don't have a swimming pool. Or infantrymen hope for combat helmets, making it clear that it was really an achievement to deliver 5000 helmets to Ukraine - after all, the German army itself has none.

One can indeed get the idea of buying a new helicopter when the old one has been already flying for over 50 years, or more precisely, less than every second in the fleet that most of the time is grounded. In any case, you can thank Willy Brandt for buying them. For those who are younger than 50:

Willy Brandt was once German chancellor. The SPD man, who in his old age became an icon of the peace movement, made sure, before this could happen, that Germany spent three and a half percent of its budget on national defense.

Today, Brandt's successor, Olaf Scholz, can already celebrate himself for a "turn of the times" when he promises to spend a good half of it in the future. Times were different back then. The Cold War was raging, and Willy Brandt knew where the enemy stood and how powerful he was. For Brandt was a convinced anti-communist.

The anti-communists in the SPD - even Brandt's successor Helmut Schmidt still invested more than three percent of the gross national product in the military - were followed by those who "understood" and appeased Russia. First in the SPD, then also in the CDU/CSU.

This was the basic mistake of the two German chancellors Gerhard Schröder and Angela Merkel: They believed in the goodness of the Russian leader Putin. And considered the defense of Germany more or less superfluous. Which is why today the defense report presented by Social Democrat Eva Högl is either a case for satire or, because of Vladimir Putin, a veritable horror story.

Not even everything was ready for German soldiers on combat missions. In Mali, they lacked the right vests and had to be sent on. Nor were the right backpacks always available, a fatal matter when you have to parachute into unpleasant parts of the world as a "fighter".

The additional 100 billion for the Bundeswehr announced by the chancellor is called a "huge opportunity" by the defense commissioner, party colleague Högl. However, it will be many years before the Bundeswehr can be repaired.

Equipment is a long-term business. In other words, over the next five to (more likely) ten years, Germany will remain a very vulnerable country, 100 billion or not.

After Germany's highest-ranking army soldier, Lieutenant General Alfons Mais, admitted that the Bundeswehr was "bare," Högl now says placatingly that the troops are "ready for action." But is "ready for action" also "ready for defense"?

In view of the obvious equipment deficiencies of the Bundeswehr, military historian Jürg Neitzel asks what has actually happened to the billions that the Bundeswehr has been allowed to spend since Putin's Crimean campaign. After all, this amounts to up to 18 billion euros annually.

One learns that defense does not depend on money alone. A lot can go wrong when buying tanks and aircraft, even more so than when trying to get a major airport up and running in Berlin. "The whole system of procurement is too ponderous," Högl says. That sounds as bad as it is meant to be.

So if there is now this paradigm shift forced by Putin via war of aggression and security becomes the first of all values again, then Olaf Scholz's most important department head in the coming years will be the federal defense minister.

Before the chancellor made her the head of the armed forces, she had never set foot in a barracks. And had already planned her political retirement anyway. Now there is a new job description for her:

She is demanded to be a passionate top manager who can train the entire Bundeswehr to get rid of the sluggishness it has accumulated during the treacherous peacetime. As a mental coach, she will find the right language to use against unscrupulous threats to democracy in this country.

The search is also on for someone to save the now suddenly very large budget from being plundered by industry, its lobby and/or compliant members of the Bundestag who still owe a favor to the arms manufacturers in their constituencies.

For it must be stated: If it is true that the Bundeswehr is only conditionally ready for defense, what has it done with the 50 billion it currently has at its disposal? Which is, after all, the world's seventh-largest defense budget - remarkable for a country that has seen itself as a "peace nation."

But perhaps that is the biggest problem: The "peace nation" has just ended. And yesterday's supposedly important issues have become today's luxury problems. It only seems strange at the moment that the Bundeswehr has spent its energy trying to genderize the "one-man package" into a "one-person package.

In any case, Germany needs a new "mindset," which is likely to be more strenuous than raising a lot of money for the Bundeswehr. In an interview with Der Spiegel, the Israeli world thinker Noah Yuval Harari put it this way:

"You cannot force someone to make peace, but that someone can force us to make war."

What that means must also first be understood. Not only in the Bundeswehr.

Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (http://www.DeepL.com/Translator) (free version)

"Here You see our new best-equipped Bundeswehr. Stealth bombers, stealth grenade launchers,
stealth tanks, stealth soldieresses(f) and stealth soldiers(m)"

https://www.tagesspiegel.de/images/tarnkappe_ts/28165562/1-format1007.jpg

Skybird

03-19-22, 05:05 AM

If it is true that Germany has the 7th biggest defence budget in the world, bigger than that of France with its expensive hobby of maintaining nuclear weapons, then one must wonder where all that money is disappearing. Here is some search for answers:

https://beta.dw.com/en/german-military-big-budget-little-efficiency/a-61136184

The article does not say it clearly, but I call this kind of administrative incompetence: corruption as well.

Catfish

03-29-22, 09:26 AM

Putin's useful idiots.
"Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is a repudiation of a whole generation of German politicians from across the spectrum."

https://www.politico.eu/article/putin-merkel-germany-scholz-foreign-policy-ukraine-war-invasion-nord-stream-2/

It is of course easy with the hindsight we have now, also the author's own nation is not exactly a saint either. But unfortunately there is a lot of truth here.

Skybird

03-29-22, 09:33 AM

^Ah, thnaks, thats the piece I just referred to in the Ukraine thread, but I forgot to post the link.

Skybird

04-06-22, 05:40 AM

Der Tagesspiegel:

The war in Europe has left young people in Germany in a state of shock. This is the finding of the current trend study "Youth in Germany - Summer 2022," which will be published on May 3, 2022.

Results on the topic of "Youth and War in Europe" have already been published in advance to mark the current occasion.

Around 68 percent of the 14- to 29-year-olds surveyed expressed their concern about a war in Europe. "A war that calls prosperity and future prospects into question was previously unimaginable for many young people in Germany.

They are visibly disturbed because they don't know an answer to it," says Simon Schnetzer, who heads the regular surveys of the youth study together with youth researcher Klaus Hurrelmann. "The majority of young people are unsettled and don't want war," Schnetzer says.

Until five months ago, climate change was the top concern, he said, but now worries about war in Europe have clearly moved to the top of the list. "The fear threshold among the 14- to 29-year-olds surveyed is dramatically high," Schnetzer said.

Interviews with young people would show that the vast majority of them did not expect the situation in Ukraine to escalate in any way. According to Schnetzer, young people are very worried and cannot comprehend what war is even being waged for in 2022. "What frustrates them is the feeling of powerlessness against this war."
A war that calls prosperity and future prospects into question was previously unimaginable for many young people in Germany.

According to the survey, 42 percent of young people expect that living in fear of war could become a permanent condition, and 28 percent assume that the war will spread to Germany. That it comes to an active participation of young Germans as soldiers and female soldiers, expect 23 per cent. An equally high percentage expects the use of nuclear weapons to have dramatic effects in Germany as well.

13 percent of those surveyed even assume that they may have to flee their place of residence. "The young generation is fully aware of the dramatic nature of the situation," Schnetzer said. Young people are stunned, he said. "Because in their eyes there should be no more war and the long-awaited recovery from the pandemic is once again a distant prospect," says the youth researcher.

The reintroduction of military service after completion of school is rejected by large parts of the respondents. Only 18 percent support it, while 50 percent are against it. Increasing military and defense spending is supported by 43 percent of respondents, whereas 22 percent clearly oppose it.

The admission of Ukraine to the European Union and the supply of weapons to Ukraine are supported by about 40 percent each, but 25 percent of young people oppose it.

"There can be no talk of a willingness to fight in the young generation," said youth researcher Klaus Hurrelmann of the Hertie School Berlin. Rather, he said, those surveyed were keeping a "conspicuously low profile" and were not ready to take action at the current state of threats to peace in Europe.

"This is probably due to the fact that, as a young generation, they were not prepared in the least for a possible threat of war," is Hurrelmann's assessment.

Comprehensive sanctions against Russia are supported by only 57 percent of those surveyed. "It is possible that young people have rising energy prices and inflation in mind here and are therefore more reluctant to react," is the youth researchers' assessment.

The "Youth in Germany" trend study has been published as a study series every six months since fall 2020. A total of 1,021 young people aged 14 to 29 were included in the representative study. The current survey was conducted in the period from March 9 to March 21, 2022.

A survey by the Vodafone Foundation concludes that young Germans are worried about the future even independently of the war in Ukraine. In a survey by Infratest dimap, 86 percent of 14- to 24-year-olds agreed with the statement: "I am worried about the future.

Only eight percent believe that their children will one day be better off than they are, 58 percent see things getting worse, and 28 percent say "neither better nor worse".

The survey data was collected in September 2021, well before the war in Ukraine.

The pessimism is also evident with regard to concrete problems: The majority of the teenagers and young adults surveyed do not believe that Germany will "have a grip on climate change," have a "first-class education system" or "be more socially just" by 2050.

Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)

Skybird

04-13-22, 03:09 PM

Oooopsala - switching off the lights.

https://beta.dw.com/en/german-police-bust-right-wing-group-planning-attack-on-energy-grid/a-61468227

mapuc

04-19-22, 01:34 PM

I could have posted it in our Ukraine thread. But it's more about Germany.

Here is what a former Retired Danish politician wrote. When I read it I thought Wonder what Skybird and Catfish as to say about his accusation

Right now Putin's war in Ukraine is being financed by Germany. If Germany won't sanction Putin, the rest of us will have to sanction Germany.
Denmark must now start converting to green energy.
We want to be free of Putin's oil and gas. Good!

Germany (and Hungary and Italy), on the other hand, continue to finance Putin's brutal attack on Ukraine. Children are killed, women are mass raped and cities are destroyed by Putin and his soldiers. The war is financed by Germany.

Agree that the new German Chancellor gave a good speech (I was very excited) and promised to pay what Germany promised three presidents Bush, Obama and Trump to NATO.
It's also good they are trying to phase out gas and oil and will conserve energy and explore alternative energy supplies.

But it seems Germany is blocking all sanctions on Russian oil and gas. The Americans are angry! No reason for the rest of Europe to just stand by and give up. If Germany won't sanction Putin, the rest of us will have to sanction Germany.

Because that's what Putin has been waiting for - divided West.
Remember next time you buy a German car or other German goods that you are financing Putin's war. Sanctions against Germany will not end the war. But sanctions on Germany and all others blocking sanctions (Hungary and Italy) will ensure they know we are tired of them sponsoring Putin's war on Ukraine.

Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)

Markus

Catfish

04-19-22, 03:15 PM

Hmm yes, one could say it would have been much more convenient for Germany, had Russia been able to occupy Ukraine the way it did with the Krim :03:

While i think that Scholz should move his and Germany's a$$ when it comes to supply Ukraine with military hardware this seems a bit xenophobic, from Denmark towards Germany?

"Danish energy giant takes heat for long-term contract with Russia’s Gazprom"
https://www.courthousenews.com/danish-energy-giant-takes-heat-for-long-term-contract-with-russias-gazprom/

Germany is bigger than Denmark and needs more energy, simple as that.

A lot of other European countries are also dependent on Russian gas, some up to over 90%. Everyone is working on cutting it as fast as possible, as Germany is, but literally no country in Europe dependent on it right now could get rid of it immediately. Germany hopes to cut it in july, don't know if this is possible though. You do not build two LNG terminals in a day.

https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/germany-step-up-plans-cut-dependence-russia-gas-2022-02-27/

https://news.climate.columbia.edu/2022/03/14/qa-how-deep-is-europes-dependence-on-russian-oil/

Catfish

04-19-22, 04:15 PM

steady but slowww

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=km4iKAVPjyU

Skybird

04-19-22, 05:30 PM

Gas is needed not only for electricity production, but also to heat industrial ovens (glass, aluminium, steel), so a rat tail of industrial problems would arise if gas from now to then would not be there anymore. Also, gas is needed not only as an energy-carrier, but a ressource that is being turned into chemicals - fertilizers for example. No gas, no mass agricultre.

Now look at the prices in the agricultural sector...

If there is one stumble in these production chains, these easily start cascade effects later down in the production and supply lines. Industries go offline or redcues their prouction, workers work at reduced times and earn less, with costs gpwing up. The German state pays compensations, but at the cost of additonal debts an dinflating the money volume even more. A vicous circle starts. You see German aluminium, steel and fertilzer production already have shrunk, and this causes price shifts, and social rifts when workers do not get full payment. This in an environment with inflation, recession, and likely stagflation. Also, many of these production ovens in the industry cannot be just switched on and off - if they cool out, they are destroyed.

So, it is not as simple as it seems. Its not only about warm living rooms in private homes. If these were the only issues, hell, we would be lucky!

I mention all this to illustrate that I am aware of these complications and implicit factors. It must also be said that the state budget in Russia is practically unlinked to the maintenance of costs of the military. The state is a tyranny that can opt for anything anytime - and does - to run and supply the military and war no matter how the state finances are. The phrase "buying their gas directly finances their war " again is too simplified, but its a catchy slogan.

Still, I think nobody forced the germans to go the easy way in the past. Their stupid designs of green energy policies do not work out well, they are hopelessly naive, childish, and the invitation by Russia to maintain, cover, fill the deficits left by these polciies "from the side" with cheap Russian gas, was thankfully accepted, so that the Green illusions had not to be revealed to the public earlier. What we now have in constellation of factors is the most royal mess you can imagine. It is selfmade, it is unneeded, and could have been prevented - and nobody wanted to take safety measurements while there was time, nobody wanted to prevent it. So I say: let the Germans suffer. Pain is a good teacher at times.

I also say: dear stupid Germans, you were the stupidiest brainf###### in the past 20 years, and wanted what you got ourselves into, and so lets take what is coming at you and stop complaining because YOU DESERVE IT.

The blame for having seen morei n Putin then he was I have to accept for myself, too, not to the degree to wihich most others fell for him, but I made huge mistakes in assessing his drives, too. But the other problems - these are what I have warned of since twenty years, and warned of since I was at university over 30 years ago. With that guilt I leave my dear german supermoralistic fellow countrymen alone. Without our green-ideological hybris, Germany would not be in such a vulnerable position today, and without such a weak export-dependign economy, Germany would not be in such a vulnerable position again, too.

My stand regarding the current coalition and especially Scholz and his damn Russophile SPD is well-illustrated by my postingsd, I must not repeat it. To hell with this human drivel. I dispised them already when I still was at school.

Scholz has said he wants to pay one billion for weapons the Ukraine can poick form a lost. What our media usually do jt say is that that list has been cleaned of wepaons types the intellectually all-knowing chancellor's office have decided to be too unsuitable for the Ukraine, and amongst that are many wepaons that the ukrianbe depserately asks for, and that the Superchancellor Olaf "head-in-the-bubble" Scholz at no costs wants to see being delivered - by nobody, if only he could prevent it (fortunately he cant). Also, the way Scholz ha sopted fort, not only is it only a fig leaves, an alibi, it also costs time, time that the ukriane does not have.

With friends like the Germans, you almost need no more enemies. Underhanded to the max.

I posted a thread some day ago, on the German-Russian relations after the treaty of Rapallo. If you have not red it, find and read it now. It explains a lot. Germany since always is far more oriented towards russia then towards the Western world. it has always been like this since - well, I dont know since when, since very long time at least. It started centuries ago already, long before Rapallo. Russia is an objkect of German transfiguration on a level that foreigners possibly find hard to imagine possible.

If someone gets the impression that I have a huge rage against Germany and the Germans, then he is right, and this rage and disgust are not new, but grow steadily from year to year. I live as a stranger in this country that has been made strange to me. And I have nothing to do with the attitude of the broad mass of the population and I want nothing to do with it. There is much that is beautiful and artistic in the many centuries of cultural history of this country, even much genius and brilliance of the highest radiance. That in Germany of the last hundred years with criminal and then ideological and pedagogical means this beauty has been deliberately destroyed and the good, true and beautiful deliberately dragged through the mud, corrupted, trivialized, and replaced with the contemporary mud of political sentiment and ideological re-education to infantilism and egalitarianism, that is a crime so great that I can and will never forgive the Germans. I live here, was born here and have a German identity card, but I don't belong here and to them. To hell with these stupid Germans!

We live now at a sharp turn of the times. The old world we live din untiul just some years ago, is gone and over, and Gerany will now loose, not win, welath and comfort, living standards will decline, uncertainty grow, and it sjust a quesiton of time, of factors of financial laws until the accelerating collapse of the money system will help to let poverty and need grow dramatically and fast. We had the chanc ein the poast to do better and to build reserves, and we let politicians not doign that, even further eroding reserves, and turning them into deficits. All this was and is easy to predict, since thelaws of economics are comparably unchangable like the laws of nature. And I said so many years ago already, in many postings over the past years. We now foudn ourselves in a perfect storm, some say the war and corona were two black swan events, I am not so certain on that,m but it is a perfect storm for sure, and we no can no longer deny that the world is changing for the wqorse and more dangeorus. The good and fat times are over, at least over here in germany, and also Europe. Corona and the war did not cause these destructive processes, but they serve as a catalyst that speeds up the pace of their unfolding by many factors, apparently.

This is the era of dying certainties.

Catfish

04-20-22, 05:19 AM

Well we also have some other politicians who make more sense right now, from (astonishing) Mr Hofreiter to Mrs Baerbock. Just of all two green politicians who made a u-turn after Putin invaded Ukraine. Also Mr. Habeck.
And we have Agnes Strack-and-so-on.. chairwoman of the defense committee

https://www.zdf.de/nachrichten/video/ukraine-lanz-strack-zimmermann-waffen-100.html

Skybird

04-21-22, 09:16 AM

The Neue Zürcher Zeitung writes:

"Let us hope that it is not true; but if it is, let us pray that it does not become common knowledge," the wife of the Anglican bishop of Worcester is said to have exclaimed in the face of Darwin's theory that humans and apes have common ancestors. A similar reflex can be observed in German politics at the moment, ever since Chancellor Olaf Scholz propagated the "turn of the times" when he drew a picture of a fundamental upheaval in European history on February 27: the world had become a different place overnight as a result of the Russian invasion of Ukraine; the European security order had been shattered; our freedom, our democracy and our prosperity were in existential danger; Russia's President Vladimir Putin was on his way to establishing a Russian empire.

The horror of Putin's war of aggression led to a moment of clarity. The resolutions Scholz announced in his historic speech met with broad consensus in the Bundestag. They include arms deliveries to Ukraine, far-reaching sanctions against Russia, a strengthening of NATO's eastern flank, a "special fund for the Bundeswehr" secured in the Basic Law, more than two percent of gross domestic product for defense, and an immediate reduction in energy dependence on Russia. Did German politicians understand that the turnaround announced by Scholz was more than just a shock moment that would eventually pass?

In view of the fundamental upheavals in the international order, the measures announced by the government so far can at best be a start. But seven weeks later, it seems as if the federal government has become afraid of its own clairvoyance. The momentum of the turn-of-the-century speech has almost passed again. It has just become apparent how difficult it is for the actors to think about politics on the basis of a reality that is not that of their own socialization. The caesura announced by Scholz for German foreign policy has so far been hesitant. It even seems as if the traffic light coalition is primarily concerned with imposing as little caesura as possible on itself and its electorate.
In the mills of the coalition

In Kiev, there is a justified impression that Germany has not followed up sufficiently on its big announcement that it would break the taboo on supplying Ukraine with weapons: Germany is delivering too hesitantly, too little, too late. The "special assets of the Bundeswehr" are in danger of being pulverized in the mills of the coalition and the intrigues of the opposition. Moreover, it is becoming clear that there will be no increase in the regular defense budget (which will remain unchanged at 50.1 billion euros until 2026), but that the 100-billion-euro fund will be used successively over the next few years to ensure that Germany meets NATO's two-percent target. [Skybird: Didn't I say within one or two days that I believe the German chnages when i see them and that the special fundings will be wasted like described here...? Heck, its GERMANY we are talking about, the SPD - the unshakable Russia-friends par ecellence...]

The question of how to proceed when the additional money is used up in a few years is left to the successor government. Germany is also acting with the handbrake on economic sanctions. The German government does not want to do without Russian energy imports in the short term. According to the Federal Minister for Economic Affairs and Climate Protection, Robert Habeck, the Federal Republic would otherwise be threatened with mass unemployment and poverty. People would then "no longer be able to heat their homes," Habeck said.

German foreign policy is not moving decisively on either arms deliveries or broader sanctions. It is following the European convoy, and often only when there is no other way. Now would be the right moment to communicate clearly what it actually means to defend a free and open, just and peaceful Europe.

It is in Germany's own security interests to hinder and weaken the Russian war machine in Ukraine. The lukewarm response of Europeans and Americans to the 2014 annexation of Crimea has invited Putin to further land grabs. The whole thing was further promoted by the willingness to return promptly to business as usual with Russia, when Nord Stream 2 was already launched in 2015 by the Russian corporation Gazprom and five European corporations.

Together with its partners, the German government should now do everything in its power to ensure that Putin does not emerge as the winner from this war. Because if, as a result of the Russian invasion, the realization takes hold that those who brutely enforce territorial claims with military force will be rewarded, this will have far-reaching consequences for stability in Europe.

The last few weeks have shown that the Europeans, together with the Americans, can indeed significantly influence the course of the war if they support Ukraine. Further sanctions must be imposed as quickly and disruptively as possible. If the German government continues to reject a comprehensive energy embargo, it could at least support intermediate steps, such as a European oil embargo or punitive tariffs. Germany should not only provide money to upgrade Ukraine, but finally support and organize the delivery of heavy weapons.

It is fatal for the deterrent effect of the West that our partners in the EU and NATO are getting the impression that Germany is more of an obstacle than a pacesetter. Not only in the Kremlin, but also in Beijing and Taipei, people are watching closely how resolutely the EU and the U.S. react to Putin's aggression. For Germany's export-dependent economy, a Chinese invasion of Taiwan would have devastating consequences.

Now would be a good time to take a closer look at relations with China. One of the great lessons of Germany's failed policy toward Russia is that "change through trade" does not have the desired effects, at least in autocratic systems. The much-vaunted energy partnership has not brought Russia closer to the West, but has made Berlin vulnerable and susceptible to blackmail. Lessons should be learned from this experience that not only energy flows but also economic networks and cross-border financial and data traffic can be used as weapons. Especially when the relationships are not reciprocal.

The extensive macroeconomic interdependencies with China also harbor security risks that have not been recognized in Germany for a long time, as has been shown, for example, in the expansion of Germany's 5G mobile networks. The German government should look very closely at strategic dependencies on Beijing that have arisen and develop a comprehensive diversification strategy. In terms of China's economic presence in Germany and Europe, it is important to strike the right balance between security, openness and economic resilience. In doing so, the German government should be aware of how close the authoritarian partnership between Russia and China has become.

With regard to the European security order, a return to the status quo ante is impossible. Putin no longer accepted the order based on the Helsinki Final Act and the Charter of Paris even before the attack on Ukraine. The Kremlin sees this order as a construct of the West that was imposed on Russia after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Instead, as a veto power, it wants to be able to set rules that restrict the sovereignty of its neighbors. As long as Putin is in the Kremlin, security in Europe cannot be organized jointly with Russia. Rather, it is a matter of effective security from Russia.

This will be exceedingly painful for Germany and Europe. The relationship with Russia will be characterized by permanent crisis management. In addition, there is a nuclear threat that was thought to have been overcome, but without the institutional and regulatory framework to contain it.

With Joe Biden, an American president is still in office who is heavily involved militarily in Europe. But this is not likely to last, even if Donald Trump does not return to the White House in 2024. In the long run, China is the bigger challenge for the U.S., and the Europeans must move quickly to shoulder the brunt of deterring and containing Russia.

Germany has a special responsibility in strengthening national and alliance defense. It must play a leading role in further strengthening the credibility of NATO and alliance cohesion and become the backbone of conventional alliance defense in Europe.

The international upheavals cannot be stopped or reversed. That is why Berlin must now do everything in its power to adapt German foreign, security and economic policy to the realities of the new era as quickly as possible.
----------------------------
Jana Puglierin is a political scientist and heads the Berlin office of the European Council on Foreign Relations.

Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (http://www.DeepL.com/Translator) (free version)

Catfish

04-23-22, 01:52 PM

DW is becoming better

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yM1Vifk3tWs

Catfish

04-28-22, 03:12 AM

https://i.imgur.com/HGsZntrm.jpg

Skybird

04-28-22, 08:12 PM

The Neue Zürcher Zeitung puts the finger into the wound:

There is a dispute in Germany over the centerpiece of the security policy "turnaround" proclaimed by Chancellor Olaf Scholz: the 100 billion euro modernization of the Bundeswehr. The CDU and CSU are signaling that they do not want to approve the government factions' draft bill as it stands. They doubt that the money will really only be used for the Bundeswehr. They also say it is unclear how the new debt - which is what the "special assets" are all about - is to be repaid. Party tactical games, as the government claims? No, the criticism is justified.

It is the duty of the opposition to ensure that such huge sums are used appropriately. Especially since it would not be possible without the votes of the CDU/CSU parliamentary group. For the so-called debt brake to be circumvented and the credit-financed special fund to be anchored in the Basic Law, a two-thirds majority is needed in parliament - and thus the approval of the CDU and CSU.

But even with the approval of the opposition, there is a real danger that 100 billion euros will only be a flash in the pan, which will blaze impressively but not heat up the Bundeswehr to the necessary operating temperature in the long term.

The German government is currently planning to use the additional debt, known as special assets, to close the gap between the regular defense budget and the fulfillment of NATO's two-percent target, which the chancellor has also promised. This states that all member states of the alliance must spend at least two percent of their respective gross domestic product on defense. Germany has been falling well short of this target for years.

The German defense budget is threatened with a coverage gap
https://i.postimg.cc/FsJV0bkJ/Unbenannt.png (https://postimages.org/)
Expenditure in billions of euros

At the same time, the regular defense budget is to be frozen at just over 50 billion euros until 2026. However, this would mean that the money in the special fund would already be used up by 2025. Once regardless of the question of whether the Bundeswehr's notorious procurement bureaucracy can even properly spend so much money in such a short time: What comes after that?

Certainly, there will probably be annual increases in the defense budget in the future, as there have been recently. The galloping inflation trend alone will make this necessary. However, by their very nature, long-term defense projects can hardly be planned if the regular defense budget is not increased in a predictable manner for years to come. Only in this way would the German military also have planning security for the rising operating costs that inevitably arise with more material to be maintained.

It would make sense to finance the particularly costly armaments projects through a special fund spread over several years, such as the planned development of the Future Combat Air System. Other expenditures, however, would be better covered by a growing regular defense budget. These include protective equipment for soldiers and the 20 billion euros in ammunition stocks that Germany has committed to NATO to procure - enough for 30 days of combat. Only in this way will Germany succeed in achieving the goal set by Finance Minister Christian Lindner of making the Bundeswehr the most effective army in Europe.

If, on the other hand, the special fund is spent within a few years without increasing the defense budget, the next federal government will face a huge challenge: How will Germany then meet the NATO quota? It is questionable whether the country will have the political strength after the next election to close what would then be a much larger funding gap. If it fails to do so, the grandly announced turnaround will have turned out to be a flash in the pan by then at the latest.

Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (http://www.DeepL.com/Translator) (free version)

More and more the turnaround" in German defence policy is getting demasked as just another Scholzian smoke screen - as I feared and said it would. In its current format its just a very very little bit more than cosmetics only. Cosmetics that will wash off the face again in 3-4 years.

However, the question must be asked if such defence budgets as needed even are seriously affordable anymore? But that is a question I would ask on many political projects and state administrating areas, not a few of them I would describe as mad and insane. Climate policy hybris, inflation, unfolding recession and stagflation, extremely high debt standings while the currency still gets inflated, and ever more greed and need and political profiling with the money of other people - and the next generation.

It's all over our heads already, but no one wants to admit it - or stop packing even more and more on top. All high flying plans. No sense of realism - or competence to show it. Best example for the latter: the German energy "turnaround". A stupid drama since 12 years, still accelerating make sure one hits the wall at the end at top speed. Say, how do you stop a loooooong train in almost no time that has been accelerated for 12 years and that lifts the wheels on one side higher and higher in every turn it races through...?

Skybird

04-29-22, 06:38 AM

https://cdn.prod.www.spiegel.de/images/ec916160-1cf2-4cf8-83df-6c63642d43a6_w948_r2.194_fpx53_fpy45.jpg

Skybird

05-01-22, 05:52 PM

Now that the "special assets" for the Bundeswehr, amounting to 100 billion and loudly announced as an additional booster, have already started tpo be unmasked as a means of achieving the 2% target for the defense budget, the question is now also increasingly being asked whether this 2% requirement will actually, as pompously announced, ever be anchored in the constitution as a binding obligation. The loudly advertised German "turn of time" seems to be trivialized now already more and more, while numerous speakers left today on the occasion of the 1st May no doubt that they want maximum increases of the already murderously high social expenditures, and see the necessity to be able to defend such a welfare state also militarily, as practically irrelevant. Somehow I have the overwhelming impression that, despite two months of war, a great many firecrackers still haven't heard the shot/the shots/the never-ending salvos. I shouldn't be surprised, after all, I announced early on that I wouldn't believe Scholz's lofty announcements until I see them implemented. It is doubtful that the 100 billion will ever be approved, because the opposition also smells a rat and has made it clear that it will not accept a wishy-washy definition for the use of the money and will then rather vote against the necessary constitutional amendments.

I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that there's a 70% chance that all the grandiose announcements will come to nothing or almost nothing, at least more nothing than anything. Already the buying of the F-35, announced early, is in my opinion in the stars, and will be unraveled again, because it is not "European". Bet?!

The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung therefore also comments:

The fact that the "turn of the times" has by no means changed everything can be seen from the Green party conference over the weekend. The party did support the federal government's current realpolitik course, including arms deliveries, which is what ministers Habeck and Baerbock stand for.

But on one issue, the Greens, who used to be the parliamentary arm of the peace movement, remained true to their old beliefs: They do not want to anchor NATO's two-percent target in the Basic Law. They had already rejected it in their election program, which, of course, was written in a completely different foreign policy environment.

Not everything has to be written into the constitution. But if there is one thing to which German politicians should urgently commit themselves legally after the experiences of recent years, it is to equip the Bundeswehr in line with the alliance. How is it to be understood that the Greens are in favor of the special fund of 100 billion euros, but do not want to commit themselves to a long-term spending target for defense?

Do they really believe that the Bundeswehr's striking power will be permanently restored with an injection of funds? Or that the war in Ukraine will soon be over and the money can then be spent again on greener causes?

Putin's war of aggression is just two months old, and already a coalition partner is raising doubts about a key promise made by the chancellor. In all likelihood, the West faces a very long strategic confrontation with Russia, which incidentally spends four percent, as well as with China, which has the world's second-largest military budget.

The two percent target, which has been ignored for far too long, is an important prerequisite for Germany to better protect its population, its allies and its interests in the future. The yardstick should not once again be German wishful thinking, but international reality.

Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)

Skybird

05-08-22, 06:08 AM

These people disgust me.

https://www-achgut-com.translate.goog/artikel/olaf_scholz_und_ein_besonderes_gedenken?_x_tr_sl=a uto&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=de&_x_tr_pto=wapp

Reece

05-08-22, 07:56 AM

If it disgusts you then it definitely disgusts me!! :Kaleun_Mad:

Skybird

05-10-22, 06:27 AM

According to Reuters, negotiations on liquefied gas supplies from Qatar for Germany are going slowly. The main reason is that Qatar is insisting on long-term supply contracts for at least 20 years, people familiar with the talks told the news agency.

The German negotiating partners, however, have little interest in long supply contracts, as Germany wants to be climate neutral as early as 2045. According to the latest legislation passed by the cabinet, the energy sector is to be virtually CO2-free as early as 2035.

This would therefore mean that gas would no longer be allowed to be used for heating or power generation. For the next few years, however, Germany will have to rely on liquid gas to replace Russian pipeline gas. A source told Reuters, "The length of the liquefied natural gas contracts could jeopardize Germany's decarbonization goals."

The two sides are also apparently at odds over a clause on the destination of gas deliveries. Qatar wants to dictate that the gas will not be forwarded to other European countries. The European Union does not agree.

A third point of contention is the question of what the gas price should be linked to in the future. Qatar wants a link to the price of oil. Germany argues for a link to a European gas index. Felix Booth, a liquefied natural gas expert at Vortexa, says: "Qatar has the levers in its hands. In the end, Germany will have to agree to terms to secure supply." Liquefied gas is much more expensive than cheap Russian gas anyway.

The German Economics Ministry did not comment when asked, nor did the government of Qatar. Gas importers Uniper and RWE also declined to comment on the talks.

German Economics Minister Robert Habeck (Greens) had visited Qatar in March and subsequently reported an energy partnership. According to insiders, the Emir of Qatar, Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, wants to come to Germany before the end of May to sign an agreement. This does not mean, however, that supply contracts will be agreed, said people familiar with the plans for the visit.

Catfish

05-10-22, 02:48 PM

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

Jimbuna

05-11-22, 06:02 AM

^ I hope Olaf Scholz sees that clip.

Skybird

05-11-22, 06:08 AM

^ Words of horror that make Bubble-Olaf tremble in fear: "If there is an emergency, it has to be delivered in no time."

After six weeks passed since the mutual agreement, the Polish still listen to deafening silence from the chancellor's office regarding the agreed ring exchange of combat vehicles.

Skybird

05-13-22, 06:30 AM

When the "traffic light coaltion" cam einto office I said it is absolkutely possible that it might not last the full term. When the Ukraine war broke out I said it might not even last until the end of this year. In both cases I indicated that the key problem is Scholz himself, and poiitned to his pltlical records sinc ehis desastrous tiem as mayor of Huam,burg. This man shoud, nave rhave been allwoed to become chancellor. He is arrogant while cowardly, incompetent while absolutely full of himself.

Focus writes:

It's Friday the 13th, and the first coalition wrangling is taking place in the traffic light alliance. But it's only superficially about individual issues. In fact, distrust of the chancellor is growing. And that just two days before the important state elections in Germany's most populous state. Things are getting dicey for Olaf Scholz.

This Friday, the defense committee will discuss the delivery of heavy weapons to Ukraine - and the suspicion, expressed not only by the arms industry, that the chancellor and his office are delaying these arms deliveries. And this with the argument that Germany must always move in the West's convoy. No "German Sonderweg," the chancellor says in this regard.

But this principle of the chancellor's turns the small question into a big one in terms of state policy. The question is: Should Germany assume a leading role in the Western alliance? That's what the Greens and liberals expect of him. But Scholz doesn't want to. And Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann (FDP), the chairwoman of the defense committee and therefore hard to ignore as Scholz's liberal tormentor, has a reason, which she dresses up in a very, very nasty sentence.

The "NZZ" asked Strack-Zimmermann about Scholz's leadership qualities. The question is absolutely legitimate, because Scholz has claimed this leadership for himself not only once. Scholz even claims to be the mastermind for a Western strategy on Ukraine. To this now the tomboyish, to Scholz's chagrin, but above all independent and therefore hardly to be disciplined parliamentarian:

"I would be happy if we at least marched in step with our partners (the word "march" is likely to bring a blush of anger to the faces of many Social Democrats) and did not give the impression that the Germans always have to be persuaded to act first." But the liberal in the Germany-critical liberal paper did not leave it at that. Leadership?

"The chancellor needs a pretty broad back for that, should he ever want to fill this role." The subjunctive irrealis means that from Strack-Zimmermann's point of view, Scholz is not leading. An opinion that is shared by at least Toni Hofreiter among the Greens, an equally independent since he did not become a minister.

It is the combination of unfulfilled leadership role, arrogance and lack of respect for freely elected parliamentarians that led to the discharge today among liberals. Not for the first time. On 24 April Strack Zimmermann had already dealt with the leadership qualities of the chancellor.

A country as big as Germany in a crisis as big as the one over Ukraine would have to lead. And this leadership would have to come from Olaf Scholz - "not only economically, but also militarily." And then, "And for those who don't want to accept this role, I say, then they may be sitting in the wrong place at the wrong moment." Now, this does not mean that the whole coalition is in the toilet.

What is already to be recognized by the fact that Strack-Zimmermann as well as the defense-policy FDP spokesman Marcus Faber distribute even currently after the meeting of the defense committee sedatives. One could clarify, which remained open, surely in a next meeting. However, this presupposes that Olaf Scholz will also accept a second "invitation".

The need for clarification that the members of the defense committee have arises from two kinds of decisions - those that have been made but are difficult to explain, and those that have not yet been made, which is equally difficult to explain. Scholz's government has promised to supply Ukraine with Gepard tanks. But that will take time. Was this "will take time" intentional? [You bet it was!, Skybird]

Marder and Leopard 1 tanks have not been delivered because the Federal Security Council has not yet decided on them, although Scholz promised that it would not take that long. But apparently it does.

Let's move up a level. The CDU/CSU, the Greens and the FDP are largely in agreement on security policy issues. More so than the SPD, the Greens and the FDP. Among the Social Democrats, phantom pains are still widespread. Many there cling to a notion of pacifism that the Greens have overcome at record speed.

A Jamaica coalition could replace a traffic light government immediately and without new elections. That would be very unusual, but it is not impossible. Who would have believed three months ago that Greens would justify arms deliveries with love of peace ?

Finally, the North Rhine-Westphalia elections this Sunday. There, it smells like black-green, and for several reasons. Perhaps the most important: The Greens know the SPD. And they have had to put up with this arrogant coalition partner for three minister presidents.

It started back then with Johannes Rau, a man who was actually affable, drank Pilsner and smoked HB cigarettes. But he thought the Greens were an accident of history. And from the Social Democrat a nice bon mot has been saying for decades:

"Better a cottage house in the green than a green in the house."
Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (http://www.DeepL.com/Translator) (free version)

Skybird

05-15-22, 02:15 PM

There were state elections in Northrhine Westphalia (where I live in) today. Due to the state heaving the biggest population of all 16 states, these elections sometimes are called and seen as "small Bundestag elections". Participation dropped from 65 to 56%, and the faction of the non-voters formed the biggest group, as big as the voters of CDU, SPD and Greens all together. Means: the non-voters have won this election, so to speak. The CDU gained, the SPD sufferedc a pretty desastrous result (the worst since WW2), the Green tripled their last result form five yers ago.

CDU and FDP had formed a colation government the past 5 years, but due to the FDP being the second national coaltion party suffering very heavy losses, that is not possible anymore. Its either a coalition of CDU and the Greens, or CDU and SPD, or the SPD, Green and the FDP - like on national level, what is called traffic-light coalition in germany.

The SPD campaigned heavily withScholz,. so their loss isdue to Scholz and his Ukraine policy. The FDP got punsihed becasue - I think - its boss Linder who also ios the ficnaine ministrer in the nationb govenbrment, juggled way to much with terms and calcuations to hide that he has dramatically increased debts, his main priority being that debts are not called debts anymore, but get some distracting alternative names. With the FDP's voters being established business people and young voters from the better situated families in Germany, he seems to not get away with this trcik, his clientel being too aware of what all this fincial mumbojumbo is meaning for us and helps to fuel inflation and thus: loss of wealth.

All this reflects the national government's many issues. The Green however see a strom-and-triumph phase and run from victory to victory currenbtly. Their weight will gian in the national coaltion, they will be able to diatctae Bubble-OPlaf even mroe temrns and ciodnitions iof he wants to keep in power. Which is good. Somebody has to kick the stupid little boy in his cowardly back, else he would not even get out of bed, that much afraid he is of atomic war with Russia.

The results, counting in the non-voters - and that is how it should be, to put the eleciton results into their real context.
https://i.postimg.cc/fy1ZBT8R/Unbenannt.png (https://postimages.org/)

Roughly only every 5th person eligible to vote voted for CDU, not even every 6th voted for SPD, only every 10th voted for Greens. This must be kept on mind when parties claim they "speak for the people" and "represent this or that majority". They don't. They are minorities. Mostly even surprisingly small ones.

Not even the complete to-be-formed coalition government speaks for a majority of the people.

AFD and FDP are in, the SED ("Linke") is out.

Skybird

05-17-22, 01:29 PM

I like to communicate with conviction!......With a lot of desire and enthusiasm!......Authentically approachable and emphatic......Clear, spontaneous and honest!......And full of emotionality and passion!https://www.tagesspiegel.de/images/kommunikation_ts/28350342/1-format1007.jpg

Okay Olaf. And now again, but this time without reading from the cheat sheet with the weasel words!

Catfish

05-17-22, 03:57 PM

Watch this and cry :doh:
(german only)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KAd6feu1shs

Skybird

05-17-22, 05:19 PM

^ A kingdom for a starship that takes me aboard and flies away. Its all so completely hopeless. Gegen Dummheit ist einfach kein Kraut gewachsen.

When I am near my death I hope they will get in full what they are craving for. Stupidity deserves to suffer from its consequences. I hope it then burns like a torch.

I repeat this from time to time, every year or every second. It never grows old:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ww47bR86wSc

Skybird

05-20-22, 08:01 AM

I'm getting more and more scared and anxious in this country. Brutal ice-cold ideologues and self-lobotomized lunatics elevate state-defined collectivism to the reason of state - even in infancy. And for years now it has been getting worse and worse. Where do we differ from authoritarian regimes such as Russia or China, which also maltreat the very young to ensure that they become the trained conformists, ideologically trimmed state drones that the control-addicted state leadership demands them to be? The NZZ writes:

The German "traffic light" (coalition) has entered its sixth month. In mid-December of last year, Chancellor Olaf Scholz issued his first government declaration. Since then, the accusation that the three-party coalition has been running its mouth too full has persisted. Digitalization is not making any progress, economic development is stalling, the healthcare system is limping along, and the "share pension" is a long time coming. It's all a lot of bickering, hesitation and dithering.

The SPD, Greens and FDP can point to the Ukraine war and its consequences as mitigating factors. And they can look with pride at those areas in which they are actually delivering. The social transformation that Olaf Scholz promised is progressing. Society is well on its way to becoming a community of the committed. But is this really progress?

Every plan carries the seeds of failure, and not all laws change reality. But no one can deny the will of the three governing parties to fundamentally transform society. Federal Minister of the Interior Nancy Faeser of the SPD, for example, calls for and promotes "democracy education.

In this way, she gives the Germans an alarming report card. Clearly, almost 80 years after the end of the war and 33 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, her compatriots are still not (or no longer) proper democrats. If that were really the case, all of Europe and half the world would be worried. But it is possible that Faeser's diagnosis is a rhetorical ploy to make it easier for her pet project, the "Democracy Promotion Act," to clear the hurdles of necessity.

By the end of the year, a draft law prepared jointly with the Ministry of Family Affairs should be available. Initiatives and associations that previously relied on short-term project funding can then look forward to regular payments from the state budget.

According to the two ministries' discussion paper, Germany needs "democratic commitment and convinced democrats. For this reason, "projects in the area of promoting democracy, shaping diversity and preventing extremism are to receive reliable support." Family Minister Lisa Paus of the Green Party specifies: The "committed civil society" deserves every state support.

If civil society is already a strange conceptual bastard of state and society, which should be in fruitful tension with each other, "engaged civil society" is completely wooden. What is meant here are social actors who act in the interests of the parties currently in power and are subsidized by the state to do so. The state wants to shape a society in its own image. Ultimately, the citizen is placed under reservation.

Those players in identity politics who offer courses and seminars on the "fight against the right," against climate change, for integration and for "diversity" are primarily worthy of permanent funding. Paus and Faeser expressly reject an extremism formula with which the initiatives would have to renounce any extremist temptation.

The "committed civil society" is supposed to oppose racists and extremists of all stripes, although their extreme right-wing form is mentioned very often and the Islamist form almost never. It is also disconcerting that Faeser mentions "anti-Semites and anti-feminists" in the same breath. Apparently, the SPD politician considers hatred of Jews and rejection of feminism among "convinced democrats" to be equally abhorrent.

To prevent both from arising in the first place, Faeser advocates early childhood democracy education. Kindergartens should become a political space in which the youngest children can playfully learn about the "fight against right-wing extremism. If one takes other statements by Faeser, who is also the Minister of Home Affairs, at face value, the battle against the traditional concept of home must also be fought in the kindergarten.

Home, says the minister, "is all people, no matter where they come from." That's why "we have to reinterpret the concept of home in a positive way and define it in such a way that it is open and diverse. And that it expresses that people can decide for themselves how they want to live, believe and love." We learn: the Secretary of Homeland considers homeland a negative term that must be reinterpreted by the state. She demands that the collective work on the concept in order to then generously assign individuality.
The social restructuring of the "traffic light" has two goals: First, life is to break down into a sequence of correct decisions, from kindergarten to the deathbed; this creates a long flow of confessions and thus of ideological norm control.

Secondly, it is no longer being that determines consciousness, but doing that determines existence. Those who do not permanently participate and pull along have no part in the community of the committed. "Our cohesion" (Paus) does not apply to the apolitical, or even to those who already consider home a positive concept.

Even four-year-olds should learn to distinguish the right from the wrong attitudes in kindergarten. To this end, the "rainbow portal" operated by the Ministry of Family Affairs recommends a reading book with the story of a male mermaid. "Individuality, diversity and variety" are to be taught to the little ones in this way. Childhood must no longer be an island of purposelessness and thus not a childhood in the previous sense. Politics overarches every stage of life.

At the age of 14, still a minor, every young person is to be allowed to decide freely at the registry office which sex he or she has. This is what it says in two draft laws by the Greens and the FDP that failed in the summer of 2020, and which are now being incorporated into the "self-determination law" sought by the "traffic light" majority before the parliamentary summer break.

Once again, the will to arbitrariness is celebrating triumphs, even at the cost of turning absurd. These merits were earned by the federal government's queer commissioner, the Green politician Sven Lehmann, when he recently claimed that gender identity could not in principle be examined from the outside, not even by doctors.

At the physical borders of the country, however, the same fluid principle should apply as at those of the body: the assertion defines being. Those who do not identify themselves when applying for asylum are allowed to establish their nationality by means of an affidavit. According to Interior Minister Faeser, this possibility should only be an exception in cases of emergency - but how can one prevent the exception from becoming the rule? Once again, identity politics turns identity into a chimera.

The new spirit has also already taken hold of German jurisprudence. In April, the administrative court in Mainz ruled against the city of Worms, which did not want to naturalize a Somali because he could not produce official identification documents. Witness statements from the family, the judges said, would have to suffice in emergency situations. Will such "communities of responsibility" be formed in the future on such a basis, as the FDP is pushing in family law? "Two or more persons of full age" are soon to be allowed to enter into such a relationship, provided they are not related.

In a speech at the end of April, the foreign minister clarified the epochal change that the "traffic light" wants to set in motion. "Identity in the 21st century," Annalena Baerbock explained, means "above all, civic engagement, being integrated into society." Such a definition breaks with anthropological certainties and is hardly compatible with the conditions of a liberal constitutional state.

According to this definition, identity is not shaped by the ego but by the collective, and the individual must be committed in order to attain it. Only the politically desired commitment makes a person. Only society provides individuality. Why an FDP that sees itself as a liberal party tolerates these statist maneuvers in part and welcomes them in part will have to be explained to its core constituency. It is also difficult to understand the deafening silence of the CDU and CSU, which have so far done nothing to counter the expulsion of the bourgeoisie.

So the conclusion is: The "traffic light" that wants to create a fear-free, diverse, free society is afraid of diversity and freedom.

Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)

Skybird

05-23-22, 04:14 PM

:har: :har:

https://www.tagesspiegel.de/images/9_euro_ts/28366954/1-format1007.jpg
For those not knowing what the 9 Euro ticket is about:
https://edition.cnn.com/travel/article/germany-9-euro-travel-ticket/index.html

Catfish

05-23-22, 04:17 PM

^ yeah this was what's missing :haha:

Skybird

05-24-22, 08:09 AM

Hurrah...! After thirty years as a reasonably adult, reasonably independent thinking being, I can only despair of my compatriots.

The NZZ again:

Now Beijing is pulling the strings - Germany is naively stumbling from one energy dependency to the next.

After the Fukushima nuclear accident, a hasty energy turnaround drove Germany into the clutches of Putin's gas geopolitics. Now Berlin is making itself dependent on Chinese wind rotors and solar panels. That is not smart.

"After City Hall, you're smarter," the popular saying instructs those who want to have foreseen all evils with the benefit of hindsight. Today, it is standard wisdom that Germany has recklessly become dependent on Russian gas (55 percent) and oil (42 percent) and has self-importantly thrown all warnings to the wind. The accusation that German prosperity is based on the import of relatively cheap energy from the east is also cheap. Some people even accuse the Social Democrats in particular of mafia-like chumminess with Putin's filthy rich cronies.

The most convincing evidence for this thesis is the close ties between the former German chancellor and the Russian president. Gerhard Schröder not only paved the way for the new Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline, but also awarded three of the five refineries to the Kremlin-controlled oil companies. An oil boycott, as decided by the EU in its umpteenth sanctions package, would not only endanger the existence of these refining plants, but also dry up the energy infrastructure, especially in northern and eastern Germany. The supply of kerosene to Berlin Airport (BER), for example, would be acutely threatened.

However, two aspects are neglected in the debate about self-inflicted energy dependency. First, Germany - like other countries - has been co-financing pipelines from Siberia since the 1980s, and not just out of self-interest. Secretly, the strategy of "change through trade" was linked to the ulterior motive of making Moscow dependent on Western foreign currency in this way.

This worked even in the coldest Cold War. Not only did the Soviet Union always honor its supply contracts, but it also imposed moderation on itself so as not to jeopardize the flow of money from energy sales (in 2020, 71 percent of all revenues). The rulers in the Kremlin were also naïve, contenting themselves with the convenient sale of raw materials instead of building up a competitive industry themselves. That, too, was a Western calculation.

The fact that Germany, even under CDU Chancellor Merkel, held on to Nord Stream 2 for so long was the result of this thinking: Russia would not risk letting the secure flow of foreign currency via this additional gas pipeline dry up. This dependence would prevent even an aggressive Putin from crossing red lines, who would have to be granted certain territorial interests, such as the annexation of Crimea in 2014.

Germany's dependence also has its deeper cause in a naïve energy turnaround: The hasty exit from both nuclear energy and coal-fired power generation has virtually driven Germany into Putin's arms. Eighty new gas-fired power plants were supposed to fill the electricity gaps as a "bridging technology" when the many wind turbines were once again at a standstill or bad weather paralyzed the solar plantations.

But while other countries took note of the reality early on and are now revising their nuclear phase-out plans or even building new nuclear reactors, Germany is stubbornly sticking to its plan to shut down the last three remaining nuclear reactors by the end of the year.

Meanwhile, Economics and Climate Minister Habeck of the Green Party is fomenting the belief that replacements can be found immediately through much more expensive fracking gas (the extraction of which is banned in Germany) or vague "energy partnerships" with the less democratic Qatar, for example. At the same time, Germany does not yet have any ports where the liquefied gas could be unloaded. The "green hydrogen" that is being touted as a replacement technology would initially require a lot of electricity to produce, which is likely to become even scarcer and more expensive anyway due to the push for heat pumps and electromobility.

The promises of a "green job miracle" through the energy turnaround have also been dashed: The German solar industry is in the doldrums, as is the wind power sector. Siemens Energy is in the red. And with Nordex AG, the last wind turbine manufacturer is threatened with extinction, because Chinese (state-owned) corporations have completely leveraged the German market with dumping prices here as well.

Germany is thus slipping from one dependency into another: without massive imports from China, the "green" and CO2-free economy is not possible. This also strengthens a power that not only has Putin's back politically, but also compensates for Moscow's financial shortfalls. China (like India) is taking advantage of the situation to buy energy from Russia at low prices. This enables it to produce even more competitively.

Unfortunately, German manufacturers are losing important market shares due to higher raw material prices and the sanctions blockade. So an actionist policy is cutting into the country's own flesh twice over. In Beijing, which has long since stopped hiding its hegemonic claims, people are rubbing their hands. Meanwhile, in Berlin, they are stumbling from one naiveté to the next. The town hall that heralds the "turnaround" to realistic pragmatism proclaimed by the German traffic light government has yet to be built.

Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)

Skybird

05-28-22, 03:47 AM

From FOCUS. I rest my case.

The Deutsche Umwelthilfe

[Deutsche Umwelthilfe e.V. (DUH, using the English name Environmental Action Germany) is a non-profit (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-profit) environmental (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_organization) and consumer protection association (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consumer_organization), supported by public and private project grants and donations. It is a member of the European Environmental Bureau (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Environmental_Bureau), in Brussels. It has the legal right to represent group claims in court against projects that it considers a threat to the environment.]
has lodged an objection to the first planned liquefied natural gas terminal. The war in Ukraine is bad. But not so bad that German approval procedures can be shortened because of it.
[That brainfree group is extremely infuential and powerful and has caused plenty of legal troubles in Germany, Skybird]
Olaf Scholz was in Brandenburg two months ago to inaugurate the Tesla factory in Grünheide with Elon Musk. It took 730 days from the groundbreaking ceremony to the moment when the first cars rolled off the production line. A German record. Scholz was thrilled.

He would like to transfer that to the energy supply. We now need four liquefied gas terminals very quickly. Unfortunately, it takes eight years to build such a terminal if you go through all the approval procedures properly. That could be eight very cold years, since climate change is not coming fast enough to compensate for the loss of Russian gas. So: Tesla speed! Says the Chancellor.

The next thing I heard on the subject was Robert Habeck imploring environmental associations to refrain from filing lawsuits against the terminal in Wilhelmshaven, for which planning is furthest along. Immediate outrage from the "taz" [superleft newspaper, Skybird] to the "Süddeutsche" [left newspaper, Sky]: This was sending the completely wrong signal. The war is bad. But just because Putin had invaded Ukraine, there was no reason to abandon the tried and tested approval procedures.

At the beginning of the month, Deutsche Umwelthilfe filed an objection. Especially in times of crisis, the principles of the rule of law must be upheld, and this applies in particular to climate protection and environmental law, the executive director explained.

The association fears that the construction would irreversibly destroy the underwater biotope near Wilhelmshaven. In addition, harbor porpoises are sighted off the coast. Who knows what effects the terminal construction would have on the whales? There is always some animal that speaks against an intervention in nature. It is the nature of nature, if you will, that it stands in the way of any construction project.

Incidentally, Deutsche Umwelthilfe is the association that had rows and rows of German city centers paralyzed before Corona because the nitrogen oxide concentration in the air was allegedly too high. Did you know when the highest nitrogen oxide values ever recorded were then measured at measuring stations? In the spring of 2020 during the first lockdown, when road traffic in Germany came to a virtual standstill. If you now think that would make Deutsche Umwelthilfe appear a bit more modest: of course not!

The word of the hour is "turn of the times." Everything would have to be rethought and reassessed. Let's call it a déformation professionelle, but whenever I hear that everything is really going to be very, very different now, I think: Let's have a look.

Do you remember the first Corona months? The pandemic would open the door to a new world in which the "we" and no longer the "I" would be in the foreground. It was written almost word for word in the progressive-minded papers.

Or take the refugee crisis: We had to fundamentally question ourselves, the Chancellor declared in one of her first press conferences, when thousands were crossing the border every day. German thoroughness was super, she said, but in a crisis everything had to be put to the test, including German thoroughness.

There was even a law against too much thoroughness, the "Standard Deviation Law. If we are going to take action against thoroughness, then let's do it thoroughly. Without the appropriate regulation, nothing works in Germany.

I would be the last person to object if we were to part with a few regulations. I would be happy if we could find our way back to more freedom and less paternalism. Unfortunately, things usually go in the other direction.

Experts at the Federal Ministry of Justice have recounted and come up with 246,944 federal regulations that citizens have to comply with. And that doesn't even include the regulations of the states, municipalities and public corporations.

German bureaucracy is an inexhaustible subject. During research, our colleague Alexander Neubacher came across the regulation for maintenance work on offshore wind turbines. This regulation not only stipulates that the fitters find sleeping bags and cookies if they once have to endure longer on the wind turbine than planned due to bad weather.

No, it also stipulates that a deck of cards must be kept on hand at every wind turbine so that the maintenance workers don't get too bored while they are holding out at lofty heights. Is the regulation still in effect? Despite Corona? Despite the war? Despite the standard deviation law? Of course it is.

As long as everything moves along familiar lines, you can get along with 246,944 federal regulations. It's just that nothing unforeseen can get in the way. Like a pandemic. Or a war in Europe.

Last week I met a lawyer who runs wind farms in Schleswig-Holstein. What he reported from practice did not sound as if we would soon be beating the Russians at their game with our own energy. First, he had to wait twelve years before he was allowed to repower his wind turbines. That's what it's called when old wind turbines are replaced with new ones. It's actually a good thing, because the wind turbine then has twice as much power as before. Unfortunately, the distance rules had changed in the meantime. Now it's bat season. Everything is running at half power because it cannot be ruled out that a bat will get lost in the rotor blades.

The lawyer is pinning his hopes on the Greens. If any party can get it right, it's the Greens, he says. It's like Hartz IV. The only ones who were able to modernize the labor market were the Social Democrats.

I'm not so sure about that. It would also be obvious to think again about the use of nuclear power. We have three remaining nuclear power plants that could still provide us with useful services if the gas fails. But in December, we are supposed to finally call it a day. The veto of the Green Minister for the Environment, Steffi Lemke, is ironclad. The German nuclear phase-out is being adhered to, even if the lights are beginning to flicker because electricity is running out.

The green German would rather sit at home by candlelight than draw nuclear power one day longer. Let them continue to rely on nuclear power in Finland and France and Great Britain and Sweden and Belgium. We know better than anyone what a devilish thing it is!

Societies are amazingly tough and inert entities. One can certainly see something comforting in this. Revolutions only work at gunpoint. But a little movement would be desirable, don't you think?

Perhaps we could start by withdrawing the non-profit status of the German Environmental Aid Association. That would be a measure whose beneficial effect would unfold immediately.

Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)

https://www.sprueche-suche.de/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/ich-koennte-kotzen-spruch.jpg

Skybird

06-01-22, 07:17 AM

A draft list for what the military will/should get with the additional money rain. The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung writes:

New fighter jets, modern warships, extensive modernization and digitization of the armed forces - all of this is to be financed in the coming years from an extraordinary special fund that the Bundestag and Bundesrat intend to approve as early as next Friday. However, there are no details or even a conceptual plan for the future equipment of the armed forces.

After taking office, Defense Minister Christine Lambrecht (SPD) had suspended a comprehensive modernization project of her predecessor Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer (CDU), but in the past six months she has failed to formulate her own ideas or even to present a coherent plan for the future armed forces. Two days before the Bundestag is now to decide on the largest and most expensive investment project in the history of the Federal Republic as part of a change of era, neither the members of parliament nor the public have a conceptual presentation from the federal government on national and alliance defense.

Instead, individual projects have been compiled in the ministry and in the branches of the armed forces, to which defense, budget and economic policymakers have each added their own projects, some of which have regional policy implications. According to the available data, therefore, this is a hodgepodge of acquisitions, most of which had long since been decided but not financed. For example, shortly before the election, the Bundestag, with majorities from the CDU/CSU and SPD, had approved orders worth more than seven billion euros, but most of these were not backed by budget funds.

Since the "special fund," announced at the end of February by Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD), is accompanied by a so-called "economic plan," the public can now see from lists drawn up by the budget committee what spending is planned for the coming years. The list envisages around 41 billion euros for the air force, 19 billion for the navy, the army is to receive around 16.5 billion, and a further 20 billion is planned for digitization projects that will benefit all branches of the armed forces.

In addition to military requirements, the list also represents economic interests and the need to accommodate the opposition in the negotiations. In contrast to what has long been suspected, ammunition purchases are almost entirely absent. They are to be financed from the current regular budget. It is also not clear what system the list follows.

At the top of the list is the aircraft industry, with Airbus, a company with considerable production capacity in Bavaria and traditionally strong support from the CSU, in first place. Accordingly, the development and purchase of Eurofighters with electronic warfare capability is planned first and foremost. According to earlier plans, this billion-euro contract was to be awarded to American industry. After a revision, probably decided in the Chancellor's Office, the new German government had already decided otherwise a few months ago. The assets are also to be used to purchase American F-35 fighter aircraft, the most modern currently available.

As yet unfunded, but already recognized for several years as a potentially lethal shortfall, is the modernization of ground-based air defense and especially air defense. This was decommissioned as a weapon category in 2012 under Defense Minister Thomas de Maizière (CDU) at the Army. The planned projects also include some 60 new transport helicopters to replace the existing and worn-out fleet of CH-53 helicopters from the 1970s.

There are also plans to acquire light support helicopters for the Army, aircraft for electronic maritime reconnaissance and other various early warning and reconnaissance systems. The list of materials also includes the project for a joint Franco-German combat aircraft of the future (FCAS), which has been very quiet recently due to internal disputes.

Financially not decisive, but militarily necessary and politically finally pushed through after years of blockade by the SPD is the arming of the Heron TP drones in the Bundeswehr. As the short war between Azerbaijan and Armenia in the summer of 2020 and now even more so the Ukrainian defensive struggle against the Russian invaders showed, these weapons have become decisive means of successful warfare. Due to a morally charged discussion, in particular by SPD parliamentary group leader Rolf Mützenich, Germany had so far refrained from equipping its soldiers with

The Bundeswehr is also currently hardly able to defend itself against hostile drone attacks. This is set to change. The air force chapter of the special fund also includes the further expansion of space surveillance and an associated situation center. Overall, the air force projects account for about 40 percent of the total package.

For the Navy, which is to receive 19 billion euros from the special fund, the main projects are modernized corvettes and at least one additional F126 frigate. This is a combat ship that is to supplement the 125 frigates that have been languishing in the introductory phase for years. These are intended more for peacekeeping missions in distant waters than for high-intensity combat with a maritime counterforce in the Baltic Sea. Conversion of the Baden-Württemberg-class peacetime frigates, unit price around 900 million euros, is unlikely to be considered. Like other armament projects of recent years, they could prove to be an expensive mistake. In addition, modern anti-ship missiles (FNSM) will be procured, which can sink large warships at low cost, as recently demonstrated by Ukraine using the Russian Moskva as an example.

They are an interesting alternative to expensive ships, especially in the comparatively small Baltic Sea. Estonia, for example, does not have a large navy of its own, but has ordered and received such anti-ship missiles for some time. Also planned, according to the list of materials from the budget committee, are the acquisition of anti-aircraft missiles for submarines, underwater sonars and the German-Norwegian submarine U212 CD. Each is expected to cost about a billion. The project has been in the planning stages for five years; Norway would like to buy four of the boats, Germany two so far. But there has been a lack of money to do so.

Finally, the Navy has planned to purchase multi-purpose combat boats, which are small, heavily powered and extremely maneuverable boats. They are under 20 meters long and can accommodate, for example, 20 soldiers of the naval battalion. For years, the Navy has been trying in vain to acquire such boats, of which more than 130 exist under the type designation CB90 in the Swedish Navy, for example.

The Army also has long lists of deficiencies and wants to close at least some of the gaps in the land forces from the 100-billion-euro budget. Numerous individual projects are being presented to the budget committee. However, neither the Army nor Minister Lambrecht have specified how many brigades or divisions are to be equipped with the equipment and by when.

The procurement projects indicate that Army Chief of Staff Alfons Mais will probably continue to pursue the goal of establishing a "medium forces" brigade. This combat unit is to be based on the American model and concentrate on armored and armed wheeled vehicles that, unlike the tank and armored infantry battalions with their heavy tracked vehicles, can be deployed quickly.

The material for such a force of about 5,000 men currently does not exist, nor do sufficient tanks and armored personnel carriers for the Army's existing eight brigades. Accordingly, for the land forces, in addition to new infantry fighting vehicles, vehicles designated as "heavy weapon carriers infantry" are to be ordered. According to experts, this includes the Boxer armored transport vehicle, which will then be equipped by Rheinmetall and Krauss-Maffei-Wegmann with the same automatic cannon as the Puma infantry fighting vehicle and designated as a "wheeled infantry fighting vehicle.

In addition, there will be new acquisitions or retrofit programs for the Army's approximately 300 ill-reputed Puma. A successor to the Fuchs armored transport vehicle is also on the wish list. Experts are puzzling over what is meant by this, because the Army already has a passable vehicle in the form of the Boxer model. Tracked vehicles that can drive in or over snow and armored vehicles that are flown in the Air Force's A400M transporter, for example, are also on the Army's list.

The planned acquisitions for digitization are very expensive and very complicated. In the current draft economic plan, they alone account for around twenty billion euros. Of this amount, the project "Digitization of Land-Based Operations," which has been jolting for years, is to be advanced, and command posts, radios and satellite communications are to be procured. The procurement of PRC-117G radios is one of those things that had long been projected but apparently not funded in sufficient numbers. Earlier reports had stated that the Bundeswehr had to have thousands of old-style analog radios rebuilt for its vehicles because of inadequate digitization, investing about a billion euros in technology from the 1960s.

What is conspicuous about the list, apart from the absence of any figures and prices, is the clear weighting to the detriment of the Army, even if it is consoled by the fact that some projects, such as the personal equipment package (2.4 billion euros), or the helicopter purchases and ground-based air defense, would predominantly benefit the land forces.

Nevertheless, the aircraft industry, which is active in CSU-ruled Bavaria, and the shipyards on the coast, which are always in dire straits, are apparently receiving particularly lavish benefits. The air force and the numerically small navy receive a total of 60 billion euros, more than three times as much as the army, although two thirds of all soldiers serve in the land forces with around 66,000 people and the army would probably have to bear the brunt of the battle in the event of war. Moreover, in the event of tension on NATO's eastern flank, U.S. fighter aircraft and allied fleets would be much quicker to mobilize than heavily armed land forces. There is currently no military justification for the currently planned weighting, for example by the Inspector General of the Bundeswehr, Eberhard Zorn.

Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)

Skybird

06-10-22, 03:51 PM

Under the motto "80 million together for the energy transition", consumption is to be reduced with the help of advertising posters, series of events as well as support programs and advisory services, as Economics Minister Robert Habeck said.

This is necessary for climate protection and also because of the dependence on Russian oil and gas supplies. "Only with more renewable energies and more energy efficiency will we strengthen our independence." In addition, one could benefit oneself: "Not only to get one over on Putin, but also to be in a better position oneself," said Habeck, referring to Russian President Vladimir Putin.

The campaign will include posters, tips and guides, as well as new funding programs and advisory services. The Ministry of Economics is also participating in the campaign itself with energy-saving measures for heating, cooling and lighting. In all offices, air conditioning will be turned up to 26 degrees Celsius, and in winter the heating temperature will be lowered, it said.

The campaign is supported by associations such as the Federation of German Industries (BDI), the Association of Chambers of Industry and Commerce (DIHK), the German Federation of Trade Unions (DGB) and the Nature Conservation Ring. Messages such as "Dear shower fans, an energy-saving shower head saves 30 percent heating energy" or "Dear 80 million, whoever saves energy strengthens Germany's independence" are intended to reach people.

Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)
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One can only despair over so much infantile, stupid claptrap at the head of state. "To get one over on Putin...?" "To be in a better position yourself...?" "Saving shower heads?" "Turn up the air conditioning to 26°, turn down the heating?" Tell me, you minister for idiocy and childishness - is that all for the day or is somehtign else on your mind...?

Shortage management and planned economy, that's what they used to call it in GDR times.

Catfish

06-11-22, 04:54 PM

Physics will of course bow to the wants of the wisecracks :D

Skybird

06-15-22, 02:40 PM

Are there correlations between performance and preferences in school, and party affiliation? Apparently so. For example, the Greens at school sucked in Maths, and history, and like dsocial studies. Well, their politics showe. What a surprise!

:Dhttps://www-welt-de.translate.goog/debatte/kommentare/article239380457/Allensbach-Umfrage-Gruenen-Waehler-waren-frueher-schlecht-in-Mathe.html?_x_tr_sl=auto&_x_tr_tl=de&_x_tr_hl=de&_x_tr_pto=wapp

Let me know whether or not that link works. I have technical issues with Google.

Skybird

06-19-22, 05:34 PM

FOCUS:

The ban on fracking in Germany is once again being called into question - especially by the FDP. Economics Minister Robert Habeck, however, wants to stick to it. He prefers to get gas from abroad rather than draw on his own resources. Will the gas treasure be lifted after all?

It is one of the strictest fracking laws in the world that the Bundestag and Bundesrat passed for Germany little more than five years ago. The Fracking Prohibition Act of 2017 bans commercial unconventional fracking projects. The aim is to protect the environment and health from the risks of this technology. And that means the roughly 2.3 trillion cubic meters of gas in Germany's shale rock will remain untouched - for now.

Because now the debate about the law is flaring up anew. The Federal Republic is in the midst of an energy crisis due to the war against Ukraine started by Russia. Gas is becoming an increasingly scarce commodity. The problem is that Germany gets around half of the natural gas it needs from aggressor Russia. This now needs to be replaced, as a quarter of the energy required here is produced with natural gas.

The agreement reached by the Bundestag and Bundesrat provided for a ban on fracking until at least 2021. After five years, the Bundestag was then to decide whether the regulations should remain in place. If the Bundestag does nothing after this time, the ban will continue to apply, it was said at the time. To date, nothing has happened in this regard and the law stands.

Most recently, CSU leader Markus Söder and NRW Economics Minister Andreas Pinkwart (FDP), as well as the head of the Institute of the German Economy (IW), Michael Hüther, called for an open-ended review of fracking. According to " Welt am Sonntag ", the Professional Association of German Geoscientists (BDG) is also in favor of considering fracking in view of the energy crisis.

The FDP now wants to go ahead and, in view of the energy crisis, put the ban on natural gas extraction by fracking to the test. "As scientific studies show, fracking does not cause any relevant environmental damage under modern safety standards," argues Torsten Herbst, parliamentary director of the FDP, in the "Welt am Sonntag" newspaper. Those who import fracked gas from the U.S. cannot be against safe fracking production in Germany, he said. "Serious consideration should therefore be given to whether major shale gas extraction is feasible in Germany from an economic and technical point of view," he said.

Michael Kruse, energy policy spokesman for the FDP in the Bundestag, tells the newspaper his party supports "the significant expansion of domestic natural gas production." All options must be examined, he said. "We have always rejected the fracking ban law of 2017 in terms of content from this straightforward position."

So the FDP sees an energy goldmine in the German shale rock that needs to be unearthed. Federal Economics Minister Robert Habeck, on the other hand, continues to reject the use of fracking. He points to possible negative consequences for the environment and legal hurdles.

With the help of gas imports from Qatar and the USA, Habeck is trying to solve the energy problem by other means. However, he has not yet been able to organize much gas. Liquid gas is to be shipped from the USA, but it cannot yet be stored in Germany. There is simply a lack of special port terminals. The German government is trying to build these in a hurry. Floating LNG terminals are intended to bridge the first few years. But that costs a lot of money. In addition, the imported, liquefied LNG natural gas must first be converted back into its gaseous state at high energy cost. Another of Habeck's ideas is to help Israel develop a gas field. In any case, the Economics Minister cannot be accused of refusing to work. But all his plans have one problem: they could take too long.

To save gas, Habeck also wants to take additional measures, as can be seen from a four-point paper. For example, the use of gas for power generation and industry is to be reduced and the filling of storage facilities pushed forward. The federal government is providing billions in funding for this purpose. In addition, coal-fired power plants are to be used more.
2.3 trillion cubic meters of gas: enough to supply Germany with natural gas for decades

And so the 2.3 trillion cubic meters of gas deposits in the country's own shale rock are once again coming into focus. This amount would be enough to supply the country with natural gas for decades, says Hans-Joachim Kümpel, former president of the Federal Institute for Geosciences and Natural Resources, to the newspaper Welt am Sonntag. As long as natural gas is needed in Germany, it is a fool's errand not to produce it, Kümpel said. "A production volume of 20 billion cubic meters annually is possible, for decades to come." The volume would be equivalent to about half of current natural gas supplies from Russia, he said. "It would significantly reduce the glaring dependence on imports," the raw materials expert emphasizes.

And the cost? Within a year, the gas could be extracted from shale rock in Germany, Mohammed Amro of the Freiberg Mining Academy tells the newspaper. But for that to happen, the ban would first have to fall. In as little as five years, Germany could increase the production rate to the point where it could cover one-fifth of its natural gas needs with domestic fracked gas.

So Germany is now at a crossroads - again. Forced by a war in Europe, it must decide whether to tap its own gas resources and possibly accept damage, or to buy in expensively and import resources from faraway countries. The environmental aspect is already being torpedoed here. "The fact that we ultimately harm the climate by foregoing domestic natural gas production and accept substantial economic losses through foreign exchange payments is regrettable, if not irresponsible," Kümpel says. Experts have given up arguing against it, he says.

Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (http://www.DeepL.com/Translator) (free version)

I knew that it was there. But not that it was this much.

Once again ideology trumps over reality.

Otto Harkaman

06-19-22, 09:23 PM

Germany turns to coal as Russia cuts gas supplies

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/6/19/germany-to-limit-use-of-gas-for-electricity-production

Catfish

06-22-22, 04:29 AM

And the coal comes from .. Russia!

August

06-22-22, 08:10 AM

And the coal comes from .. Russia!

We got loads of coal. Why buy from them?

Skybird

06-25-22, 04:31 PM

The Greens have a run, sewem to be successful. But hiddne behidn their advertsing figures Habeck and Baerbock they still are the same Germany-hating destruction brigade that wants to erode Germany from within. That are StaSi destabilizing methods in action, and they indeed stem from the Cold War and the East's attempt to infiltrate West-Germany and destabilise its social integrity from within.
The Neue Zürcher Zeitung writes:

Robert Habeck and Annalena Baerbock are right to be applauded for their stance on the war in Ukraine. Their policy is consistent because it leaves no doubt about who is the perpetrator and who is the victim. At the same time, she is pragmatic because dogmas no longer apply to the question of energy supply. What a pleasant contrast to the errant duo of Scholz and Lambrecht.

What is a success in foreign policy terms is becoming a risk in domestic policy terms. While all eyes are on Ukraine, the Greens are pushing ahead with social restructuring. Whether gender issues or migration - the former environmental party is focusing all the more on identity politics, as wartime has demanded many compromises from it. For example, it is courageously replacing the lack of Russian gas supplies with coal and gas from the Gulf - in other words, it is pursuing sober realpolitik. On identity issues, however, the party polarizes and promotes extremes. The Green Party's control center for its reeducation program is the Ministry of Wokeness, formerly known as the Ministry of Family Affairs, Senior Citizens, Women and Youth.

The party's approach is illustrated by the personnel of Ferda Ataman, the designated anti-discrimination commissioner. Family Minister Lisa Paus proposes a candidate to the Bundestag for election who denigrates Germans as "potatoes."

Discrimination is fine as long as it is directed against the majority society, but satisfies left-wing foreigner politicians and activists. These believe that white Germans are generally privileged - whether they are welfare recipients or multimillionaires. Discrimination against Germans is consequently not discrimination, but only the accelerated creation of equal living conditions.

It is not about dialogue and balance, but about confrontation and window-dressing. The journalist Ataman belongs to an association that pilloried other journalists for using the allegedly xenophobic term clan crime.

In Germany, Ataman and her like-minded friends do not want it reported that Arab clans are among the dominant forces in the underworld in Berlin and other cities. What must not be, cannot be. Ideology and approval in a red-green justemilieu are more important than facts.

If the goal were to find solutions instead of left-wing populist management of an issue, the phenomenon of clan crime would lend itself to a differentiated examination. For here we can see how a short-sighted policy toward foreigners can create serious social problems.

In the 1980s, Turkish and Lebanese extended families used the GDR as a gateway to the West. The Stasi state let them in, provided they moved on immediately to the West. West Berlin could not deport the migrants, but would have liked to get rid of them. So the families received a toleration, which forbade them to work or even to go to school, and thus literally forced them into illegality. Although they were only temporarily tolerated, they never left Germany again.

This migration story would be an ideal example to explain why the traffic light coalition is reforming the law on foreigners. Tolerated persons are to be granted permanent status after five years, provided they are well integrated. This is sensible because it avoids unnecessary suffering. The state must take action against illegal migration, but four years and 364 days is time enough to expel a person from the country.

But the prospective anti-discrimination commissioner is obviously not interested in explaining and appealing for understanding. She would rather scandalize and indoctrinate. Anyone who reports on migrant crime, which has long been ignored, is to be muzzled.

When I was still researching the topic as a correspondent 15 years ago, a criminal counselor at Berlin police headquarters told me that it would not be appreciated if she provided information on the subject. That would contradict the image of multicultural Berlin.

Multiculturalism no longer exists; today it is called diversity. Seen with common sense, this means nothing other than recognizing social diversity and living it as a matter of course. This is not enough for red-green identity politicians. They claim that true diversity and democracy will only be achieved when all people, largely independent of origin and length of residence, can have a say.

This idea represents the distorted image of a democracy that mutates into a participatory club for everyone who just feels like participating. The state would be nothing more than a random assembly, with no binding force and no duties. The individual only has rights and claims against the state for "inclusion" and "participation".

The social contract is no longer a mutual contract, but a unilateral agreement in which the individual formulates his or her wishes. Democracy is shrinking into a service agency for all those minorities who articulate their demands most loudly.
Medical risks must be discussed - even if this contradicts gender ideology.

Limitless individualization is the program of the Greens and, with some exceptions, also of the FDP. This is reflected in the coalition agreement. It promises individuals total power of disposal over their bodies, regardless of social conventions, legal or medical objections. For example, anyone over the age of 14 is to be able to change their gender by a simple declaration of intent, including chemical and surgical treatment.

Anyone who speaks out against this, for example citing the developmental psychology of teenagers, is berated in the same savage manner that degrades Germans to potatoes. The Family Ministry, the agitation center of the otherwise urbane party leaders Habeck and Baerbock, always leads the campaigns.

The state secretary in the ministry, Sven Lehmann, railed against "homophobia and transphobia" and "fake news" just because several authors had pointed out in a guest article for the "Welt" that sex reassignment surgery for pubescents can affect their health. They also warned against media coverage that downplayed the risks.

With any other treatment, it is the doctor's legal as well as ethical duty to provide information about possible side effects. Only in the case of gender reassignment do green identity ideologues turn Hippocratic truthfulness into "group-related misanthropy." No television advertisement for harmless vein ointment can do without the slogan: "Ask your doctor or pharmacist about risks and side effects. Only in the case of irreversible surgery is this not supposed to apply.

Yet a completely different kind of misanthropy is conceivable: Activists immunize a treatment method against any criticism. Media amplify the marginal phenomenon to a social trend, and unquestioning physicians do not let themselves be told twice to reach for the scalpel. Such an operation is certainly lucrative, and it would not be the first time that unscrupulous doctors put themselves at the service of a misguided zeitgeist.

When medical practitioners and scientists question the equally beneficial and sometimes terrifying miracle world of modern medicine, this deserves respect. This should be true even if one does not share their arguments. Science is based on speech and counter-speech and the willingness to falsify every hypothesis.

During the pandemic, however, "science" mutated into a creed that could be used to exclude dissenters. The Corona experience shows that verbal disarmament promotes social cohesion. Unfortunately, this realization bounces off the armor of ignorance worn by all enthusiastic right-wingers - whether on the left or the right.

The green battle brigade does not notice the paradox of its actions. It demands tolerance and equal rights for minorities, but meets all objections with intolerance. Anyone who dares to contradict Lehmann or Ataman is a potato or a misanthrope. This is the language of cultural revolutionaries, not politicians who want to take a society on the long road to change.

One thing is certain. When the Ministry of Wokeness has realized its program, the Republic will be unrecognizable in some places.

Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)

Rockstar

07-03-22, 09:37 AM

https://youtu.be/8jDUVtUA7rg

Jimbuna

07-03-22, 12:20 PM

^ Confirms what I already knew or in some instances suspected was the case.

Catfish

07-06-22, 08:26 AM

"German industry is grinding to a halt"
For the first time in a generation, the country has an export deficit

https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/german-industry-is-grinding-to-a-halt

Jimbuna

07-06-22, 11:29 AM

In truth, the German industrial export machine was fuelled by cheap energy from Russia – and that fuel could soon run dry, as Wolfgang Münchau wrote in last week’s magazine. For most of the post-war era, Germany has prided itself on very low inflation, a stable currency, and a huge trade surplus. Right now, it has a very Italian or Greek mix of 8 per cent inflation, a crumbling currency, and a rising trade deficit. Many other countries are used to that, but for Germans it will come as a shock.

Sounds about right imho

Catfish

07-07-22, 02:47 AM

While energy minister Habeck tries to bail out crumbling gas companies (Uniper now has a loss of 900 million Euros per month), the bills for energy in form of gas will probably be 900 percent higher towards the end of the year.

While electric energy, its prices and scarcity can of course be blamed on the green ideas of banishing nuclear and coal altogether, even the greens are now doing what is needed for immediate survival and reactivating this 'obsolete' technology.
Bad idea to switch to a new technology, that does not yet exist in numbers necessary to make up for the losses..

Other energy sources like the russian gas deliveries breaking away cannot be absorbed as "easily" though. Norway and Finland can help and do this, also the US via LPG, but probably not to the amount needed to keep prices halfways stable. Interesting times ahead ..

Jimbuna

07-07-22, 05:58 AM

Good luck with that Kai.....my monthly energy bill went up yesterday from £70 to £163

Skybird

07-07-22, 09:41 AM

The Russia sanctions and Corona measures are having their full effect, ending Germany's business model: The world export champion has been relegated to the 2nd Bundesliga. The export surplus has been pulverized to just a marginal 0.5 billion euros in May. This means that the trade surplus in the first five months of 2022 fell by 70.7 percent year-on-year.

Germany is losing massive productivity and competitiveness, which will cost jobs, social security and prosperity. Who should be the number and transfer master in Europe in the future to steadily save the EU and the euro?

Italy? France? Spain? Joking aside, Germany will no longer be able to afford it if you destroy its industrial base and have no new one. One has catapulted oneself into the sidelines by political wrong decisions and a hubris. The question that then arises: Will the EU and the euro survive?

The chances are dwindling in parallel with the economic destruction of the German economy. Which would bring even more dislocation. So we see a vicious circle that reinforces each other. A solution is not in sight far and wide. Quite the contrary.

If we were to be honest, we would have to admit that we are standing in front of the shambles of a grandly failed energy policy that was ideologically blinded, pulled through come hell or high water. While we switch off, everyone else switches on. The fact that the EU has now also classified gas and nuclear as "green" with the taxonomy is a gong on the 12 and the total declaration of bankruptcy of the German energy policy of recent years. It must also be admitted that the Russia sanctions have failed and are hitting us the hardest, while Putin is earning more money than ever with his gas and oil sales.

We must not forget: Germany is dependent on cheap raw materials and their availability. While we are losing the basis for our economy and security of supply, other countries such as India, China, Brazil and Turkey are only too happy to buy the important raw materials from Russia. Which brings us back to the issue of competitiveness and productivity. It is particularly amusing that India resells Russian gas to us at a higher price. You can't make this up....

The former draught horse of the German economy, the car manufacturers, can be held up as a prime example of the decline. In 2021, production already fell by 11.7% to lose another 2.9% year-on-year in the first half of the year. Whether our car companies will complete the transformation process and survive is written in the stars. Likewise, whether the mobile future is actually electric and where the electricity required for this (I won't even start on the raw materials) is actually supposed to come from? The fact is that neither the sun nor the wind are currently capable of providing a base load.

"What a time to be alive. This English saying is truer than ever, because we are living history. Everyone can feel it: the turning point is in full swing and things are crumbling on all sides. In view of this overall situation, I find it particularly sporting that German politicians are now taking 2 months off for a relaxed summer vacation, while we are in the midst of the biggest crisis in decades due to war, inflation, energy crisis and broken supply chains - much of which the summer vacationers have brought upon us themselves. "Bella Ciao"

Marc Friedrich is a bestselling author and financial expert. His new bestseller The Greatest Opportunity of All Time was chosen by Buchreport as the most successful business book of 2021. I red another book by him some years ago: very competent, but worrying to read already back then.

Skybird

07-12-22, 08:12 AM

Some interesting background on Hendryk Broder. I leave the German link, everybody who is interested, can translate it via Google or DeepL.

https://www.nzz.ch/feuilleton/henryk-m-broder-deutschland-lebt-nicht-in-der-wirklichkeit-ld.1692744

Die ersten Wochen waren durch den Wunsch bestimmt, die Ukrainer mögen ehrenvoll verlieren. Sie sollen bitte aufhören, weil es die Deutschen beschämt, dass es so ein Volk wie die Ukrainer, das sich selbst verteidigt, überhaupt gibt.

Jimbuna

07-14-22, 10:55 AM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v8Rgm7YWeNA

Jimbuna

07-17-22, 08:36 AM

Olaf Scholz accused of breaking Nato promise

Olaf Scholz, the German chancellor, has been accused of breaking a landmark promise to boost defence spending to meet Nato’s two per cent target following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Three days after the war began on Feb 24, Mr Scholz vowed that Germany would immediately start spending more on its underfunded military, winning acclaim for pronouncing the start of a “new era”.

“From now on, we will invest more than two per cent of gross domestic product in our defence every year,” he said.

But a new financial plan by Christian Lindner, the finance minister, which will run until 2026, shows Germany will not even get close to the Nato target for several years.

The budget is “a stark contrast to the Chancellor’s announcements”, Ingo Gadechens, a CDU politician who spent more than 30 years in Germany’s navy, told Bild.

Defence spending will be equal to only 1.5 per cent of GDP in 2022, according to the government, rising to a maximum of 1.7 per cent in 2023. Only over a five-year average does the finance ministry hope to edge closer to fulfilling its two per cent pledge.
https://www.msn.com/en-gb/money/other/olaf-scholz-accused-of-breaking-nato-promise/ar-AAZE4Pl?ocid=mailsignout&li=BBoPWjQ

Skybird

07-17-22, 08:55 AM

Didnt I warn everybody to take that pathetic promise serious, and that I dont believe it before I see it?

Jimbuna

07-17-22, 09:58 AM

You most certainly did :yep:

Catfish

07-17-22, 03:47 PM

As said before i cannot eat enough to vomit (as the cause demands) :nope:

Skybird

07-17-22, 04:25 PM

And I dont have enough room to set up as many bathtubs as I could fill with vomits every day. :D

Skybird

07-21-22, 05:41 AM

FOCUS writes:

In an interview with the Neue Züricher Zeitung (NZZ), Michael Shellenberger criticizes the German energy turnaround, the role of the Greens and the handling of climate change. For the US-American author, "apocalyptic thinking comes mainly from Germany.

Michael Shellenberger questions central beliefs of the climate movement in an interview with the "NZZ". For the U.S. author, climate change is real "and man-made." Nevertheless, cold would still cause more deaths than the currently prevailing heat waves. The "ecomodernist" bases this on a study in the British journal "The Lancet," in which scientists found that in England and Wales "cold kills over 70 times as many people as heat."

Shellenberger is sharply critical of Germany's energy transition, contradicting ex-Chancellor Angela Merkel, who spoke out as a proponent of phasing out nuclear power, citing hazardous radioactive waste as the reason. "That's not so true," says the U.S. author. During a recent visit to a waste repository in the Netherlands, he says, sufficient waste management solutions were in place. According to Shellenberger, "safety precautions were perfectly observed on site."

"It (nuclear power) is almost without risk," he says, elaborating, "The debate about nuclear power has taken on a spiritual quality. If you imagine that renewables are a positive pole, nuclear is the opposite. Nuclear power is demonic in the mind of the Greens in Germany, renewables are angelic, and fossil fuels are an unfortunate but viable alternative to nuclear power. That's why Germany's Greens decided to keep coal-fired plants in operation longer than nuclear plants."

For Shellenberger, the Greens are "still Marxists" who celebrated their peak in the last elections. He is convinced "that the energy crisis will lead to a decline in support" and sees powerful problems ahead. "If Europe doesn't have adequate energy supplies, there will be social unrest. Governments will fall," Shellenberger said.

One example? The speed limit, of which Shellenberger is no fan. "A reduced speed on the highway would have only a very, very small impact on petroleum consumption and no impact at all on electricity consumption or natural gas consumption," he contends. "Apparently, the Greens need the speed limit in exchange for agreeing to extend nuclear power plant lifetimes. This is symbolic politics."

Shellenberger disagrees with the slogan "We don't have time" shared by German Foreign Minister Annalena baerbock. "That, too, is apocalyptic discourse of the kind we know from cults." He also has a clear opinion on well-known activists. "If you listen to Greta Thunberg or 'Extinction Rebellion,' the conclusion is that we must stop all emissions immediately. But if we stop all energy consumption, we stop civilization."

He calls Germany a negative example in dealing with climate change and the resulting consequences, "The apocalyptic thinking comes mainly from Germany. The German people and government have an alarmist view of climate change, which exists all over the world. CO emissions have been unchanged over the past ten years. So we are successful. So why do people see a catastrophe? I think there are three motivations for this apocalyptic discourse: money, power, and religion. Climate change has become a kind of ersatz religion."

Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)

Jimbuna

07-21-22, 12:59 PM

Germany's leading energy expert says she's living in a nightmare. What's worse, she saw it coming.

For 15 years Claudia Kemfert says she tried to warn politicians and the public that the country was too reliant on Russian energy.

Until recently Germany bought more than half of its gas from Russia. She advised Berlin to find other sources and focus more on renewables. And she warned against the construction of the Nord Stream 1 pipeline through which Germany receives much of its gas.

"That's what I did over the last 15 years, repeating and repeating and repeating. Hoping that what's happened now would never happen," she says, her frustration evident.

Vladimir Putin's decision to, in effect, weaponise Russian gas exports has sent Germany into a tailspin. Moscow has blamed essential maintenance on the Nord Stream pipeline for a recent reduction, then complete shut-off, of supply.

Few in Berlin are buying that. Even fewer believe Russia can be trusted to deliver what Germany needs for the coming winter.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-62234188

Skybird

07-22-22, 12:54 PM

A title too good to be missed. :D From the Neue Zürcher Zeitung.

https://i.postimg.cc/qqwm6PGN/Bubi.png (https://postimages.org/)

Now I am afraid of him. He is so tough.

Catfish

07-22-22, 03:25 PM

Now I am afraid of him. He is so tough.
You should. For other reasons though :D

Skybird

07-22-22, 03:49 PM

Surprise. In Munich, Bavaria, the Greens and the SPD are moving to extend the running time of Bavarian nuclear powerplant Isar-2. So far its just a regional group, not a national move of the whole parties, and many, the majority of the Greens and in the SPD still want to prferer coal and brown coal to nuclear power. But in past days, a few Green voices launched test balloons already with statements that could be interpreted as... well...

The success in Munich still depends on Habeck, however. He wants another powergrid stresstest being run to see whether or not there would be sufficient electrical power in the winter without the three nuclear powerplants. The third such test. since the war began.

Poland meanhwile mentioned it "wants" to lease the three remaining german reactors. Of course that is unrealistic and they know it, but they mercilessly put the finger in the obvious wound of German idiocy over this issue.

This May, Germany has burned more gas for creating power than in any May since world war 2. :doh: 3 nuclear powerplants still make up for 6% of the total power production in Germany, and if these get shut down, there is no replacement for these 6% from renewables. Only coal and browncoal. The latter getting reactivated currently.

Any other environment-killing solution - just no zero-emission nuclear power! Its evil! It kills!

Fact is nuclear energy has costed practically as few lives as renewables (accidents of construction workers and the likes), and that means: far less than coal, brown coal, gas or oil (deseases caused by emissions). And that calculation includes the victims of Chernobyl and Fukushima. The kill rate of fossil energy production ranks hundreds and thousands of times above that of nuclear power..

A German spoeciality: being afraid of the wrong things, while not being afraid of the things one should be afraid of. The Germans excel in this discipline, due to to their as I call it so often: hysterical romanticism.

Catfish

07-22-22, 04:00 PM

They said weeks ago they consider to let the remaining nuclear "switched on" to produce electric energy and make up for gas loss, so not really surprising. There is no other solution.

What surprises me is Habeck and Baerbock, what makes me angry is Scholz.

at 8:56 ff. :03: she's talking tacheles

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XB-5miVUf3I

Skybird

07-22-22, 05:10 PM

Habeck said aearly on he would look into extending nuclear runnign times. and sicne then he had put both feet on the breaks, even deceived the public over what the industry said (and th idnsutry said they could get nucl,ear fuel as early as within 6 months and not form Russia, and that they said already in the first half of Aporil: no word on that by Habeck, he indee cclkaiemd extaclty hte opposite, that the "experts" said it wouldf nto be diable and managable and for this and for that and a million othe rreaosns extenbding the runnign time were ot possible).

Don't fall for Habeck! He sells failure as success and fishes off people's sympathy by posing only. Its all facade only, in the end he is just as left-lenaign as the whole Green party and GAL always has been: so left that one could call it Marxism indeed.

And Baerbock? Has nothign to seel, and has no means of power, she plays for a weka team that is depenbding and still claims to be superior, but as so often before, Russia and its vulnerability to sanctions, financial erosion and economic collapse has been massively overestimated. The sam ehapepned 2014/2015, and on various minor occaisons before. Baerbpock wants to repalkce relaism with moralism, and in that she is a Valkyrie, but a Valkyrie of words only - she has no sowr,d no spear, no shield, no armour and no horse. And when I see what she wnats beyond the ukraine war, I am thankful that her hands are bound and she cannot do what she started in the elections for and claimed she wanted to do. Her political goals and ideas for how to reeducate society and turn it into a far more left one, are as toxic as the Greens social visions always have been.

To me the Greens are not better than any other party. They all should not exist. I gave the Weizsäcker quote before, and I repeat it: "The political parties have made the state their prey." How discouragingly true! In all Western countries. Germany, Italy, the UK, the US... Everywhere. I only wait for the situation in the US turning into a hot civil - and racial - war. Its absolutely a realistic scenario, imo.

Skybird

07-24-22, 03:29 PM

FOCUS:

Germany is in a self-inflicted energy crisis. The blame falls on all federal governments since the proclamation of the energy turnaround under Chancellor Gerhard Schröder and his Green Party deputy Joschka Fischer. All of them have cemented Germany's structural dependence on fossil fuels. After all, the main goal of Germany's energy transition was not only to promote renewable energies, but also to phase out nuclear power.

This meant that climate-friendly nuclear energy failed as a backup for the increasingly dominant but weather-dependent renewables. No one thought about storage technologies. Coal and Russian natural gas did the job.

The Ampelkoalition (=traffic light government, due to the three colours of the parties, Skybird) didn't change that either. Gas as a backup for renewables formed the backbone of its climate strategy until the Ukraine war. That no longer works. Now Robert Habeck, who wanted to become a climate minister, is mobilizing old coal-fired power plants in his distress. But he won't let go of the nuclear phase-out. For years, nuclear fear was the Greens' most powerful mobilization tool. So close to the historic victory over German nuclear power, they don't want to admit that this path may have been wrong.

This creates self-contradictions. We don't have a power problem, the government says, but recommends that companies buy emergency generators. Every kilowatt-hour of electricity is haggled over to save gas-fired generation - but 33 billion kilowatt-hours of nuclear power that our last nuclear plants can produce per year are supposedly irrelevant.

The failure of reactors in France is bemoaned as a destabilizing factor - but the highly reliable purring German plants, 4200 megawatts of secure generating capacity, are to be shut down in the middle of winter. But the availability of this power could make the difference between stability and grid collapse.

Only a revolutionary act can help out of this danger: Away with the nuclear phase-out. "Nuclear fear - No thanks! :03:" This act would have two advantages: Energy security and credibility. We would have more electricity in the grid - and politicians could convincingly link the climate goal with security of supply instead of playing them off against each other. After all, nuclear power has the same carbon footprint as wind power - but runs as reliably as coal.

Six German nuclear power plants are theoretically still operational because they have operating licenses, and three of them are on the grid. The first thing the federal government would have to do is sit down with the operators and take a technical inventory: How much electricity could the operating reactors, and possibly the revitalized ones, contribute? Have any interventions been made in the plants shut down in 2021 that would stand in the way of restarting them? How can we prepare plants and personnel to resume power operations? The government could commission its own expert body, the Reactor Safety Commission, which it has so far left to its own devices, to provide technical support.

At the same time, it would have to introduce a bill to amend the Atomic Energy Act in the Bundestag. This would allow the nuclear power plants to regain or extend their authorization to operate. In parallel, the power companies could already order new fuel elements. For the transition, the plants would have to make do with stretch operation and newly assembled reactor cores from existing fuel assemblies until the summer of 2023. Industry sources say that in an emergency, new fuel assemblies could be delivered in less than a year.

At the same time, the line ministries should proclaim the most important message: Evidence instead of nuclear fear! The Reactor Safety Commission certifies that our plants are not threatened by a Fukushima thanks to their robust protection against weather extremes and power outages. They are also immune to crashes of large commercial aircraft.

At the operating nuclear power plants, there have been no compromises in safety because of the phase-out date, with mandatory testing and maintenance being performed as usual. In plants shut down in 2021, these testing cycles would have to be resumed, unless they are still in operation anyway. The "periodic safety review" to be made up in some plants is a higher-level analysis procedure. It is performed during operation to gain additional insight into plant safety, but does not necessitate a plant shutdown.

The energy emergency dictates: It is now high time to initiate the lifetime extension. It should extend into the mid-2030s to give operators and workforces planning security. After all, the lack of secure and at the same time climate-friendly power plant capacity will be the dominant issue of the energy transition for years to come.

Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (http://www.DeepL.com/Translator) (free version)

Three active and three additional powerplants that could be reactivated. German govenrment, get your stupid hea dout of your lower back. The industry told Habeck already in early April they could get new nculear fuel, and not for Russia, before end of the year. Habeck lies about it to the German public since then, claiming it could only be gotten from Russia, and would take until next spring to get any. He lies.

The whole German bailout from nuclear energy was a hilarious stupid idea from all beginning on. Not a shot just in the foot - more a shot through the head.

-----------

On a sidenote, I tried to buy more petroleum (for petroleum ovens) of cleaning grade 5 for my parents, their heating is still on gas. Grade 5, because that is so purified and cleaned that correctly burned it does not smell after an 3-5 minutes ignition phase anymore (telling by experience). The lower the grade, the nastier it smells. I cannot get any grade 5 petroleum in Germany anymore, and even internationally my suppliers that I used in the past have dried out, in Italy, Belgium - the traders there where I ordered cannisters of 20l in the past months said they have none anymore - and that the Germans have bought them all. Last autumn, getting electricty independent petroleum heaters like certain Zibro models (Japanese market leader) were easy to get, today it is an emptied market. The prices for low quality petroleum nevertheless have gone through the ceiling. Last year,. I bought grade 5 cannisters for at best just under 55 Euros. Today I would need to accept stink brew grade 4 and 3 costing twice that price.

Skybird

07-25-22, 07:01 AM

https://www.economist.com/europe/2022/07/21/germans-have-been-living-in-a-dream

The story is old and takes many forms. A fairy-tale version, recorded two centuries ago by the Brothers Grimm, tells of a certain Karl Katz, a goatherd in the Harz Mountains of central Germany. One night a straying goat leads Katz deep into a cave. Tempted by strange men, he drinks a potion and falls asleep. On waking he finds that not hours, but years have passed. The world around him has changed.

Skybird

07-27-22, 06:25 AM

How true. The Neue Zürcher Zeitung writes:

Germany's Perceived Poverty - Don't Worry, Politics Helps

In Germany, much hardship is homemade and imported, but the true causes of the loss of prosperity are ignored. About a country between perceived poverty and imagined wealth.

Germany is a rich country that affords itself a lot of poverty. This is the complaint between Kiel and Konstanz, which is being voiced all the louder as the gas emergency and elections draw nearer. And elections are always looming somewhere in the federal republic. And the CDU and CSU are no longer willing to be inferior to the SPD in the competition for the biggest spenders. Bavaria's Prime Minister Söder is now topping the SPD with a demand for a "winter housing allowance" for everyone. And all together they discovered the pensioners as needy, to whom one would have to transfer compellingly likewise an "energy lump sum" of 300 euro. For it there is wide agreement. No one is to be left out in the cold when the warm rain of money comes down.

Pensioners make up a third of the electorate

This is curious in that no senior generation is better off than the current one. Only about 3 percent of the 21 million pensioners are dependent on basic benefits. And this is despite the fact that private assets may not even be taken into account when calculating need. This income, such as interest, dividends or rent, also remains hidden from pension insurers. As a result, even the senior citizen who was registered as an assistant in the family business as a mini-jobber in order to be covered by social insurance at low cost is counted as a small pensioner even if she receives handsome earnings from an apartment building.

This not uncommon example illustrates that indigence in Germany is based less on facts than on ideology. 21 million pensioners make up almost a third of the electorate. So Minister of Labor and Social Affairs Hubertus Heil (SPD) is gifting this group with the highest pension increase in 30 years: 5.35 percent in the West, 6.12 percent in the East. This will cost the pension funds 19 billion euros, with a further 2.6 billion for supplements in the event of reduced earning capacity. The pension at 63, another expensive election bait of the SPD, costs 36 billion euros per year. The trend is upward, because early retirement is popular despite deductions, which at the same time disproves complaints about the plight of pensioners.

At the same time, the media are virtually searching for needy people who can no longer afford rising energy and food prices. Even the Greens, for whom both could not be expensive enough for ecological re-education reasons, are joining in the paternalistic tying up of aid packages. The Green Minister of Agriculture Özdemir, who had complained about the "junk prices," especially for meat, before the invasion of Ukraine, is now worried about "empty refrigerators." Even the frowned-upon vacation trip is suddenly becoming an indicator of poverty. Yet the chaos at airports and long traffic jams testify to the opposite. Nor are the hungry bellies crowding the buffets of cruise ships, whose most loyal customers include the supposedly needy senior citizens.

Germany reaches its limits

Nor are the complaints of the charitable food banks about a lack of supplies coupled with growing demand for (almost) free food an indicator of growing poverty. On the one hand, these aid campaigns have stimulated demand themselves by increasing supply; on the other hand, it is worth taking a look at the clientele. German is hardly spoken in these social institutions: A not inconsiderable part of the "new poverty" now so loudly lamented is imported. But anyone who mentions this is immediately silenced in Germany as a "racist," "xenophobe" or even a "fascist. Figures, if they are collected at all, remain a secret. Even Friedrich Merz, who as CDU chairman is trying to project a liberal image, no longer repeats his statement that without immigration there would be "one million fewer Hartz IV recipients".

Although Germany is reaching its breaking point not only in terms of the railroads, the traffic light government wants to make immigration into the social systems even more attractive.

At the same time, the SPD and the Greens want to raise Germany's maximum taxation even further, [Germany is the highest taxing country in the world already now, Skybird]which means that the highly talented people in demand will give Germany an even wider berth in the future. This can also be seen in the 131,000 naturalizations last year, which rose by another 20 percent: It is mainly Syrians, Turks, Romanians and Poles who are receiving German passports. Not Swiss, Americans or citizens from other wealthy countries. This is where the talented Germans are drawn to. [Germany has since many years a massive brain drain that is kept a secret in politics and media, Skybird].

This universally propagated generous welcome culture is not only due to the claim to finally be the world champion of humanity. There is also a political calculation behind it: the more poverty can be proven with questionable statistics, the easier it is to redistribute from top to bottom. At the same time, the social market economy can be denounced as cold neoliberalism and the socialist planned economy can be pushed forward. In Munich, 3850 euros net for a four-person household is considered the "poverty risk threshold."

Reasons for the loss of prosperity

Of course, more and more people in Germany are also affected by a loss of prosperity. Rapidly rising costs for energy, housing and inflation are reducing disposable income even in the upper middle class. But in all this, people act as if Putin, epidemics (Corona) or greedy speculators (oil industry) were to blame. Not a misguided energy turnaround that shuts down nuclear and coal-fired power plants without replacement; not an ECB that engages in forbidden state financing with a flood of money and creates price bubbles; and not a sprawling welfare policy that creates an illusion of care for itself as a major sponsor of all perceived emergencies. In the last three years alone, Berlin has incurred an additional half a trillion euros in debt for this purpose. Adding all payment obligations, these now amount to 14.7 trillion euros, as financial scientists have calculated. The pension burdens for civil servants alone, who at an average of more than 3,000 euros a month are three times higher than social pensioners, add up to 2.7 trillion euros. And a deep recession is only just beginning.

Living beyond their means

That is why the second narrative is not true either: Germany is nowhere near as rich as it feels. The federal, state and local governments have been living beyond their means for years. From education to the federal railroad, much is in a sorry state. Despite constantly rising tax revenues. But these are primarily spent on social welfare, i.e. consumed instead of invested. Every fourth euro earned in Germany goes into social pots.

The idea of reordering priorities and limiting oneself to the essentials does not occur to anyone in the country that is still so fond of Ludwig Erhard. Instead: Don't worry, politics will help. State and local governments do not reconsider their stately spending programs, but only ever demand that the federal government help. This creates a culture of sacrifice in which every achievement creates new shortcomings, as can be seen in particular in the former GDR. It is never enough.

For example, the federal minister of social affairs, Heil, wants to reward non-work with significantly higher Hartz IV [a German social wellfare scheme, Skybird] rates, even though the economy is desperately looking for personnel. This contradiction is felt especially by voters of the former Labor Party. The upwardly mobile middle class knows that it is footing the bill for ever new aid programs from which it hardly benefits itself. Meanwhile, their savings are losing value due to inflation and a screwed-up energy policy. Only the Greens secretly see Germany's creeping deindustrialization as a success on the road to climate neutrality. Where it suits them, they turn to the devoted Christian Democrats.

The SPD, on the other hand, is collapsing even in its own heartlands of the Ruhr region, which have been abandoned to poverty migration from southeastern Europe. The departure from Agenda 2010, with which former Chancellor Schröder, who had fallen out of favor because of his friendship with Putin, reformed the country, has not paid off for the SPD. And certainly not for Germany. Yet the Social Democrats would have to dare more Schröder in order to win back the middle class, which still believes in pay through performance. But courageous reformers have no voice in Germany.

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

Germany is in steep decline, and the fall is irreversible, I am quite sure. And the cream on top of it: it is without need, and willed by ourselves. We want it so. We have nobody but oursleves to hold responsible for the mess.

That says a awesome lot of what you ever need to know about the Gemans.

Catfish

07-27-22, 07:53 AM

Skybird

07-27-22, 08:20 AM

It is not so bad once a) the transformation to solar and other renewable energy has been achieved (not so soon i guess :03:)
or b) energy sector is switched to nuclear energy (probably not done due to the greens, at least until they begin to hunger or freeze).

As soon as energy for industry and private households is being produced by nuclear power even the electric heating of houses would be possible and not too expensive. Like they do it in France.
And do not say electrical heating is not ecological feasible, after all all the greens want to switch all to electric cars. I guess the energy for all that just comes out of the wall plugs, nothing to worry about.

https://www.focus.de/politik/deutschland/analyse-von-ulrich-reitz-rolle-rueckwaerts-bei-atom-jetzt-wird-klar-wie-uns-die-gruenen-das-verkaufen-wollen_id_123767281.html

It looks as if the Greens are falling. Now we need to make it not just a temporary, but a lasting, and to-be-increased solution.

Wind and solar have the problem they are not capable to provide stability that is independent from weather and climate, and they are not Grundlastfähig, as we call it in German. Nuclear must be added. Instead the Greens so far want to reactivate charcoal, brown coal (!). How green is that?

One threat there is in nuclear energy, and that is cooling water. Many reactors in france currently are down due to lacking cueling water, their rivers already are too warm. I do nto know to what degree latest reatcor tehcnolgy exiosts that can redcue the need for cooling water, using other colling agents: liquid salt and such.

Elements for nuclear fuel must not come form Rosatom, RUS, but in fact can be delivered from the US, Canada, Australia, Africa - Germany could even produce its own.

We also have gas, and not even just little bits of it, that waits to get fracked. If done, we would be able to produce gas until far into he next century. I did not know that until recently, but now I learned about it.

Diese verdammte Technikfeindichkeit in Deutschland und bei den Grünen... But when it is abotu technology that can be abused for surveillance of citizens, remote controlling their households, and making their consummation habits transparent to the state, they suddenly are for it.

The last Germna company producing rotor blades for windmills, has shut down just days ago. Like solar panels, most of that stuff needed to build windmills now comes form China. For reasons I could not understand even when having a pistol held at my sleeve, they are quite accepting of the idea to move from dependency on Russia into deeper dependency from China. Woudlnt we be better off to stay with Russian gas then? I mean Russian language is easier to learn than Mandarin.

I hope for fusion energy. Until then, its nuclear energy for me - as the main source for energy. Wind and solar to me are additions, not the main players. Its insane to foolishly play around with your energy basics if you are a nation depending on high tech production and industry. Totally insane.

Jimbuna

07-27-22, 11:28 AM

German tanks are worst in Europe, because we believed in peace, - Berbok

In Germany, part of the reserves of its army, in particular tanks, are obsolete.

This was stated by the head of the German Foreign Ministry, Annalena Berbok, in an interview with Radio Liberty, Censor.NET informs.

"We thought and believed that we would live in peace in Europe. And that's why in the past we spent less on our own military defense, you can talk a lot about that, but it's a fact and it's a reality. And that's why it's harder for us to supply from our own reserves , because there is 50-year-old equipment, we thought, for example, that we will never use tanks again," the minister said.

"I mean our military tanks, the worst you can imagine in Europe. It's been like that for the past decades, because Europe was built to live in peace. It's old-fashioned, and our stockpile of weapons now is not what it should be , with the exception of some air defense parts, which I said, so we can't supply everything from our own stocks. So that's the situation," Burbok added.

Catfish

07-28-22, 02:44 AM

^ yes it seems even the greens are waking up, better late than never. Ukraine will get more Gepards/'cheetahs and a deal about 100 PzH 2000 mobile artillery for Ukraine has been signed,; officially acknowledged by KMW. Building will take a while...

Skybird

07-28-22, 03:13 AM

Its unknown what they plan with the 100 to be build howitzers, whether they are for ukraind or not. No exprt öermission so far, they could as well be for the BW. The war in Ukraine teaches the relevance of artillery, and many existing PZHs are in an nonworking state. Also, it takes 2 to 4 years to build them.

Catfish

07-28-22, 05:53 AM

https://m.censor.net/en/news/3356907/german_government_agreed_to_sell_100_pzh_2000_self propelled_guns_to_ukraine

Skybird

07-28-22, 06:29 AM

In past hpurs Ger,mna media indeed said the govenrment had given export permissions for 100 howtzers that should be produced. But the German economy minmstr yuntil now refuses to comemnt and says it neitehr cionfiorms nor denies the reports.- Yetserday ARD and ZDF said that at the time of broadcasting there were no permission for exports given. They also said to produce a PZH2000 from first bureaucratic hurdle-taking to deliver it would take 2- 4 years.

In other words: a typical delay manouver of the Olaf of Bubbles.

The Ukriane also has ordere drtoe than just one ISIS systems for air defence that Bubble-Olaf promised them - and then delayed its delivery to Decembre, give and take some time. The Ukraine wa sinvited to orde rmore directly at the Ger,mna industry, and these orders were placed already weeks ago. The idnustzry now compolaisn that the chnacellors office refuses any communication regarding export permissions on these additional orders - since weeks.

There are some reports however that slowly mroe and more politicians consider the delivery of German MBTs from industry reserves. I tend to think that this woud amke sense. If the Russians have big problems with the vulnerabilities of T-72s, then the Ukrainians must have thes eproblems, too. The T-72 has such deep-rooting design and quality issues that they cannot be corrected by updates as seen in recent 20 years. And I find it hard to believe that it takes months and months to train tankers on Leopard-1s and 2s. There are big difefrence sin taregbtting optics and sensor handling, yes, you can check these in SBP wonderfully, but still: its no black magic. I think in can be done in not more time than it takes to train them on the PZH2000. A German tank general, retired said some weeks ago that in his time they learned to drive and shoot with the Leopard-1 in 1-2 weeks. In SBP at least I found firing with the Leopard-1 slightly more dem,anding than with the Leopard 2A4, and easiest with the Leopard 2A5. Its about the handling of the targetting aids in the optics. Aiming/shooting with the Leopard-2 in SBP is easier than in the Abrams. What I want to say with this,. is just this: I have a hard time to believe those hesitating sceptics who claim it takes months and months to train crews used to the T-72 to drive and fight with the Leopards, I do not believe this. The nonly limiting factor I consider is that the drivers tzraditionally are the ones who also must serve as repair engioneers int he field, when the tanbk has mechnaicla issues or lost a track. To fix such things on the fly, that to learn indeed may take more time and experience.

But it is not the right time to be picky.

Before you laugh about my comparison to SBP: some NATO countries have built training centres around that software, and that software alone compelte with intero9cnnected classrom training and hardware cabins.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_O6_qrgA-eQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OOYqTauIr9s

Skybird

07-28-22, 06:39 AM

They have some new videos illustrating some of the weapons that newly are used on the battlefield in the Ukraine, the same models or at least similiar weapon categories, like loitering ammunitions. New version 4.3 coming this summer.

https://www.youtube.com/c/eSimGamesDtl/videos

Jimbuna

07-28-22, 09:55 AM

The German city of Hanover has turned off the heating and switched to cold showers in all public buildings because of the Russian gas crisis.

It's the first big city to turn off the hot water after Russia dramatically reduced Germany's gas supply.

Germans have been told to expect sweeping gas reduction measures and extra charges on their energy bills.

And the EU has agreed to lower demand for Russian gas this winter by 15%.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-62335911

Skybird

08-01-22, 01:11 AM

Justice Minister Marco Buschmann (FDP) and Family Minister Lisa Paus (Greens) present the key points of the new self-determination law: At the registry office, anyone over the age of 14 can determine their own name and gender - even without a sex change. You can change your gender up to once a year. And: Anyone who, for example, names a person's old name after a change (deadnaming) must expect a fine.

Compare to just a few weeks ago:

The Humboldt University in Berlin cancels the lecture of a female scientist at short notice before the "Lange Nacht der Wissenschaften 2022". The biologist and doctoral student at HU, Marie-Luise Vollbrecht, is not allowed to give her lecture "Geschlecht ist nicht gleich Geschlecht. Sex, Gender and why there are only two genders in biology" because she wanted to deduce evolutionary biology, why there are only two genders from a biological point of view and that biological sex (sex) and gender roles (gender) are different things. This is too much science for some activists who call themselves "Arbeitskreis kritischer Jurist*innen an der Humboldt Uni Berlin", accuse the biologist of "transphobia" and threaten to see each other "on the street". Therefore, the university cancels the lecture because of "security concerns". Ideology beats biology.

Skybird

08-04-22, 05:51 AM

Berlin's Grunewald in flames.:Kaleun_Crying:

Thats as if the Central Park in New York would be burning.

Saddening. The forests and lakes in Berlin are one of the few good things the city has to offer. I tremendously enjoyed staying and wandering around there.

A police blast site was the starting point of the fire. Of the explosive devices still stored on the site, some have already gone off uncontrolled, making an approach dangerous.

The east of Germany is repeatedly affected by the most severe droughts and hot spells in Germany, a hotspot. The forests are dry tinder, the ground completely parched.

I know the place and the surrounding forest area. If the weather, the wind, opposes the emergency forces, they still get real problems, especially since it's Berlin.... :D If the wind has a good day, they are lucky. Today, a particularly intense heat front is supposed to pass over Germany. The main thing is that any crazy local politicians and administrative dorks do not straddle the emergency forces from the side.

Several fire sources were identified. The fires are currently spreading uncontrollably, they say they currently do not try to extinguish the flames, reason unknown, I assume lacking capacities and risk from explosives in the ground. Could be they need to let the fire widening before they move in on it, so that all explosives have gone off. And that gives the fire huge opportunities. They cannnot let it widening forever. However, its Berlin, so...

Famous AVUS motor highway and a nearby railtrack are completely shut down. The traffic situaton in Berlin could become interesting today.

https://www.tagesspiegel.de/images/tagesspiegel/28574392/1-format1007.jpg

Jimbuna

08-04-22, 06:36 AM

Looks like the game of 'silly buggas' continues.

Russian energy giant Gazprom says it is impossible to take back a turbine that is vital for gas supplies to Europe due to Western sanctions.

The 12m (40ft) turbine is stranded in Germany after returning from Canada where it was repaired.

Berlin insists the equipment is not affected by sanctions and accuses Russia of not honouring its contracts for political reasons.

On Wednesday, Chancellor Scholz paid a visit to the Siemens Energy factory where the turbine is stranded, and said the turbine was ready to be shipped back to Russia at any time.

"But someone needs to say: I want to have it," he added.

Moscow says it can only reinstall the turbine - and increase gas supply - after it receives documents showing that the turbine does not fall under Western sanctions.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-62408993

Skybird

08-04-22, 09:27 AM

You should have seen Scholz visiting the turbine yesterday. Its a really kind turbine, they say, it must be great to meet it and chat with it, also telling the experts whether or not it is working or not. This chancelloring person knows, and it/he/she does and gets thigns done! And little Bubble-Olaf stood there, and VERY pressingly said that this shows that the Russians have REALLY no reason to not take it back, and that it is all just show - I watched him in disbelief that he was not shy to make himself looking like an idiot once again, I just almost waited and expected him to swing a pathetic fist and stomp his angry feet on the ground, instead he stood there like a preacher, hands folded, and obviously had no idea whatsoever of anything, somethign, whatever. It was a hilarious, almost pitiful sight to see. And he does not even realise what impression he gives to the cameras! Sometimes I can only feel sorry for this pathetic figure, but then I remember how mercilessly greasy he has been throughout his career, shirking any responsibility and always sneaking away and weaseling out. A sloganeer and dazzler of the very first order. A decal of a state-supporting personality. A failed caricature.

Logically, he earned nothing but scorn and mockery and ridicule. The Achse des Guten posted a selection of bitterly ironic, sarcastic comments to an article about the event:

Men staring at turbines

Let it be said that the Chancellor can only grin smurfily and has no sense of humor. That's not true. He just lacks a sense of unintentional humor.

In the gas dispute with Russia, Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD) on Wednesday inspected the turbine for the Nord Stream 1 pipeline, which is being temporarily stored in Mülheim an der Ruhr on its way from Canada to Russia. How now? Didn't Vice Chancellor Habeck already say two weeks ago that the turbine was at Gazprom and that the technical problems were just faked?

By circumventing its own embargo, the clever German government is playing a trick on Putin from which he won't recover for a long time. "By supplying the turbine, we called Putin's bluff," he said. "He can no longer use this pretext or put forward technical reasons for failing to deliver gas."

Now the chancellor himself has visited the gas turbine at Siemens in Erlangen. You can't make this stuff up, and even the weekly show wouldn't have come up with such a crazy idea. Readers and twitterers are having pure fun with this cabaret act. On RP Online, a reader comments, "What nonsense is this Scholz talking about, when he visits the turbine in Mühlheim, it can't very well be delivered to Russia at the same time." And on Twitter, a rj comments on the corresponding Tagesschau report: "I thought he was still on vacation? Wish Turbine lots of fun, take a selfie, he'll never come back."

Particularly entertaining are the almost 900 reader comments on a Welt Online article, they come with delicious humor, here is a small selection:

Wilfried F.: Someone has a screw loose in this game. It's not the turbine.

Georg G.: Humor is when you laugh anyway! I could cringe at the following image: Scholz in his overalls smurfing through the turbine and then certifying that the part is fine!

Harald W.B.: And next week also Mr. Habeck must visit the turbine. On it the week it is then officially adopted by the party executive committees of SPD and Greens to the departure to Russia.

Hassan Liebeaus B.: Men staring at turbines. Coming soon to your cinema

Angelika A.: Build a museum around this turbine and charge admission. This message has comedian format and is cabaret at its best.

Fabian S. I am curious about the meeting with the turbine. It's good to know each Turbine personally.

Hans D.: Sure, we'll visit a turbine. What comes after that? We visit a nuclear power plant and a wind turbine.

Marc D.: The chancellor visits enz turbine:in. Or turbine end? [Refering to typical German gender-correct Schwachkopf-Neusprech, Skybird] Please clarify urgently before this big event.

Holger D.: Visiting things is supposed to work wonders. Perhaps the chancellor should consider kissing the turbine? It is supposed to be a very nice turbine. It will probably be painted in rainbow colors.

Matthias K.: Now we know why the turbine is still in Germany: Scholz was on vacation in the Allgäu and only after his return an appointment was found in which he can announce with the Siemens Energy boss at a photo session that the famous turbine will first go on a tour of Germany so that everyone can say goodbye.

Rebellion Extinction: If necessary, the turbine could be fenced in and admission charged? Students pay half of the entrance fee.

Thomas S.: If the turbine is transported by German Railways, it might take some time.

Heiko M.: Maybe it is a very beautiful turbine and worth seeing.

Johannes H.: Are there also public viewing dates? Or will one be able to admire the turbine during a slow drive, through the whole of Germany?

Ralph A.: I have been waiting for my new car for quite some time. Could Mr. Scholz take a look at where it is?

Skybird

08-04-22, 10:01 AM

What had already been foreshadowed recently has now been confirmed: after Habekc's media-effective trip to Qatar and his loud-mouthed announcement that the Qataris would act as saviors of Germany's energy misery, it now turns out that not only were there and are no contracts, but also that the so-called non-binding "partnership declaration" has completely collapsed like a house of cards. "Aus die Maus." The Qataris were not prepared to accept Germany's terms for a deal on gas or hydrogen, and obviously had no need to respond to the restrictions and time limits that the needy Germans had in mind.

At the time, Habeck lied to the German public about the results of his propagandistically hyped trip.

Why am I not a bit surprised?

Skybird

08-10-22, 08:21 AM

First voices ask what Germany will do about not the next winter - but the winter in two years. Because if Russia does not deliver gas, in spring 2023 the German results will be empty, and despoite lng terminals and repalcmeents sought for, Germany will not be able to build sufficvient reserves for the winter 2023/24. In other words, the seocnd winter from now on is set to become much worse than the winter ahead of us in 2022/23.

To help ourselves by starting to produce our own gas (as is possible) and to extend the use of nuclear energy, still is beign ruled out. Juzst days agao the goivenrment of Lower Saxony has categorically ruled out to extend the use of powerplant Lingen(Emsland), and the fracking of Germany's not small gas reserves also i still beign categorially ruled out. Instead one expects other nations to make sacrifices and provides Germany the energy it rejects to produce itself.

The industry said already in April they could manage to complete delivery of new nuclear fuel by Octobre this year if they would place orders now (=then). The govenrment since then wasted four and a half months, doing nothing, and still doing nothing. Now the dleoivery times have been extended again, globally. If orders for nuclear fuel would be placed now, they will most likely come too late to help preventing power outages in winter when hundreds of thousand of newly bought electric heaters will be switched on simultaneously.

In the coming days, the ships on river Rhine will no longer be able to pass certain key points where the water has dropped below 40cm. (!) Then coal and oil cannot be transported to powerplants anymore. And the railroad? Is in the poorest shape it was ever in during my whole lifetime, and already in better shape was not able to replace shipping of these quantities of coal via waterways.

Hehehe! Deutschland schafft sich ab. Self-made and self-inflicted.

I hope that this winter there will be a real crack and creak in the woodwork and that many people will be seized by the great jitters - from cold and from naked fear - and that there will be a serious crisis. I really hope so: because it seems that only hard lessons of suffering can bring about necessary learning and adaptation processes to reality. So far, ideology and hubris still beats the necessary will to adapt, and politics is still in self-destruction mode in order not to have to give up cherished ideologisms and delusions and not to have to admit that one was on the wrong track for years and decades.
Nobody takes the German energy turnaround as a model - the others are not that stupid! Germany is the lauhging joke of the world.

Jimbuna

08-10-22, 08:48 AM

Germany is the lauhging joke of the world.

Only after we rid ourselves of Boris :)

Skybird

08-16-22, 06:29 AM

The Rhine at Duisburg...

https://www.tagesspiegel.de/images/news-bilder-des-tages-rhein-bei-duisburg-extremes-niedrigwasser-rheinpegel-bei-168-cm-tendenz-fallend-nach-der-lange/28602886/1-format1007.jpg

... and Köln

https://www.tagesspiegel.de/images/der-rhein-bei-bei-koeln-bei-starkem-niedrigwasser-der-rheinpegel-ist-gefallen-auf-82-cm-und-faellt-weiter-die-lange-duer/28602884/1-format1007.jpg

They say gas is a problem. I object to that. I say: soon electrical power will be our greatest problem.

The ideology-driven Schwachkopf-regime still refuses to consider ordering new nuclear fuel and extend the runnign time of three to be shut down powerplants and reatuvating threee others that from the technical side is in a state that this is possible.

The governmental suicide squad also still refuses to consider fracking German gas of which we seem to have so much that it would keep us afloat until far into the next century.

Bubble-Olaf did not like what the Norwegian government told him: that Norway cannot produce more gas and that it is not willing to agree short-termed contracts of limited duration as the Germans wanted them.

The suicide squad in Berlin still rates ideology and party illusions above state reason, rationality and national interest. Not to mention: the common good. "The party, the party over everything, over everything in the world..."

Bubble-Olaf still blocks any European pposiiton to make Russians responmisble for their silent support of the war and Putin. He still tries to marginaölise it by calling it "Putin'S war." Easteuropean and Baltic state viscously object to that naive view, and rightly so.

Berlin still blocks delioveries of amroured troops carriers thsat stand readfy fpor dleiovery by the many dfozens, Belrin doe snto want the ukrainian counteroffenve to run too successfully, so to not "not-appease" their gas master in Moscow. Forgive that word, I only try to follow Bubble-Olaf's illusive, evasive word mastery.

Plenty of super-specific super-clever caöculations done in Germany on what to save in en ergy to make it over so and so muzcn time. What they all desperately ignore is that if Russia sees that the German mind game works, they will just shut down the remaining 20% of transport volumes for gas, too, to make sure that it will not work.

I'm tired of having to look at Habeck's offended face when he announces one more time and then again that Russia won't let itself be defenseless in the face of what Europe is doing and will fight back with means that hurt us. What did this whiner expect...? He tries to bribe the Germans by fishing for sympathy. That is so insidious. I cannot get it why so many Germans fall for him, while he still blocks needed measures to secure even minimums of safe power supply.

Germany would need 30-35 LNG tankers exclusively driving for Germany to cover its trnasportaion needs once the LHNG temrinals are ready next year. The market has not this many free ships. So far, Germany managed to charter 4 such tankers. 4 of 30-36.

Next winter will become far worse than the now coming one.

What remains is whistling alone in the dark forest. I hope that the chillfs from the cold and trembling with fear and financial worries goes deep into the bones of the Germans, so that they finally learn to walk upright and defend themselves against the political caste and rotten ideologues that have brought us to this pass and still try to drive us ever deeper into the mess.

Skybird

08-18-22, 05:21 AM

Die Welt:

Natural gas is actually a scarce and expensive commodity in Germany. Nevertheless, significantly more electricity was produced by gas-fired power plants in July than in the same month last year. While the amount of electricity generated in July 2021 was 3558 gigawatt hours, one year later it was 4036 gigawatt hours. This is an increase of 13.5 percent, according to the Federal Network Agency's electricity market data portal Smard.

In May 2022, the amount of electricity generated was also significantly higher than in the previous year, although in June it was slightly lower. Looking ahead to 2020, the figures for all three months are again well above all the values for 2021 and 2022. Gas-fired power plants, for example, generated 5888 gigawatt hours of electricity in July 2020.

The industry association Zukunft Gas suspects that the reason for the current plus is a sharp increase in demand for electricity from France, where numerous nuclear power plants are currently not on the grid, and from Switzerland, where not as much electricity can currently be produced from hydropower due to the drought.

Already in the second quarter, electricity exports from Germany to France had increased almost six-fold compared to the previous year. In the case of exports to Switzerland, the increase was even more than six times. "These quantities of electricity were probably produced and exported in part with gas-fired power plants," a spokesman told the Deutsche Presse-Agentur.
Federal Network Agency speaks of "solidarity" - and expects gas shortage

In this context, the President of the Federal Network Agency, Klaus Müller, had spoken on the ZDF talk show "Markus Lanz" of an effect that had something to do with "neighborly solidarity", "even if it is not desirable from a gas point of view".

At the same time, Müller believes a gas shortage is likely, at least regionally. "Presumably, the restrictions would first be temporary and can also end again or occur several times," said authority head Klaus Müller to the website "t-online" in an interview published on Thursday. In that case, he said, it would be necessary to ensure that gas was transported well across the country.

To avoid a gas shortage, he said, it must be ensured that gas imports will be larger next year - for example, because the two additional private liquefied natural gas terminals will be ready as early as possible or Germany will receive additional gas from France. "Then we could expect to fill our storage facilities faster again next summer."

Mueller believes it is unlikely that the storage facilities will be nearly full before this winter. "We miss an average fill level of 95 percent by November 1 in all our scenarios. We'll barely manage that because individual storage facilities started from a very low fill level."

----

Skybird says: the fun starts next year. Next summer storage facilities will start from a much lower level than this year. The LNG terminals as planned so far can replace only 20-25% of the Russian gas volume, and the govenrment has managed to find only four available LNG tankers - of a needed 30-35. Also, these tankers need to be filled before they cna unload in Germany, and the avialability of LNG starts to become more difficult than expected (German for: hoped). Quatar: fail. Norway: cannot and do not want to deliver more. US: growing resistance there to keep bigger gas reserves for themselves, longterm perspective of access to that gas, from a German point of view: unclear.

Electricity will become the bigger problem than gas anyway, I think. Europe will not leave the crisis mode any time soon. Not for many years to come.

If ever during the rest of my lifetime. Yes, this time my sense of realism ticks indeed very pessimistic.

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

waterstandings in German rivers still are critically low, some locations report weater levels of "Zero". Ships have started to no longer ship loadings, because it is not economic for them, the costs are not covered anymore, so they stay docked. Ciosts had jumped up high already for shipping, because ships were loadedonly 50%, and less. From some number on the finances just do not click green anymore.

At some points ships sail with less than 30cm water under the keel. :o

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

We got oil last week, and paid twice as much as last time, early January. I got a raise for eletricla power from the Public Utilities, a raise of 20% for electrical power. I expected more, but more can still come later ony.

Its very different in different places in Germany, the rising prices are not equal everywhere, due to public utilities and private providers all manage and budget on their own account and within their own responsibility. With different outcomes, over time.

Skybird

08-18-22, 06:33 PM

NZZ:

It's bizarre: Germany is bailing out Uniper, an energy company majority-owned by the Finnish state, in part through the gas levy. Protecting Uniper's owners is wrong, but it won't change the coming jump in costs for natural gas customers.

German energy giant Uniper, majority-owned by the Finnish state and now reporting a net loss of more than 12 billion euros, has been a resounding failure with its business strategy. Now it is being partially nationalized to the tune of 30 percent and is being rescued from insolvency mainly by the German taxpayer and by German natural gas customers (companies and private individuals) through the planned gas levy. Couldn't there have been a better solution?

The Düsseldorf-based company with its 11,500 employees is, among other things, a major energy trader, buying and selling natural gas and coal, for example. The former E.On subsidiary is now 78 percent owned by the Finnish energy group Fortum, which in turn is almost 51 percent owned by the Finnish state.

For years, Germany's largest gas importer did lucrative business with Russia and cultivated its ties to Moscow. Management praised Russia as a reliable supplier, was one of Gazprom's biggest customers in Europe and played a key role in driving the construction of the Nord Stream 1 and 2 Baltic Sea pipelines.

These businesses are now in ruins. In addition to substantial write-downs, the massive gas supply cuts by Gazprom and Russia in recent weeks and months have become an existential problem. Uniper now has to buy the missing cheap natural gas from Russia very expensively on the market at current prices in order, in turn, to meet its contractual obligations to its own customers, who, however, can still pay the prices contractually agreed before the war. This fact has plunged Uniper, whose customers include over a hundred municipal utilities and industrial companies, into an existential crisis.

Uniper is not alone in distress. Twelve companies are said to have applied for compensation of 34 billion euros in view of the planned gas levy, but more than half of the sum is attributable to Uniper. As a result of the gas levy, private individuals and companies will have to pay 2.42 cents more per kilowatt hour from October onwards, which will mean a borderline burden for many customers - irrespective of the planned reduction in value-added tax on natural gas, which the Chancellor has just announced.

The state-orchestrated stopgap gas surcharge may be economically justifiable, but once again it also creates misaligned incentives. It is wrong to save the owners of Uniper, the shareholders, among whom there are hardly any private investors, from the total loss they have brought on themselves. The same applies to the owners of corporate bonds. The state should have sent the Group into insolvency, but then de facto taken it over and at the same time ensured its smooth operational survival. After the restructuring, it could then have been reprivatized.

Unfortunately, it is unavoidable to continue serving creditors from the corporate world, because Uniper is too interconnected to fail completely. This interconnectedness would otherwise have sent hardly foreseeable shock waves through Europe, including Switzerland, similar to what once happened with the uncontrolled bankruptcy of the investment bank Lehman Brothers.

Furthermore, in an ideal world, only Uniper's customers should have been held accountable for the now higher prices, and not the totality of all natural gas consumers. The same would apply to other distressed natural gas traders and, in turn, to their customers. In this way, customers would also painfully learn to be much more aware of supplier risks in the future.

In the end, however, there was probably no justifiable alternative for the operational rescue of Uniper. This also applies to the planned passing on of the enormously high natural gas prices to private individuals and companies. This is the price Germany has to pay for Russia's attack on Ukraine, the subsequent exchange of blows between the West and Moscow, and above all for its self-inflicted dependence on once cheap Russian natural gas.
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This is the price to be paid for an "energy transformation" that is as blasé and out of touch with reality as it is dreamed up in a planned economy scheme. Have the ladies and gentlemen top experts and know-it-alls at least somehow become more modest and less know-it-all and ideologically whipped up? No. Of course not. They don't need any proofs of their wisdom, and a reality that disproves them doesn't bother them. They "know" that they know better and, above all: they mean well. That beats competence and knowledge any time these days.

Jimbuna

08-20-22, 01:56 PM

^ Crazy times indeed :o

Catfish

08-20-22, 04:21 PM

Germany's chancellor Scholz has outruled further weapone support for Ukraine.
Out of gratitude Putin will stop gas delivery to Germany completely from august 28th to september 2nd.
There should be either a revolution or some of us will see to other means.

Jimbuna

08-21-22, 09:17 AM

Not having a go at Germany Kai but I'd not be very happy either if it was the UK acting in such a manner.

Skybird

08-22-22, 04:56 AM

The Achse des Guten writes:

German illusions at the gas tap

"Illusions, blooming reality," the song says. German politicians also love illusions. Some, for example, can believe so intensely in saving gas supplies that they accept disastrous consequences in return.

My highly esteemed colleague Wolfgang Kubicki [prominent member of the FDP, Skybird] recently called for the Nord Stream 2 pipeline to be put into operation. He concedes that the technical problems with Nord Stream 1 are pretextual, but he says we should not make it so easy for the Kremlin to get away with it. He therefore believes that it is expedient to open Nord Stream 2, because there is no point in "driving Germany up the wall," to put it succinctly.

First of all, I find it extremely welcome that - finally - lively debates are being held again in Germany. This applies explicitly even when opinions are expressed that I do not share or even consider aberrant.

I do not share Kubicki's view for the following reasons:

1. there is agreement insofar as it makes no sense to ruin Germany. I have demonstrably held this view for a long time. For this, it is of fundamental importance to provide the country with a reliable and stable supply of inexpensive energy.

However, the statement that it is clear that the technical problems with Nord Stream 1 are pretextual and the demand on the other hand that Nord Stream 2 be put into operation are contradictory. It is the same way of thinking that concludes that if one wind turbine does not provide enough energy when there is no wind, then build more. Multiplying by 0 is and remains 0.

No gas from two pipelines is also no solution

Since there is apparently agreement that Putin turns on and off the gas tap at will, i.e. that gas deliveries are not reliable, the danger for Germany cited by Kubicki has not been averted by the commissioning of Nord Stream 2. Whether one or two pipelines do not deliver gas, or sometimes more and sometimes less, is irrelevant.

A stable energy supply would therefore not be ensured even with Nord Stream 2. This is wishful thinking at best, but it has also been a characteristic feature of German policy up to now.

The idea expressed by him that one should not make it so easy for the Kremlin is irrelevant with regard to the issue of security of supply. It is a pedagogical consideration, the purpose of which is apparently to convince even the last doubter. Whether this will succeed is rather unlikely. Those who have not understood it so far will not understand it further.

If one wanted to have cheap and reliable energy, there would be various other possibilities. Before these are not exhausted, considerations are forbidden, a state, which leads a war of aggression and this also still in criminal way, additional sources of income to provide. This is by no means a moral consideration, but a foreign and security policy one. It is in our own interest.

With its "dumbest energy policy", Germany has truly earned the worldwide gloating. It is understandable that those who bear responsibility for this policy want to continue it today. A tried and tested means is the presentation of a supposed "lack of alternatives.

This, however, is not the case. The possibility of fracking for gas extraction has been sufficiently pointed out. If fracking had been started immediately in recognition of the turn of the times, the gas problems would have been largely obsolete this winter. The FDP is in government - why didn't they make sure of that? There is still time now, too.

The mendacity of the debate

But there is not only fracked gas, there is also quite "normal" natural gas. Germany's reserves are limited in this respect, but they are enough for this winter and for many more to come. It would be possible to expand existing gas production in the short term. The FDP is in government - why didn't it make sure of that? Here, too, the clock is ticking.

Incidentally, there is still coal seam gas from mines; here, politics shines through inaction. Coal-fired power plants could come back online on a larger scale, nothing is happening.

The mendacity of the debate is made clear by the fact that people are still arguing about the necessity of continuing to operate the last nuclear power plants. Those who exacerbate the problem by shutting down the nuclear power plants see no urgency whatsoever. But then we don't need to talk about Nord Stream 2 at all.

So it is by no means the case that a catastrophic winter has to come. If it does come, it will be because German politicians have not done everything in their power to avert it.

3 The consideration of opening Nord Stream 2 is therefore neither imperative because there would be other ways, nor is it expedient because a reliable gas supply would not be secured even then.

However, such an approach would have significant negative consequences, which have been largely ignored so far. Our partners in the EU (as well as other allies) have insistently tried to dissuade us from an energy policy that weakens us and makes us dependent, but in contrast strengthens a potential and, for all to see, belligerent opponent. Outside Germany, our role is viewed extraordinarily critically across party lines. This is considerably underestimated here. German money was used to build up the Russian war machinery, as were German components. The unwillingness to see Russia as the danger it represents and to counter recognizable dangers inadequately with continued wishful thinking were major factors contributing to this war.

Wishful thinking leads to dependence

Likewise, it is clear that Putin is counting on the effeminate Germans to buckle at the first problems, which would drive a wedge into the Western alliance. It is not for nothing that just when the discussion about Nord Stream 2 is boiling up here, no more gas comes via Nord Stream 1, he tightens the thumbscrews, so to speak. If we were to give in to his blackmail, the consequences would be catastrophic and far-reaching: The pressure for change toward a sensible energy policy would be gone (which politicians would welcome), and Germany would continue to depend on Putin's mercy. The Western alliance, already increasingly alienated, would clearly distance itself from us, which is in line with Putin's calculations.

There is already a realistic danger that the Central and Eastern European states, together with Scandinavia, the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand (probably also with Singapore, South Korea and Taiwan), will form an axis in which Germany no longer plays a role. We would then be more clearly cut off from world trade than we could imagine in our worst dreams, because China could not compensate for this even if it wanted to. It is obvious that complete dependence (on Russia for energy, on China for the economy) is fatal for us. However, this danger is already looming because of the behavior of the German government, which has proven to be too uncertain a cantonist. Worldwide, it is very clearly noted that there is an enormous gap between words and deeds with regard to Russian aggression.

But if Germany does not even get its act together now, but buckles, we will also lose the support of other European partners. Whether states in South America or Africa go along with the strict line against Russia or not is irrelevant in the end. Their economies do not play this significant role, and they are also strategically far from the firing line with regard to this war. Germany is a different story.

So commissioning Nord Stream 2 does not reliably ensure a warm winter. This is pure wishful thinking. On the contrary, it increased dependence on Russia and at the same time minimized the pressure to finally implement a rational energy policy. In terms of foreign, security and economic policy, such an approach would have very serious, negative consequences in the long term. Many of those who currently advocate commissioning are closing their eyes to these consequences. Often - as is unfortunately also the case with Mr. Kubicki - it is precisely those who have already completely misjudged Putin and his intentions.

It is a negative characteristic of German politics that one accepts disastrous long-term consequences for a supposed, short-term advantage. These are ignored, glossed over, or people who point them out are muzzled. We are now seeing the result. If Germany does not show that it is learning from its mistakes, we will be lonely. And we will have to ask ourselves whether we really want to belong to the states that will then be our partners. Because, let's not kid ourselves: If we open Nord Stream 2 now, despite everything, there will be no turning back. Everything else is an illusion.

How did Udo Jürgens once sing? „Illusionen, blühende Wirklichkeit, zum Tanz der Jugendzeit. Ein erster Hauch von Leid wird sie verwehen.“ (Illusions, blooming reality, to the dance of youth. A first breath of sorrow will blow them away.)

Jimbuna

08-23-22, 01:34 PM

World will never recognize attempts of Russian Federation to occupy territory of Ukraine, - Sholtz

The world did not recognize Russia’s annexation of Crimea eight years ago, nor does it recognize attempts to annex new Ukrainian territories.

Chancellor Olaf Scholz of the Federal Republic of Germany stated this while addressing the participants of the second summit of the Crimean Platform, Censor.NET informs with reference to Ukrinform.

"The international community will never accept Russia's illegal imperialist annexation of Ukrainian territory... We condemn Russia's attempts to forcefully integrate parts of Ukrainian territories. Our message is clear: any shameful referendums and other attempts to change the status of parts of Ukrainian territory will never be recognized," - emphasized the German politician.

He noted that "such steps will make any negotiations impossible."

Russia's unprovoked and unjustified war of aggression against Ukraine has met with strong opposition from the Ukrainian people, whose determination and courage are respected around the world, Scholz said.

Ukraine, as he noted, refused to submit to the rule of the strong, a situation where large powers can "swallow" smaller ones whenever they want.

The Summit of the Crimean Platform demonstrates that Ukraine's partners are more united today than ever, Scholz is convinced. He called the holding of the summit more than timely and reminded that today the world commemorates the victims of Stalinism and fascism. Source: https://censor.net/en/n3362630

Skybird

08-24-22, 04:37 AM

FOCUS summarises well what I am complainign about all the time in the German management of the gas crisis. Maximum incompetence at work. And plenty of ideology. BTW, after Quatar (zero deal) and Norway (small deal increase) now Canada had to let down the Germans' and their hopes to drastically increase gas delivery rapidly. All that the German got from Trudeau is long-termed intentions declared in a paper. I know there were plenty of smiles exchanged and plenty of friendly words, but thats what it comes down to: a declaration of intention for - of course: green - hydrogen being produced and shipped at some years away in the future. Insiders say since the production sites and shipping facilities and transpüortaiton capcities needs to b e build first. we are talking about a future 5 to 10 years away - minimum.

Also, the Germans invest again into making themselves exclusively dependent on others. Everythign is better, in German eyes, than to produce the power right where it is needed, which from a standppoint of physics and economics by far would make the most sense. Its an giant energy waste just to get some net energy in return. How very green! :yeah:

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Three gas mishaps by our government stun even experts

The desired effects of the gas levy are neutralized by the reduction in VAT. The revenue from the instrument ends up with the wrong people. At the same time, ever scarcer gas is being used to generate electricity in unprecedented quantities. What is going wrong in the traffic light coalition?

The traffic light coalition in Berlin no longer has a grip on the issue of gas supply in Germany. There's no other way to explain the string of mishaps and inconsistencies that gas customers are currently having to pay for. This is the verdict of many economists following last week's numerous decisions on the subject. The political opposition continues: Union leader Friedrich Merz speaks of "chaos with announcement".

In fact, the traffic light government has made three mistakes that show it is not using the right instruments to deal with the crisis.

Mistake number 1: Gas surcharge up, VAT down

Mistake number one is the combination of a gas levy, which Economics Minister Robert Habeck announced as unavoidable last Monday, and the reduction of VAT to seven percent for gas, which Chancellor Olaf Scholz promised two days later.

So gas is first made more expensive, which encourages consumers to save gas. Then it is made cheaper again and the effect fizzles out. Economists are perplexed by so much actionism in the German government: Stefan Kooths, vice president and head of the Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW), notes that the VAT decision "dilutes an essential desired purpose of the gas levy: to save gas."

Marcel Fratzscher, president of the German Institute for Economic Research (DIW), thinks that the reduction of the value-added tax for low-income earners is better than nothing, but still far too little. "Much better are direct transfer payments, such as an energy allowance, of 100 euros per month & person for households with medium and low incomes," Fratzscher writes.

Jens Südekum, professor of international economics and member of the Scientific Advisory Board of the German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy, advocates letting price signals take full effect and cushioning them with socially graduated income transfers. And Ifo President Clemens Fuest sees one main problem with the measure: private households would be relieved, but companies would be burdened because they would only pass on the VAT to their customers. "I'm not sure that's what the government intended," he wrote on Twitter.

Glitch number 2: The billions from the gas levy flow to the wrong people

In the future, German gas customers will pay billions of euros with their gas levy to domestic and foreign corporations that are doing just fine without this revenue. This emerges from a report by Trading Hub Europe, the company that ultimately organizes the levy on behalf of the Ministry of Economics.

Trading Hub published a list of eleven companies on Monday. In addition to the Düsseldorf-based utility Uniper, which is already known as a beneficiary, is financially shaken and is already being supported by the state, for example, the Baden-Württemberg-based EnBW, the Austrian OMV and the Swiss Axpo are among the likely recipients of the money.

EnBW expects to make billions in profits this year despite rising energy costs, recently increased its dividend and is enjoying a share price that has risen nearly 30 percent since the beginning of the year. Nevertheless, its subsidiary VNG, a gas trading company based in Leipzig, has applied for money from the gas levy.

Another example is the largest Austrian group listed on the stock exchange: OMV. As an energy supplier and petroleum company, OMV has benefited greatly from high oil and gas prices, more than doubling sales and profits in the first half of the year.

Swiss energy supplier Axpo also wants money from German gas customers. It is currently suffering a little from the energy crisis, but at a high level. The half-year figures were not as brilliant as in the past, but a profit of around half a billion Swiss francs remained at last.

Group CEO Christoph Brand speaks of a "good result in stormy times. To keep it that way, he is apparently now tapping German gas customers. Habeck had described the gas levy as "the fairest way to distribute the additional costs among the population." The fact that the money is now going to high-earning corporations contradicts this assessment.

Breakdown number 3: Gas used en masse to generate electricity

In May and July, more gas was burned in Germany to generate electricity than ever before. This admission by the Federal Network Agency, which is subordinate to Economics Minister Habeck, must be seen as a mockery by people who will soon be spending hundreds of euros extra for a warm apartment. They are being told that gas has become a scarce commodity. One that has to be bought at a high price, that will continue to be indispensable for heat generation for a long time to come, and that people urgently need for heating and industry for firing and production.

That's why gas storage levels are currently published somewhere almost daily, just as Corona case numbers were in previous years. The message behind it: The weal and woe of industry and private households depends on it in winter.

If more electricity is needed than can be supplied by renewable energy, coal and oil-fired power plants, but gas is needed elsewhere, then the nuclear power plants that reliably produce electricity should continue to operate. However, the Greens in the traffic light government do not want to know anything about this. What is clear is that the energy debate is ideological.

August

08-30-22, 07:35 PM

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

Skybird

08-31-22, 05:05 AM

FOCUS on Robert Habeck:

Between rhetoric and substance: Habeck's 5 crucial mistakes

Robert Habeck, Germany's Economics Minister, never fails to impress with his rhetoric. But the substance behind it currently fails to live up to the promise of his rhetorical style.

Robert Habeck is an exceptional rhetorical talent on the Berlin stage. He doesn't use the thin linguistic wood of the others, who fill entire speeches with their prefabricated components. His language is vivid, often earthy and therefore vital. He has a sense of rhythm. He wants to convince, not overpower. He sometimes lets people watch him think.

But just as on the executive floors of business, a strict distinction must be made between substance and style in politics. And it is precisely with substance that Robert Habeck's delivery problems begin.

Language does not automatically transform into a high political product quality. Robert Habeck's substance does not currently deliver what his pop-art style promises. If you strip away the rhetorical packaging, you'll notice the technical quirks and intellectual errors:
Exciting, but no time right now?

1. naiveté in Qatar

It was unparalleled naiveté to rely on the verbal promise of the Prince of Qatar. Habeck's trip to the Orient has brought no relief except for the unflattering kipper image for German electricity customers. The videos that Habeck sent from there ("I launched a new energy partnership in Qatar") seem like satire today.

2.Gas customers are turned into perpetrators

For decades, the Greens upheld the polluter pays principle, only to betray it in the hour of government participation. Most of Germany's 21 million gas customers were forced to connect to the gas grid when they bought their new properties or live in rented apartments that were connected to the gas grid decades ago without their involvement. They are not perpetrators, but victims. The minister wants to charge them 34 billion euros.

3. tax collection through gas levy

The original attempt to garnish this levy with a value-added tax surcharge and thus turn it into additional revenue for the state was lucrative for the state and brazen for the citizen. Anyone who believes that this was an error on the part of the ministerial bureaucracy, as Habeck later claimed, is underestimating the precision work of the state. If there's one thing the state knows how to do, it's tax collection, which, in the words of Peter Sloterdijk, "presupposes the tax tolerance of the giving side as a premise."

4.Gas customers should buy gas suppliers' increased world market prices

Habeck's idea that gas customers should take the risk of increased world market prices off their gas suppliers is already absurd as an idea. In the same way, bank customers would have had to bail out financial institutions during the financial crisis by paying a surcharge on their checking accounts. And in the Greek crisis, a state gyros fee plus an ouzo levy would have been due.

But the gyros lover and the ouzo drinker have as little to do with the mismanagement of Greece as the gas customer has to do with Putin's war and the explosion in gas prices. This is precisely why the ouzo levy never existed, not even as an idea.

5. rejection of continued operation of nuclear power plants

Robert Habeck justifies his rejection of the continued operation of the three nuclear power plants still in operation with an untruth that remains an untruth even if it is constantly repeated by him. "We have a gas problem, not an electricity problem," Habeck says. The phrase also found its way into the repertoire of the energy minister and vice chancellor in the variant "We have a heat problem, not an electricity problem."

Both are wrong: The gas shortage is already making the price of electricity more expensive, because gas is not only used in the heating market, but also to generate electricity. If all three nuclear power plants are taken off the grid at the end of the year - as Habeck wants - there will be an electricity shortfall of six percent of current consumption. The demand cannot be covered by sun and wind alone, which is why gas, which is already in too short supply, would have to be used to generate electricity again.

Conclusion: The well-behaved citizen still follows the word acrobatics of the Minister of Economics and the state-organized rolling grab into the pockets of gas customers with stoic composure. He pays and he suffers. He grumbles, but he does not revolt. The philosopher Peter Sloterdijk had a hunch: "The resignation of the citizen is the basis of sound public finances."

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There are reports that secretly now the ministry of Habeck has started to plan for an extension of nuclear energy. Even if later this year the extension would come - and that is absolutely uncertain - it would cost Germany dearly, since they could run in reduced mode only due to their almpost burnt out fuel. If the Greens would not have blocked the idea for half a year, and listened to the industry that said in early April they could get, if need be, nuclear fuel within 6 months instead of Habeck's claimed "12 months minimum", then these three reactors could run with full load from Octobre, November on. Further, three nuclear powerplants that were taken of the net last year, are in a condition that they could still be reativated, their fuel rods are still inside the cores and techncial analysts checked the installations and said they are ready to go - they could have been connected to the grid before winter, too.

The ideological fanatism of the Greens and some SPD blokes costs Germans and the German state finances dearly, so dearly. What did I quote Richard von Weizsäcker with recently? "The political parties have made the state their prey."

It continues with another folly, the gas Germany has in its Northern regions - but stubbornly rejects to make availabe for extraction. Yes, it would not solve the issues we have this winter, but in the long run it would. That gas could keep us floating on deep into the next century. But "No!" - it shall not be. Its against the ideology.

Its mad, mad, mad that the Germans want everything at once: jumping off nuclear, coal, oil and gas alltogether - without having sufficient replacement energy. Renewables do not do the job, and never will do the job. Even more, the warming of climate may reduce wind intensity, we see that with the rain desasters we have: these happen because the weather zones do not move fast, but creepo along, even come to a standstill in a region which then gets all its load. We have had that in Münster 2014, when the whole city drowned: three supercells stayed in place over the city and united their force and did not move at all, for hours, and so we got 200-240l of rain per sqm within less than 2 hours. And similar phenomenons we have seen in other places since then, too. When the air gets warmer, the winds may reach extremes during storms - and in the normal times inbetween blow much lesser. What is it then with the windmill energy production, eh? The Gulf stream weakens, too, the changing temperature patterns may influence weather, too, predicting harsher winters - and more clouds and so less solar panel produced power. Add to this the lacking storage capacities. Right now Germany has enough storage capacity for running its powergrid for around 30-50 minutes. A "Dunkelflaute", a time of lacking wind and sunlight, the experts define as such a period of time lasting 7 days and longer - and we have that 2-5 times per cold season, tendency growing. Doing some math tells you that Germany would need to increase its battery capacity by a factor between 200 and 300 - and be able to charge these up ! And that covers a wind-and-sun timeout of 7 days only. What if it lasts longer?

Die Deutschen spinnen. Dümmer als die Polizei erlaubt.
https://www.autozeitung.de/assets/gallery_images/2016/01/autofahrer-vogelzeigen-gross.jpg

Skybird

09-05-22, 05:58 AM

FOCUS on the government' recent financial "presents":
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Nine reasons why the savings package of the traffic light coalition is not received by citizens

All in all, the savings package of Chancellor Olaf Scholz's (SPD) traffic light coalition looks very powerful. Nine reasons explain why citizens will not get anything out of it in the end.

If you want to understand the different division of tasks between politicians and journalists, you basically only have to remember two words: Truth and effect.

The good journalist looks for the truth, including the one behind it. In doing so, he does not use, to pick up a nasty word from the NDR editorial board, the "political filter."

The politician, on the other hand, always aims for effect first. If the truth helps him do that, so much the better. But it is not a necessary condition for his advancement. As a rule, he puts a party-political filter over the truth - until it begins to glow red, green or yellow.

Which brings us to the word relief package. Linguistically, an orgy of relief has been celebrated for weeks. Relief packages I and II - together 30 billion euros - were followed yesterday by relief package III (65 billion euros). The finance minister called it "massive", the chancellor "precise and tailor-made".

And indeed, in the relative world of politics, this is a relatively high sum. At least it can be used to achieve a media impact.

Austerity package? No citizen will be relieved - unless he stops filling up his tank and heating his home.

In the real world, however, i.e. in the world of car drivers, shareholders, savers, life insurance policy holders, workers and employees, househusbands and housewives, gas, electricity and oil customers, this is a relatively small sum that evaporates in the wallet faster than a summer rain in times of drought.

Within the next twelve months - and this is a bold claim - not a single German citizen will see a net reduction in their tax bill unless they stop heating, refueling, shopping, working and, best of all, breathing.

The uncomfortable truth is this: The force of the economic dislocation is more violent than the government's capabilities. The government, which is trying to save the day here, cannot have a lasting effect on people's everyday lives in the face of the elemental economic forces of inflation, stock market crashes, energy shortages and the consequences of a stubborn pandemic.

One-off payments of a few hundred euros will have no effect

1 Real wages and thus also the purchasing power of pensions are falling at high speed. In the second quarter of the year, the Federal Statistical Office calculated a price-adjusted wage decline of 4.4 percent in view of high inflation. For the current year, the Institute of Economic and Social Research predicts a real wage loss of 3.6 percent.

This means that the purchasing power of all blue- and white-collar workers - if the sum of all gross wages in 2021 is taken as a basis - will decrease by 56.2 billion euros. The average wage earner (49,200 euros in 2021) will lose around 1,800 euros.

This can only be remedied by wage increases that at least compensate for purchasing power. One-off payments in the order of 200 or 300 euros - as now announced - will not have any effect here.

The state itself continues to drive up the burden

2 The state itself - which pretends to relieve its citizens - is driving their burdens to ever new heights. On Sundays, it relieves the burden, and on weekdays it collects the money. The gas levy alone, which is supposed to bring in 34 billion euros, halves the effect of yesterday's relief package.

Energy will become noticeably more expensive even without the gas surcharge

Even without the gas levy, a noticeable increase in the price of all types of energy is to be expected. Many gas suppliers have already raised prices. According to Check24 the average gas price for new customers is 185 per cent higher than in the previous year. Electricity costs have increased nevertheless by 31 per cent. At the gas stations one hardly believes its eyes. And: The big rollover of the global energy price explosion to the end consumer is still to come.

We are learning that no state in the world can reimburse its customers for what an energy market that has come apart at the seams is demanding.

The state is relieving itself, but not us.

4. 19 percent value-added tax on all inflated goods is another factor. This also reduces prosperity. 19 percent of 100,000 euros is 19,000 euros. But 19 percent of 120,000 euros is about 23,000 euros. In this way, the state earns a share. It relieves itself, but not us. In the first half of 2022, the state collected 17.6 percent more taxes than in the same period last year.

Stock market losses reduce German prosperity

5 The stock market is buckling under the pressure of events. In 2022 alone, investors in the Dax, including many ordinary citizens and their insurance companies, have so far had to absorb a loss in value of around 270 billion euros. This money is gone not statistically, but in very real terms. It reduces the capital income and thus the prosperity of the Germans.

Riester pension serves deliberate impoverishment, not capital formation

6 Without exception, all pension products designed by politicians are not convincing in the current situation. The guarantee given by the legislator of a repayment of the contributions made - for example in the case of the Riester pension - leads to the obligation of fund managers to invest in conservative financial assets. But with conservative investments, progressive inflation cannot be beaten by definition. This means that in the current situation, the Riester pension serves to deliberately impoverish people, not to build up capital.

Even life insurance policies no longer bear fruit in a crisis situation

7 Life insurance policies also bear no fruit in this situation. They are also obliged by law to buy government bonds and the government bonds of reputable states cannot compensate for the high inflation rates. Allianz SE's performance reflects the current unattractiveness of its products and the market's expectation that many people will cancel or let their life insurance policies lapse. Europe's largest insurance company therefore lost around 18 percent of its value, or a good 12.6 billion euros, in 2022 alone.

8 At the bottom of the food chain lives the German saver, who is being punished first with negative interest rates and now with minus interest rates for his savings activity. As long as the interest lies below the inflation rate, it comes with it to the loss of value. The experts of the specialist portal Tagesgeldvergleich.net calculated that from January to June 2022, German savers had to cope with a loss of purchasing power of 93.3 billion euros due to rising inflation and low interest rates. By the end of the year, they will have lost a total of 186.6 billion euros, which means a loss of purchasing power per capita of 2,140 euros.

Real estate sector also affected by crisis

9 The real estate market - even if many had hoped otherwise - cannot decouple itself from this development in the long term. It is running out of solvent customers, which is why almost all experts assume that purchase prices will soon fall throughout Europe, thus also reducing the value of existing properties.

Conclusion: The 65 billion package will at best change the perception of reality, but not reality itself. The government has yet to have a serious discussion with its citizens about the depth and duration of this economic and social turnaround. For this dialogue, the government does not need money, but courage. Or as the great British storyteller William Somerset Maugham used to say, "Sincerity is the boldest form of bravery."

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

Skybird

09-07-22, 06:05 AM

Germany fiscally petrifies. FOCUS writes:
--------------------
Spending spree with consequences: The federal government's latest relief package is once again merely a reaction to present-day problems that make it virtually impossible to think properly about the future. Fiscal petrification has long since begun.

The favorite word of all politicians is future. The future must be conceived, secured and shaped. The parties are happy to hold congresses on the future, adopt programs for the future and, in Jürgen Rüttgers, the CDU/CSU already had a minister for the future in 1994.

But as soon as they reach high government office, politicians dive into the problems of the present, never to emerge from them again. The "desire for the future" (CDU) ends in a major self-discharge time and again.

Present problems make thinking about the future impossible: "State loses ability to act"

An important group of voters always has to be quickly reassured, given presents or - as in these days - relieved. With great regularity, the political focus changes - until the future is barely recognizable because of the present. The greed for the moment , to speak with Ingeborg Bachmann, means in reality a continued consumption of the future. The hallmark of the modern state is its eternal need.

The shift in emphasis from the future to the present can be read in detail in the state budget. Social politicians of all parties tell people that there is enough money for everyone. People don't have to make an effort, just tuck in their shirts like starlets. Anyone who doesn't let the state subsidize their house, car, solar system, childbearing or even their pension hasn't understood the game.

This "maternalistic paternalism and care machine" (Peter Sloterdijk), constituted by all parties as a joint venture, means that the normal federal budget has hardly any money left for investments in the future. A large part of the budget, in fact about 90 percent, is "fossilized" , wrote the Federal Audit Office in its report on the 2023 budget: "As petrification progresses, the danger grows that the state will lose its ability to act."

The spending spree set in motion once again by the 65-billion-relief package, the core of which is the handing out of bad checks, will lead to further petrification. Sloterdijk sees a latent social democracy at work here that goes beyond the party of the same name because it is more or less irreversibly built into the procedures of modern statehood.

Germany does not abolish itself - it petrifies

Here are the facts that did not play the role they deserve during yesterday's presentation of the 2023 federal budget by the Ministry of Finance. Whereby Christian Lindner - it should be added to his credit - is not the inventor of fiscal petrification, only its executor:

By 2040, spending on age-related projects alone will explode to 282 billion euros annually.
Already today, taxpayer subsidies to a pension system that has become dysfunctional amount to 112 billion euros.
Unless the trend is reversed, employees will soon have to transfer half of their income to the welfare state
The draft budget does not reveal the true state of federal finances, says the Federal Audit Office:

"The shifting of expenditures and debts to special assets as well as accounting practices distort the picture. At around 78 billion euros, real net borrowing is four times higher than shown in the federal budget."

Austerity package? No citizens will be relieved - unless they stop filling up their tanks and heating their homes

The room for maneuver in the federal budget will now shrink further with each interest rate policy decision by the ECB. Already today, the ECB's Executive Board is set to discuss the next interest rate hike. Rising interest rates also mean more spending for the federal government.
Lindner speaks of a "steep wall" that is building up. For 2023 alone, he has budgeted around 30 billion euros to service the debt that has recently accumulated.
Investments - and these are the only expenditures that are intended for the future - remain constant at between 51.1 and 52.1 billion euros. This corresponds to a share of around twelve percent of spending. Whereby this spending for the future also includes social housing, federal road construction and other self-evident items.
88 percent of the budget volume is effectively withdrawn from changes in the budget formulation process because it relates to statutory entitlements such as social benefits, personnel expenses and precisely pension commitments.

Conclusion:

With the financing of a permanent present, the eternal chalk era continues to reign in schools, Germany's largest transport company remains a Bimmelbahn and the digitization of the administration will not be able to start until the 22nd century. Germany is not doing away with itself, as Thilo Sarrazin once predicted. It's just quietly fossilizing away.

Skybird

09-08-22, 04:23 AM

FOCUS has this interview. H.-W. Sinn is a wellknown economist and longterm warner in Germany.
---------------------------

Star economist Hans-Werner Sinn, former president of the Ifo Institute, has been warning of inflation for years. Now it's here - and our prosperity is at risk. A conversation about mistakes made by the ECB, errors in climate policy and the culprits behind Germany's decline.

Professor Sinn, war, inflation, a weak euro - is our prosperity in danger? How alarmed should we be?

Hans-Werner Sinn: Quite. Because while the euro crisis was a competitive crisis for the southern European countries, in which Germany came out quite well, this is now a crisis that is massively calling into question the business model of the Federal Republic of Germany, and which at the same time is reminiscent of social upheavals in the past that were caused by inflation.

The hyperinflation of 1923 is approaching its 100th anniversary. Are we facing something similarly threatening?

Sinn: No, there's no question of that, it's not that bad. But, of course, the principle of "nip it in the bud" applies. Every inflation starts small if you don't fight it.

The ECB has long denied demonetization, but at the central bankers' meeting in Jackson Hole at the end of August, Director Isabel Schnabel sounded for the first time as if she had recognized the seriousness of the situation.

Sinn: Yes, Ms. Schnabel has done an about-face after having massively downplayed the dangers of inflation for a long time. As recently as November of last year, the ECB leadership was still talking about a mere inflationary base.

Has the European Central Bank now realized that decisive action is necessary?

Sinn: I have my doubts about that. The forces in the ECB that do not want to act to a sufficient extent are still in the majority, I would argue.

Do you feel a certain satisfaction that you were right in your warnings about inflation, for which you were dubbed a populist and worse?

Sinn: No, I can't take any pleasure in that; the situation is bad enough. I have no illusions about the sluggishness of the public cognition process; I didn't have them before.

Are you afraid that the ECB will not raise interest rates rapidly enough?

Sinn: Indeed. We have been experiencing a stalling tactic since last summer. While the Anglo-Saxon countries announced a turnaround in interest rates early on, the ECB tried to prevent it and talked the issue down. We are now feeling the consequences: there has been a significant movement of capital from Europe to America, where higher interest rates were previously expected. This has appreciated the dollar and devalued the euro, by more than 20 percent, leading to a similarly large inflationary push in goods and services purchased on the world market, including energy.

The ECB has made energy imports directly more expensive. Its policies may be fine if you represent the interests of over-indebted eurozone countries, because inflation devalues their debt and low interest rates keep the nominal debt burden down. What the ECB did, however, was not a policy in the interest of the community of euro countries and certainly not a policy that was in line with the Maastricht Treaty mandate to establish price stability.

Now the ECB is trapped: If it heartily raises interest rates in the fight against inflation, it will drive us straight into recession. An unresolvable dilemma.

Sinn: No, I dispute that. This argument stems from a widespread error in thinking. We are in a stagflation, a situation where the constraint on economic activity comes not from the demand side but from the supply side - specifically, from the Corona-related lockdowns and quarantines. These continue to tighten supply to this day.

On the world's oceans, shipping traffic has still not returned to normal, with freighters idling by the thousands off South China ports, unable to unload their cargo and unable to take on new cargo. This will eventually resolve, but for the time being it means that manufacturing companies cannot get their inputs from China and then cannot deliver them either. On top of that, oil and gas supplies have also been tightened. So overall, there is a lack of supply, not demand.

In such a situation, a restrictive monetary policy dampens inflation because it raises interest rates and weakens demand for credit and thus for goods. But it does not dampen real economic activity, because firms can no longer deliver anyway. That's why there's no justification at all for a low-interest-rate policy like the one the ECB is still pursuing. his

You're saying the ECB could easily raise interest rates without plunging the country into recession?

Sinn: That's right.

Then it might as well raise interest rates by 0.75 percentage points at the next Council meeting?

Sinn: Yes. Especially since even then interest rates would be strongly negative in real terms, given eight percent inflation. We are still a long way from having a braking effect on real economic activity.

To reiterate: You blame the ECB for high gas prices, not Putin and the war?

Sinn: No, it's not that simple. The euro devaluation that followed from the ECB's policy immediately increased the prices of liquefied gas, which are mostly quoted in dollars, on the international markets once they were converted into euros. That in itself could not have changed the price of gas in Europe under normal conditions.

However, because of the shutdowns by Russia, liquefied natural gas has now become the marginal energy source in Europe that determines prices. The devaluation, for which the ECB is responsible, has increased the price of gas in Germany via the liquefied natural gas market.

And how did it happen that we are so dependent on Russian gas, which was once so cheap? Has economic calculation produced political naivety?

Sinn: No. The energy crisis in connection with the Ukraine war would not have assumed this scale if Germany had relied less on gas and more on coal and nuclear power. The fixation on gas is a direct consequence of the green energy transition. Many overlook this.

"I can only marvel at how easily the German people have allowed themselves to be seduced into unrealistic reveries"

The prevailing opinion claims exactly the opposite: if we had relied on renewables earlier and more radically, we could care less about Putin's pipelines.

Sinn: Unfortunately, that's not true. Many people think that the more wind and solar energy we use, the more conventional power plants - be they coal-fired, gas-fired or nuclear - we can decommission. In fact, fluttering green energy needs conventionally generated power to fill the many long dark lulls.

When the wind isn't blowing and the sun isn't shining, we still need electricity. And we need more and more of it if traffic is also to become electric and houses are to be heated with heat pumps. If we triple or quadruple electricity production in Germany, as would be necessary to fulfill all the new tasks, we would also need three or four times as many conventional plants for the dark periods, regardless of how much electricity we can generate from wind and solar power in favorable weather conditions.

It also makes a significant difference whether consumers take showers or a bath in the tub - because that really costs money: Since three times more water is needed for a bathtub than for a shower, bathing is also three times as expensive. Assuming that the bathtub is only used as a relaxing addition to the shower and a consumer only takes a bath once a week instead of twice a week, he could directly save 46 euros in electricity costs per year.

After showering or bathing, women in particular often blow-dry their hair. Many of them probably don't know that the hair dryer is an absolute power guzzler. A comparison makes this clear: for ten minutes of blow-drying hair, an LED lamp can burn continuously for 83 days. So if you let your hair dry for as long as possible before blow-drying and then blow-dry it for just five minutes instead of 15, you'll end up paying 20 euros less on your annual electricity bill.

All this is nothing compared to the number one power guzzler in many German bathrooms: There you will find a washing machine, which accounts for 15 percent of a household's total electricity consumption. It all depends on the appliance itself: If the machine is more than ten years old, consumers are wasting a lot of energy unnecessarily.

Newer machines that have, for example, a so-called Eco program (energy-saving program) or work with a fuzzy logic in which the machine independently adjusts the amount of water to the weight of the clothes - often have ratings between A+ and A+++. These grades provide information about the energy-saving friendliness of the machine in question. If consumers replace their old machine with a new one, they can save 24 euros a year in electricity costs.

Since coal and nuclear power are to be phased out, this leaves only gas-fired power plants to produce electricity during dark periods. A huge, disproportionately large increase in capacity was planned for them, without this ever being made public. In this way, the planners responsible for the energy turnaround handed us over to Putin. Putin has let the energy transition collapse like a house of cards.

Energy economists like Claudia Kemfert from the DIW do not accept the argument that green energy cannot be stored.

Sinn: We will not succeed in storing the necessary seasonal weather compensation in the foreseeable future. The existing pumped-storage plants are a drop in the bucket, and they cannot be increased sufficiently. Batteries as seasonal storage systems are still tens of orders of magnitude away from the economic viability threshold. Hydrogen is the only option. However, the loop from electricity to hydrogen back to electricity wastes three quarters of the energy generated, the plants are extremely expensive, and hydrogen embrittles all materials that could be used for pipelines.

So the pipelines have to be replaced every few years. The hydrogen route and derived e-fuels are technically possible, but only at horrendous cost, robbing us of our prosperity.

Do you therefore see a comeback chance for nuclear power? Opponents argue that the remaining three nuclear power plants contribute only minimally to the electricity supply anyway.

Sinn: Green power is also not as extensive as everyone makes it out to be. The six nuclear power plants in question - the three that were shut down last year and the three that will be shut down this year - still generate 20 percent more electricity than all the photovoltaic plants in Germany put together.

Many people overlook how small the importance of wind and solar power actually is in Germany. They account for just 5.5 percent of primary energy consumption and 7.5 percent of final energy consumption. The aim is to reach 100 percent in the long term, but how can that be achieved? And in 23 years.

Since 1990, we have reduced CO2 emissions by 40 percent by shutting down GDR industry and other measures. We are supposed to achieve the remaining 60 percent by 2045. That is absolutely utopian. Or do we now want to shut down West German industry as well? None of that works at all. I can only marvel at how easily the German people have allowed themselves to be seduced into their unrealistic musings.

Do you see no need to stop climate change?

Sinn: Yes, of course! The countries of the world must take coordinated action against climate change by relying on green energies, including nuclear power. But you have to remain realistic. The unilateral path of the Europeans, especially the Germans, only leads to the destruction of competitiveness, but hardly to a CO2 effect for the world.

Why not?

Sinn: Because the fossil fuels that we use less of here, namely coal and oil and also gas, are then consumed elsewhere in the world, by the Chinese and all the others who do not participate in climate protection in the same way, who are in fact our competitors and potential enemies.

The only thing we can achieve single-handedly for the climate is to stop mining lignite, which is located on German territory. For all other fossil fuels, we can achieve nothing at all by restricting demand.

Because oil and gas will then only be burned by others?

Sinn: Yes. If, for example, we pass regulations in Europe that reduce or even ban combustion engines, the carbon bound in the oil will simply go into the air in other areas. Measures on CO2 emissions in the transport sector and unilateral action by Europe achieve absolutely nothing.

The counter-argument is: As we can see from the summer heat, the fight against climate change cannot be postponed; we cannot wait until the whole world joins in.

Sinn: We have to wait, because if we rush ahead and damage our competitiveness, we set a bad example that no one will want to follow. We can only achieve success in the fight against climate change if all or almost all countries in the world commit to cutting back on fossil fuels as well.

The Paris Agreement, which was concluded by 191 countries in 2015, is not such a commitment. While the agreement was highly celebrated, the truth is that only 61 countries committed to restrictions with clearly defined amounts. The others applauded the 61 for releasing the fuels for them. That is the reality.

If we really want to change something, we have to create a world climate club, Chancellor Scholz is right about that. But the club won't work without India, China and all the others who are speculating on getting the cheap fuels that the Europeans won't touch anymore.

They warn of a loss of competitiveness, and the first CEOs are even talking about imminent deindustrialization. Is Germany really in such a bad way?

Sinn: We have seen a contraction in German industrial production since 2018, and 2018 is the year in which the EU's CO2 regulation on combustion engines was enacted. This massive tightening virtually means the death of the combustion engine.

You can only meet the CO2 targets with electric cars, because they are set at zero, although in reality they have the exhaust just a bit further in the coal or gas power plant. This policy has robbed the German automotive industry, and with it the heart of the German economy, of its competitive advantage. Because electric cars can be produced by others, and perhaps even better.

The car managers themselves are more confident. The German auto industry can also play a leading role in e-mobility, they claim. In this respect, the departure from the combustion engine would only be half as bad.

Sinn: That may work for individual carmakers, who gather together the components they need from all over the world, and the profits are then retained for the shareholders, who in turn are also distributed worldwide. But what about the mass of jobs at domestic suppliers? They are gradually being eliminated, and that's where the big problem lies. The fact that VW failed in its attempt to make the running in China with electric cars and fired its CEO should give pause for thought.

Do you expect people to take to the streets because of the loss of prosperity and threaten the country with social unrest?

Sinn: No. Something like that only happens when abrupt developments occur, but we're talking about gradual processes here.

Chancellor Scholz promises not to leave anyone alone. But can the state really compensate for all the financial disadvantages, or will it be overwhelmed at some point?

Sinn: The state is hopelessly overstretched. It can only give to some what it takes away from others. But there will be resistance to this redistribution. And the old course, where central banks were allowed to print money without restraint and then distribute it, can no longer be continued because of inflation. Until now, states simply borrowed when they needed money: They sold the debt securities to the banks, and the banks sold them posthaste to the respective national central bank, which purchased them with freshly created new money. This made everything seem to work. Corona? No problem. Economic crisis in Italy? No problem. Money flows out of the printing press, the standard of living can be maintained.

The only problem is that in this way the money supply increases more and more and that only imaginary incomes are created that are not earned. Many people have overlooked this, and now we are in a situation where Corona has triggered inflation and the ECB is having a hard time gradually reducing the money overhang of 5.3 trillion euros that has been created since mid-2008. I don't see how that's going to work.

FDP leader Christian Lindner vows to stand firm and defend the debt brake. Can this be trusted in view of the political pressure?

Sinn: I take the finance minister's word for it that he wants to comply with the debt brake. He also has to comply with it, because any debt further strengthens the inflationary demand overhang. The times when money seemed to fall like manna from heaven are over.

But the people are groaning about the high energy prices, many households are having a hard time in winter, and the government is waving new rescue packages.

Sinn: That's a matter for politicians to decide; as an economist, I don't want to comment on that. All I can say is: Then the government has to name its horses and riders and say who it wants to take the money away from and give it to those who are now suffering from high energy prices. Again, that's almost everybody. That's the cat biting its own tail

Who will pay for the crisis in the end? Who will be hit hardest by the loss of prosperity?

Sinn: They will hit us all. Some more, others less. The state can redistribute the burdens, but the sum of the burdens remains. And if politicians try over-indebtedness, at some point savers and pensioners will rise up and be robbed of their assets by inflation. Someone will bear the burden in the end. The good Lord does not help there. richer,

Are we dealing with a small dip in prosperity, or do you fear a permanent process of decline?

Sinn: The loss of prosperity is a longer-term process. It has to do with demographics and the massive damage to competitiveness caused by the green energy transition. If the energy that people would have bought on their own is banned, so that everyone has to switch to another energy that they would not otherwise have purchased, that makes us all poorer.

In addition, inflation leads to considerable redistribution effects: Debtors get richer, creditors and the weak get poorer; life insurance contracts, for example, lose value. Similar things happen in the relationship between states; just think of the Target balances, i.e. the Bundesbank's credit claims in the euro system. They amount to almost 1,200 billion euros. With eight percent inflation, the German government will soon lose 100 billion euros a year.

In your view, has inflation reached its peak, as some optimists are predicting?

Sinn: No. I don't think we've passed the peak. This can be seen from commercial producer prices, which are currently 37 percent higher than in the same month last year, and these are on average three months ahead of consumer prices. So there's still a lot of doom ahead of us! It is true that in the past producer prices did not transmit directly to consumer prices, but only by about one third. Everyone can work out for themselves what one third of 37 percent is.

Will demonetization reach double digits?

Sinn: That is to be expected.

Skybird

09-09-22, 06:20 AM

Fritz Varenholt had this on the German industrial collapse.

Fritz Vahrenholt is an honorary professor at the University of Hamburg in the Department of Chemistry and was Senator for the Environment of the Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg until 1997. From 1998 to 2013, he held board positions in the field of renewable energies at Deutsche Shell AG, Repower Systems AG and RWE Innogy. He was the sole director of the German Wildlife Foundation until the end of 2019.

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

We have to point out again and again that the energy markets were already out of joint before the Ukraine war. As a result of the reduction of generation capacities (coal and nuclear power plants) throughout Europe and the failure to develop new oil, gas and coal reserves, as well as a rapid but politically intended increase in the prices of emission certificates, the prices of gas and electricity multiplied as early as 2021. The Ukraine war has further exacerbated this trend.

BDI President Siegfried Russwurm pointed out at the August 31, 2022 government meeting in Meseberg that industry has used 21 percent less gas over the course of this year. However, a large portion has not come from conservation or switching to other energy sources, but from shutting down and downsizing production.

Russwurm: "This is not a success, but an expression of a massive problem. The substance of the industry is threatened." And further, "The situation is already toxic for many companies, or will be shortly." The federal government's response is not to create a competitive industrial electricity price, as in France, but to watch as one factory after another closes its production.

The reaction of Economics Minister Habeck at the Meseberg press conference is remarkable. "The situation that we get cheap gas from Russia will not return.... This is not good news, because it can mean in each case in the affected industries that a structural change and... a structural break can happen. We are responding to this...by continuing the labor policy measures, short-time allowance." He wants to support alternative business models, which amounts to an elegant euphemism for deindustrialization.

Ten percent of Germany's small and medium-sized businesses face collapse. Steel mills like those in Hamburg and Bremen are closing down, paper mills are on the verge of going out of business. The paper manufacturer Hakle is just the beginning. The aluminum industry has largely shut down production not only in Germany - Europe has already lost 1 million tons of aluminum, according to WoodMackenzie. The situation of chemical plants and especially fertilizer factories is also alarming.

The Bergstrasse Academy maintains a depressing list of victims of energy price developments on its website. Why does an academy have to do this, when will our industrial unions finally sound the alarm? Their most important demand should be the creation of a competitive electricity price.

I was very pleased when, during the election campaign of 2021, Chancellor Olaf Scholz formulated his goal for Germany as an industrial country at Industry Day: "My goal is an industrial electricity price of four cents." Today, it has increased almost tenfold. In France, industrial companies are allowed direct access to low-cost nuclear power. For around 4.5 €ct/kWh, industrial companies can purchase a total of 120 terawatt hours, 25 percent of French generation, primarily from nuclear power plants. The EU Commission had already given its blessing to such an approach in 2010.

But we are discussing the shutdown of the last three nuclear power plants. The Green economy minister is offering a lazy compromise of a stretch operation of two nuclear power plants until next spring. He is hiding from us the fact that shutting down every other nuclear power plant will push the merit order further to the left and cause the price of electricity to rise massively. In the merit order, the order in which power plants are used, power plants are sorted by their generation costs in increasing order. As demand increases, more and more expensive power plants are added. The most expensive are the oil and gas-fired power plants. If six nuclear power plants were operated and lignite-fired power plants were revitalized, the cost of electricity would be more than halved. Robert Habeck and the entire German government are hiding this from us.

As you can see, the impact of secured base load from nuclear power and lignite in an electricity market with extremely high gas power prices is fundamental to fighting price increases. It is not fiddling with the merit order, as the German government is now planning, that will help us in the long run, but ending the electricity shortage with cheap power generation.

In a model scenario calculated according to the merit order tool of the EWI (Energy Economics Institute of the University of Cologne), electricity costs are cut by more than half if low-cost nuclear and lignite power plants continue to operate. 170 per MWh (17 €ct/kWh) is still three times as much as before the energy crisis, but it would leave the core of Germany's industrial base intact. But sometimes you get the impression that politicians have already resigned themselves to the erosion of Germany as an industrial location.
-----------------------

The level of dilletantism and destructiveness of this German suicide coalition defies description. Absolute incompetence seems to be a prerequisite for being allowed to hold a ministerial office. The worst crisis since WWII meets the worst government this country has ever had since then. And to do even worse than Merkel's regime - that really means something. But as the German saying goes: "Schlimmer geht immer."

Skybird

09-09-22, 04:13 PM

Test day for the city's sirens in my home town today. After a desastrous nation-wide testing result two years ago, one had planned to improve things and have the network of sirens properly maintained.

Today, of 70 sirens in the city where I lived, only 7 went on, they write. I say "they write", because I did not hear a single thing over the day and if it would have been a serious emergency, no warning whatever would have reached me - because the warning app announced to show a testing alarm also failed.

Second attempt, second complete failure. Germany, autumn 2022. I feel encouraged for our future...

mapuc

09-09-22, 04:37 PM

Could not hear the sirene you say.

Could it be the German has the same system as Denmark-
Here the sirene is tested one time per month(First Wednesday in the month)-Silently.
Only one time per year, citizens will be able to hear the sirene.

Oh missed the part only 7 went on-Which mean you should have heard the sirene(s).

Markus

Skybird

09-09-22, 05:32 PM

No, it definetely was a "loud" test. Meant to be that, at least.

Jimbuna

09-10-22, 08:14 AM

No, it definetely was a "loud" test. Meant to be that, at least.

Don't profess to be an expert on German politics by any stretch of the imagination but the impression I get from reading some of your posts is that whilst many in the UK would like to see a coalition government here in the UK, one look at the German coalition (every party having their own agenda and cancelling each others out in effect).

The people of the UK should see what is happening currently in Germany and perhaps think again of what they wish for.

Skybird

09-11-22, 08:57 AM

CIA expert leaves no good hair on the BND. FOCUS writes:
--------------
John Sipher is considered one of the most experienced intelligence experts in the United States. He does not see Germany's intelligence services as reliable partners when it comes to Russia. And what's more: he considers the Russia analysts from the BND "completely useless."

"Arrogant, incompetent, bureaucratic, useless" - the verdict of an American CIA expert on German counterintelligence sounds damning. In an interview with FOCUS online, John Sipher describes his professional experiences with German colleagues regarding Russia.

Sipher is one of the most experienced intelligence experts in the United States. For 28 years, he worked for the CIA in counterintelligence and was a member of the "Senior Intelligence Service," a leadership team of the U.S. intelligence service for global CIA operations.

He worked for a long time as an agent trainer and was responsible, together with intelligence services of other Western countries, for missions in Europe and Asia that were classified as highly dangerous.
-------------
FOCUS online: How do you assess the cooperation with the German intelligence services?

John Sipher: I'm sorry to have to say this. But although Germany is the center of the European economy, the German intelligence services are absolutely not reliable partners when it comes to Russia.

Actually, I don't like to speak negatively about the German intelligence services, because there are some good people there. And we are all, after all, desperately dependent on Germany to continue to put pressure on Russia.

But the German agents are being held back by their politicians, who apparently didn't want to acknowledge that Putin might be up to something nasty. So the German spies have their heads in the sand. And for that reason, the Russia analysts from the Bundesnachrichtendienst are completely useless.

You are speaking from personal experience?

Sipher: During my time in the intelligence service, when one of the tasks was to defend the country against a state threat from Russia, I noticed how much more incompetent the Germans were compared to all their colleagues from almost all other European countries.

They were also much less helpful than other Europeans. I really can't remember a single time when cooperation with the Germans worked. I also had some close friends who worked with the BND and the BfV (Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution) in Berlin and Munich.

And their assessments were similar?

Sipher: They all came to the same conclusion: The BfV does solid, serious work - but only if the will is there to do something. And when it came to Russia, both the BfV and the BND deliberately turned a blind eye for years and decades, respectively.

One got the impression that they were so lax in their dealings with Russia because they were afraid of finding out something they did not want to see. Because then they might have had to do something. And they knew that was not wanted by the Chancellery and the German government.

By the way, I also hear these assessments from the secret services of other countries, which also tried to cooperate with the Germans.

Secret agents from other countries also assess Germany negatively?

Sipher: Yes. For example, when voices from other countries have been raised that Russia increasingly poses a threat, German analysts and top people - mostly from the BND - have almost always reacted very arrogantly, claiming that they understand the Russians much better than anyone else.

The rest of us, they say, are simply "full of prejudice" against Russia. So it should hardly come as a surprise that the German intelligence services have a very bad reputation among other NATO partners when it comes to cooperation on Russia.

The motto seemed quite obvious: "Don't search and you won't find anything, and then there won't be any problems." Most other intelligence agencies also found that cooperation with Germany was a one-way street.

The Germans were happy to listen to information from others about Russia's dangerous actions - but conversely, they refused to hand over anything or cooperate themselves.

The main problem was pressure from above, from the German government?

Sipher: Exactly. In addition, the German intelligence services are not adequately funded and are far too bureaucratic. Anyone who has worked with the Germans says that both the BND and the BfV are not taken seriously by the government, hardly even listened to.

Many individual BfV and BND agents did not agree at all with the political top in Berlin. But all of them knew that a rebellion would damage their careers. In the end, no one wanted to cooperate with the German intelligence services because it never amounted to anything.

Do you see any signs that this is changing now?
Sipher: Hopefully, things will improve in the future. NATO's intelligence services will once again welcome the Germans with open arms if they are willing to cooperate in the future.

mapuc

09-13-22, 07:49 AM

If it ain't the energy problems or other problem EU has to deal with. Now they also have to deal with this crisis

The neighbouring countries have been embroiled in disputes for decades and friction has ratcheted up in recent weeks, with both sides alleging airspace violations. Greek officials have raised concerns about another outbreak of conflict in Europe following Russia’s war in Ukraine.

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/9/11/greek-coast-guard-fires-on-cargo-ship-in-aegean-sea-turkey

Markus

Jimbuna

09-13-22, 07:52 AM

Here's me thinking the issue wasn't of German concern but rather that of Greece and Turkey.

mapuc

09-13-22, 08:02 AM

Here's me thinking the issue wasn't of German concern but rather that of Greece and Turkey.

Ok here is what I was thinking.

Starting a new thread ? No
Is it about EU-well Greece is a member of EU and Turkey is a candidate
NATO both countries are member of NATO-However we do not have a NATO thread.

With this in mind I thought it would fit in our Germany thread.

It's up to Skybird-It's his thread if he decide it does not fit here-You remove these three or four comment. Remove comments after number #1633

Markus

Skybird

09-14-22, 02:05 AM

I claim no propriatory right. ;)

Skybird

09-16-22, 11:37 AM

Crisis spelling end for "made in Germany"?

https://beta.dw.com/en/is-the-energy-crisis-the-final-nail-in-germanys-export-dependent-economic-model/a-62727083

As severe as the energy crisis is, the existential threat to Germany's export-based economic model comes from many factors, and not just the war in Ukraine and its knock-on effects for global energy markets. Another major cause for concern is the dependence of the German business sector on China, for example.

Saying it since many, many years. The german economy is not strong, as was always claimed, but is extremely weak, because it it is so heavily dependent from factors beyond its control. Dependency is not strength. Never was, never will be. To think so, is self-deception.

Economic strength is to not need others that much, but being able to get along by yourself, no matter the others. THAT is strength.

Skybird

09-17-22, 06:18 AM

FOCUS writes:
----------------------------------

Well, dear Greens, that's it: you will be cursed, cursed, cursed

Just a moment ago, the Greens were considered the party that would provide the next chancellor. The refusal to do anything about the energy crisis undoes what trust the party leadership has built up.

Until a week ago, the energy crisis was a crisis of the two former people's parties, the CDU/CSU and the SPD. Even then, that wasn't entirely true, because it's the green energy transition that has contributed significantly to the calamities we find ourselves in. But at the end of the day, it's who's in power that counts, and it hasn't been the Greens over the past 16 years.

Energy crisis is now a Green crisis

Since the beginning of the week before last, the crisis has been a green crisis. Everything that may come this winter will now be attributed to them: the death of companies that will follow the doubling of electricity prices; the blackouts when the grids collapse because there are no longer enough reliable power plants.

I thought the Greens were smart, at least strategically. I trusted them to be the next chancellor. For a short time, it looked as if the project of conquering the social center might work.

The refusal to do everything necessary to avert the meltdown is therefore a mistake whose impact cannot be overestimated. It is likely to destroy all the trust that the party has built up in recent months.

We are at the beginning of the storm. You can see the weather glow. There is not a day when you don't read in the newspapers about companies that have no idea how they are going to shoulder the electricity bills. The worst hit are companies that wanted to do everything right and relied on a modern gas turbine. Those who can still burn oil or coal now at least have an alternative.

Anger at Minister Habeck

It also hits industries that you don't immediately think of. I ran into a doctor at a garden party on Saturday who joined a radiology practice in Munich three years ago. His billing office wrote to him last week, telling him to be prepared for an additional payment of 1.2 million euros in electricity costs. Large radiological units are power guzzlers that cannot simply be turned off overnight. The magnets that are needed for image acquisition cannot tolerate that.

"Let's see how long we can hold out," the radiologist said. I found him surprisingly composed. I wouldn't be able to sleep again if I were promised an additional payment of 1.2 million euros. But when we got to talking about the Minister of Economics' decision to take the nuclear power plants off the grid, the equanimity was gone. You could see how incomprehension and anger gained the upper hand in the man.

It is not only my radiologist who wonders why we are not doing everything we can to minimize the damage to the country. It has now been two weeks since Robert Habeck presented his plan to transfer German nuclear power to the silent reserve.

To this day, no one knows how this is supposed to work. A nuclear power plant is like my radiologist friend's computer tomograph: Some plants don't have an on/off switch. Habeck has answered his critics by saying that all those who thought his plan wouldn't work hadn't understood him. Unfortunately, he did not say what exactly he had in mind.

Greens have found short explanations

There are some unbreakable laws in politics. A scandal that takes more than one sentence to explain is not a scandal. That's why Annalena Baerbock's cheating book was a big issue in the election campaign and not Olaf Scholz's Cum-Ex past, although the latter is much more significant than the former. In the same way, an explanation that takes me more than a minute is useless as an explanation.

No one has known this better than the Greens. They invented chlorinated chickens and genetically modified corn to protect Germany from foreign goods. When their opponents started to explain the advantages of trade agreements with faraway countries, they just laughed.

And now they are looking for salvation in merit order, i.e. the order of power plants in pricing? Good luck. I made an attempt over the weekend to explain how the price is calculated in the electricity market.

I could see the look on my interlocutor's face go nowhere. At Greenpeace, they already knew why they always put the dolphin in the display window and never the undersea giant spider, which would be just as deserving of staying alive.

Is the nuclear power plant a symbol? Of course it is. Nuclear energy now accounts for only six percent of electricity generation. But that's how it is in times of war: Sometimes it's also about symbols. That's all the more true when people are up to their necks in water.

When you hold the letter with the new installment payment in your hands, it's good to know that the government is doing everything in its power to get the situation under control. And not saying, "Sorry, it's bad that you now have to pay five times as much. We also have 300 euros for you. But as far as power generation is concerned, unfortunately we have to make allowances for the green soul."

Green energy transition makes things much worse

With the energy transition, it's like with socialism. It's never the idea that's bad, always just the execution. Of course, the goal of phasing out coal after nuclear is held fast. Stupidly, it is precisely this fixation on renewables that has led us into dependence on Russian gas.

The Greens have always warned against Putin, which advantageously distinguishes them from other parties. However, the Green energy transition then made things much worse, because after coal and nuclear power were phased out, gas was the only reliable energy source left.

The coalition agreement announced the construction of more gas-fired power plants. "Natural gas is indispensable for a transitional period," it says in a rare bow to reality. It would be interesting to know whether the coalition intends to stick to this or whether it is counting on other energy sources appearing out of nowhere.

Perhaps they will simply forgo the so-called baseload, energy sources that are independent of the vagaries of the weather. That would fit in with a world in which will and imagination count and not the disdainful laws of physics.

You think this is a joke? I remember a tweet in which the German Environment Ministry declared before the gas crisis: "Base load will no longer exist in the classical sense." Instead of baseload, they were betting on a system of renewables, storage and smart grids. In the environment ministry, people have always been further ahead than in normal politics. Now only reality has to follow.

Even among Green voters, there is a change of mood

At the beginning of the week, the opinion research institute Forsa asked Germans what they think about the lifespan of nuclear power plants. 67 percent are in favor of the three reactors still in operation being used to generate electricity until 2024.

Even among Green voters, there is a shift in sentiment. At 41 percent, the proportion of those in favor of continued operation is no longer so far behind the proportion in favor of shutdown or reserve.

If I were a Green hater, I would want the party leadership to stick to its decision to phase out for as long as possible. At the latest, when the lights go out in January during the doldrums because the sun and wind can't keep up with power consumption, their ambitions for higher things will be over for the time being.

When the Tesla owner can no longer get her car out of the spot because the charging station is on strike, then the Green Party will be back where it came from: no longer a lifestyle choice for the upper middle class, but an offer to the truly convinced, who will also let their conviction cost them something. That's still enough for the Bundestag. But it will be difficult to get into the chancellor's office.

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

Two bakers in my neighbourhood have shut down last week. The one for a limited time, he hopes, the other forever.

It has begun.

Rockstar

09-17-22, 09:05 AM

Germany takes control of Russian-owned oil refineries

https://www.cnn.com/2022/09/16/energy/rosneft-germany-oil-refineries/index.html

Berlin/London
CNN Business
—
The German government has seized control of three Russian-owned oil refineries to secure supplies of gasoline, diesel and aviation fuel.

Germany’s economy ministry announced on Friday that it had temporarily taken over Russian oil giant Rosneft’s subsidiaries in the country. Rosneft Deutschland and RN Refining & Marketing account for about 12% of Germany’s oil refining capacity, the ministry said in a statement.

The move was designed to “counter the threat to the security of energy supply,” it added.

Jimbuna

09-17-22, 02:06 PM

A step in the right direction if even just a small one.

Catfish

09-20-22, 09:29 AM

Jimbuna

09-20-22, 01:25 PM

Scholz condemned intentions of Russian Federation to hold pseudo-referendums in occupied territories of Ukraine.

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz called the so-called unacceptable referendums on joining the occupied territories of Ukraine to the Russian Federation

As Censor.NET informs with reference to Interfax-Ukraine, the German publication Zeit Online reports this.

"It is quite clear that these fictitious referendums are unacceptable," Scholz told reporters in New York.

He emphasized that "referendums" are not covered by "international law and agreements reached by the international community." Source: https://censor.net/en/n3368481

So does this mean Germany will send tanks etc. now?

Rockstar

09-20-22, 04:05 PM

So does this mean Germany will send tanks etc. now?

Two things,

1. I think it’s bad for business if they did. Look what Poland and others are doing. They unload their obsolete albeit useful equipment on Ukraine. Then buy the ‘good stuff’ for themselves. I’d bet U.S. and German arms manufactures are competing for those contracts as we speak. And if you look nobody else is giving away their best armor either.

2. This is not tank warfare. Throughout this war we have seen tanks knocked out in droves, even the most modern tank is a sitting duck without the modern integration of C3I, air and infantry support. This is a war of artillery, infantry and will. Tanks though useful, have not proven themselves to be a “game changer”.

Jimbuna

09-21-22, 04:50 AM

Fully agree but the 'etc' part meant other weapons such as artillery, apc's and ammunition etc. (oops. there I go again).

Skybird

09-21-22, 07:28 AM

Pushing an offensive under fire needs armoured mobility. The Ukrainians need to carry their troops into battle and artillery fires in - technicals, pickups and cars.

Tanks are great for fast spearhead attacks - and the, with infantry, digging in and holding that terrain.

The Russians prove to be bad at identifying individual targets like cars and tanks so far. The lack the modern AT drone weapons that the Ukrainians have gotten.

Many of the BMPs and T-72 the Ukrainians were given, have been updated with plenty of Western hightech components to bring them closer to NATO standards. They are more ffective than their Russia n coutnerparts. So one could argue that some NATO members altready deliver modernised MBTs.

Delivering MBT imo should be a main task of the Europeans, and Germany as one of the main MBT producers. The Leopard, Chaöllenger and Leclerk all have one thign in common with Russian amde tanks: they burn Diesel. The Americna abrams is a gas junkey and runs jet fuel with its very thirsty gas turnbine. Ukrainian logistics are not designed to now service another newly opened needed suppy line for that new gas, and in significant quantity, it is a needless complication, even mroe so under war logistics conditions.

German industry could deliver Leopard-1s and Leopard-2A4s in significant quantities, as well as Marder-3s. The Bundeswehr would suffer no loss there. They have them stockpiled in their parking backyards.

Poland is so fed up with the Germans that it now refuses to buy more German armour, and instead buys South Korean MBTs. Not every Polish quarrel with Germany is justified, much of their noise is just that: nationalistic noise. But regarding the military support for Ukraine they are right.

Ukraine depletes its Sovjet-made ammo stockpiles for Sovjet made weapons and artillery. It needs to switch to Western systems to get ammo available. Russia will not deliver it any ammunition for Sovjet era weapons. The deliveries of a newly reopened Russian ammo factory somewhere in Eastern Europe or Scandinavia, I forgot where it was, seems to not be able to compensate the need in ammo supplies. Media reported already months ago that Russia has brought military production in the Ukraine to a standstill by bombing according factories.

Skybird

09-21-22, 07:48 AM

Bubble-Olaf had his meaningless and imo embarassingly weak premiere at the UN. FOCUS writes:
------------------

Olaf Scholz spoke for the first time last night at the UN General Assembly in New York. First, the chancellor explained his views on the war in Ukraine, then he delivered generalities. This was not yet his turnaround announced months ago.

"When others get hot, I get cold. When others get cold, I get ice cold." This is how Chancellor Helmut Schmidt spoke and acted.

He did not allow himself to be blackmailed by the hijackers of the Lufthansa plane Landshut to Mogadishu. The plane was stormed by a special commando of the GSG 9 and the hostages were freed.

He was not intimidated by the hijackers of Hanns Martin Schleyer, the president of the German employers' association. The terrorists' demands for the release of legally convicted terrorists remained unfulfilled. The state showed itself strong and unyielding. Schleyer paid with his death.

Olaf Scholz does not have the cold-bloodedness of Helmut Schmidt. He is personally more supple and politically more agile than "Schmidt Schnauze," as the former chancellor was respectfully called.
Scholz plays the moderate European before the UN

Tonight, Scholz delivered his calling card to the United Nations General Assembly in New York. It was that of a moderate European who has a recognizably difficult time with war and warfare.

There appeared a man who explained in a well-tempered voice - first in English, then in German - his position on the Ukraine war. On the occasion of the Russian invasion, he directly addressed the perpetrator of violence and hardship: "Russia's war of conquest against Ukraine cannot be justified by anything. President Putin is waging it with a single goal: to seize Ukraine. Self-determination and political independence do not count for him. There is only one word for it. This is sheer imperialism!"

He drew a red line for himself and the traffic light coalition, which remains a red line even if it is not called that: "That is why we will not accept a Russian dictatorial peace. That is why Ukraine must be able to fend off Russia's incursion. We are supporting Ukraine in this with all our might: financially, economically, humanitarianly and also with weapons."
Powerlessness of German military aid

Then, however, they left him. What followed were generalities that can only be seen as correct, but just as banal: "If we want this war to end, then we can't care how it ends."

No ****!

He defends the economic sanctions, knowing they have long been directed against his own people: "Together with partners around the world, we have imposed tough economic sanctions against the Russian leadership and Russia's economy."

In terms of military aid to Ukraine, demanded by many and disputed on the home front, no specification, nowhere. Scholz did not name any weapons categories or sums of money, and of course he concealed the fact that Germany's aid of 1.2 billion euros lags far behind the British aid of over 4 billion euros and the American military aid of 25 billion euros. The powerlessness of this German military aid marks all sorts of things, but certainly not a turning point.

To bridge the gap between the good intentions and the rather modest reality of German aid, Scholz built a bridge out of large word elements: "Our message is: We stand firmly by the side of the attacked! To protect the lives and freedom of Ukrainians! And for the protection of our international order!"

He announced that he was prepared - be careful here the details matter - to imprison not Putin and his government, but the Russian soldiers for their atrocities: "The murderers we will bring to justice. We support the International Criminal Court and the independent commission of inquiry set up by the Human Rights Council in this with all our strength."

The bottom line is that Olaf Scholz wants to keep all options open with his low-threshold military aid, including that of mediating peace talks. In doing so, however, he is leaving the Americans in charge of the European theater of war. Tonight, Olaf Scholz has postponed the turning point for a self-confident Europe.
-----------------

"Who wants leadership from me, will get leadership." (original quote Scholz).

Pffft.... A weaseling windbag. Maulheld.

Jimbuna

09-21-22, 08:03 AM

If it wasn't so terrifyingly true....it would be funny.

Jimbuna

09-22-22, 12:59 PM

Every citizen of Russian Federation who openly opposes Putin’s regime can ask for asylum in Germany - head of Ministry of Internal Affairs Feser

The Federal Republic of Germany is ready to accept Russian deserters under certain circumstances.

This was stated by the Minister of Internal Affairs of the Federal Republic of Germany, Nancy Feather, Censor.NET informs with reference to the Oldenburger Onlinezeitung.

"As a rule, deserters who are threatened with severe repression receive international protection in Germany. Anyone who courageously opposes the Putin regime and therefore exposes himself to the greatest danger can apply for asylum in Germany due to political persecution," said the official.

The decision-making practice of the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees has already been adjusted accordingly. However, granting asylum is a case-by-case decision that also includes security checks.

For months, Germany hosted critics of the Russian regime who were persecuted and threatened, the minister added. Russia's increasingly brutal aggression against Ukraine is accompanied by increased internal repression, in particular against the press, human rights defenders and representatives of the opposition. In particular, the government gives Russian journalists the opportunity to report freely and independently from Germany. "In this fast and non-bureaucratic procedure, we have already made possible the admission of 438 people together with the Federal Ministry of Foreign Affairs," Feser said.

After Russian President Vladimir Putin announced partial mobilization, there were signs of conscripts fleeing the country, and flights abroad that were still available were quickly booked. Then the coalition partners VDP and "Greens" asked the government to accept Russian deserters.

It will be recalled that on September 21, Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a decree on partial mobilization. According to Putin, only citizens who are in the reserve will be subject to conscription, they will undergo additional training taking into account the war in Ukraine. According to the decree, mobilization begins on September 21.

At the same time, the Russian invaders in the temporarily occupied Luhansk region are taking all the men they can find.

Protests swept through Russia. Detained men are served with summonses.

It is known that men are trying to leave the Russian Federation en masse. In particular, to Finland and Georgia. EU countries - for example, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania - declare that they will not provide shelter to Russian citizens fleeing mobilization. Source: https://censor.net/en/n3368993

Rockstar

09-24-22, 07:30 PM

Far right German party members to tour Russian-held regions of Ukraine

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/far-right-german-party-members-to-tour-russian-held-regions-of-ukraine/ar-AA121ZXg?ocid=EMMX&cvid=852d56158dda4724bde0581b20fc41d8

Far left is far right, far right is far left, bipolar or Schizophrenic or WTH?

Former German MP and current Left Party (Die Linke) member Dieter Dehm suggests the Russian mass killings in Bucha were “probably faked”.

Rockstar

09-24-22, 07:40 PM

Fully agree but the 'etc' part meant other weapons such as artillery, apc's and ammunition etc. (oops. there I go again).

Well the way I see it is as Skybird pointed out on so many occasions that the military readiness of the German armed forces simply sucks. They don’t have much to give away that is operationally ready to begin with and if the feces hits the rotating oscillator they’ll need what they do have for themselves and NATO

Jimbuna

09-26-22, 11:47 AM

At least a few of the NATO members (Germany included) are too reliant on assistance from the US imho.

Skybird

09-28-22, 06:51 AM

The German "Energiewende" (ewnergy transformation) was a still birth drom all beginning on. Now the cadaver already stinks from rotting, but they still refuse to finally bury it, and so the cadaveric poison started to poison the ground around and make it unusable as well in the future.

Renewable energies are becoming the only cheap source of electricity. For some companies, this is the last chance to cover their costs. A Hamburg steel mill, for example, now only starts its furnaces according to the weather forecast. Wind has become an uncontrollable economic factor.

It wasn't long ago that professional weather forecasts were something for sailors and farmers. One look at the app and the fisherman headed for the sheltering harbor, the farmer watched to make sure he got his hay in the dry. In other industries, it didn't matter. That has changed. With the energy transition, weather data became a key planning variable in the energy industry. And now, gas shortages and skyrocketing energy prices mean that even for companies with large electricity requirements, wind and sun are suddenly having a decisive influence on operational cost accounting.

Can this really work in a high tech environment like the German industry claims to be? I see no chance for that. In fact what I see is that cascade effects have already started to work their way through the whole eocnomic netqwork, on all levels. What I see is that all what has held it alltogether, now has become so loose and untight that the whole has started to fall apart. They deny it, they ignore it, they try to gloss over it, but for me the signs are clear. Its a cascade of effects that reaches from one subordinate level to the next higher one, and on every new level the cataclysmic effects reinforce themselves over-proportionally. To me the perception of it is as clear and obvious like differentiant between a red and a green traffic light.

The minister for wonder, magic and supertalk Robert Habeck now finally had to accept to leave the two Bavarian nuclear powerplants on the grid - but sitll limting their lifeitme until end of March. The thir durnning reactor in the Emsöland he still wa nts to switch off. No new fuels beign ordered. Three more reacvtors that could be reatcivated, still no word on these. The greens still put their ideolgiocakl worldwview "nuke is evil" before the needs of the people and the necessities of this nations eocnomic fundament. They claim that "every Watt saved counts",, but they waste GWh ewn masse this way, and they od not accept the link betwene hiogh prices of electrocty and the short supply of it, that supply and price do interacxt. They just do not get it, these retards.

At the last elections, 60 million were elegible to vote, the total population now is 84 million (justz newly counted, due to the huge migration influx). The Greens got 14,8% of the vote that saw a participation of 76%. Doing some math means that around 6.6 million people of 84 million gave them their vote, that makes them a minority of less than 10% of the total population. Of these, many - especially younger - followers have changed their stand on nuclear power and see the need to leave the reactors on, maybe even stay with nuclear energy, at the last count, there was almost a 45-50% parity between those Green voters objecitng to and accepting nuclear power. So lets halve the group here, which means they are a tiny minority of around 3-4 million Green people only who enforce economic disaster and anti-nuclear policy on a huge and overwhelming majority . Inside the Greens, it is interesting to see who is for and against it. Its a generation thing. The old ideolgical hardliners from the 80s are strictly against it, the young ones are way more pragmatic and see the needs realistically, less ideologically.

FOCUS writes on wonderboy Habeck (and mind you, I have said from all beginning on that Habeck is nothing more than a rhetorically gifted but factually incompetent and ideologically hardlining "Blender": a phony and imposter):
-----------------------------
As recently as August, Robert Habeck was the superstar of German politics. But that has since thoroughly changed. 6 reasons that explain the Economics Minister's fall from grace, which he brought on himself.

"Some of the hut is already on fire," says Robert Habeck. He means the German economy. But he could justifiably say the same about the ministry he leads.

Since he took office, the former home of German regulatory policy - which produced great personalities such as Ludwig Erhard, Karl Schiller, Otto Graf Lambsdorff, Hans Friderichs and Wolfgang Clement - has mainly been producing glittering verbal tinsel, contradictions by the dozen and, as its latest premium product, obvious nonsense. In this highest product category, Robert Habeck currently has quite a bit to offer:

Habeck's idea of a gas levy was confused and arbitrary

Nonsense 1: His idea of a gas levy was confused and arbitrary from the beginning. Why, in times of inflation and energy price explosion, the state should act as a spender of energy and thus as an inflation driver, Habeck could not explain conclusively.

The social injustice that only gas customers should bear the risks of the energy war between Germany and Russia cried out to heaven. Especially since these 21 million gas customers are not responsible for the misery and have no alternative strategy for escaping their gas supplier.

The polluter pays principle was upside down, which is why Habeck now had to take the back seat. The chancellor, the finance minister and, most recently, his party friends have made it clear to him: That levy, for which the minister was still freaking out in the Bundestag the other day, has to go.

Habeck's enegier trips to Qatar and Canada were for the cat

Nonsense 2: With their heroic trips to Qatar, Canada and Saudi Arabia, Economics Minister and Chancellor Habeck suggest that the state is now closing the energy gap with an iron hand that the energy industry cannot close. The truth is: The videos that Habeck sent from there ("I launched a new energy partnership in Qatar") look like a contribution to Jan Böhmermann's ZDF-Magazin Royale.

This is because Habeck's successes are hardly measurable. In 2020, the Federal Republic imported about 56 billion cubic meters of natural gas from Russia. The 137,000 cubic meters of LNG imported from Qatar correspond to about 82 million cubic meters of gaseous natural gas. That's about 0.2 percent of Russia's previous annual supply via pipelines - in other words, a joke. Meanwhile, in Canada, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau stressed that his country would play no role in the supply of liquefied natural gas in the short term.

This means that the trips by Scholz and Habeck have brought nothing except new CO2 emissions from the government's engines for the coming winter.

Conclusion: If one could heat with hot air from the power plant of party politics, it would be cozy warm in the coming winter.

Habeck lacks a compass for debt and inflation

Nonsense 3: The minister demands further subsidies almost daily, which he wants the finance minister to pay for with new debts. Apparently, the minister has no compass for the connection between debt policy, money overhang and inflation; he demands things that will be paid for in the present with currency devaluation and loss of prosperity and by the next generation with the limitation of its possibilities.

The Federal Audit Office is already talking about a "fossilized budget" because there is hardly anything left for future investments. Intergenerational justice, rightly called for by the Greens in their election program, is first ignored and then sabotaged by Habeck. This is no way to serve his young voters.

Minister on the outside, Robin Hood on the inside: How Habeck denounces higher earners

Nonsense 4: The minister actively fought the relief of the middle class through the elimination of cold progression and denounced this project as a discreet enrichment program of high earners. He said, "I do not see how we can represent in this situation that those who need less support are absolutely relieved more. "

He was of the opinion that "Rich households and people with lower incomes pay the same high energy prices. The only thing is that rich people can take it. "

The truth is: no one would be better off by shifting the tax rate; only the negative effects of inflation on income taxpayers would be muted. The reform was not neoliberal, but overdue.

The bottom line: for the first time in history, there is a minister of the economy at work here who does not love and caress his core target group, but reaches into its wallet. Outside: Minister. Inside: Robin Hood.

How SPD and FDP had to get Habeck on track with nuclear policy

Nonsense 5: Nuclear policy. With his about-face yesterday - as things stand, the Isar 2 and Neckarwestheim 2 nuclear power plants will have to run beyond the end of the year - Habeck admitted that he had fooled German citizens for weeks with false statements like "we have a gas problem, but no electricity problem." Only political pressure from the SPD and FDP made him relent. What was impossible yesterday is now suddenly "necessary," he said. From the beginning, his attempt - first the party, then the country - was a cautionary tale for a party that demands: follow the science on the climate issue.

Habeck complains about conditions that he himself has brought about

Nonsense 6: When Habeck now complains about the weak capital cushion of the German economy, he is lamenting conditions that he himself helped to bring about. The energy price explosion was the igniter for the drop in profits in Germany's small and medium-sized businesses, but the Greens brought the match beforehand with ever new bureaucratic requirements.

The profitability of German companies is historically low. The burden of bureaucracy is historically high. Robert Habeck is not solely responsible for this, but he and his political friends are a major driver of this bureaucratic mill and grind movement that threatens to pulverize the middle class. In a recession, it will push those already weakened over the cliff first.

Conclusion: Robert Habeck no longer needs media disenchantment. He is disenchanting himself. Even his journalistic foot soldiers are already showing signs of fatigue. The Robert Habeck fan club is about to disband. Alan Posener penned the requiem for a superstar retiree in Die Zeit:

"So far, none of the traffic light parties is making a bella figura. Least of all the man who would be most likely to jump over his own shadow, Robert Habeck. Too bad. "
---------------------------

Habeck originally is an author of children books - not without even ideolgically charging up the smallest of the young ones with Green gender and sexualization ideology in his books. Why do the masses always fall for the lousiest impostors? To look at the election results and what kind of people get spilled to the top of the power herarchy time and again is the best argument against generla elections, I sometimes think. It seems our political system makes sure we get governed always by the worst of the worst. My trust for it is excatly 0.000, since many, many, many years.

Skybird

10-01-22, 03:25 AM

FOCUS writes:
--------------------------
What no one in the Green Party dares to say: What Germany will look like after the energy transition

With no political project is the number of errors as great as with the energy transition. A thought leader of the Green Party now speaks the truth: Those who rely entirely on wind and sun want the irreversible deindustrialization of the country.

What will Germany look like after the final energy turnaround? A paradise, if you can believe the brochures of the Greens. Cows graze peacefully on lush meadows, while the wind turbine turns gently on the horizon. The German family sits happily united at the dining table - black and white, old and young, grandma in the middle - listening spellbound as Annalena Baerbock reports on the latest victories of feminist foreign policy on "Tagesthemen." The union of modernity and Biedermeier: Transformation can be this beautiful.

There is also another, less promotional view. It is represented by Ulrike Herrmann, economics editor at the "taz" and thus the paper that feels more committed to the eco-movement than any other in Germany. With regard to the energy transition, Herrmann speaks of green shrinkage. If you think that this is another polemical dig at the Greens, you are far from it. Ms. Herrmann means it in a positive way. When she talks about shrinking, she thinks it is something worth striving for.

Utopia of an ecological planned economy

She has written an entire book on the subject. It's called "The End of Capitalism." In it, she develops the utopia of an ecological planned economy, in which a committee of climate wise men works to dismantle the system that generated growth and prosperity for many years. Better get ready in time for bananas from Costa Rica or grapes from the Cape to be a thing of the past!

This is what the green future looks like: People use only regional and seasonal products because air travel has largely ceased. The next vacation trip is not to Sardinia, but at best to Rügen. Of course, you can still meet friends, but they all speak German again now. São Paulo, Bali or Mumbai are as far away as they were in Marco Polo's day.

Necessary repairs? You have to do them yourself. A new jacket or dress? Only if you know how to operate a sewing machine. Most commodities are shared with neighbors anyway: lawn mowers, drills, toys, books.

The good news is: washing machines, computers and the Internet are here to stay. "Nobody has to fear that we'll end up back in the Stone Age and living in caves when capitalism ends," Ms. Herrmann reassures her readers. There is just less of everything, respectively: If you're lucky enough to have a computer, it's a device from the time when people still believed in growth.

Only green shrinkage remains

Why the turn to less? Quite simply, no industrialized country can be kept running on sun and wind alone. Energy is available in abundance, and that's not the problem. The sun sends 5000 times more energy to the earth than the eight billion people would need, even if they all lived like Europeans. "However, solar panels and wind turbines only provide electricity when the sun is shining and the wind is blowing," Ms. Herrmann writes. "To provide for lulls and darkness, energy must be stored - either in batteries or as green hydrogen. This intermediate step is so costly that green power will remain scarce and expensive."

Ergo: If green energy is to be enough for everyone, green shrinking is the only option. I rarely agree with people who work at the "taz." But I think Ulrike Herrmann is right. Capitalist growth philosophy and green revolution do not go together. I'm glad someone is saying it so clearly. Most people who are on the road for the Greens act as if everything can be reconciled: the Volvo at the door - and climate rescue on the go.

I'm not sure everyone realizes what it means to say goodbye to fossil fuels, as the climate movement demands. You can be happy with less. The happiest people supposedly live in Bangladesh, according to an older happiness comparison study I took. Others see the Finns in the lead when it comes to well-being.

We will not be able to maintain living standards

Be that as it may, things will change once the coalition agreement of the German government has finally been worked through. It's hard to imagine, for example, that we'll be able to maintain the medical standards to which we've become accustomed. One reassuring piece of information during the pandemic was that no country would have as many intensive care beds per inhabitant as the Federal Republic. Does anyone seriously believe that it will stay that way once we have phased out nuclear power and coal?

As I said, you can get by with less. Ulrike Herrmann recommends the 1970s as a reference decade. People didn't live badly back then either, she says: "It was the year Argentina became soccer world champion and the first part of 'Star Wars' was shown in theaters."

Agreed. You just shouldn't have the misfortune of getting liver cancer or a degenerative muscle condition. There is a reason why life expectancy today is 81 years on average. On the other hand, 72 is also a nice age to retire. From the point of view of climate protection, every year of life is one too many anyway.

We are now hearing that we are in trouble because the energy turnaround has not been pushed forward decisively enough. But you can also see things the other way around. No other country in Europe has spent as much money on the expansion of renewable energies as Germany. Even before the invasion of Ukraine, we had the highest electricity prices in the EU. According to green logic, we should be in a much better position today than our neighbors, but the opposite is the case.

The road to energy transition is paved with false assumptions

The truth is: the backbone of Germany's energy transition has always been Russian gas and French nuclear power. Robert Habeck involuntarily admitted it when he prepared his supporters that the nuclear phase-out would have to be postponed for a few months. Because we can no longer rely on Russia and France, nuclear power from Bavaria and Baden-Württemberg will now have to fill the gap - at least until April.

After that, heat pumps are to do the trick, according to the coalition agreement. 500,000 heat pumps are to be installed in German households every year. I'm curious to see how that will work out. The road to the energy transition is paved with false assumptions. Do you remember Jürgen Trittin, the father of the can deposit, promising Germans that the energy transition would cost them no more than a scoop of ice cream [and former environment minister, years ago, and a green Maoist, Skybird]? That has become a very expensive scoop of ice cream.

Civil engineer Lamia Messari-Becker, long a member of the German Council of Environmental Experts, assessed the plans in an interview in Der Spiegel. Habeck should end this aberration, she said. Most houses in Germany are not suitable for the use of heat pumps, she said. Those who try it anyway will incur horrendous electricity bills, she added. There are not even enough appliances or craftsmen who could install the pumps.

Trittin's ice cream scoop bet was a highly serious matter

The responsible state secretary in the Ministry of Economics, Patrick Graichen, was recently asked where the 60,000 fitters would come from who would be needed to put the ambitious plans into practice. Well, he said lightly, then a few less tilers will have to lay tiles. I'm afraid that against Robert Habeck's heat pump plan, Trittin's ice cream scoop bet was a highly serious matter.

Ulrike Herrmann's book about the end of capitalism made it to number one on the bestseller list. The audience that can appreciate the return to the seventies is larger than I thought.

After all, the music was definitely better back then. I'm getting the old discs out again now. If rewinding progress, then at least to the sound of Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin. As Janis Joplin sang: Freedom's just another word for nothin' left to lose.
------------------------------

Skybird

10-04-22, 10:03 AM

FOCUS writes:
-------------------------
Putin, Putin, Putin: Although Angela Merkel only wanted to make "feel-good" appointments in her political retirement, the former chancellor never misses an opportunity to talk about Russia and the Kremlin tsar. There are good reasons for this.

At the beginning of June, six months after leaving the chancellery, Angela Merkel made her first public appearance as former chancellor at the presentation of a small anthology of her speeches. There she cautiously approached her new role. She was "not a completely normal citizen" and therefore had to continue to be careful about expressing herself. "It's not my job to comment from the sidelines," she stressed: "I'm still looking for my way."

Now, it is a well-known fact that good intentions are not always long-lasting. Merkel does make comments on current politics, especially on Putin and Russia. For she is undoubtedly not pleased that Germany's extreme dependence on Russian gas - with all the unforeseeable consequences for the population and the economy - is attributed not least to her policies.

In any case, it was not to be expected that Merkel would be completely politically abstinent. Like all former heads of government, she is probably concerned with her own image in the history books. The CDU politician, who is emphatically unpretentious, would never say that. But her announcement that she and her long-time office manager Beate Baumann are writing a book about her life in the GDR and her chancellorship speaks precisely to this.

It is also noticeable that Merkel, who once described the internet as uncharted territory, obviously feels comfortable on the net. At any rate, she has had her own homepage there since the beginning of July: www.buero-bundeskanzlerin-ad.de . Anyone who wants to know which interviews the former chancellor has given, which speeches she has delivered, which statements she has made, will find what they are looking for here. It is a digital chronicle of the ex-chancellor's activities.

One thing is clear from Merkel's public statements to date: at present, the main concern here is to present her policy towards Vladimir Putin and Russia as if it had been - to use her favourite vocabulary - without alternative. She would "not apologise" for this policy, she had already declared at her first public appearance. Nor did she ever believe "that Putin would be changed by trade". She had known how he thought and had always tried to prevent an escalation.

The ex-chancellor avoids any verbal sharpness when talking about Putin. Putin, Putin, Putin: The former Chancellor never misses an opportunity to talk about Russia and the Kremlin tsar, while avoiding any verbal sharpness. This could be observed twice last week, when Merkel spoke at the first event of the newly founded "Federal Chancellor Helmut Kohl Foundation" in Berlin and at the "1,100-year town anniversary" in Goslar.

In Berlin, she could have left it at paying tribute to Kohl's services to unity. In Goslar, on the other hand, the eventful history of Goslar, the founding of the CDU in 1950 in this former mining town, and her relationship with her former Vice-Chancellor, Sigmar Gabriel, an honorary citizen of Goslar, provided enough material. But in both speeches, the Ukraine war and its consequences played a major role.

In Berlin, Merkel tried to defend her Russia policy - citing Kohl. Her thesis: in all measures against the aggressor Putin, Kohl would always make sure to return to "business as usual" after the end of the war with Russia.
Merkel is no longer in office - but far from gone

In Goslar, she pleaded for "working on a pan-European security architecture involving Russia within the framework of the principles of international law", even if this would require "a very long breath". Merkel's "bitter realisation of 24 February": "As long as we have not achieved this (...) the Cold War is not really over either; worse still, it has become a real war for the people in Ukraine."

But after the invasion of Ukraine, her policy towards Russia - also with regard to natural gas supplies - appears in a different light. Although the former German Chancellor had announced that in her political retirement she would only attend "feel-good" appointments: She also takes on the unwieldy topic of Putin and works hard to ensure that her policies are interpreted positively in retrospect.

The conclusion: the former chancellor is no longer in office - but she is far from gone.
---------------------------------
Unfortunately.
A real huge fly swatter may come handy.

Catfish

10-04-22, 02:33 PM

"Die ich rief, die Geister .. "
then standing there and being so completely innocent.

Apart from Schroeder she is the the one who made Germany dependent on russian oil and gas, due to her good relationship to Putin.
She should shut up or publicly take a stance against Putin now. Disgusting.

Skybird

10-04-22, 03:46 PM

^ Now she can feel further encouraged in her delusion. The UN is giving her a UN Refugee Award.

If I received such a prize or a similar one for whatever, I would feel insulted.

Skybird

10-05-22, 03:21 AM

The leaders of numerous municipalities and communities are warning the population in newspaper reports of blackouts lasting 72 hours or more. Officials complain about the lack of resilience of the Germans and their innocence.

Skybird

10-07-22, 06:26 AM

My opinion of the German state propaganda TV stations ARD and ZDF already was very low before, they arte dispicable and and stuck ina series of scandals anyway. This news now does not help to heal their reputation. But it is representative for the perverse and lefty Zeitgeist in general over here: I only say "Dokumenta".

FOCUS writes:
----------------------
For his statements in the ARD documentary "Death and Games," a Palestinian terrorist from the 1972 Olympics received an exclusive fee of $2,000. The bereaved families of the murdered athletes are stunned and speak of a "media scandal".

A fugitive Palestinian terrorist who was involved in the murder of eleven athletes of the Israeli Olympic team in Munich in 1972 has collected an exclusive fee of 2000 US dollars for the description of the massacre in the ARD. This was confirmed by a spokeswoman for ARD to the news magazine FOCUS.

Mohammed Safady (69) boasted in the four-part ARD documentary "Death and Games," broadcast in September, about the attack on the Israeli team and the killing of the eleven athletes and a Bavarian policeman. The act was heroic and for the first time made the world aware of the fate of the Palestinian people, Safady said in the documentary. He has no regrets. Any time, the former member of the Fatah terrorist group said, he would take on a new assignment to murder Jews.

It had been agreed in advance with the broadcasters SWR, rbb and BR involved in the documentary that no fees would be paid to Palestinian hostage-takers who were still alive, the spokeswoman for the Berlin-Brandenburg (rbb) broadcaster, Stefanie Tannert, told FOCUS. However, it later emerged that the producer responsible for the documentary had paid an exclusive fee of $2,000, she said.

Relatives of the murdered Israeli athletes reacted with horror to the news of the fee for a murderer. The spokeswoman for the victims' families, Ankie Spitzer, whose husband André was tied up in the helicopter and presumably shot by Mohamed Safady, told FOCUS: "For me, it's a media scandal on the part of ARD that killers are paid money for their inhuman statements."

Skybird

10-07-22, 01:05 PM

FOCUS writes:
--------------------------
Panic is spreading in parts of the German economy due to the rapid rise in gas and electricity prices. In view of the further round of price increases expected by the beginning of next year, both companies and their industry associations fear that production in Germany could become permanently unprofitable. The Munich-based Ifo Institute expects that the development of energy prices will lead to increased investment abroad.

"At first glance, the cost share for energy is not that high," says Ifo economist Oliver Falck. The share of energy costs in gross production value is 0.5 percent in the automotive sector, 0.8 percent in mechanical engineering and 3.1 percent in chemicals.

"Nevertheless, a sharp rise in energy prices can affect the competitiveness of those industries in particular that face tough international competition and already realize relatively low sales margins due to competition." Falck expects "temporary production stoppages and the relocation of particularly energy-intensive production steps abroad."

According to Falck, energy-intensive production is also very capital-intensive - in other words, expensive. Relocations are not readily possible, he said. "However, we will probably see relocations abroad in new investments." At the VDMA mechanical engineering association, a spokesman says, "Companies won't make such an important decision solely because of energy prices, but sharply rising energy prices can of course tip the scales in individual cases."

Because of high energy prices, the president of the Association of German Chambers of Industry and Commerce, Peter Adrian, also warns of numerous insolvencies in the coming months. "If energy prices do not drop significantly, the lights will go out in tens of thousands of companies in this country in six months at the latest," he told the "Rheinische Post" (Friday). This would threaten a loss of prosperity of incomprehensible proportions. In addition, gas prices in Germany are about ten times as high as in the USA.

How immense the energy demand of the most energy-intensive companies is can be seen from the data of the Federal Statistical Office. The city of Ludwigshafen, with a population of just 171,000, has the highest gas consumption in all of Germany. This is because the city on the Rhine is home to BASF's main plant.

BASF does not provide figures for Ludwigshafen alone, but energy costs for the European sites combined were €800 million higher in the second quarter than a year earlier, according to the chemical company. Compared with the second quarter of 2020, the additional costs of energy supply thus amounted to one billion euros.

A consequential damage of the high energy prices: Domestic supply chains have long since been disrupted, and supply problems are no longer confined to Chinese imports. "We have received numerous responses from member associations reporting production cutbacks by member companies due to the massive rise in energy prices," says Bertram Brossardt, the CEO of the Bavarian Business Association (vbw).

BASF has greatly reduced its ammonia production, and the production of acetylene, a basic material for many plastics, textiles or even solvents, is also not running at full capacity. According to a BASF spokesman, demand has declined because some acetylene downstream products cannot be produced competitively at present.

"The cost of electricity, oil and gas accounts for about 12 percent of production costs in the chemical industry," said Wolfgang Große Entrup, chief executive of the industry association VCI. "In basic chemicals, the share is even higher at around 16 percent. For individual chemicals, for example ammonia or chlorine, the share is even more than 70 percent."

Chemical products are needed to manufacture almost all industrial products. "In the third quarter, energy costs in the chemical industry were almost 150 percent above the previous year's level," says Große Entrup. Within two years, the industry's energy costs have more than quadrupled, he said. Prices for many precursors have also risen by triple digits since 2020, he said.

Distressed entrepreneurs see the situation even more dramatically than economists. The biggest cost problem for many industrial SMEs is not natural gas, but electricity. For years, some companies bought electricity on the spot market because prices there were cheaper than long-term supply contracts.

Spot prices have multiplied, but many companies with long-term supply contracts are now also facing immense electricity price increases. At the end of the year, contracts will expire in many places. Many companies used to pay less than ten cents per kilowatt hour, but now they are facing prices of around 40 cents, according to Andrea Thoma-Böck, managing director of the family-owned company Thoma Metallveredelung in Heimertingen.

"Very few companies will still be in the fortunate position of being covered in 2023," says the entrepreneur. "The rest are waking up to this new pricing world that no company can handle." Some companies can't find anyone else willing to sell them electricity. "To make matters worse, many companies are being denied an electricity contract," Thoma-Böck says.

The automotive industry association VDA surveyed 103 suppliers as well as bus, trailer and body manufacturers in September; ten percent reported restrictions on production. Once the high electricity prices take full effect, vbw CEO Brossardt expects production to become unprofitable in many companies. "The companies won't be able to hold out for long. This doesn't just affect energy-intensive businesses, but the breadth of the economy." Companies are also plagued by uncertainty as to how the gas price cap will be structured.

A more or less creeping exodus of German industry was already taking place before the Corona crisis. According to the Federal Statistical Office, the share of "goods of foreign origin" in German exports has risen steadily, from just under 10 percent in 1990 to 24.5 percent last year. This indirectly shows how massively German industry invested in foreign production.
--------------------------------
Oly the Greens will be happy. They wanted this since their founding days in the early 80s. Because they have until today not understood that without economic production there will be no wealth anymore to plunder that they can redistribute to their clients and that of the left parties. All world shall become a Hobbit village! Well, utopia is near. Rejoice! :yeah:

mapuc

10-08-22, 09:25 AM

The German rail operator blamed cable sabotage for a major train disruption and said security authorities had taken over the investigation. It had earlier reported that the "technical fault" had been repaired.

https://www.dw.com/en/sabotage-cause-of-massive-train-disruption-in-northern-german-rail-operator-says/a-63377385

Markus

Skybird

10-08-22, 01:35 PM

The wirecutting demanded technical insider knowledge. Two sabotage attacks in two places, hundreds of kilometers apart. Train traffic was down across all Northern Germany, and still is affected.

And a huge fire in a subway station in Cologne the same day.

Makes you think.

Jimbuna

10-08-22, 02:21 PM

Skybird

10-09-22, 10:16 AM

The AdG writes on the indulstrial implosion of Germany:
------------------------
The de-industrialization continues. RWE is providing election campaign support for the Greens and at the same time is leaving the German countryside. The next domino to possibly fall is the chemical industry in eastern Germany.

The deviation of global temperature from the 30-year average of satellite-based measurements by the University of Alabama (UAH) fell slightly in September 2022 compared to August, from 0.28 degrees to 0.24 degrees Celsius. The average temperature increase per decade since 1979 has been about 0.13 degrees Celsius, a trend of little concern.

Minister Habeck does not care about the real modest temperature development. He began his press conference on the early coal phase-out in the Rhenish coalfield on Oct. 4, 2022 with the dramatic words : "The structural crisis of our time - that is without question global warming, driven by the burning of fossil fuels."

At a time when politicians are asking people to prepare for power cuts lasting longer than 72 hours, at a time when rows and rows of businesses are shutting down production because of excessively high electricity prices, at a time when electricity and gas bills are becoming unaffordable for many families, the Minister of Economics is wielding the big club of fear over a climate development that is not covered by reality (see linked chart above). But he needs the backdrop of fear because he now realizes that his energy policy of a double phase-out of nuclear energy and coal is a fire hazard for the country and its people. And so he has to reluctantly "green" the temporary return to coal-fired power generation with the promise: to return to coal by March 2024 and then to exit coal again all the more quickly.

12 coal plants with 7 GW are to be brought out of reserve or not shut down to compensate for the closure of the last 3 nuclear plants (4.5 GW) and to replace gas plants to a small extent. These coal-fired power plants are to continue running until March 2024. And what comes then ?

In order to help the ailing Economics Minister with regard to the associated additional CO2 emissions, RWE boss Markus Krebber and the CDU/Green state government of North Rhine-Westphalia jumped to his side. They had agreed to bring forward the lignite phase-out, which was planned for 2038, by 8 years to 2030 and to shut down 3000 MW of lignite-fired power plants as early as 2030. Krebber's campaign support for the Greens, whose approval ratings are in a tailspin ahead of the Lower Saxony elections on October 9, is being carried out on the backs of the 5,500 miners in the Rhineland coalfield whose jobs will be cut in 2030.

Krebber treats the workers as a plaything: first, hundreds are called out of early retirement to continue operating the Neurath and D and E lignite-fired power plants until 2024, after which thousands of jobs will be lost. This doesn't even include those jobs that get into trouble as suppliers for the power plants or buyers of cheap lignite-based electricity. This is because the abandonment of lignite will have to be replaced by more expensive power plants, which, however, would first have to be built. And every energy expert wonders how the lost electricity will be replaced.

Here, too, the helpful RWE CEO Krebber distributes politically oriented tranquilizer pills: gas-fired power plants are to be built, which can be converted to hydrogen as quickly as possible. Krebber himself realizes that this is completely uneconomical : "It seems strange to plan new gas power plants in the middle of the biggest gas crisis". But he knows the counter deal of the federal government for its well-meaning chairman of the board. He says the federal government will "create a framework to enable investment in these plants," in other words, to support RWE with permanent subsidies from tax revenues. Krebber:" RWE will participate in this tender. I assume that a large part, if not all, will be provided by RWE."

RWE is getting out of the way : 5.9 GW of lignite will be closed in the Rhenish coalfield by 2030. As possible compensation, investments in 1 GW of unreliable renewables and 3 GW of taxpayer-subsidized gas-fired power plants are announced. The latter are to be fed 50 percent by hydrogen from 2030 and completely by hydrogen from 2035.

But it is completely illusory to provide these quantities of hydrogen for hydrogen-ready gas-fired power plants by 2030. The steel industry alone needs 2 million t of hydrogen to convert 25 million t of pig iron production in the blast furnace with hydrogen. To produce just this amount of hydrogen, about 110 TWh of renewable electricity is needed. This is equivalent to today's entire onshore wind power production, not to mention the power for e-mobility, heat pumps, the chemical industry, air and truck traffic. Krebber's promise turns out to be the same cloud pushing we know from Economics Minister Habeck.

There will be no hydrogen for power plants and it will be unaffordable. We don't yet know how it will be transported or how it will be stored. The first small experimental turbine from Kawasaki is to be tested in 2024. But the reason given today is that RWE is on track to meet the 1.5 degree target of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. In reality one wants to conceal one thing: RWE is looking the other way. RWE is no longer interested in what happens to Germany as a business location. Instead of fighting for green coal-fired power plants with CO2 capture in Germany, it wants to make two-thirds of its investments by 2030, about 25 billion euros abroad. Parallel to the press conference with Minister Habeck, it was announced that RWE is acquiring the U.S. solar and wind power company Con Edison Clean Energy Businesses for $6.8 billion.

If the miners in the opencast mines had hoped that their union would fight for a future for lignite, for example through further development into green lignite with CO2 capture, they were disabused. IGBCE Chairman Michael Vassiliadis merely pointed out that there must be no deviation from the promised state adjustment payments and early retirement pensions. In any case, no more resistance was to be expected from the SPD in North Rhine-Westphalia. The state party has long had nothing to do with industrial jobs in the Rhine region. That's why it is losing the support of skilled workers, engineers, workers in the trades and in industry.

Only the eastern state premiers did not allow themselves to be infected by the exit orgy from the only significant domestic energy source in the middle of the deepest energy crisis Germany has ever experienced. According to Minister President Reiner Haseloff, a phase-out before 2038 would "permanently weaken" Germany as an industrial location. "There will be an energy gap that we will not be able to close." The Minister President of Brandenburg, Dietmar Woidke, also reacted negatively: "The security of energy supply is now paramount. Our Lusatian lignite makes an indispensable contribution here."

Neither state premier was impressed by the impertinent, anti-employee and anti-industry slogans of Michael Kellner, State Secretary in the Ministry of Economics. Kellner, who was the federal political director of the Greens from 2013 to 2021, had demanded: "Now it's time to aim for the 2030 phase-out target in eastern Germany as well. It would be fatal if economic future opportunities were squandered in eastern Germany because the state premiers of the SPD and CDU want to hold on to dirty coal."

But Kellner is an ideological politruk who puts the party line ahead of the country's interests. He could have read up on worldwide efforts to capture CO2 from combustion processes, as the Schwarze Pumpe coal-fired power plant in Lusatia developed 10 years ago. It is not the next stage of technical development of the CO2-free coal-fired power plant that counts, but the stupid prejudice of "dirty coal" cultivated at party conferences. CO2 capture, as it is now practiced in Norway, the USA and Canada, would reduce CO2 emissions faster and more cost-effectively than Habeck's and Krebber's phantoms of hydrogen power plants.

In the East, the danger associated with the lignite phase-out is being felt. The consequences of the oil boycott of the Druzhba pipeline are already being felt there. At the Leuna chemical park, production has been cut in half. In Schwedt, people fear for their future. The German Economics Minister's hope of having crude oil delivered via the port of Gdansk has not yet been realized because the Polish government is opposed to supplying the refinery as long as Russia's Rosneft has a stake in the refinery. It is not enough for the Polish government to place the refinery under the trusteeship of the Federal Network Agency. It is demanding expropriation.

When Schwedt and Leuna shut down, the entire East German chemical processing industry topples over, with domino effects from electrical engineering to mechanical engineering. The construction industry is also hit.100 percent of bitumen and asphalt in eastern Germany comes from Schwedt.

In a situation where industrial jobs are threatened by scarce and overly expensive energy sources such as gas, oil and electricity, further shutdowns must not be allowed to take place; instead, the energy supply must be expanded. This means producing our own natural gas, CO2-reduced lignite and nuclear energy. Instead, the German government is trying to buffer prices with ever new bailouts via government debt. That won't work for long.

https://www.achgut.com/artikel/rwe_wahlkampfhilfe_fuer_die_gruenen_und_nix_wie_we g
-------------------------
Its no longer just bored discussion to kill time, or grim joking, but reality materialising all around me. I see it everywhere now in my everyday life experience how this country is abolishing itself, destroys its economic and financial space and freedom to act - but all the time making bigger and bigger words and claimign to serve as an exmaple for the world.

Yes, an exmaple. For how, at no cost, not to run a country as long as you do not wish to see it committing suicide.

This is a journey down the spiral from which there is no more escape possible. Germany's fate is sealed.

Skybird

10-09-22, 03:37 PM

Google Webpage Translator does not work for me, possibly due to some tight browswer settings of mine or security addons activated, I dont know. But maybe the link works for others.

ENG:
https://www-focus-de.translate.goog/finanzen/news/gastbeitrag-von-marc-friedrich-der-spektakulaere-abstieg-deutschlands-geht-in-die-geschichtsbuecher-ein_id_161645829.html?_x_tr_sl=de&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=de&_x_tr_pto=wapp

GER:
https://www.focus.de/finanzen/news/gastbeitrag-von-marc-friedrich-der-spektakulaere-abstieg-deutschlands-geht-in-die-geschichtsbuecher-ein_id_161645829.html

Skybird

10-09-22, 05:34 PM

In the state election in Lower Saxony, the FDP - a member of the federal coalition government - was kicked out of the state parliament.
The AfD, which here is so fragmented and at odds with itself like in no other federal state, nevertheless doubled its result over the last election's result, rivals the Greens, almost: 11% versus 14%.
These are two run-in, crashing kick-jump-slaps in the face for the government work at the federal level.
It will probably come down to a red-green coalition. Both parties have already stated that under absolutely no circumstances will they refrain from shutting down the third remaining nuclear reactor (located in Lower Saxony) by the end of the year, come what may. Meanwhile, more and more cities are reporting that they are preparing as best as possible for severla hours-long planned power cuts per days - and also for expected blackouts lasting 3-7 days - at full speed.
When the military officer responsible for desaster relief and emergency planning warned in an interview that the population should prepare for such things and consider them a realistic and seriosun threat, the female SPD carricature of an interior ministerisissy (sorry, I suck at this poltically correct gender bitchtalk) called him back and gagged him.
And if yo have missed it, this news: https://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/court-berlin-repeat-2021-election-90629953 . Give the Berlin polit-chimps more bananans, they have gone bonkers. The worst-adminstered and most incompetent state government of all 16 in Germany. Since as long as I can think. Those elections last year were not even meeting standards of some corrupt third world state, it was a deasaster when considering regional authorities' claim how superior they are. Up to one half of the voting offices have seen unacceptable levels of irregularities. Not necessarily wanted fraud, but simply incompetence and inability.

Lunatic asylum Germany, October 2022. We continue to report as long as we still can. :salute:

Jimbuna

10-10-22, 05:14 AM

Skybird

10-10-22, 05:25 AM

Both working fine at this end.
Thats good to know, the Google link for the translated webpage should give the English translated page, but I get from that link only the German one.

So i can nevertheless use the Google at times, not posting DeepL translation word by word, which is not easily done when the text includes many relevat graphs that all need to be carried over manually.

DeepL quality is much better than Google translations, however.

Rockstar

10-11-22, 11:46 AM

Arne Schönbohm Head of German Cyberclown security and Russian spy exposed and fired.

The investigation revealed "German" IT company Protelion is in fact a cover entity of the RUSSIAN company Infotecs, founded in 1991 by ex-KGB officer Andrey Chapchaev. Andrey received an Order for Merit to the Fatherland this year from: Vladimir Putin, can't imagine what for. :hmmm:
This is a national security emergency. And it's just the tip of the iceberg. Decades of German govts led by the CDU & SPD have turned a blind eye to &/or enabled Russian infiltration of German industries, ministries, & critical infrastructure.

https://youtu.be/dtZf-A4Qd5k

Skybird

10-11-22, 03:41 PM

So ein Schmock! Ridiculous. FOCUS writes:
---------------------
Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD) caused a stir with a sentence about Putin's gas blackmail. At the engineering summit, he said he had "always been sure" that Putin would act in exactly the same way. But as recently as December, Scholz had not wanted to stop Nord Stream-2 - despite all the criticism.

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD) made people sit up and take notice with a sentence at the mechanical engineering summit on Tuesday. According to the report, the chancellor said about Russian energy supplies that Putin "also uses them as a weapon." He continued, "I was always sure he would do that." The speech can be seen on Youtube.

Scholz also said - as he has often done in appearances - that he had therefore already asked his staff shortly after taking office in December 2021 what would actually happen "if Russia stopped supplying gas." And further: "That was, I think it's fair to say here, at a time when the vast majority didn't think it was likely, but I did think it was possible."

Explosive: Scholz was first labor minister, then finance minister and vice chancellor during the chancellorship of Angela Merkel (CDU). Now he claims to have foreseen Putin's gas blackmail, but at the time he supported the Chancellor's course.

With this assessment, Scholz triggers frowns among observers and the opposition, as " Politico " writes. For also until December, Scholz had called Nord-Stream-2 a "private-sector project." Only two days before Russia invaded Ukraine, the German government stopped the commissioning of the pipeline.

"As recently as December, Olaf Scholz said Nord Stream 2 was a purely private-sector project. Now to discover his conscience and position seems strange," CDU politician Roderich Kiesewetter told "Politico" about the chancellor's words.
--------------------
Mind you, this is the smarty who said "Who wants leadership from me should know that leadership is what he will then get from me." :har: The smarty who let Hamburg city go up in flames during the summit back then, and afterwards said he accepts responsibility - and weaseled himself out of any responsibility at all afterwards and masisvely blocked police and juristic examinations. Who said that he cannot remember certain key episodes of a financial scandal we have over here and his own role in it, and meanwhile got shown in a book about it that shows that he can remember it all very well. The man who says he organses the biggest m ilitary aid to Ukrainbe seocnd only to the US, while at that time Germany rnake dnot even amognst the top 15 when he made that statement.

This pityful and always stupidly grinning carricature of a human being makes me sick. If he would get rolled over by a car in the street, all you would get is a spot of glibbery slime on the tarmac.

Pfffft, back into your basket, Fiffi!

Jimbuna

10-12-22, 05:01 AM

He must be as big an embarrassment to Germany as Boris was to the UK.

Jimbuna

10-12-22, 09:27 AM

Not sure whether to believe this or not.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U0ZMeo4FOvo

Skybird

10-12-22, 11:00 AM

Dazzle from the glossy brochure of self-deception. It does not last, neither in terms of financial support nor in terms of temporarily increased acceptance among the population. And it is not difficult to increase this acceptance, because in Germany the military has always been looked down upon with great contempt. When it is so far down, change can really only go in one direction. And the 100 billion in special assets? To a large extent only a smoke candle, which is fizzled out as a component of the regular annual budget.

Don't fall for it. Look at how our economy is being destroyed intentionally, and how our additonal new debts caused by unofficial special fonds and side budgets have been pumped up to be twice as large as the official budget.

Biggest army in NATO. Yeah, sure. One of Bubble-Olaf's best jokes ever.

Be aware of one thing. In terms of financial policy, the balance of power in Europe is shifting towards Club Med, from creditors to debtors, and in terms of political organization toward the Eastern European members of the EU and NATO, with a focus on Poland. Virtually all the gains in political weight that these states are making, are gains that an increasingly weak and vulnerable Germany has had to give up. The center in Europe is shifting, from Berlin to Warsaw.

Germany will be lucky if it survives even the next few years in one piece without collapsing completely. The danger exists, and it is real. With our political personnel, one can only get scared and anxious. That's why I keep assuming the worst. I have every reason to. The era of Germany having a dominant say in Europe, is over.

Jimbuna

10-12-22, 01:06 PM

I'm a little surprised you don't think it is France who will become the dominant member.

Skybird

10-13-22, 03:48 PM

Unlike a viral epidemic, the madness carried by ideolgical fanaticism never becomes endemic, but simply worse and worse. The Neue Zürcher Zeitung writes:
-------------------------------------
The "rainbow portal" of the German government informs prepubescent youths about the possibilities of gender reassignment. This upsets the CDU in particular - but the entry in question was created under Chancellor Merkel.

Not every uproar on social networks spills over into the real world. Most waves of outrage peter out just as quickly as they arise. Things seem to be different in the case of the "rainbow portal" run by the German Federal Ministry for Family Affairs. A user on Twitter referred to a handout offered there for children on how to prevent the development of sexual organs. With the help of "puberty blockers," the "rainbow portal" said, little ones could gain time to "calmly consider: Which body suits me?". The criticism of the ministry of the Greens politician Lisa Paus does not want to end since then.

The portal, which is financed with tax money, sees itself as a "source of information, database and knowledge network". It was launched in the late phase of the grand coalition of CDU and SPD, in May of 2019, by the Social Democratic minister and current governing mayor of Berlin, Franziska Giffey.

At the time, the primary target group was referred to by the acronym LGBTI*; today, LGBTIQ is the acronym of choice. "Lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans and intersex people" became "lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans*, inter* and queer people." What has remained is the concern. The Ministry of Family Affairs wants to provide information about gender diversity.

Is the portal fulfilling its self-imposed mission? The doubts grow. CDU member of the Bundestag Marc Henrichmann sees the welfare of children at risk if a government addresses prepubescent minors in this way and trivializes "drugs that have lifelong effects."

Henrichmann's party colleague, former Agriculture Minister Julia Klöckner, calls it "crazy" for the federal government to recommend puberty blockers to "very young, insecure people." Admittedly, the offending entry with the headline "Young and transgender" can be traced back to August 2020, when the chancellor's name was Angela Merkel and she belonged to the CDU.

After public outrage, the Family Ministry responded. Preceded by a paragraph about "good doctors," it added the note that children should ask a doctor "whether puberty blockers might help." What remained was the thrust of the entry and the immediate salutation, "We have tips for you." Children around the age of ten are basically allowed to put their feelings above their biological characteristics, according to the "rainbow portal": "Do you feel more comfortable as a girl? Or do you feel more comfortable as a boy?"

For those who are "still very young" and can't answer that question conclusively, there are medications available to make sure "you don't hit puberty." And those whose bodies "really don't match the way they feel" can be made more masculine or feminine through hormones. Full-grown people can have surgeries to change their sexual organs.

Puberty blockers, whose use is counted among the ministerial "tips," are not without risk. They cause the blood level of sex hormones to drop. Those who even undergo sex reassignment surgery may later experience this measure as a great liberation as well as a catastrophic failure. Recently, there have been increasing reports of people regretting their transformation. Some psychiatrists see gender dysphoria in children and adolescents primarily as an "expression of failure to meet the challenges of puberty."

Recently, a gender clinic in London had its license revoked after children there were urged to transition. It is also because of such excesses that the deputy chairwoman of the AfD, Mariana Harder-Kühnel, accuses the federal government of seducing children into "manipulating their own bodies in a way that is harmful to their health" and motivating them "downright to rebel against their possibly protesting parents."

The Family Ministry insists in a statement that tips are not recommendations. Puberty blockers could be prescribed exclusively "after careful medical indication based on scientific guidelines by medical specialists." The federal government in no way recommends their use. The article, which has been in the public domain for several years, provides information in "age-appropriate, easy-to-read language on which questions affected children, adolescents and parents should seek advice."

In the "Rainbow Portal" itself, however, on the topic of "young and transgender" the child is addressed directly throughout. The question, for example, "Do I have to be either a boy or a girl?" receives the answer: "No, you don't have to decide. Many people are not only man. And not just woman. You can be both."
-------------------------
This country, this "culture" are hopelessly lost. Completely broken.

Skybird

10-15-22, 05:55 AM

FOCUS writes:

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

All over Europe, they are thinking about how to save their economy. Only in Germany is the main thing: climate-neutral! If we're going to go down, we're going to go down clean.

On March 14, 2020, the German Federal Ministry of Health published a warning. "Attention Fake News!" it said. "It is claimed and quickly spread that the federal government will soon announce further massive restrictions on public life. It's not true! Please help stop its spread."

As a well-intentioned citizen, one wondered how to respond to the appeal. How does one stop the spread of Fake News? By circulating the opposite? Unfortunately, that doesn't help against fake news either, because you first have to say what you're against in order to put it right.

Fortunately, the problem was solved just two days later. The federal and state governments decided on the very restrictions that the Ministry of Health had just ruled out.

I remember the first lockdown well. When I wanted to sit down on a park bench in the English Garden to read a book, two policemen approached me because sitting down on a bench for reading purposes was now considered a misdemeanor. Presumably, the Federal Ministry of Health considers spending time outdoors to be overrated anyway.

I couldn't help but think of the warning from the first Corona year when I saw the following anti-fake news tweet from the Federal Ministry of Economics last week:

"We have one of the most reliable power grids in the world and high security of supply. Despite this, claims are circulating on the net under #blackout, #powerfailure or #load shedding, spreading unfounded panic." This was followed by a detailed explanation of why power outages in Germany were as good as impossible.

We'll see how long this reassuring message lasts. In any case, I would advise coordinating with other departments after all to avoid unnecessary irritation. The Federal Office for Civil Protection and Disaster Alert, for example, called just two weeks ago for people to build up a ten-day stockpile in case of power outages ("When putting together your emergency stockpile, it's also a matter of thoughtful planning").

It certainly couldn't hurt either if Economics Minister Robert Habeck would take his Green Party chairwoman aside for once, so that she doesn't continue to recommend load shedding in ARD interviews and thus "spread unfounded panic," as the memo from his office puts it.

We live in a strange in-between realm. On the one hand, we are just losing the foundation of our national economy with the collapse of the energy supply. On the other hand, the government is acting as if everything can continue as agreed and laid down in the coalition agreement.

Of course, the end of coal continues to apply. A few days ago, Robert Habeck concluded an agreement with RWE according to which the coal phase-out will not be postponed, but on the contrary brought forward by eight years - from 2038 to 2030. Of course, the nuclear phase-out will also be maintained. And I'm sure that if you were to ask those responsible how the plan to build two dozen new gas-fired power plants as a bridging technology on the way to a renewable future is going, the answer would be: everything according to plan.

What should we call that? German Sonderweg? Cosmic trust in God? Everywhere in Europe, they are thinking about how they can ensure that their economy doesn't go koppheister - only in Berlin they are happily continuing to build their cloud cuckoo land. It's fascinating, but also a little scary.

The German government's answer to the energy crisis is, in short: now more than ever. So now more than ever to push ahead with the expansion of renewable energies and the departure from the fossil fuel era. You know this from management seminars, where the motivational trainer advises people who have had the rug pulled out from under them to see the crisis as an opportunity. As a spectator, you say to yourself: Poor devils, you wouldn't want to be in their shoes either. Unfortunately, in this case we are all participants in the great management experiment.

Even the current plans are completely unrealistic. The "FAZ" editor Morten Freidel recently took the trouble to do the math. To achieve its goals, the government would have to build four large or eight small wind turbines every day for the next ten years. Even if all the approval procedures were to be dispensed with overnight: There's neither the material nor the assemblers to do it - not to mention the costs.

And in 2045, when everything is over because Germany will finally be climate-neutral, as the proponents hope, it would start all over again. Even a wind turbine doesn't last forever. After 20 years, it has to be replaced. Which means that a significant portion of the national economy would be constantly busy providing the wind to keep the country going.

Without a certain degree of energy independence, it won't work, at least if we want to remain an industrial nation. And that shouldn't be too long in coming. The 200 billion for the gas price cap will last until the end of next year. But then another winter is just around the corner. And then another. And then another.

We're a rich country, that's the good news. We're even an energy-rich country. We have gas reserves that could make us independent of the vagaries of the energy market for 20 years. Stupidly, we prefer not to even talk about this wealth. Most of the gas is in Lower Saxony. As you could read, none of the parties in the election campaign even mentioned gas reserves in a single word. That, too, is a strategy: evading reality through collective silence. We have some practice in this in Germany.

If you believe the Green strategists, it is clear who is to blame for the AfD's electoral success: the CDU, because its party leader warned against immigration into our social system. That's what makes life in cloud cuckoo land so pleasant: you can always pick the explanation that suits you best. Immigration, on the other hand, hardly plays a role at the demonstrations, where the main issues are inflation and energy prices.

The AfD's solution is to open Nord Stream 2. I am absolutely against that. I think it would be a huge mistake to signal to the terrorist in the Kremlin that he can do whatever he wants, as long as he just supplies us with gas again. But if you are against gas from Russia, you should be able to name an alternative. The alternative can't be to hope that the miraculous conversion of electricity into hydrogen will save us from all our troubles.

60 percent of Germans say they currently do not trust any party to get to grips with the problems facing the country. A record figure. I know in government they think people are too stupid to see the wisdom of the energy transition. But people aren't all stupid. They have an inkling: Shutting everything down isn't a solution in the long run, either.

In the middle of the week, the International Monetary Fund published its forecast for the coming year. For no country does the forecast look as bleak as for Germany. But for one country, Russia, it's even worse. But that is the only consolation.

If I were a cynic, I would say: The main thing is that we keep to our climate targets. If we're going to go down, at least do it cleanly.
---------------------------------------

Skybird

10-17-22, 06:23 AM

A (typical) German tale. Narrated by FOCUS.
-------------------------------------------------

Munich resident drives an old diesel again after a year of e-car chaos

The former Skoda, Holger Macht's faithful companion with a rattling diesel engine, had actually had its day after 20 years of life. Nevertheless, Macht still drove the car to his work in Bad Tölz every day for the past three years. But he already suspected since 2020: That won't work for long. "I knew that the Skoda would soon refuse service," he says.

Macht is a teacher at the Fachoberschule (FOS) and teaches German, history, and politics and society. He drives 100 kilometers a day to and from the FOS. That adds up to 25,000 kilometers a year.

In recent years, he had followed the diesel debate closely, hearing about the unhealthy air to which older diesel cars in particular contribute. And at some point he had decided to stop contributing to the bad air: "It was absolutely clear to me: I definitely wanted an electric car."
Munich resident wants to swap his diesel for an electric car after 20 years

Now one or the other will think: Why doesn't the man use public transport? But the connection to Bad Tölz is not that simple. After all, when the old Skoda actually went on strike for good overnight, Macht was forced to switch to public transport from mid-June 2022: "It took me 35 minutes to get to work by car, and a hundred minutes by public transport."

70 minutes by car, there and back, instead of three hours and 20 minutes by public transport: That has never been in a healthy ratio for Macht. Moving to Tölz? Out of the question for him. Macht has a private tie to Munich. "As a teacher, it's also not wrong to have a local distance from your job," he says, even though he loves his profession.

But Macht, as a frequent driver, bought an economical diesel again after all, for 8,000 euros. When the summer vacations started, he had time to look at some used cars. There wasn't much choice. "The market was completely empty," says Macht. But if Macht had his way, he would have taken out a loan and bought his dream electric car long ago.

For him, it's a dilemma. "I would have liked to have provided a little better air," says Macht. His conscience torments him to this day. "I only go into town by public transport anyway." But Macht encountered obstacles in his electric car project that he could not have foreseen.

The teacher lives in Ramersdorf, in a Gewofag housing development near Rosenheimer Strasse. He had been thinking about an electric car since 2020, shortly after there was talk of diesel bans in Munich for the first time. At the same time, he knew that his old diesel wouldn't last much longer.

The e-car project began for Holger Macht with an e-mail to Gewofag. He wanted to ask for permission to install a wallbox, or charging point, in his underground parking space. It shouldn't be complicated. For Macht, it was clear: "If I buy an e-car, then with its own charging point in the underground garage." His basic condition.

Too often, he had observed that the public charging stations were permanently occupied, with e-cars or even hybrid vehicles. But often also with diesel or gasoline vehicles, although that is not allowed. "When I leave for Bad Tölz in the morning, the thing has to be charged. I can't speculate on a charging option the night before or in the morning," says Macht.

On August 3, 2021, he wrote the first of quite a few e-mails to Gewofag: "Would you agree to a wallbox in the underground parking garage? Is there a need for a form-based application?" it says. The first answers come quickly, even on the same day. In fact, the approval of the landlord is required by law, the first mail says.

The second one, two days later, says: "An inspection is necessary and has been commissioned. This test was carried out by an expert from a Munich electrical company - whom Holger Macht was able to meet in person on September 10, 2021. They went together to the underground parking garage, to Macht's parking space.

Nearby is an electrical junction on the wall, about five meters from Macht's parking space. "The surveyor said that you could easily branch off a line here and put an electric meter in between, which would then record my consumption," Macht recalls. A wallbox could then be installed at its end, he adds: Macht's own new electric charging station.

Great, Macht thought, and believed it was only a matter of time before his wallbox could be bolted on. Full of anticipation, he picked out an e-car that would suit him. "It had to be a compact station wagon in which I could also easily take my husky Tommy," Macht recounts.

A few clicks on the Internet. There it was, the dream e-car: a Kia EV6. Cost: about 60,000 euros. The idea: pay a quarter of the sum immediately. "For the rest, I wanted to take out a loan," says Macht.

But the teacher didn't count on the landlord. Four weeks later: Still no answer from Gewofag. So Macht wrote again on October 9, 2021. The answer: They had requested the audit report and would get back to him.

More weeks passed. At the end of October 2021, KfW cancelled a subsidy of 900 euros for wallboxes. Money that Macht was actually counting on. Frustrated, he wrote to Gewofag - and received sobering news, on November 8, 2021: It was not possible to install a wallbox. Because it was not feasible to lay a line from the location of a potential wallbox to the electricity meter of his apartment on the seventh floor. That was the result of the test report.

Gewofag did not give any reasons for this and also did not address the auditor's idea of setting up the infrastructure directly in the underground parking garage. When asked by AZ, Gewofag wrote that it was a garage that was not located in the residential building. Therefore, a wallbox must always be connected to a power transfer point in the residential building. This would be the only way to measure the individual power consumption of Mr. Macht's future e-car.

For Macht, this was contradictory. After all, he had spoken to the expert personally. So he decided - Macht himself is politically active with the Volt party - to get city politics involved. "After all, the city has a stake in Gewofag," Macht thought to himself. He wrote to the city council faction of the Greens, the mayor's office of Verena Dietl, the municipal utilities and also the city council faction of the SPD. He pointed out that Gewofag always emphasized that it wanted to make wallbox access available to all tenants.

The campaign worked. Almost everyone contacted Gewofag and asked what the obstacle was to installing an underground parking wallbox for Holger Macht. In the end, Gewofag commissioned a second inspection. Mayor Dietl, who is also chairman of the supervisory board of Gewofag, personally informed Mr. Macht about this.

Dietl emphasized in the letter that Gewofag would basically like to promote e-mobility where possible and was currently working on a concept to enable all tenants to use a wallbox in the near future.

Three months later, almost March 2022. No trace of a second test report. Macht wrote to Gewofag again to inquire about the status. Once again he was put off. Then, on May 12, 2022, the result of the test report. A message from Gewofag. It said that the only way to install a wallbox was to lay a line from Holger Macht's apartment on the seventh floor down to the first floor level and from there to the underground parking garage.

Macht would have to bear the costs for this himself. Gewofag (current housing stock: 39,000) could not add anything. Meters, cables, infrastructure: about 16,000 euros. This is the result of the feasibility study by the electrical company. Gewofag could not cover the costs. "And that didn't even include the fees for the wallbox," says Macht.

In addition, he would be liable in the event of an emergency, the letter said, if the newly laid line caused damage. The cost breakdown for the wallbox line is 21 pages long. Macht estimates that the length of the line would have been 20 meters from his apartment.

16,000 euros, plus up to 2,000 euros for the wallbox, plus the 60,000 euros for the car: "Unfortunately, this cannot be financed," Macht wrote in frustration at some point in one of his last e-mails to Gewofag. For almost a year, he fought for a wallbox. For now, he continues to drive his Ford.

But the new used car isn't a permanent solution for him, either, since the city has announced it will ban many diesel vehicles from the city to improve air quality. Even though the city announced temporary exemptions for residents, this does not reassure Holger Macht. Because he could theoretically be forced to change vehicles again in about two years because of impending bans, even though his Ford Diesel is working fine.

Macht now wants to wait and see, but has decided to go electric for the time being, at least on two wheels, instead of four. "I bought an e-bike," he says. Of course, he can't use it to commute to the technical college in Bad Tölz every day - but at least he can ride it into town.
-----------------------------

Are you well entertained? How about a final joke then, to see you leaving this post with a laughing face?

A calculation demonstrated recently and gets often qwuoted since then that if the German "government wants to reach its climate-poltical goals until 2030 and abandon coal then, we would need from now on and then for every day until 2030 that every 15 minutes a big windmill is being launched in Germany additonally. Every 15 minutes.

The global supply chains are down, all main parts for windmill rotors now come from China or cannot be build without parts form China. We have not the material. We have only a small fraction of the engineers needed for this task alone. We have a dramatic shortage of workers. We have a dramatic decline in the economy, but still low unemployemnt - which only illustrates how few available workers we have. The the government collides head-on over the nculear powerplants.

But building 4 big windmills or 8 medium-sized windmills. Every hour. Every day. From now until 2030.

https://finestwords.de/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/Lustige-Spr%C3%BCche-zum-Totlachen.jpg

https://media.news.de/resources/thumbs/d3/e9/856601543_736x414/lachen-ist-gesund-1523440966.jpg

https://img.fotocommunity.com/ich-koennte-mich-totlachen-3c22cc0c-a7f2-4ece-b5f8-c23c098371af.jpg?height=1000

Skybird

10-17-22, 03:33 PM

Bubble Olaf finally - in the last possible week considering the legal framework changes and parliamentary approval required - did something that he hates to do. He made a decision on the njuclear powerplants. ALL THREE now should be runnign in full through the winter.

The Greens must be pissed. Durign past three days of their party summit they just ah decided they would stick to never let that happen and only two powerplants in "reserve" (by technical implicaitons not possible like they wanted it to do) until April, the third one switched off already in Decembre.

The Green slammed heads with the FDP whioch wanted all three to run on until 2024 at full power. Thsi they did not get, the three plants shoud be switche doff next April.

New conflict ahead thenm, becasue next winter 2023/24 could beocme even more ciritcla for Germany than this oen, becase we likely leave the winter season with empotier gas reserves than we had this spring.

All this is just a tinkering with immediately urgent symptoms. The problem of long time energy supply security is not being adressed by this, Bubble Olaf wants at no cost give the impression that nuclear power is an option again in Germany. He has ruled out to buy new nuclear fuel.

There is no realistic longterm strategy insight. Once again not.

Which is needed for running the three suriovivors at full power, because what trhey till have ha snot been renewed in time, becasue one wanted thme to switch off. They can only be run in limited intensity. That is what Bubble Olaf now calls full power". So even this deicison would nto have been an original Scholzian deicison if he would not have already put a weasel into it again.

https://beta.dw.com/en/germany-extends-lifetime-of-all-3-remaining-nuclear-plants/a-63466196

Meanwhile, the Association of German Heating Engineers has announced that it is absolutely impossible to realize the German plans for the energy transition and Habeck's so-called "heat pump offensive": far too expensive, many homeowners cannot afford the cost, far too many homes are not suitable for it at all, and the association calculates that it will never have the necessary staff to even begin to meet the schedules. There are also delivery problems and broken logistics chains, as well as dependence on China and materials from China.

But this does not bother the Greens, it is completely ignored.

There is now a certain possibility, not yet excessive but undeniable, that the coalition will burst.

Skybird

10-17-22, 03:46 PM

FOCUS comments:
---------------------------

Chancellor Olaf Scholz has put an end to the nuclear dispute that paralyzed the CDU/CSU for weeks. For Economics Minister Habeck, this may even turn out to be a success; the FDP, on the other hand, will have to swallow the 2023 phase-out. And the chancellor is making a bet with the whole thing.

What at first glance looks like a painful defeat for Robert Habeck and his Greens turns out to be a success on closer inspection. The chancellor's word of power on the vexed nuclear issue is a blessing for the vice chancellor - not even in his own party can he now be accused of caving in to his rivals from the FDP.

With his policy decision, the chancellor has freed his larger coalition partner from an ugly suspicion that climate activists harbor against the Greens. That in case of doubt, the Greens do not follow their green conscience and their anti-nuclear DNA, but rather their power. This is another reason why Habeck can live well with this Scholz decision. He may have to cross the "red line" that his Greens drew for him just last weekend, but he was forced to do so by a stronger force: the chancellor. If need be, this can also be used to create a victim myth that is suitable for the Green Party.

In a compromise, only one party ever pays the price. Scholz's decision is also at the expense of the FDP. The FDP will now have to phase out nuclear power earlier than it last wanted - by April 2023 at the latest. That's a high price to pay, by the way.

A party that defines itself as "open to technology," and even more so has made this its progressive brand essence, must now withdraw from a technology that other countries consider to be the hope of the future par excellence, such as Silicon Valley, which is specifically investing billions in the next generation of nuclear power.

Now to the Chancellor: in soccer, what Scholz is currently demonstrating on the soccer field of the traffic light coalition is called a "penalty without a goalkeeper." The compromise - all three nuclear power plants will run until next year, but then it's over - seemed obvious. Scholz just had to seize the favorable opportunity and casually push the round thing into the square goal.

For a chancellor who constantly has to face uncomfortable questions about his leadership, this was a gift.

Whether it will for Germany, however, is written in the stars. The country is now making a bet with Scholz at the head of government: in the end, the energy transition will work. And it will do so without domestic coal, without Russian gas and without nuclear energy, which is not harmful to the climate. Germany is the only country in the EU that has set fixed phase-out dates for coal and nuclear that are relatively close (now seven years). Other countries in Europe have taken a broader view, overriding their own ideologically based decisions against nuclear.

So one can only hope that all goes well. Whether it does or not won't be known for a few years. Probably not until Olaf Scholz has long since retired.
-----------------------
The bet won't work, because it can't. Politics can neither rewrite the rules of mathematics, nor change the laws of physics by amending laws.

Therefore it would be enough to know at least some of the four basic arithmetic operations: Addition and subtraction. This would already be much more advanced than the children's game "Wishing wishes".

Skybird

10-18-22, 04:26 PM

A poll amongst German hospitals of all sizes above 55 beds made clear that every fifth house - 21% - is capable to survive only a few hours in case of a Blackout. Only 14% are prepared to maintain close to normal operations for sa few days if the Blackout lasts as longs. 40% of the hospitals said they would be able to care for patients only in a very reduced and limited format. 7% of the houses said they would need to completely shut down almost immedately.

The poll included 288 hospitals with more than 55 beds.

Supermarkets in Germany mull to close earlier in the evening. Except in Bavaria (where all stores must close at 8 p.m.), stores over here vary in their closing times, it usually set between 9 p.m. and midnight, smaller supermarkets in somewhat isolated locations may close earlier. More and more chains now say the prepare to close at 7 or 8 p.m. Reaosn is they want to save electricity for opights, and heating - and the high amount of empolyoeeds not working due to being ill from Corona. (In Germany it is punishable if you go to work with a diagnosed Corona infection, both money and prison penalties are imposed).

I sometimes like to go supermarket shopping in the night, its not as hectic and noisy as over the day, and not so many people around. But I can live with early clsoing times. I still can recall that in my childhood, all shops - ALL shops! - closed at 1830h... I could live even with that.

Skybird

10-19-22, 03:00 AM

A stageplay.

https://www-focus-de.translate.goog/politik/deutschland/wer-scholz-nach-atom-machtwort-fuer-maechtig-haelt-macht-denkfehler_id_166629601.html?_x_tr_sl=auto&_x_tr_tl=de&_x_tr_hl=de&_x_tr_pto=wapp

Skybird

10-20-22, 05:25 AM

Germany does not learn. Scholz learns nothing. But the thing he now wants to afford is really catastrophic and has the makings of high treason - which our modern law unfortunately no longer knows. FOCUS writes:
------------------------------
Despite "blackmail potential "Chancellor's office wants to push through China deal at Port of Hamburg

The Federal Chancellery is apparently planning to push through the sale of shares in Hamburg port operator HHLA to the Chinese shipping company Cosco, despite six ministries advising against it.

Despite warnings from all specialist ministries, the Chancellor's Office apparently wants to push through the sale of parts of the Port of Hamburg to a Chinese state-owned company.

According to information from NDR and WDR, all six ministries technically involved in the investment review have rejected the deal. However, according to the research, the Chancellor's Office is pushing for the deal to go through.

Chinese shipping company Cosco wants to take over shares in port operator HHLA and acquire a stake of more than one-third in Hamburg's Tollerort container terminal. Because this involves critical infrastructure, the lead Ministry of Economics had launched an investment review procedure and, according to the research, had already registered the issue for final rejection in the Federal Cabinet.

However, the Chancellor's Office had then not put the review procedure on the agenda. A cabinet decision, which is necessary for a ban, could thus not be made. Instead, according to information from NDR and WDR, the Chancellor's Office is said to have instructed the departments involved to look for a compromise so that the deal can be approved after all.

According to the research, two points in particular were cited for the rejection by the Economics, Interior, Defense, Transport and Finance Ministries as well as the Foreign Office, in addition to the changed geopolitical situation: Cosco should not only receive a purely financial stake, but should also provide a managing director and have a say in decisions. Since China is already the port's most important customer, the planned participation in the container terminal could create "blackmail potential. The EU Commission has also reportedly spoken out against it.

When asked, the Ministry of Economics merely stated that it does not comment during ongoing proceedings. A government spokesman replied that the Chancellor's Office would not comment on ongoing investment review proceedings "in view of the fact that business and trade secrets of the companies involved would be affected". Cabinet topics would be decided by meetings of state secretaries. The Chancellor's Office said that no reports would be made from these working sessions.

Rolf Langhammer of the Kiel Institute for the World Economy tells ARD's Panorama magazine (NDR), "The long-term strategy of the Chinese could of course be to seize control of the entire supply chain, digital and maritime in Europe." This could give China a competitive advantage or initiate an "abuse of economic power."

According to the information, time is pressing: if the federal cabinet does not pass a resolution and an extension of the deadline is no longer agreed, the deal would automatically come into effect according to the law. As things stand, that would be the case at the end of October - shortly before a planned visit to China by German Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD).

German business circles are also voicing a serious accusation: The Chinese side is said to be exerting pressure on German companies. Specifically, it is said that the embassy has recently contacted German companies directly. They should support the Chinese entry into the Port of Hamburg - otherwise there would be consequences for their own business. When asked, the Chinese embassy did not comment on the accusation, referring instead to a previous statement by the foreign office spokeswoman: It is hoped that Germany will remain true to principles such as those of the open market - instead of politicizing normal economic relations.
--------------------
So this is what it looks like when the Germans learn the lesson of their dependence from Russia, which is now exploding them right into their faces: they nestle down at China's feet to lick its soles while slurping with relish. There is a lot of talk here that "change through trade" is not working, and that finally one has gotten it. But one lives further after it. Maybe it will work later nevertheless, by magic, but one day.

Until then: always diligently kowtow.

It can only be hoped that now that the crime in the making has been made known by the media, the whole thign will be stopped somehow at the alst inute. Time is runnign out, iof they have not stopped it until end of this month (ten days!), its automatically through and valid.

BTW. Bubble-Olaf is known to be extremely sinophile, since allways, and I said that two or three times already at the beginning of the year, so this stunt indeed is run by the probably most suitable person in German politics.

How much I dispise this underhanded carricature of a man.

Skybird

10-20-22, 05:35 AM

Ah, other media - edit: now practically all national mainstream media - pick up the story. And the three coaltion party factions run increasing attacks against Scholz' underhanded plan. Lets raise steam and pressure in the kettle:

https://www-welt-de.translate.goog/politik/deutschland/article241686375/Hamburg-Kanzleramt-will-chinesische-Hafen-Beteiligung-offenbar-durchsetzen.html?_x_tr_sl=auto&_x_tr_tl=de&_x_tr_hl=de&_x_tr_pto=wapp

https://www-tagesspiegel-de.translate.goog/wirtschaft/streit-in-der-regierung-kanzleramt-drangt-auf-china-einstieg-im-hamburger-hafenterminal-8775502.html?_x_tr_sl=auto&_x_tr_tl=de&_x_tr_hl=de&_x_tr_pto=wapp

https://www-spiegel-de.translate.goog/wirtschaft/hamburger-hafen-regierung-offenbar-uneins-ueber-china-einstieg-a-a81037b0-1dd2-4b97-ac67-bf130b8a19cd?_x_tr_sl=auto&_x_tr_tl=de&_x_tr_hl=de&_x_tr_pto=wapp

https://www.bild.de/politik/ausland/politik-ausland/kanzler-scholz-will-china-erlauben-sich-im-hamburger-hafen-einzukaufen-81674734.bild.html?_x_tr_sl=auto&_x_tr_tl=de&_x_tr_hl=de&_x_tr_pto=wapp

What gives it all a special taste is that Bubble-Olaf was the disastrous mayor of Hamburg, is involved in a finanace scandal that has Hamburgt as one major scene of the crime, and wnats the harbour deal done shreot before he starts a travel to Bejing. How comes so much lucky coincidence into the world?

Skybird

10-20-22, 07:10 AM

Achse des Guten hin oder her - where they're right, they're right.
AdG comments:
------------------------------
Port of Hamburg: Betrayed and sold?

Hamburg wants to sell part of its port to China - and Chancellor Scholz is pushing for it. Will the mistake of depending on foreign countries, as with Nordstream, now be perpetuated? Scholz seems to want to seamlessly continue Merkel's fatal legacy.

UASC, MSC, COSCO - these abbreviations are completely familiar to Hamburgers. The letters "SC" give a clue as to what they are, they are Shipping Companies, i.e. UASC for United Arab Shipping Company based in Dubai (merged with Hapag - Lloyd AG since 2017), MSC for Mediterranean Shipping Company based in Geneva (whose Mediterranean connotation is not immediately obvious) and COSO stood for the people-owned China Ocean Shipping Company with its European headquarters in Hamburg. In 2016, COSCO and China Shipping Group merged to form China COSCO Shipping Corporation. In the same year, it was announced that COSCO would take over the port of Piraeus. And now part of the Port of Hamburg is to be sold to them.

Back in September, Business Insider ran the headline "A second Nord Stream case? Hamburg wants to sell part of its port to China - that's what's behind the bitter dispute," and asked, "Is the future viability of Germany's largest port at stake? Or is Hamburg threatened by a second Nord Stream case? Is it good to bring China into the port boat? Or would it be fatal to increase dependence on the communist authoritarian-ruled country?"

COSCO is not only a shipping company but also a logistics group, and already controls about 10 percent of European port capacity. In the case of Hamburg, it plans to sell one of the port's terminals, Tollerort, which is considered particularly efficient and innovative. COSCO intends not only to buy business shares but also to provide a managing director. Due to its strategic relevance, the intended sale must be reviewed by the German government. All six ministries involved reject it, only Chancellor Scholz wants to push it through. If the cabinet does not pass a resolution by the end of October preventing the deal, it will automatically go ahead.
U.S. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken warned explicitly

In view of the geopolitical situation, the question arises as to what is driving the chancellor to even consider such a deal. That he is under pressure from the Chinese side is possible, but not proven. However, since German companies are said to have been put under direct pressure by the Chinese embassy and threatened with negative consequences if they do not support the takeover of the Tollerort by COSCO, influence on high-ranking politicians cannot be ruled out.

Olaf Scholz, already under pressure for various affairs, not least his controversial behavior in the Cum-Ex scandal, continues the SPD's questionable behavior regarding German security interests. Supplying Germany with gas through Nord Stream was supposed to be a purely private-sector project. With this blatant misjudgment, if it was only one, Germany entered into the dependency on Russia that has brought us into the current difficult situation. If one considers that the chancellor did not implement any of the saving measures such as extending the operating lives of nuclear power plants, ordering fuel rods, starting fracking, etc., nor did he support Ukraine quickly, sufficiently and effectively, a very alarming overall picture emerges.

If he now still wants to allow an important part of the port of Hamburg to be sold to China, although only recently U.S. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken explicitly warned that China apparently wants to implement its invasion plans against Taiwan sooner than previously thought, then his behavior can no longer be classified as merely contradictory or hesitant. Already his predecessor Merkel, under whose aegis the Nord Stream 2 deal came about, had no problem selling us to China, as the Bild newspaper headlined. At the time, it was about Huawei. Scholz seems to want to seamlessly continue Merkel's legacy.

In any case, the interests of Germans in a life of freedom, security and prosperity are being disregarded or even counteracted. It is not surprising that a clear majority of Germans no longer trust any party, but feel betrayed and sold by all of them.
-------------------------------------

Skybird

10-20-22, 02:34 PM

FOCUS writes:
------------------
Sometimes important questions are not discussed in the German Bundestag, such as these: Are Germans under Chancellor Olaf Scholz's government still good Europeans at all? Doubts are allowed, and Scholz will also feel some of them at the European summit in Brussels.

Perhaps the Baltic states will confront the chancellor in the Belgian capital directly with their main concern, namely whether Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania can still rely on Germany to defend their freedom against the Russians.

Artis Pabriks still served as a soldier in the Soviet army, which is obviously helpful when you are Latvian defense minister. Pabriks is no longer afraid of the Russian army because of his own experiences. Nor of its nuclear weapons. He does, however, have doubts about his country's most important European ally. And Pabriks has been expressing these doubts openly for a few days now, whether at meetings in Germany or in interviews.

Pabriks now told the FAZ truly fundamental:

"More and more people are asking whether the Germans are reliable partners. Would German society be willing to give its life for our freedom? When I see how Germany, but also France and other countries, supported Ukraine in the beginning, I have my doubts."

In other words, a Western frontline state, a member of both the European Union and NATO, doubts whether the largest European state, and thus the most important ally on the Old Continent, will fulfill its obligation to exist under Article 5 of the NATO Treaty. And this is because Germany's society has become pacifist.

When the Bundestag debated European policy today, just before the European summit in Brussels, this issue did not come up. Neither did the remarks of Wolfgang Schmid, the chancellor's most important confidant.

Scholz's chancellery minister had compared the calls for the delivery of German tanks to Ukraine with the hopes Adolf Hitler placed in the supposed "wonder weapon" V 2. As if that were not enough, Schmidt also said that if Russia captured a German battle tank in Ukraine, it would be "the perfect propaganda material" for Russia - to say the country was under attack from NATO.

There is more than one problem, however:

First, the military equipment supplied does not, in principle, bear the sovereign marks of the supplying countries.
Second, even the Gepard tank already supplied by Germany can be captured by Russia.
Thirdly: What has a German Leo 2, which is used for the defense against the imperialist aggressor Russia, to do with that V 2, which the imperialist aggressor Germany under Hitler used the civilian population of for example England?

One would have liked to know from Olaf Scholz what he thinks about the statements of his most important man. One would also have liked to know whether Scholz bases the hesitant delivery of weapons, with reasons that change over time, on the fears of his confidant.

Scholz always says that Germany should not go it alone when it comes to arms deliveries. Now, however, the European Parliament has decided by a large majority that the European states, especially the "hesitant" ones, may supply Ukraine with what Ukraine demands. The vote was overwhelmingly clear: 500 (!) MEPs in favor, a full 26 against. Even social democrats like parliamentary president Katharina Barley said yes. The Chancellor also said nothing about this in his government statement on Europe today.

Olaf Scholz was also silent on the cancellation of a joint cabinet meeting with France, which was to take place next Wednesday. Berlin canceled Paris, saying that German ministers were busy elsewhere. What does this mean: Germany cancels a Franco-German ministerial meeting because the cabinet members supposedly have more important things to do than consult with the French - the French, of all people - seriously now?

Scholz also gave no information in the Bundestag, shortly before he left for Brussels, about why he had not coordinated his "double whammy," the 200 billion in energy aid, with the Europeans. Many of them are angry with the Germans right now, especially those who are less rich than Germany. They also fear that Germany is responsible for the moon prices of gas because it is currently buying up the world market with its money.

Some European countries now want to take on debt to pay for energy aid to their populations - analogous to the Corona debt that the European Union incurred. Scholz could have made clear in the Bundestag what his position was on this - the chancellor avoided any specification.

Alexander Dobrindt, head of the CSU parliamentary group, recalled that Scholz had recently spoken out in favor of European debt at the European summit of the Social Democrats. He also said that shoving boom projects into shadow budgets was not an act that would score points in Brussels.
Is the port of Hamburg becoming something like Nord Stream 2?

Finally: China. Most recently, Green Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock used the Green Party conference to issue a strategic warning. Once again, Germany must not become so dependent on a dubious state like Russia. China was meant.

The NDR now reports that Scholz wants to enable the partial purchase of the Port of Hamburg by a Chinese state-owned company; several of the traffic light ministries warned against this because it would open up a potential for blackmail - China is also a major customer at the Port of Hamburg. Does Scholz really not consider a sale of the Port of Hamburg to be a strategic dependence on China?

How to deal with China is to be one of the topics at the Euro Summit. It will be interesting to see whether there are any questions for Scholz about the port project. In any case, the matter is reminiscent of the Nordstream 2 deal, which Scholz was still selling as a "private-sector project" until the Russians invaded Ukraine.

To answer the opening question of this text: doubts about Germany as a good European have never been as great as they are today. They are greatest in Eastern Europe.

Artis Pabriks, the Latvian defense minister, demands leadership from Germany. He will have to be patient.
----------------------

Skybird

10-21-22, 07:01 AM

FOCUS writes:
------------------------

There's a fire in the coalition again. It's about China, it's about Hamburg, and this time the chancellor can no longer play the benevolent referee. Olaf Scholz is in the middle of a major conflict. He is in the China dilemma.

The planned entry of a Chinese group into a Hamburg container terminal is increasingly becoming a bone of contention in the coalition: the Greens and FDP are criticizing the project.

It's not just a dispute about the Port of Hamburg. It's not just about the question of whether the Chinese should be allowed to participate in "critical infrastructure" in Germany. It is also about a major power issue. For the first time, the Chancellor himself is at the center of a coalition dispute. That could be dangerous, in many ways.

The most recent coalition dispute took place between Christian Lindner and Robert Habeck. The chancellor was able to dissolve it by directive decision. Now the situation is different. Now it's not two of his ministers who are Olaf Scholz's problem, but: the chancellor himself is the problem.

The framework in which this coalition conflict is taking place is also problematic. For it is the domestic core of a foreign and trade policy conflict that could hardly be greater. After all, it touches on Germany's self-image because it calls into question the Federal Republic's model of prosperity.

In short, it is a question of whether Germany will continue to be the most successful European trading nation, in other words, whether it will go for "business first". Or is Germany guided by geostrategic considerations, i.e. "politics first"? The business first principle entails major political risks, the politics first principle entails major economic risks. For Scholz, this means: He is in a China dilemma.

Green Party Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock publicly warns against "business first." Baerbock's party colleague Toni Hofreiter warns against making the same mistakes in China as in Russia. Green Economy Minister Robert Habeck wants to stop China in Hamburg.

FDP campaigner Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann wants Scholz to stop "mansplaining" to potentates. FDP parliamentary group leader Dürr has already found a new formula for Germany: trade without making itself susceptible to blackmail. As if this were so simple. A chair leg in the hand of a murderer is still a chair leg, but more so a weapon.

That the two intelligence chiefs - from the Federal Intelligence Service as well as from the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution - publicly warned against the port trade with China is to be expected: "Security" is their job. But security, while eminently important, is only one aspect of this issue.

In any case: This dilemma is far greater than Scholz's Hamburg past, which is now readily pointed out. Certainly, Scholz was Hamburg's mayor for many years. It goes without saying that he knows all the players on the ground. And of course he has a close relationship with his successor, Peter Tschentscher, whom he himself chose.

And in fact, everything also somehow has to do with the SPD and its view of the world, or more precisely: its idea of trade relations and the role of politics in them. The fact that a mayor does everything he can to help his port fits in conceptually seamlessly with Olaf Scholz's industrial policy ideas on the Nordstream 2 Russian pipeline.

Even with Nordstream, Scholz had ignored the geostrategic considerations - the gas pipe's blackmail potential against Germany - and against Ukraine. This is what Scholz's (and Merkel's) formula of the "private-sector project" stood for. This was not only naive.
In the case of China, we can no longer distinguish between politics and economics.

It was an attempt to pursue what an old 68 would surely call a state-monopoly capitalist industrial policy. Against all political warnings, the Americans as well as the Eastern Europeans. "Business first" - the old German recipe for prosperity, instead of "politics first." It didn't take long, just weeks, for the old mistake to catch up with the chancellor.

The matter is complex because it is no longer possible to make a clear distinction between politics and economics: Scholz wants to travel to Beijing at the beginning of November - as the first European statesman after the CP Party Congress that crowned Xi Jinping as Communist Emperor of China. His goal: to draw Xi to the West's side against Putin's Russia. Xi is seen as the only leader who can stop Putin from escalating the Ukraine war into the nuclear realm.

But if Scholz were to personally stop the Hamburg terminal deal with China, he would hit Xi hard in the head. The reason: Under Xi's leadership, China no longer distinguishes between foreign policy and foreign trade. For the potentate, politics and trade are two sides of the same coin - foreign policy, strategic instruments of power. Xi has weaponized trade.

When Lithuania recently upgraded Taiwan diplomatically because it is a flawless democracy, Beijing, which wants to bring Taiwan home to its empire, subsequently blocked trade with Lithuania. Also affected, points out Thorsten Benner of the Berlin-based GPPI think tank (Global public policy institute), were goods from Continental in Germany. It was a warning shot - to all of Europe.

The problem: Europeans have not yet found a proper response to the new, rude practice of the Chinese under Xi's ideological leadership of turning trade into an imperialist tool. China policy is essentially made in national capitals, not in Brussels.

That's how Angela Merkel handled it, and that's how her successor is doing it. That Europe must unite to stand up to China is the slogan in Sunday speeches. When it comes to traveling on Mondays, the motto is: Germany first.

It could also go differently. In that case, Olaf Scholz would not travel to China alone, but would take Ursula von der Leyen with him. That would send a double signal, both to Germany's partners in Europe and to its rival partners in China. The Commission President's task would then be to negotiate with China on trade rules on an equal footing, or in technical jargon, a "level playing field.

Because there is a dramatic imbalance in trade between the West and China. China is steadily expanding its influence in Europe, its main instrument being the "belt-and-road initiative," a thoroughly aggressive project that hides behind a cute name: Silk Road.

And at the same time it is sealing itself off from the outside world. China's idea of globalization is national, not global: China itself wants to remain politically self-sufficient, while making others, especially Europeans, economically dependent on it.

And so far it has been successful in doing so. If Germany as a country, or a German company with state influence, or even a German company at all, wanted to participate in a Chinese port - this would be out of the question.
Is Scholz sitting out the problem?

There could be an answer to this problem, too, which a look at a map produced by the Mercator Institute for China Studies (Merics) shows: Cosco, the company that wants to buy 35 percent of Hamburg's terminal, already has stakes in quite a few European ports that compete with Hamburg - the logistics business is tough as nails. Rotterdam, Antwerp, Bilbao - Cosco holds minority stakes in these ports. The Greek port of Piraeus is 100 percent owned by Cosco.

The solution: Instead of letting the Chinese drive them through the ring and play them off against each other, the ports could also look for a joint answer to the problem that is the same for everyone. But there has been no talk of that either so far - so much for Europe.

And Scholz? Could just keep quiet. If he manages to sit the issue out until the end of October, the Chinese will get what they want. The question is whether the others will let Scholz sit it out.

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

mapuc

10-21-22, 07:13 AM

If I remember correctly you government coalition is called the traffic light
Red-Yellow-Green

Which colour does it show when it comes to:

Energy ?
Ukraine ?
EU ?
China ?

Markus

Skybird

10-21-22, 07:30 AM

The term "trafficlight" or "trafficlight coalition" (die Ampel, die Ampelkoalition) is due to the three parties' associated colours: red for the SPD, yellow for the FPD, green for the Greens. We label different other coalition by nations flags, too: "Jamaica coaliton" for example would mean CDU (black) plus FDP (yellow) plus Greens (green).

Personally I would prefer to associate parties with different species of apes: nagging capuchin monkeys, thieving long-tailed macaques, and choleric chimpanzees, for example.

In the trafficlight coalition, it nevertheless is only three different shades of "left", the trafficlight thus is technically defunct. The FDP has been pulled over the table so far, had to agree to enormous new debts althgough their promises was they would not allow that (as a reuslt their elecition result at the last state election in Lower Saxony has dived by one third of their former value, and they got kicked out of parliament: endless new debts and giving in to left demands is not what their voters elected them for). On national level they now agree to enormous new debts and try to weasel out of their accountability by calling debts not "debts", but something else, no matter what, just not "debts". By claim, the FDP ist "liberal", in reality it is as left as practically any other party in the Bundestag now, even the CDU is a left party since many years, sometimes under Merkel lefter than the SPD, to catch their voters. The Greens always were home to Maoists and Marxists, and the SPD are socalists that relate to communists like water to ice: its the same H2O, the only difference is the situative context.

mapuc

10-21-22, 07:50 AM

Skybird

10-21-22, 08:44 AM

Thank you Skybird-I find it interesting to follow your "description" of the Political situation in my Fathers country.
Oh!? I did not know that. Explains why you speak German.

mapuc

10-21-22, 08:59 AM

Oh!? I did not know that. Explains why you speak German.

I knew I had a thread about my Father being member of the Hitler Jugend

https://www.subsim.com/radioroom/showthread.php?t=217679

Markus

Skybird

10-22-22, 05:51 AM

It's a familiar motif in the horror genre: the resurrection of the dead, who set out to haunt the living, who already harassed them when they were alive. The German horror of the present has a name: the holy mother Angela, the self-appointed last authority for whatever and universal corrective authority for unpleasant and therefore retractable election results and critical books, which she did not even have to read in order to nevertheless judge how damnable the criticism of Merkel in them was... FOCUS writes:
---------------------------------
Everything known, everything seen: In terms of self-righteousness Merkel plays in the 1st league. Angela Merkel's unshakable ego: Memoirs of a divine empress

If there were a prize for self-righteousness, Angela Merkel would win it hands down. She never misses an opportunity to say how at peace she is with herself. And now comes the memoirs!

Four months ago, Angela Merkel sat in the Berlin Ensemble and said that she would only make feel-good appointments after leaving the chancellorship. That was a little mean to the reporter Alexander Osang sitting next to her, because one involuntarily wondered whether the evening of talks with him was already set up as a feel-good appointment. But one was allowed to understand her statement in such a way that she would make herself scarce in the future.

Unfortunately, she did not stick to it. Not a week goes by without the retired chancellor showing up somewhere and giving advice. At the end of September, she was at the opening ceremony of the Kohl Foundation in Berlin, where she talked about herself, Kohl and Putin. Then she gave the festive speech for the 1100th anniversary of the town of Goslar, naturally with a glance at Russia. Then, a week later, she gave the next speech, this time on the occasion of the 77th anniversary of the "Süddeutsche Zeitung", also with a view to German-Russian relations.

In between, she was in New York to accept the award of the UN Refugee Agency for her commitment to the refugee crisis, followed by an appearance in Lisbon, where she explained why she in no way regretted her decision to rely entirely on Russia for energy supplies.

Merkel intends to be right. Absolutely

Change through trade? She never believed in it. Putin as a warlord? She never had any illusions. The invasion of Ukraine? She saw it coming for a long time.

Of course, she also knows exactly how things should be done better. She advises those responsible in the government to show more leadership. For the foreign minister, she has the advice to start thinking now about how to reintegrate Russia into the European security architecture. The really remarkable thing, I would say, is that people don't fall off their chairs laughing when the 16-year chancellor speaks to them. But probably only someone who is not employed by the "Süddeutsche" can think like that.

I have written about all the German chancellors. Adenauer did not consider any of his successors as suitable as himself. Kohl's stubbornness was also legendary. Anyone who wasn't for him was against him; there was nothing in between for him. But in terms of self-righteousness, Angela Merkel is once again in a league of her own.

You can see it in her face, too. She's got this neck of people who think they've done everything right in life. The head is so tight (on the shoulders) that there's not much wiggle room left, except for a nod of self-approval.

There were warnings about Putin

Last week, "Der Spiegel" presented the result of a meritorious research on their government's attitude to Nord Stream 2. A team of editors had spent months trying to gain access to the previously secret report in which the Economics Ministry, then still led by Peter Altmaier, was supposed to assess the risks of another gas pipeline to Russia. There were warnings, especially from Eastern Europe and the USA, that Germany would become even more dependent on the Kremlin as a result of the commissioning.

The sunniest assessment, however, came from Berlin: the new pipeline would not weaken European supply security, but on the contrary increase it. Gazprom has basically no influence on the volume of gas supplied, it only ensures the transport. More pipes, more gas, more reliability - that was the conclusion four months before the outbreak of war and eight months before Putin closed the gas tap.
Everything foreseen? Everything done right?

Of the many ministers who served Angela Merkel, Peter Altmaier was always the most loyal of the loyal. He would never have dared to rebel against the boss or initiate a decision that could have made her unhappy. So his assessment can certainly be attributed to the chancellor. The point is clear: No government has made us so dependent on energy supplies from a state that is hostile to us as that of Angela Merkel. During her term in office, dependence on Russian gas has risen from 43 percent to 55 percent. But as I said, there is no need to repent.

The stupid thing is: it's not getting any better. There is a man in the chancellor's office who wants to be like his predecessor. If there is a role model for Olaf Scholz to follow, it is the woman with the self-confidence of a divine empress. When he went into the election campaign, his promise was: I'm just like Angela Merkel, only without the rhombus. People mocked him for it. But the people who would have reelected Merkel if she had been allowed to were numerous enough to propel him into the chancellorship.

Even better than being right after the fact is to have known everything beforehand. Appearance by Olaf Scholz at the mechanical engineering summit on Tuesday last week. Putin uses gas as a weapon? Quote Scholz: "I was always sure he would do that."

Gerhard Schröder, after all, could say of himself that he saw the good in Putin's reptilian eyes. By their own admission, Merkel and Scholz never entertained illusions. What should we call their behavior? They knew what Putin was capable of and still put the gas weapon in his hand and even loaded it? Blue-eyedness is therefore not an explanation. If I were their legal counsel, I would say: Be careful, a lawsuit for treason can be filed quickly. Better to plead negligence. It doesn't sound so good, but unlike intent, it saves you a lot of trouble.

Merkel is working on memoirs - the content is already foreseeable

Would admitting that you misjudged the situation make the situation we are in better? It wouldn't. But it might help prevent repeating the same mistake. Coming to terms with the past is always also precaution for the present. If you recognize where you were wrong in your assessment, you may be warned next time.

Most people think of China as a huge sales market. But if we're not careful, we'll be trading one dependency for another, especially in energy production. No other energy sources gobble up as many rare metals and earths, calculated over their life cycle, as photovoltaics and wind power. And guess where much of the metal needed to make solar panels and wind turbines comes from? It's not Europe, unfortunately, but the Middle Kingdom.

Angela Merkel is now working on her memoirs, along with her office manager Beate Baumann. "The book will provide an exclusive, personal insight into the political life and work of the former German chancellor," says the publisher's announcement from Kiepenheuer & Witsch, where the biography is scheduled to appear in fall 2024. The author can be quoted as saying, "I am pleased to reflect on central decisions and situations of my political work and to make them understandable to a broad public, also with recourse to my personal history."

You don't have to be a clairvoyant to tell what will be in the memoir. Our former chancellor is at peace with herself. Her policies were, in the truest sense of the word, without alternative. Anyone who sees it differently has grasped nothing and understood nothing. An ideal gift for masochists. But there are enough of them in Germany, too, so that at least nothing stands in the way of a nice place on the bestseller list.
---------------------------

mapuc

10-22-22, 06:24 AM

You are critical on Merkels politics.
Then you should hear one of our EU and Germany expert Lykke Friis when she is speaking about Merkel. Sometimes I get the feeling she's almost getting an orgasme.

Markus

Skybird

10-22-22, 07:06 AM

You are critical on Merkels politics.
Thats an understatement. I see her as a continental political deaster of first rank. And I have seen her like that form all her chncellory beginning on. For very short time I put some hope - desperate hope in her training as a physicist, that this maybe wou,d help her top se thign srealisticlaly. That was a big mistake, although my hope was muted. Merkel is no scintiost, and has no scientific midneset. Like have studied psycholog and did my degree, but am no psychologist. Still, I have more scientific mindset in one day than Merkle in her complete 4 terms has shown.

My contempt for her has no limits, and since many, many years. Scholz is her worthy successor, thats why she supported him, ironically. Scholz had already been sorted out by his own party at that time!

I know not a signle name in German politics whom I would see as a real alternative. When i look at the names and faces from all parties, I canot help but must start to giggle hysterically.

Germany is lost, that simple it is.

Jimbuna

10-22-22, 07:28 AM

Not just Germany but also the UK and a few others.

mapuc

10-22-22, 08:21 AM

I was born with as German-Had German citizenship from birth until I was 4 or 5, when my Dad got the Danish. I could get German citizenships back, if I want too...

I just don't feel for it, cause it's not only Germany and UK who's going down the drain, Even Denmark is heading same way.

Markus

Skybird

10-23-22, 06:43 AM

Last week I noticed they ran a documentation on radio about the history of Nordstream 1, and how nice it was to have all that cheap gas and how it worked miracles and wonders for German economy to have the lowest-paid low-wage sector in the West, the cheapest energy supply from Russia, and the highest export rate of all industrialised countries and how economically strong Germany became from this (I always have completely objected to this stupid view: when you are depending on exports exclusively, you are not strong, but weak and depending: I preach this since many years).

Yesterday the first of the 16 minister presidents of the German federal states, a CDU man, said that "after the war" he wants Germany to buy Russian gas via Nordstream 1 again. (A strong wing in the SPD anyway wants to reconnect with Russia "after the war", and the AfD seeks close relations to Russia anyway.)

Merkel recently warned the govrnrment that it must absolutely now already think about "leading Russia back into a European security architecture."

And while I type this, I have a radio feature running where they hail the construction of Russian pipeline-building to the West since the 70s and how much effort it costed the Eastgerman workers, and worker's pride and all that, and how triumphant the mastery of the technical challenges was.

Go figure.

The public gets prepared and re-educated for something.

The bitter irony here is, that Germany, due to the stupidity of Green-leftist economy-ecology ideology of the past decades, may have indeed no other choice, if it does not want to completely collapse in the coming 3-4 years. and that is no exaggeration, that is a very realistic scenario, I say. When the economy explodes, it cannot support the paying of wages anymore. People cannot pay and finance their living costs. Jobs are being cut on a piecework basis. The whole social and economic fundament of the society will first contract in an apparent implosion, before it blows up in an explosion and leads to social uprise and violent revolt, unavoidably, and political radicalization will take place in record speed. And then nothing is neither safe nor certain anymore.

Skybird

10-24-22, 06:04 AM

Good to know! Regional newspapers in my hometown report today that there is not one functional public bunker in the whole district of Münster anymore. :yeah: Well, at least the misery will be over sooner when the going gets tough.

Earlier, the public alarm siren sytems failed in two tests over the past 12 months. Almost completely, and with one phase of "improvements" in between. :har:

Skybird

10-24-22, 06:23 AM

Babble Olaf is much deepwer invovle din the Hamburh harbour affair then previously reprted (I am not surprised, but suspected this and said so, he was mayor of hamburg for many years and has sevcerla dubious affairs and scandals sticking to his heals since then, despite the teflon coating).

DER WIRTSCHAFTSKURIER reports:
---------------------------------------

A year ago, the Port of Hamburg concluded a deal with Chinese partners for the partial sale of a terminal. Now the deal is threatening to fall through after all. Right in the middle of the mess: German Chancellor Olaf Scholz.

The Tollerort container terminal is the smallest loading station in the Port of Hamburg, where there are four terminals in total, and it's pretty much in the corner, at the back near the Köhlbrand Bridge. But the small terminal is currently causing a lot of trouble.

And trouble that Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD) has to put up with. The reason: a long-time business partner of the Hamburg port operator, who comes from China of all places, is to buy 35 percent of this terminal. And Scholz is behind the deal. So far, anyway.

The deal was almost done and dusted before it became a political issue. The supervisory board of Hamburg port operator HHLA had already approved it. Andreas Rieckhoff, a close confidant of Chancellor Olaf Scholz from their Hamburg days, sits on the board. Both have trusted each other since their time in the SPD district of Hamburg Altona.

The "Hamburger Abendblatt" knows a photo of a vacation in Spain spent together in the nineties. When Scholz became mayor of Hamburg, he brought Rieckhoff into the economic authority as a state councilor. Since 2020, the chancellor's friend has sat on the supervisory board of HHLA as a representative of the Hanseatic city.

He is a kind of Hanseatic multi-supervisory board: He is involved in the Hanseatic city's airport as well as in the supervisory board of the trade fair, the Tourismus GmbH and the Center for Aviation Research. According to his curriculum vitae, the busy state councilor and Scholz confidant is a member of eight supervisory boards, six of which he chairs.

He agreed when it came time last year for China's COSCO Shipping Ports Limited (CSPL) to take "a strategic stake" in Container Terminal Tollerort, according to a September 2021 joint statement.

It is seen as "strengthening the customer relationship with the Chinese partner as well as providing sustainable planning security for the container terminal," the assessment from last fall reads. Tollerort is to become the preferred transshipment point for the Chinese, it said.

"Long-standing and trusting customer relationships," such as those the port has cultivated for 40 years in goods traffic with China, are important, said Angela Titzrath, head of HHLA, at the signing of the contract. She recalled that Chinese freighters have been handled at the terminal for four decades.

The Port of Hamburg has indeed been the most important logistics hub for maritime and continental goods traffic between China and Europe for decades. Almost every third container that crosses the quay in Hamburg comes from China or is destined for the Chinese market.

The partnership should "strengthen Hamburg's position as a logistics hub in the European North Range and vis-à-vis the Baltic Sea region."

Titzrath's Chinese contractual partner Zhang Dayu, head of CSPL agreed with her: "We look forward to developing the existing potential together with our partner HHLA and to successfully developing the location further."

Meanwhile, no one is looking forward. Because, what was true a year ago is water under the bridge against the backdrop of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The new watchword in the EU and Germany, painfully learned from the consequences of energy dependence on Russia, is "decoupling."
Chinese state-owned shipping company Cosco wants to buy 35 percent of the operating company that runs the Tollerort container terminal.

In German: decoupling. The economy in this country should not be dependent on just one main partner - and that is not just referring to Russia, but also to China as a production and sales market. In view of these effects of what Scholz himself has called the "turn of the times," a deal like the one in Hamburg is no longer a good idea these days.

As a result, there are calls for the deal, which already seemed to have been concluded, to be scrapped: Green Party co-leader Omid Nouripour, for example, says: "We learned in the war over Ukraine that dependencies on states such as Russia and China can be fire-threatening."

We should "learn from these mistakes." FDP Secretary General Bijan Djir-Sarai, German Justice Minister Marco Buschmann (FDP) and Economics Minister Robert Habeck (Greens) expressed very similar views. They all warned against repeating past mistakes.

Only at the beginning of the week, the presidents of the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution and the Federal Intelligence Service issued an urgent warning in the Bundestag about possible threats from China. Russia is the storm, China is the climate change that we have to be prepared for, said Thomas Haldenwang, President of the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution.

That sounds very different from last year, when the completion of the deal seemed to hinge only on formalities. At the time, there was talk of "various approvals under competition and foreign trade law." But these could now become decisive.

The deadline for the investment review process initiated at the time expires on October 31. This was confirmed by a spokesman for the Federal Ministry of Economics. An extension of the deadline would be possible if all parties involved agree. If the deadline is not extended, and if there is no cabinet decision, this will be deemed de facto approval and the deal will be through.

However, it does not look like that will happen. For Scholz, who already has to answer to a committee of inquiry because of his Hamburg connections to the Cum-Ex fraudsters at Warburg Bank, does not want to be drawn into the next maelstrom of Hamburg merchant gossip that threatens in view of his acquaintance with port supervisory board member Rieckhoff.

After an EU summit in Brussels, he was more reserved than usual about the deal over the weekend, saying that "nothing has been decided yet." In the review process, there are still "so many questions to be clarified that there is currently no interim status to report."

The whole thing sounds a bit like Nord Stream 2: There, shortly after his election as chancellor, Scholz had spoken of the question of commissioning being a purely economic matter and shifted responsibility away from himself.

A short time later, he revised this view and ultimately made the commissioning politically impossible. Putin's Russia looked into the empty tube. It could be that China's head of state Xi Jinping will soon have the same experience with Scholz and the Germans.
---------------------------------
The trick is that a cancellation of the dela must be aciutvely decided. If Little Olaf just stubbornly refuses to do anything about and doe snto put it on the daily schedule of the chnacellor'S office where it then gets put down, its through automatically. He must just refuse to add it to his calender and sit out for the next 6 days.

Skybird

10-24-22, 03:18 PM

Scheiße.

Focus writes:
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The way is clear for the controversial Chinese participation in a container terminal in the Port of Hamburg. As reported by the Süddeutsche Zeitung, the six ministries that had previously rejected the deal have given up their opposition and agreed on a compromise. At the same time, experts warn against the deal.

Thus, the federal government will decide on a so-called partial refusal: According to this, the Chinese state shipping company Cosco will not be able to take over 35 percent of the Tollerort terminal as planned, but only 24.9 percent. As a minority shareholder, the Group would then formally be unable to exert any substantive influence on the management.

The compromise was reached even though lawyers from the Ministry of Economics warned of the consequences. "Bild" reports, citing a secret risk analysis from Habeck, that experts have considerable doubts about the deal: According to the report, a deal would have an "increased strategic Chinese influence on German and European transport infrastructure," as well as a "detrimental impact on the resilience of supply chains and security of supply"

It goes on to say particularly clearly that a partial acquisition by the Chinese group would be a "likely detriment to public order and security." This is because elements of European transportation infrastructure influenced by "China would not be available, or at least not available without restriction, in the event of a conflict or crisis." The Chinese government could use this as a means of exerting pressure to achieve political goals.

The conclusion: "The acquisition should therefore be prohibited" in order to avoid becoming economically dependent on China.

It was open whether the decision would be made this Wednesday in the Cabinet or by circulation. Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD) is considered a supporter of the deal, Vice Chancellor Robert Habeck and Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock (both Greens) had positioned themselves against it. As the SZ further reports, only the Foreign Office had recently come out in favor of a complete prohibition of the deal. There, among other things, a negative signal effect had been feared if the German government did not prevent the entry of the Chinese group despite Europe-wide concerns.

"After all, the Port of Hamburg is not just any port, but one of the key ports not only for us as an export nation, but for Europe as a whole," Baerbock had said in mid-October. With every investment in German critical infrastructure, the question must be asked "what this could mean at the moment when China would oppose us as a democracy and community of values". Other countries are experiencing "what it means when China owns or even partially owns critical infrastructure - be it airports, rail networks, power grids."

On Monday, the German government conceded that the planned entry into the alliance was met with incomprehension by German allies such as the United States, France and the Netherlands. The criticism of the plans of Cosco and HHLA "cannot simply be brushed aside," said government spokesman Steffen Hebestreit. Accordingly, he said, the project is being carefully examined. However, two dozen other European ports are also wholly or partially owned by Chinese investors, for example in Rotterdam or Piraeus. In Hamburg, on the other hand, only a minority stake in one of several terminals is involved.

------------------------
Ratio's declaration of bancruptcy. Corruption trumps reason. Retards like these dont get it, they just dont get, these dwarves are too retarded, too dumb and toom unscrupolous and too corrupt. Only to save the chaotic damn three-times cursed coaltion, their powers and priviliges.

This deal even in reduced form is far more dangeorus than Nord Stream 1+2.

Damn stupid ####heads.

Skybird

10-25-22, 10:58 AM

FOCUS writes:

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Olaf Scholz has waved through the Port of Hamburg's China deal. In the traffic lights coalition, the Liberals and Greens in particular think this is wrong. But what is just beginning in Hamburg is already a tradition in another German city. Duisburg is Germany's "China City. And the state government wants it to remain so. Is that wise?

Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann finds the Hamburg China deal "foolish. After all, "Russia's invasion of Ukraine has just made it clear how dangerous dependencies on dictatorships are". And what applies to Russia "applies all the more to China," the pugnacious FDP woman now tells FOCUS online.

Already now, she says, the Chinese have a stake in 14 ports in Europe. And the 24.9 percent stake in the Hamburg port terminal held by the Chinese state-owned company Cosco could soon become the 35 percent originally targeted, for example through a newly founded Chinese company. But Strack-Zimmermann directs his attention from Hamburg to another major city.

Duisburg Gateway Terminal: The future of logistics

The future of logistics is currently being created on the former coal island in Duisburg Meiderich, if the proud port operators and the equally proud North Rhine-Westphalian Minister President Hendrik Wüst (CDU) are to be believed. With 235,000 square meters, the Duisburg Gateway Terminal will be the largest terminal in the European hinterland in just two years.

Until recently, Duisburg was ready to seal its next dependency on China, under the eyes of a state government that is oblivious to the geopolitical dangers posed by a gigantic logistics project. NRW Minister President Wüst, says Strack-Zimmermann, is "droning on in silence."

Climate-neutral container terminal

It wasn't always that way. At the groundbreaking ceremony in March, top CDU politician Wüst was delighted with the showcase project so promising for his state: "The first container terminal to run on hydrogen in a completely climate-neutral way sets the course for a climate-neutral future and is an example of the excellent research into hydrogen in North Rhine-Westphalia, which we as the state government are promoting." And with 13 million euros, as Oliver Krischer said. Krischer is from the Green Party and is transport minister in North Rhine-Westphalia in the state's first black-green coalition.

Not only Wüst is pleased. The Chinese were also pleased. They were originally involved in the 100-million project. With a third, or more precisely, with 30 percent. And with the state-owned company whose name is already familiar from Hamburg: Cosco.

Xi Jinping's European port investments

In recent years, President Xi Jinping's logistics experts have cast a dense net of port holdings over Europe. Many fish swim in it, but probably the fattest fish in the China net is an entire city at once: Duisburg. Nowhere in Europe do so many Chinese students study as at Duisburg University: 2,000 young Chinese study here free of charge, and with what they have learned, such as the latest research on mechanical engineering, they then return home to China.

Duisburg is the end point of the "Silk Road"; 40 trains from China arrive here - every day. With Chinese clothes or electronic parts, after traveling across Russia and through Belarus and past Ukraine.

The new "Silk Road" is the central project of President Xi, with which he is promoting trade with Europe - and in the process covering the continent with strategic dependencies. Duisburg plays an important role, and this city alone was worth a detour for Xi. The president came to personally shake the hand of Duisburg's then harbormaster.

Staake saw through China's scheme

No one saw through the geostrategic ambitions of the Chinese as bluntly as the architect of this gigantic conversion project in Duisburg, Erich Staake. The ex-Bertelsmann manager, who was brought in by the then Social Democrat Prime Minister Wolfgang Clement, was supposed to show in Rheinhausen what the future of a country looks like when coal is at its end. And it has to be said: Staake was successful.

When people drove through the harbor with him in a VW bus, Staake said he couldn't understand why the Europeans were so docile in accepting this silent conquest by the Chinese. It is clear that the Chinese are not only interested in business, but also in political dependencies, for example in the Balkans - or in Greece. Xi's people now own 100 percent of the port of Piraeus.

China base already exists

And when Staake was asked about his competitor Hamburg, he liked to reply that they shouldn't be so fussy, the Hamburgers, because the real China base in Germany is Duisburg. That's right. And it has a long tradition.

This is where the first German-Chinese city partnership was established exactly 40 years ago - with China's fifth largest city. Wuhan has eleven million inhabitants, and since the emergence of the Corona virus, the reputation of this city in Germany is perhaps no longer quite so impeccable. In any case, in the political partnership between Duisburg and Wuhan, the flag followed the trade. First the Thyssen people built a steel mill in the central Chinese metropolis, then the politicians followed.

Data jumps out for China

There are now 100 Chinese companies in the city. And while the Dortmunders are having their smart city digitization project built by the Americans, in Duisburg they prefer the Chinese. The city is working with Huawei to digitize the traffic lights in the city. At home in China, "social scoring" is used to give preference to digitizing people, preferably those who the communist party believes are not behaving in a socially acceptable manner.

A port is not just a transhipment point for goods, and a city has more people than traffic lights. The most important thing a port and a city has to offer a quasi-state foreign investor is: data. Perhaps this is what is meant when in Berlin, for example, Greens and Free Democrats warn that Germany's "critical infrastructure" should not be left to the Chinese.

Cosco has meanwhile pulled out of Duisburg

At the state level, things get complicated, because this is where things get concrete. And when it comes to investments, especially in future projects, party politics no longer play a role. Hamburg's Social Democratic Mayor Peter Tschentscher (SPD) defends the China port deal, as does Düsseldorf's Christian Democratic Minister President Hendrik Wüst.

On the fringes of the recent Minister Presidents' Conference, he rebuffed. German-Chinese cooperation, "keyword Silk Road, is good and reliable." In Duisburg, "no one from China is involved in the port," Wüst also said. That's even true - in the meantime. Because, secretly, quietly, Cosco has meanwhile apparently withdrawn from its shareholding. According to the FAZ, the port has taken over the shares.

Many dependencies created

Felix Banaszak comes from Duisburg, and he finds what Hamburg and Duisburg are doing with China "naive." In Duisburg, says the Berlin Green, "many dependencies" have been created. Banaszak explicitly criticized the port's involvement.

Can deals like the one in Duisburg still be undone later, Ms. Strack Zimmermann, when the situation has changed and a partner like China, for example, begins to pursue an aggressive foreign policy? "We are, of course, loyal to the contract," says the Berlin-based Free Democrat, who comes from Düsseldorf and therefore knows the Duisburg situation, in an interview with FOCUS online.

"But we must not do anything like that in the future."
-----------------------

Skybird

10-26-22, 09:41 AM

Der FOCUS writes on a new German law against incitement of the people which, like so often these days in Germany, was knitted with a hot needle and turns out to be a mess that will do more damage than good and was waved through without making the public aware of it at all. It makes critical discussion literally impossible. In my opinion, this law is a gag order. For example much of the criticism I have written and posted against Islam in earlier years, now could bring me into prison. Not in Turkey or Saudi Arabia - in Germany.

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

New paragraph 130 is a threat to critical debate

Anyone who speaks out on controversial contemporary conflicts will face imprisonment in the future: The new version of the incitement of the people in § 130 threatens critical debate, says criminal law professor Elisa Hoven. If the legislature does not make improvements, there is a threat of the judiciary becoming politicized.

(Author Elisa Hoven is a professor of criminal law at the University of Leipzig and a judge at the Constitutional Court of the Free State of Saxony).

Lying is not punishable in itself. Until now, people were allowed to spread false claims about political decisions or historical events without the courts being interested. There was one exception: denying the Holocaust. That the approval, denial and trivialization of the genocide of the Jews under National Socialism is punishable is no doubt justified by German history. What the Bundestag decided last Thursday around 11 p.m. (!) without any public hearing (!) is therefore nothing less than a small revolution in criminal law.

According to the new paragraph 5 in section 130 of the German Criminal Code, in future the denial or gross trivialization of any genocide, crime against humanity or war crime will be punished with a prison sentence of up to three years or a fine - and first of all regardless of where or at what time the disputed war crime took place. The statement need only be capable of inciting hatred against, for example, a national or ethnic group and disturbing the public peace. Thus, a historian who downplays the Napoleonic wars is unlikely to be liable to prosecution. Denying pogroms against Jews in the Middle Ages is likely to be a different matter, and even more so in the case of current conflicts, especially since "disturbing the peace" is not empirically investigated by the courts and has so far rarely formed a serious corrective.

What is highly problematic about the new regulation is that it punishes the denial or trivialization of war crimes, for example, that have not yet been established as such by any court. If someone writes on Facebook that the acts in Butscha were staged by the West, the public prosecutor's office would have to investigate under the new criminal offense. The competent district court would then have to investigate whether war crimes actually took place, because after all the defendant denies the crimes under international law. It is precisely this clarification that actually takes place at the International Criminal Court, equipped with specialized investigative teams and the best technology, in proceedings that sometimes involve hundreds of witnesses from the war zones. Proving crimes under international law is highly complex. Rarely is there as much lying as in war, evidence is covered up or manipulated, witnesses are hard to find, and legal classification is not always easy. How a German district court is supposed to manage this task is a mystery to me.

And there is another one: As long as an international crime has not been established as such by courts, why should one not be allowed to "deny" it? The past has shown us that there is a lot of untruthful reporting about war crimes. Perhaps some readers still remember the "incubator lie" in the Iraq war. The story of Iraqi soldiers allegedly ripping premature babies out of incubators and leaving them to die on the ground during the invasion of Kuwait in August 1990 was even discussed in the UN Security Council. It later turned out to be all lies, part of a PR campaign commissioned by the Kuwaiti government-in-exile. Especially in war, which is particularly prone to untruths, critical questioning of information - at least for journalists - is a duty. And if accusations have not yet been examined and confirmed by a court, no one should be punished for not acknowledging them.

It would also be interesting to see how the new German law intends to deal with the work of international defense lawyers who deny or at least relativize war crimes in the interest of their clients in the proceedings. Or what about the professor of international criminal law who "denies" war crimes because her legal assessment shows that they are civilian crimes (because not every crime committed in war is a war crime)?

The Sword of Damocles of Criminal Prosecution

The legislator explains the new regulation by saying that it had to implement EU law. However, this is only partially true. It is true that there is a "Framework Decision on combating certain forms and expressions of racism and xenophobia by means of criminal law," the provisions of which Germany is said to have inadequately transposed into German law. The fact that European law is increasingly encroaching on national criminal law is a considerable problem. But here, at least, there would have been the possibility of meaningfully limiting the required criminal liability. Paragraph 4 of the Framework Decision allows Member States to limit criminal liability to the denial or gross trivialization of such crimes of international law as have been "finally determined" by an international tribunal.

Without this restriction, critical discussion of war crimes in smoldering conflicts will in the future be under the sword of Damocles of criminal prosecution. Legislators should urgently make improvements here - and do so in a public process that does justice to the scope of the decision to tighten criminal law. As a society, we need to consider how political our criminal law should be, and whether we are not in a position to endure even inappropriate statements worthy of criticism without calling for the public prosecutor's office.
---------------------------------

Rockstar

10-26-22, 10:29 AM

Rockstar

10-26-22, 12:16 PM

On Ukraine and on Energy, Germany Is Upsetting Its Allies in Europe

The government has dismissed criticism of its refusal to provide modern tanks to Ukraine and its massive energy subsidy for its own citizens. But its friends are bridling.

By Steven Erlanger
Published Oct. 25, 2022
Updated Oct. 26, 2022, 7:27 a.m. ET

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/25/world/europe/germany-ukraine-energy-policy.html?searchResultPosition=1

BERLIN — At a moment when Germany’s allies seek reassurance and leadership, even its closest partners wonder aloud about its commitment to European solidarity.

Although Germany has long been Europe’s de facto leader, it has been slow to provide serious military equipment to Ukraine. It has also subsidized its own citizens’ energy bills while working to water down a price cap on gas that could alleviate pain in poorer countries of the European Union.

“Can we trust Germany?” Latvia’s outspoken defense minister, Artis Pabriks, asked bluntly last week at an open forum in Berlin, referring to NATO and the risks associated with the war in Ukraine. “You say ‘We are there for you.’ But do you have the political will?” He added: “We’re willing to die for freedom. Are you?”

Those criticisms are coming not only from countries that would be expected to push for a harder line against Russia, like Poland and the Baltic States, but even from Germany’s closest partners.

It is “not good for Europe and for Germany that it isolates itself,” France’s president, Emmanuel Macron, subtly chastised his German counterpart, Chancellor Olaf Scholz, before a European Council summit meeting last week.

A major bilateral conference between France and Germany, the “couple” that has so much influence in Brussels, was postponed from Wednesday until January because of sharp disagreements over energy, arms purchases, collective European debt and Ukraine. Instead, the two leaders met in Paris on Wednesday amid the tensions for a hastily arranged working lunch.

Mr. Scholz and his advisers bridle at the criticism directed at them — and disagree.

Germany is a force for pragmatism and the third-largest contributor of military equipment to Ukraine after the United States and Britain, they argue. Wolfgang Schmidt, the chancellor’s top aide, publicly compared German security policy to a teenager in a world of adults, finding its way with good intentions.

If late and seemingly reluctantly, Germany has recently supplied advanced weapons to Ukraine, like Gepard armored antiaircraft guns, and at least one advanced mobile antiaircraft missile system, the IRIS-T. Germany rushed that delivery this month, promising three more systems down the road.

And as part of its effort to counter the criticism, Germany, which is Europe’s largest economy, hosted a multinational conference on Tuesday to focus minds on how to help Ukraine reconstruct, both during and after the war — a massive task. The German president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, whose role is more symbolic, also visited Kyiv on Tuesday for the first time since the war began, after Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, disinvited him in April, angry over Germany’s tight relations with Moscow.

“It was important to me, especially now in this phase of air attacks with drones, cruise missiles and rockets, to send a message of solidarity,” Mr. Steinmeier said.

But there is little doubt that the collapse of Germany’s long-held assumptions — that security in Europe must include Russia; that Russia was a reliable supplier of cheap gas and oil; that war would never again touch Europe; and that trade with autocratic regimes like Russia and China had no geopolitical implications — has been disorienting.

Germany is undergoing an economic and psychological shock, akin to an identity crisis, said Claudia Major of the German Institute for International and Security Affairs.

“The fear here is the end of the promise of prosperity — of Wohlstandsversprechen — that each generation will be better off,” she said. “And now that’s over.”

Mr. Scholz, a cautious labor lawyer from Hamburg, is carefully trying to ease the pain, especially among German voters facing a difficult winter of high inflation and soaring energy prices.

But while he acknowledges that the world has changed, “he is not saying that we must change with it,” said Ulrich Speck, a German analyst. “He is saying that the world has changed and that we will protect you,” a major risk for the future.

Mr. Scholz himself raised expectations among Germans and their allies alike just days after Russia invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24 when, in what he called a “Zeitenwende,” or historical turning point, he announced a big hike in military spending. The extra 100 billion euros ($99 billion) was intended to improve the sorry state of the German armed forces, but since then the government has been slow to act on its promises.

The result has been a deepening impression that Germany, with an awkward coalition government that was elected before the Russian invasion, is not able to fill Europe’s leadership vacuum, but is reluctantly joining the consensus when not going alone.

“Germany is not really a team player now — there is the sense of being dragged along,” said Jana Puglierin, director of the Berlin office of the European Council on Foreign Relations. “It’s Germany first.”

Relations with Poland and the Baltics, which are pushing a harder stance on Ukraine, are rancorous. “But we’re not bonding with Italy or Spain either,” Ms. Puglierin said. “I see us alone in Europe, detached.”

Thomas Kleine-Brockhoff of the German Marshall Fund said some criticism of Germany was necessary and valid, but he feared it had gone too far.

“Criticizing Germany has become a cottage industry, but there’s no pushback from the government here,” he said. And sometimes, as in Poland and Hungary, he said, Germany is a useful whipping boy for nationalist political campaigns, especially among populists, which feeds into a larger anti-E.U. sentiment.

But on Ukraine, he said, it’s true: Germany is “just not doing enough.”

While it has supplied armored personnel carriers and advanced howitzers, Germany has drawn a line at the kind of advanced heavy weapons that might make a difference now for Ukraine in the war — in particular the Leopard 2 tank and the Marder, a tank-like infantry fighting vehicle.

Those are seen by the government to be more offensive weapons that might help Ukraine push Russia back beyond the lines of Feb. 24 and prompt some unknown Russian reaction, Ms. Major said.

She and Norbert Röttgen, an opposition politician, said that the leadership holds an exaggerated fear of escalation and a desire not to panic voters, who are frightened by Russia’s nuclear threats and have delivered losses to the ruling three-party coalition in recent state elections.

So Germany has not given permission to its companies to sell Marders or Leopards to Ukraine or allowed other countries that bought the weapons to give them to Ukraine.

Instead, it has provided them to allied countries to replace Soviet-era weapons sent to Ukraine. That made sense early in the war, but there is little Soviet-era equipment left.

Mr. Scholz could have created a European coalition to provide weapons “to stand up to Russia and bring Europe and the West together,” Mr. Röttgen said. “Instead, we’ve created the deepest divides and we’ve been late on delivery, so now there are questions about Germany’s reliability.”

In their defense, Mr. Scholz and his defense minister, Christine Lambrecht, a fellow Social Democrat, argue that no country has provided Ukraine with modern Western tanks, including the United States, while insisting that the tanks are so complicated they would require months of training in how to use and maintain them.

Ms. Lambrecht admitted to gaps and bottlenecks at the same Körber-Stiftung Berlin Foreign Policy Forum last week. But she repeated the mantra that “we will give Ukraine what it needs in coordination with our allies.”

In other words, Germany will not be the first to provide Western tanks. But Washington, too, has been careful to calibrate the weapons it provides Ukraine, Mr. Schmidt has pointed out.

Annalena Baerbock, the foreign minister, a Green, has always pushed for more help for Ukraine. “We will supply Ukraine with weapons as long as it takes,” she said. “Ukraine is also defending Europe’s freedom.” The war, she said, “will shape German identity and European identity for years to come.”

Asked about polls that show German reluctance to see Russia as a military adversary, she said: “I’m a politician and not a psychiatrist.” But “people are afraid of war” and of their electricity bills, she said.

On energy, Germany has been sharply criticized within Europe for its unilateral decision to cushion the blow of higher energy prices to its own citizens and companies to the tune of €200 billion, which Mr. Scholz has called “a double ka-boom,” on top of €95 billion already provided.

The amount is somewhat inflated, and other countries, like France and Spain, have also announced state aid for energy costs. But the size of the subsidy is grating to other, poorer nations.

“For a country that talks of multilateralism so much, Germany has always had a unilateral energy policy,” said Daniel S. Hamilton, an American scholar of Germany, citing the sudden decision by Angela Merkel, the former chancellor, to abandon nuclear energy, and its building of the Nord Stream gas pipelines from Russia that cut out Poland and Ukraine.

“For the €200 billion, it’s not just the size but the manner of it, simply announced without European solidarity,” Mr. Hamilton said.

Mr. Speck agreed. “It was a big mistake not to see the European dimension, bringing back the image of Germany as a big egotistic power trampling on its partners,” he said.

Steven Erlanger is the chief diplomatic correspondent in Europe, based in Brussels. He previously reported from London, Paris, Jerusalem, Berlin, Prague, Moscow and Bangkok. @StevenErlanger

Gorpet

10-27-22, 03:12 AM

WORLD Germany agrees plan to legalise recreational cannabis

Read more: https://www.digitaljournal.com/world/germany-agrees-plan-to-legalise-recreational-cannabis/article#ixzz7ipzJhZOh

Germany on Wednesday paved the way to legalising the purchase and possession of small amounts of marijuana for recreational use, as well as its production.
“The federal cabinet today agreed the key points for the controlled distribution of cannabis to adults for recreational use,” Health Minister Karl Lauterbach said at a news conference.
The supply and use of the drug would be “permitted in a licensed and state-controlled framework”, Lauterbach said.
Under the proposals, people over 18 years old would be allowed to keep between “20 and 30 grams” of dried cannabis, which would be sold in authorised stores and pharmacies, according to a summary seen by AFP.
Germany would allow the domestic production of cannabis by licensed businesses, as well as giving adults the possibility to keep up to three plants for their own supply.

Cannabis smokers here in America ,Driving cars, Riding bicycles electric or with gas engines. These people are out of control. They smoke their joints whenever there is a no smoking sign.They don't give a ****.Now not only my lungs get filled with their smoke. My dogs lungs get filled at the Dog Park. And these people get in their cars and drive on our local streets and highways

And i will say this Government Weed is the best Weed. I want Government alcohol for those who don't smoke.The government must understand not all of us want to smoke. We want a pill.

Skybird

10-27-22, 04:03 AM

Jimbuna

10-27-22, 07:30 AM

Macron-Scholz: Difficult Paris summit for German chancellor

It was all smiles and good cheer when Emmanuel Macron greeted German Chancellor Olaf Scholz on the steps of the Elysée.

The cameras were there to show that all was well between the two leaders.

French government spokesman Olivier Véran told reporters: "This Franco-German engine - we've every intention of keeping it alive."

But behind the bonhomie, both sides know the EU's central relationship is under strain as rarely before.

On a host of subjects - defence, energy, aid to business, EU expansion - the two countries today find themselves pulling in opposite directions. And underlying everything is a fear fast becoming an obsession in Paris.

The French concern is that the war in Ukraine has ripped up Europe's geostrategic rule-book, leaving Germany enhanced and pushing France to the Western side-lines.

Symbolic of the rift was the cancellation of what had been until now a routine set-piece of Franco-German friendship - the regular joint meeting of the two countries' cabinets.

After a pause for Covid, these encounters were meant to resume at Fontainebleau on Wednesday. But faced with a glaring lack of common ground - as well, according to France, as the studied uninterest of several German ministers - it was agreed to call the session off.

Mr Scholz's arrival for a bilateral summit with the French president was an attempt to minimise the differences, but no-one is deceived.

Lamenting what it called the "glacial" state of cross-Rhine relations, Le Figaro newspaper said in an editorial that it was "the result of a profound geostrategic change - a continental shift that started a long time ago and which is destined to transform the face of Europe".

The essence of this shift - according to French analysts - is the awakening of the slumbering giant that is Germany, and its dawning realisation that it must shift for itself in an increasingly dangerous neighbourhood.

For France this is bad news because it casts doubt on a central assumption of the last half century: that by walking lockstep with Germany, France can not just restrain its richer and stronger neighbour, but also project its own vision of European unity.

With almost masochistic relish, French commentators have taken to listing the ways in which Berlin has lately chosen to go its own way rather than find an accord with Paris.

On re-arming, Germany has shown a clear preference for US kit - like F-35 fighter jets and Patriot air-defence systems - and seems content to leave once-vaunted European defence initiatives on hold.

Stung by criticism that it was suckered by Russia's Vladimir Putin, Germany appears anxious to reassure its eastern neighbours by promoting itself as the European arm of Nato, rather than - as France would like it - a partner in EU defence.

On energy, Germany is against a cap on gas prices, which France wants. It also wants France to authorise a new pipeline to carry gas - and eventually green hydrogen - from Spain. But France refuses.

And then there is Germany's decision to offer €200bn (£170bn) in state aid to businesses and households to get them through the energy crisis.

For France this will create severe economic distortions, because other European countries will be unable to compete with that level of subsidy. Germans reply that France is hardly in a position to give lessons about the iniquity of state aid.

In an article titled "The late Franco-German couple", veteran French commentator Nicolas Baverez said France had only itself to blame for letting itself be eclipsed by Germany over the years.

What has happened now with the Ukraine war, he said, merely revealed the imbalance that was already there. "While France is content to talk about sovereignty, Germany exercises it," he wrote.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-63389717

Skybird

10-27-22, 09:45 AM

There are many issues.

Paris wants a stop to expanding EU, Germanywants to increase it at all costs.

Paris wants to collectivese debts because it would tremendously benefit from it, Germany does not want to pay even mroe for other nation'S economic debt burdens.

Paris traditionally tries to dominate shared arms development projects,a dn tries so with the jpint fighte rprject on ebhaldf of Dassault again. Germany wants a veto power over exporting decisions of partner countries. Both wishes are unacceptable for the other side.

The EU states are angry that Germany stems 200 billions for trying to bail out itself. They want Germany to spend that money on bailing out others.

Macron cant stand Scholz. Well, for once I agree with the French president here.

France has delayed quite some arms development proijhects by now, last time the subamrines for Austrlaia. Germany has no time to wait this ling for a nuke-carrying aircraft if it wants to revice the nucvlear "Teilhabe". Times simnpyk was runnign out for Germany. Also, the F-35 is already flying, and the new Europen fighter doesnot even exist on the design board.

Paris is in princple alwas allergic against Ameicna influence in Europe, ebcasue uses the eU as avehcile to drive forward its own power ambiitons to dominabte Europoe via the EU. Paris reigns, Belrin pays. That is the French diea iof cooperaiton. Revenbtly they even wnated other nations to pay for a French nulkear defence shield - but without giving Europe any shared rights and command authority over French nuclear weapons. They wanted money for - just some lukewarm words and promises.

Macron hides that Paris also has massively boosted its own households and economy with indirect enormous financial aids. He throws with stones although he sits in a glass house.

Skybird

10-27-22, 11:07 AM

FOCUS asks: is Bubble-Olaf undermining the oil embargo against Russia with his China-obsession?
-------------------------------
Is the Chancellor torpedoing the sanctions against Russia with the Hamburg China deal? Meanwhile, there is already another critical China deal - this time in Dortmund.

The Hamburg-China deal, which Germany's Chancellor Olaf Scholz made possible as the holder of policy-making authority, also touches on Russia policy in this way: Germany renounces Russian oil, but allows the sale of a German port terminal to a Chinese company that ships Russian oil, which Moscow uses to finance its Ukraine war. This raises questions.

Especially these: Is the chancellor undermining the West's Russia sanctions because of Germany's heavy dependence on China?

China shipping company transports Russian oil

Back in March, just a week after the Russian invasion of Ukraine began, the world's largest shipping companies suspended their trade with Russia. With one exception: Cosco. That Chinese state-owned shipping company, which, with Scholz's permission, is now allowed to buy a 24.9 percent stake in a terminal in the Port of Hamburg.

The Danish shipping giant Maersk had expressly justified its voluntary renunciation of the Russia trade with the threat of sanctions. These have since been decided. They come into force on December 5. In six weeks, it will then be forbidden to bring Russian oil to Europe by sea, affecting two-thirds of the volume transported. Under pressure from Hungary's Prime Minister Orban, Brussels had to allow an exception for his country.

Against this background, the timing for the China-Hamburg deal is remarkable. The German Cabinet waved it through yesterday at the urging of the Chancellor's Office, six weeks before the oil sanctions that the West has collectively agreed to enter into force. And a week before the chancellor's trip to China.

Politically highly explosive deal

Legally, Germany's China decision does not violate the Russia sanctions. Politically, however, it can be seen differently. China's dictator-president Xi Jinping has, after all, personally pledged his support to Russia's President Vladimir Putin. And the company Cosco, which ships Putin's oil, to China but also to India, is one of the most valuable Chinese companies, which is also closely linked to the Communist Party.

Xi uses his companies not only to increase his gross national product. But also for political blackmail. The BND and the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution warn of this, which is why they also wanted to prevent the port trade.

An incident reported by the Brussels-based research platform Politico shows how China uses its economic power politically: In an interview, Belgian Foreign Minister Hadja Lahbib discussed the geostrategic threat posed by China. Chinese merchant ships could also transport military material and in this way become "warships". As a result, emissaries from the Chinese Foreign Ministry made representations to Lahbib. They demanded that the interview be withdrawn and combined this with an extortionist threat: Belgium was earning good money from the Belgian ports, in which China has a stake through Cosco....

"Germany is positioning itself on the wrong side"

Selling Xi shares in the Port of Hamburg is not just a security policy problem. It also sends a problematic signal to Germany's allies - led by the U.S., but also France, whose President Emanuel Macron had criticized the German deal.

"With this act, Germany is positioning itself geopolitically - but on the wrong side," judges geopolitics expert Ulrich Speck. And the follow-up costs are neither considered nor included - as in the case of Nordstream 2, the Russian pipeline that Scholz advocated until the last moment before the Ukraine war, supposedly "private-sector" but in fact hostile to Ukraine.

The German Office for the Protection of the Constitution had warned against the port trade. Apparently not for the first time. Now the security agency warned the German government not to allow China to take over the chip production of the Dortmund-based company Elmos. This is reported by the "Handelsblatt". This time, the green Federal Minister of Economics Robert Habeck is in favor of it, unlike in the case of the Hamburg port terminal. Because the Elmos technology was outdated.

But: The Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution warns that China is deliberately buying into such industries in order to be able to exert pressure against individual countries. Incidentally, the semiconductor market is not only about know-how, but also about production capacities. "This has to stop," commented Konstantin von Notz of the Green Party. Apparently, the Chancellor's Office has still not understood that this sends signals about Germany's role in the world that are perceived worldwide.

Scholz now travels to China

The latest move is remarkable - after all, it is European as well as declared German strategy to reduce dependence on China, especially in sensitive fields - such as semiconductors, but also rare earths, which are needed for the energy turnaround.

Next week, Scholz will travel to Xi. He is taking a business delegation with him. One of the businessmen, a "fat cat," Deutsche Bank CEO Christian Sewing, has since canceled his flight, officially for scheduling reasons. In fact, Sewing is one of the few Dax board members to speak critically about Germany's dependence on China. The latter's isolation and the growing tensions with the U.S. are risky for Germany, he says.

Indeed, what will happen if China invades Taiwan, which Xi aggressively threatened at the last CP Convention to great applause from his claqueurs? The U.S. will probably not only intervene militarily, but impose even greater sanctions on China; which will also affect Germany - and its most important trading partner, China.

"The Americans will say: Those who are still doing business with China will no longer do business with the U.S.," has already warned far-sighted Gesamtmetall head Stefan Wolf. The German government is not commenting on this scenario, which is anything but improbable.

China deal: Is a molehill becoming an elephant?

Taken on its own, the China-Hamburg deal is small in terms of volume. Perhaps the 24.9 percent is not even strategically relevant, because the risk is limited.

But: The big weather situation has changed completely. Russia is no longer an energy partner, China has become an aggressive dictatorship and a "system rival". With their geostrategic politicization of economic trade, Russia and China threaten the entire Western system - and thus the guarantor of its citizens' prosperity. Prosperity, however, is Germany's reason of state.

This is the situation in which even a molehill can become an elephant.

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

The number of occasions on which I feel an intense urge to vomit has increased dramatically since about the beginning of this year.

Skybird

10-28-22, 05:27 AM

DIE ZEIT writes:
---------------------------
Of the Franco-German intergovernmental consultations this week, nothing more remained than an embarrassing visit by the German chancellor to Paris, where it was not even enough for a joint press conference with the French president. That same week, on a stage in Berlin, Latvian Defense Minister Artis Pabriks asked, "Can we trust Germany?" And a few days earlier, a senior Czech security official dictated this brutal sentence into a journalist's pad: "Germany is an industrial federation pretending to be a state."

This has been going on for days, weeks, months. Germany's reputation is slumping, something is slipping in the relationship between Germany and its neighbors.

One can argue in individual cases about who is right - whether German nuclear power plants should run longer, whether France must allow a new pipeline from Spain, whether Germany is supplying enough weapons to Ukraine. And Emmanuel Macron in particular likes to use public anger specifically as a bargaining chip. But it is striking how little Germany seems to mind being at odds with its European neighbors on so many issues. The loss of prestige doesn't even seem to have really hit home here; so far, it has simply rolled off Germany's self-image as a model European. How can this be?

There are at least two German self-deceptions behind this. The first is that because Germany is now doing more, it is already doing enough. Armaments, energy, security policy: The German government has changed course in all areas since the beginning of the war - and yet it has only made up part of the enormous backlog. The yardstick is not the wrong policies of yesterday, but the reality of today and tomorrow. Latvians, Finns, French or even Ukrainians are not interested in the fact that the German government has to wrest every tank from its own mental prehistory, from German "salon pacifism" (Wolf Biermann). As the most powerful and richest country on the continent, Germany should get used to not wanting to be constantly pampered by the smaller ones.

To understand the second German self-deception, one has to go back a good ten years, to the financial crisis. The crisis had proved the German government right; it suddenly had not only the power but also the cause and the economic arguments to push through its economic policy views. Since then, people in Southern Europe in particular have been grumbling about a "German Europe". Thomas Mann had warned of precisely this as early as 1953. Only in this country do people believe instead that they have realized Mann's ideal of a "European Germany. The fact that Brussels often did what Berlin wanted was usually seen here not as a consequence of German power, but as the inevitable result of German persuasion. For so long, many Germans, politicians and citizens alike, have taken their own priorities for those of Europe that now, when they are so obviously falling apart, they cannot find a coherent way of dealing with them. What is happening right now is not foreseen in the German self-image.

Take nuclear power, for example: Germany's nuclear phase-out is a European exception, no matter what one thinks of it. But as such, it is not being discussed in this country. If Germany wants one thing and other European countries want something else, then in this logic it is not Germany that is deviating from the European path, no, the other countries have simply not yet recognized the right European path. Hardly anyone in Germany can see the perverse hubris of this attitude, but abroad it is all the more unpleasant.

Not only the German government, but also the German discourse should overcome these self-delusions. The country should admit to itself and its allies when, as with the price of gas, it thinks more about itself and the survival of its domestic industry than about Europe as a whole. In order to grow up in terms of foreign policy, as has recently also been said in the chancellor's office, Germany must also admit its egoism.

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

Jimbuna

10-28-22, 06:46 AM

Germany to push ahead with Chinese takeover of chips plant

German spy chief has warned that China buys into strategic industries in order to exert pressure.

Despite warnings from intelligence agencies, Germany's government is set to approve a Chinese takeover of a German company's microchips production facility.

German outlet Handelsblatt reported Thursday that the deal — which would see a takeover of the semiconductor production of Dortmund-based Elmos by Sweden's Silex, a wholly owned subsidiary of China's Sai Microelectronics — was set to get the green light against security advice.

The deal is currently being reviewed by the German economy ministry. A final decision on approval is expected within the next few weeks.

Europe — and Germany in particular — has been grappling with its reliance on autocratic third countries for critical infrastructure, after its dependency on Russian energy was exposed by Vladimir Putin's war on Ukraine.

The reports come only days after the German government gave the green light to Chinese state-owned shipping giant Cosco buying a foothold in a container port in Hamburg. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz not only ignored warnings from the EU but also from six of his own federal ministries, including the Greens' Vice Chancellor Robert Habeck.

Elmos is one of Germany's smaller semiconductor companies, which mainly produces chips for the automotive industry. Silex plans to take over the plant for €85 million. Elmos will use the investment to give up its own production and instead process chips bought from contract manufacturers.

The German government says that the technology Elmos uses is old and not to expect any outflow of critical know-how to China. The German security authorities, on the other hand, argued that they are not only concerned about exiting knowledge, but also that China is systematically increasing its chip production capacities.

According to Handelsblatt, they advised the government to block the deal.

The president of the Federal Intelligence Service (BND) also recently warned that China is deliberately buying into strategic industries in order to exert pressure on other countries.
https://www.politico.eu/article/report-germany-government-chip-plant-china-despite-secret-service-warning/

Skybird

10-28-22, 08:58 AM

It is known that Bubble-Olaf wants this deal to be pushed through, too.

Decisions like this had to be expected because Bubble-Olaf is known to be a confessing and kow-towing China-friendly ally of Bejing. I said that already during the elections last year.

Germany is detmerined to not let go its illusion of a German eneryg transformaiton unique int he world and not follwoe dby anyone els ebecasue it is unrealistic. It stays with the illusuion, and to feed it, it needs China delivering the stuff. Conclusion: to kepe the drema gooing, increasing dependency from China and helping China to grow its influence in Europe is logical to do. Righ? Right. :up:

Germany is becoming increasingly a security risk for the Western alliance of nations. Not the only one there is, but the fastest growing one - and soon biggest one. If it is not already now. The Germans say they have learned form the failure of depending on Russia. Thats nbot trtue, its a lie. They jave not learned anythign fro it. Nothing at all. They just repeat the very same mistake.

Thats also something I repeatedly said: do not trust Scholz, he is a notorious liar. You must not trust the Germans.

I have come to think of Germany as a security risk for the West similar to Turkey in NATO. If I were the US I also would think twice about selling Germany F-35s or modern weapon systems, namely latest block of Patriots.

I am not exaggerating, I mean it bloody serious. Washington urgently needs to kill some illusions it still has about Germany. Rejecting Germany'S request to become member of the Five-Eyes club, was a necessary first step, but it should not stop there. That German politics have not even debated about the rejection and its reaosn and cause, should tell yopu something. The germans live in an alternative reality where they are the standard to which everybody else must compare. They have made it unimaginable for themselves that others do not wish to follow their shining examples, and where this refusal takes palcle it collides wioth German self-perception and tbus gets faded out, and ignored. Ignorign things is a known psychological defence mechanism if you suffer from cognitive dissonance.

Jimbuna

10-28-22, 11:12 AM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lt46__5DTsI

Skybird

10-28-22, 06:08 PM

The dilettantism in the Ministry of Defense continues despite an additional 100 billion. What can you expect when bloody amateurs keep presiding over the whole association as if it were a matter of hobby gardening? DEUTSCHE WELLE writes:
---------------------------

Media: Six defense projects put on hold

Defense Minister Lambrecht's wish list cannot be kept, it is said. The Federal Court of Auditors had criticized technical errors in the planning for the debt fund.

According to media reports, the Defense Ministry in Berlin has reacted to criticism from the Federal Court of Auditors and revised the economic plan for the 100-billion-euro debt fund to better equip the Bundeswehr. In the process, Christine Lambrecht's department put six armaments projects on a waiting list, report the "Spiegel" and the "Welt am Sonntag" (WamS) in agreement. Deputy Inspector General Markus Laubenthal informed the members of the budget and defense committees in the Bundestag.

According to the report, the Army and in particular the Navy are affected. The procurement of a successor model for the Army's Fuchs armored transport vehicle will be postponed for the time being. The Navy will have to do without a fifth and sixth frigate 126. The number of 130 corvettes will also reportedly be reduced from ten to six.

Further development: yes - procurement: no

The IDAS system for improved self-protection of submarines against air threats is to be further developed, but procurement will be put on the waiting list. Furthermore, the number of Boeing P-8 Poseidon maritime patrol aircraft to be purchased in the USA would be reduced from twelve to eight. Finally, an unspecified "subproject" in the rebuilding of a short-range defense against airborne threats would be eliminated.

The reason for the deletions were technical errors in the procurement list initially drawn up by the ministry, write "Spiegel" and WamS. In an interim report for the budget deliberations, the Federal Court of Auditors criticized that the plans for the special budget submitted by Lambrecht's office had "considerable deficiencies" and would have to be "fundamentally" revised.

Price increases and interest rates not taken into account

According to the report, the Bundeswehr planners had listed dozens of armaments projects whose costs exceeded the 100 billion euro limit by almost ten billion euros. Apparently, the ministry had also overlooked the fact that the special fund is to be designed dynamically, i.e. price increases as well as interest on the debt must be taken into account.

The six projects mentioned would now be transferred from the special fund to the regular budget, reports WamS. However, it is unlikely that the necessary funds for procurement will be released there.
--------------------------

https://static.dw.com/image/63057357_403.jpg
Completely clueless in the house: Federal Minister of Defense Lambrecht. It's amazing that she hits the door at all when switching between two rooms, and not the wall. At the moment she is talking a lot about the Swiss ban on ammunition for the Gepard again - so she doesn't have to talk about the Marders or Leopards.

Rockstar

10-28-22, 07:39 PM

Swiss makes a crap ton of money selling ammunition with a contract stipulation nobody is allowed to use it. Who the hell approved that?

Are you telling me nobody over there saw this coming before they bought it? Next time read the fine print otherwise…

https://www.cadillacvnet.com/forums/attachments/welcome-to-the-goat-rodeo-jpg.3753/

Skybird

10-29-22, 05:05 AM

Grrrr. One moment I read it, and when I go back to it and wanted to translate it, it has disappeared behind a paywall. But the first sentences alone are already the content:

There was no open-ended examination of the question of nuclear lifetime extension. This is indicated by internal documents of the federal government, which WELT has analyzed. It also shows that Robert Habeck even acted against the assessment of his own experts.
What a surprise, why had I predicted that this is the case?

Liars. Cheaters. Fraudulent ideologist scum. Party before common good.

Skybird

10-29-22, 10:06 AM

The NEUE ZÜRCHER ZEITUNG writes:
------------------------------------------
Olaf Scholz is overwhelmed with Europe

Germany and France are suffering from relationship stress. But Berlin's star is also falling in other EU countries. German go-it-alone efforts, fundamental differences and a clumsy chancellor are to blame.

It was October 2021 when Angela Merkel was praised at her last EU summit as if there were no tomorrow. She was a "monument," Belgian Council President Charles Michel quipped. He said it was impossible to imagine a summit without the outgoing German chancellor, saying it was like "Rome without the Vatican or Paris without the Eiffel Tower." With Merkel, said Luxembourg Prime Minister Xavier Bettel, Europe is being left by a "great person."

The chancellor had attended 107 European Councils - as the summits are officially called - in her 16 years in office. Because she became the longest-serving head of government in the EU, led Europe's largest economy and was able to dominate the Brussels Alpha Round in her calm manner, all eyes have recently been on Merkel - and thus indirectly on her successor Olaf Scholz. Would the new chancellor display similar leadership qualities and be able to "hold together" the club of 27 just as well?

German egoism?

One year after Merkel's departure, it doesn't look like it at all. After all, there is a great deal of friction between Emmanuel Macron, the French president, and Scholz. As is well known, nothing runs smoothly in the EU without the Franco-German axis, and so the breakdowns in relations also have direct consequences for Europe. The fact that it has come to this at all has to do with the force of the Ukraine war, the different responses to the energy crisis and possibly also with Olaf Scholz's style.

Anyone who had not yet noticed that there was a crisis between Paris and Berlin knew this last Thursday at the latest, when a long-planned Franco-German ministerial meeting in Fontainebleau was canceled. Private reasons were only pretended; the cause was major differences of opinion, for example on armaments and energy policy.

The French side was particularly annoyed by Scholz's boastful announcement of a "double whammy". Behind the term is a 200-billion-euro rescue package designed to protect consumers and businesses in Germany from the consequences of high gas and electricity prices.

In France, as well as in other member states, the plan is seen as distorting competition. Poland's Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki had already accused Germany at the beginning of October of exploiting the crisis to give its companies shameless advantages on the domestic market. Finland's head of government Sanna Marin and her Estonian counterpart Kaja Kallas expressed similar criticism, albeit more diplomatically. Scholz had not informed any of his EU partners, including Macron, about the "double whammy" in advance.

France thinks Germany would be better off joining an EU-wide program to boost and protect all European economies, similar to the 750 billion euro Corona reconstruction fund. But Berlin has so far gratefully rejected this proposal. It also points out that Paris itself subsidized energy prices in its own country with 120 billion euros in the summer.

Misguided nuclear policy

At the EU summit in Brussels, the tensions between Scholz and Macron became even more obvious. It would be good neither for Germany nor for Europe if a member state "isolated" itself, the French president told the press. This was referring to the German chancellor's opposition to an EU-wide gas price cap. Scholz leads a minority of states that reject market intervention. Macron, on the other hand, wants the state-imposed cap on gas prices and knows that he is in agreement with the majority of Southern and Eastern Europeans.

In the end, there was no big bang in Brussels. Scholz said that they had come together and presented a vague minimum compromise. But the points of contention were by no means resolved. A high-ranking EU official told the NZZ that there was a lot of frustration, especially among the East-Central European summit participants, about Germany, which was largely responsible for the crisis through its misguided energy policy decisions.

This refers to the construction of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, the high dependence on Russian gas, but also the fact that the German government has recently been buying up the gas market, thus driving up prices. Not only in France, but also in East-Central Europe, people are also surprised that Berlin is sticking to the final nuclear phase-out in the midst of the biggest energy crisis.

Going it alone to China

In Poland and the Baltic states, moreover, there is distrust of Scholz and his traffic light coalition because of its hesitant support for Ukraine. Few seem to trust him with the leadership role that many in Europe would like to see from Germany.

The skeptics are also concerned that Berlin seems to be repeating the same mistakes in its dealings with China that it made with Russia: Although Brussels has long been discussing how to decouple from China in order to become more strategically independent, Scholz is flying to Beijing next week with a large business delegation without a care in the world.

In Brussels, the chancellor brushed off critical questions about the trip by pointing out that it had "always been done this way" - as if the example of Russia did not show that it can be politically highly risky to become unilaterally economically dependent.

In fact, Merkel had also seen foreign policy primarily through economic glasses. The chancellor, who on the one hand managed to hold the EU together in many crises, on the other hand sowed the seeds for European conflicts with her mercantilism: with the adherence to Nord Stream 2, the nuclear phase-out and the naive trust in Putin as an economic partner.

Today, these mistakes are falling on Scholz's feet. But instead of working closely with his European partners to counteract them, the chancellor has paid lip service to the idea of a "stronger, more sovereign and more geopolitical European Union" - and has so far failed to show that he is serious about this.

Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)
---------------------

Skybird

10-29-22, 10:11 AM

Grrrr. One moment I read it, and when I go back to it and wanted to translate it, it has disappeared behind a paywall. But the first sentences alone are already the content:

What a surprise, why had I predicted that this is the case?

Liars. Cheaters. Fraudulent ideologist scum. Party before common good.
More major media pick it up. This is FOCUS:
-----------------------

Habeck ignored his own experts on nuclear power plant issue

In deciding against extending the operating lives of nuclear power plants, Robert Habeck is said to have acted against the advice of his own experts.
He ignored counter-positions from within the company.
According to a report in "Welt am Sonntag," an open-ended review was not carried out.

In the traffic light dispute over extending the operating lives of nuclear power plants, Economics Minister Robert Habeck (Greens) is said to have ignored the recommendations of his own experts. A report in the "Welt am Sonntag" says that the nuclear power plant issue was not examined in an open-ended manner. Habeck and Environment Minister Steffi Lemke had acted against the assessment of their own experts.

According to the report, Habeck's experts spoke out internally in favor of extending the operating lives of nuclear power plants. But Habeck is said to have ignored this. Internal government documents obtained by "Die Welt" and "Cicero" are said to prove this. For example, the ministries for the economy and the environment are said to have pre-formulated their rejection of an extension even before the results of an internal review.

As early as March 1, the "National Nuclear Safety Affairs" working group in the Environment Ministry had already drawn up an initial "note" on the legal and technical hurdles of a lifetime extension. Allegedly on this basis, Habeck and Lemke made public their opposition to a lifetime extension on March 8.

At that time, however, a conversation with the operators of the nuclear power plants is said not to have taken place at all. According to information of the sheet there is to have been only on 5. March a video switch with the energy companies EnBW, E.on and RWE, when the result of the ministerial examination was already present. The statement of Klaus Müller, president of the Federal Network Agency, had arrived at the Environment Ministry only on March 9, i.e. several days after the "note" had been written.

The operators of the nuclear power plants are also said to have given their blessing to a lifetime extension. EnBW, for example, is said to have stated on March 2 that the plants were "also at the highest safety level in an international comparison" and that "continued operation at this high safety level can take place." But these recommendations did not appear in Habeck and Lemke's "review note," he said.

"As a result of weighing the benefits and risks, an extension of the operating lives of the three remaining nuclear power plants is not to be recommended, even in view of the current gas crisis," it said. That had been the exact wording from the previous week.

As the "Welt am Sonntag" further reported, the Ministry for the Economy and the Environment had calculated that extending the operating lives of nuclear power plants would result in "around 25 to 30 million tons of CO₂ reduction in the German electricity market per year from 2024." This information had been deleted from the draft "note," the paper said.
----------------------------------

Jimbuna

10-30-22, 12:44 PM

Europe struggles to hold ranks against China and Xi Jinping as Germany defies EU with business trip to Beijing

This week, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz will be the first Western leader to travel to Beijing since Xi Jinping was confirmed for an unprecedented third term as China’s President, much to the dismay of the EU.

Mr Scholz’s visit with a business delegation on Thursday is alarming the rest of Europe, with leaders and officials warning that it could legitimise Mr Xi’s increasingly authoritarian regime, while also increasing reliance on China for key manufacturing supply chains and raw materials, from solar panels to rare metals.

During a secret three-hour EU summit discussion on 21 October, with no mobile phones allowed, EU leaders agreed that they have become too dependent on China in vital economic and trading sectors.

They agreed that the EU needed to work together to engage with China to tackle common problems such as climate change, while admitting that they had so far failed to persuade Mr Xi to use his leverage over Russian President Vladimir Putin to help end the war in Ukraine, or even provide assurances that Beijing would not circumvent sanctions on Russia.

Mr Scholz’s solo trip drew criticism from other leaders, who said that for China to take Europe seriously the bloc should be united.

“Considering what’s going on in China, it’s in their interests to divide us. It should be in our interests to stay united,” said Estonian Prime Minister Kaja Kallas.

“It is also important that we don’t have separate deals with China, because that would mean we are weak as a union.”

His remarks echo the view in Brussels. In 2019, the European Commission took a fundamental shift in its approach to China when it published a new strategy that named Beijing a systemic rival and economic competitor.

However, Mr Scholz was not dissuaded from postponing his travel, telling his EU counterparts there should be no “decoupling” from Beijing, and refusing French President Emmanuel Macron’s offer to accompany him so the trip would have a broader European accent.

Mr Scholz has even drawn criticism within Germany earlier this month for giving the green light to the disputed sale of a stake in a Hamburg container terminal to China’s state-owned Cosco.

The Chancellor, a former mayor of Hamburg, overrode opposition to the sale by six ministries, including those of defence, economy and foreign affairs, who all raised concerns about critical infrastructure falling into foreign hands.

He has even run up against his own Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock, from the Green Party, who has attacked businesses for building up their dependency on China.

“Complete economic dependence based on the principle of hope makes us politically blackmailable,” she said.

China has been Germany’s biggest trading partner for the past six years, with volumes reaching more than €245bn (£210bn) in 2021.

In 2000, China accounted for just over one per cent of German exports but now accounts for a 7.5 per cent share.

In December, the German city of Duisburg will host the European Silk Road Summit, which is aimed at debating China’s so-called Belt and Road Initiative of investing in key European infrastructure, ostensibly to support trade.

However, Mr Scholz would be naive to imagine he can win special concessions from Beijing, according to economist Alicia Garcia Herrero, a senior fellow at think-tank Bruegel.

“I wish Scholz good luck. but I think he will be humiliated,” she said, pointing out that China will exploit Europe’s splits to secure special deals with pliant countries.

“By seeking trade deals for a few, he will destroy many others. And it is complacent: we will get to a point where Europe looks like Gruyere cheese with holes in it.”
https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/world/europe-struggles-to-hold-ranks-against-china-and-xi-jinping-as-germany-defies-eu-with-business-trip-to-beijing/ar-AA13xwTo?ocid=mailsignout&pc=U591&cvid=c5afa53b0bea4f86a32db4d8c08fb5c7

Skybird

10-30-22, 02:13 PM

I just heard the coordinator of German secret sevrice sin a TV interview, he is a Green. If you decypher the usual diplomatic sound of political language - and even for that standard he was almost rude - then you could not escape the impression that he SUNK Scholzilein's China policy. He warned, severla times, in very clear words, against the Germna way of handlign China, and he confiremd that China put extremely heavy pressure on German industry leaders to make sure the Hamburg harbour deal would pass.

Neverteghless Scholz will take all business breats of Germanyx with him- except a very few who have made it oublic that they oppose any further German conspiracy with China and have pulled out of China or are on the way to do so.

Add to this the helpless wekaness of the Gwermna military and intel services. I can only warn against selling Germany critical military and high tech systems like the F-35 and according stuff. Also, cooperation on critical cooperaiton projects nand industruial cooperaiton touchign upon critical content, should be ended and boyoctted. Scholz continues 1:1 Merkelian economics and bets on "change by trade" - and hope. Thats ha snot worked with Russia, and it will not work with China. In the coming war about China, Germany once again will find itself on the wrong side of history.

Stupid, irresponsible, and I even call it treacherous.

Fact is, without Chinese imports, Germany would be off even worse, that is true. But the consequence from that should be to realise that we are not the giants that we asusmed for so long to be, but to reduce our claims and goals, namely on energy transformation, but also in many other things. Germany in most econiomic and industral and social fields is no logner worlds class, but is mediocre only. Mittelmaß. And with those reduced means available to us, our goals must become more realistic and less delusional as well. Outr eeuction system suffers. Our stundents are less and lesser conoetent than in the oast. We flal back in almpost every field of social and economic relevance. The causes for this are many, and many of these are beyond out reach.

We must become more honest about ourselves, and more realistic in our wishes and goals. The gigh-flying ambitions we still announce to be our goals, we simply cannot afford anymore. We want more than we can do. Much more. This is guarantee for catstrophic failure and - then uncontrolled - collapse.

Skybird

10-31-22, 06:48 PM

https://www.achgut.com/artikel/chronik_des_irrsinns_der_oktober_2022

Chronicle of Insanity. From only one month of lived stupidity in Germany. And so it goes month after month, year after year. If you've ever wondered why I'm sometimes so bitter and grumpy.

Jimbuna

11-01-22, 06:21 AM

The German state pension system could collapse unless the retirement age increases experts have warned, leading to fears the same could happen in the UK.

Germany has one of the oldest populations in Europe with 22 percent of its population aged 65 years or older. However, the UK is not far behind with 19 percent of the population aged 65 and older - a figure that is expected to increase to 22 percent in just 10 years’ time.

Under Germany’s current system, the state pension guarantees retirees at least 48 percent of the average wage until 2025.

Its current state pension age is 65, but, similar to the UK, the German Government is in the process of gradually increasing this to 67-years-old.

Rainer Dulger, president of the Confederation of German Employers’ Association, told the Bild am Sonntag newspaper the current system could crash within five years unless the state intervenes.

He said: “For every 100 contributors, there are currently about 50 pensioners; in 15 years, there will be 100 contributors for every 70 pensioners.”

Mr Dulger said the retirement age needs to increase or the current system will not hold up.

He said: “This means that the financing of our pension system is on the verge of collapse.

“The retirement age should be linked to the increase in life expectancy.

“It must not be the case that the further increase in life expectancy leads to an ever longer retirement.”

The British Government is also in the process of raising the state pension age to 68-years-old but experts here are also warning it may have to rise even further.

Simon Jones, CEO of InvestingReviews.co.uk warned the Government may change its policy as the state pension becomes more expensive to fund.

He told Express.co.uk: "The Government currently plans to increase the state pension age from 66 to 67 between 2026 and 2028, and again to 68 between 2044 and 2046.

"Because people are living longer, it's becoming more expensive every year for the Government to fund the state pension.”

An Express.co.uk poll showed significant concern among readers over the Government's refusal to commit to the state pension triple lock.

The Government is considering whether to suspend or scrap the triple lock.
Former Prime Minister Liz Truss committed to the policy but since Mr Sunak took office last week he is yet to clarify his stance.

The Prime Minister's press secretary said Chancellor Jeremy Hunt would address the future of the triple lock in his autumn budget on November 17.
https://www.express.co.uk/finance/personalfinance/1690181/state-pension-age-warning-retirement-age

Skybird

11-02-22, 05:47 AM

FOCUS reveals the holy trinity's plan for German self-destruction!

https://p6.focus.de/img/fotos/id_175292105/scholz.jpg?im=Resize%3D%28630%2C372%29&hash=80c70752073dfe5ad2914661be0cb8b265a75005a5625 8414f476a0f00df3f70

Guaranteed fail-safe! :yeah: Bullet-proof! "Your fall is our promise!"
-----------------------------------------

We don't need Putin or Xi for our dismantling

The downfall of our country is possible with onboard resources; we don't need any sinister powers to do it. If you turn seven screws, you can initiate it without any outside help.

We live in the age of do-it-yourself. Today, you can build your own house - or at least your own tree house - with the help of the nearest hardware store.

Thanks to the Internet, you can open a TV station in your own kitchen - or at least produce a podcast. And if you have the time and inclination like Judith Rakers, you can switch to self-sufficiency in your own garden after watching the news. There you go!

Even the decline of our country can be managed with onboard resources. We don't need any dark forces for that, just ourselves. So here's the seven-point plan for dismantling a model of prosperity that some thought was indestructible. Listen and Repeat.

1. Expand the welfare state, deprive it first of children and then of contributors, until it groans and moans and later collapses.

At the latest, when one employee has to finance one pensioner, the contract between the generations is over. Then, at last, Adam Smith's neo-liberal phrase applies: "When everyone thinks of himself, everyone is thought of."

2. prohibit the country from using its domestic energy reserves, from coal to nuclear energy to fracked gas, thus deliberately increasing its dependence on foreign sources of supply.

The permanent price push triggered by this will not fail to have its diabolical effect. Then we will be poor, but at least CO2-free. One cannot have everything.

3. overburden this unruly German middle class with high taxes and throw tons of bureaucratic forms over it. So that it may suffocate from it.

Everything can be reduced to zero, including the willingness of those who are willing to perform to do so. This already worked quite well in the GDR.

4. Let the education system rust away, since artificial intelligence will soon take over anyway. The new Goethe is called Google. We don't need a second Einstein, we have Alexa. And we'll learn Denglish [mix of German and English, Skybird] as the only foreign language.

5. Let the public sector, from city administration to road construction to the railroads, slowly but surely decay. This is more effective than the dismantling after the Second World War, because the people are not jerkily and symbolically debilitated, but only very gradually.

The railroad comes later - and then it doesn't come at all. In the age of the home office it had lost its function anyway.

6. After the home-baked bread and the home-grown lettuce, one also makes the money on one's own. Those who are still upset about the unconditional basic income have not understood the mechanics of this decoupling of wages and performance.

At the center of our value creation is no longer the factory floor, but a special fund established by the Minister of Finance. The promissory bill is the new steam engine. It doesn't get any more sustainable than that.

7. make sure that writers, filmmakers and intellectuals of all stripes first find each other in heated debates and then lose.

When everyone has called everyone else racist, chauvinist or sexist at least once, we become brothers and sisters again; and happily anything in between.

Conclusion: For this fun-filled dismantling, we don't need Putin, we don't need Xi Jinping, and we certainly don't need Anton Hofreiter's heavy weapons. The Mecklenburg philosopher and prophetess Angela Merkel has always believed in our powers of self-destruction: Wir schaffen das!
--------------------

mapuc

11-04-22, 07:28 PM

Coincident !?

Some weeks ago German Railway had been sabotaged

Last Saturday it was Danish Railways who had suffered a severe hacker attack

A major breakdown of Denmark’s train network during the weekend was the result of a hacker attack on an IT subcontractor’s software testing environment, Danish train operator DSB said on on Thursday.

https://www.euronews.com/next/2022/11/03/denmark-cybersecurity

I say every trails points towards Russia or Russian supporters being behind this.

Markus

Gorpet

11-05-22, 01:00 AM

Gorpet

11-05-22, 01:17 AM

Coincident !?

Some weeks ago German Railway had been sabotaged

Last Saturday it was Danish Railways who had suffered a severe hacker attack

https://www.euronews.com/next/2022/11/03/denmark-cybersecurity

I say every trails points towards Russia or Russian supporters being behind this.

Markus

Hell ya, everything must be Russian, It must be Russians, It couldn't be your own politicians.Sucking and receiving dollars from America and Your own backyard.The EU and all their Bull****. How does the EU. Work without the American dollar. It doesn't.

Skybird

11-05-22, 11:42 AM

FOCUS writes:
-------------------------------------
The blocked republic: In the Ahr valley I understood that we are lost

[Skybird: Just a reminder, if you donot recall it anymore: what the Ahrtal Flooding was about, last year:
https://www.rnd.de/resizer/v5XWNPzsfFoshTrNMaD5rNAgYb8=/arc-anglerfish-eu-central-1-prod-madsack/public/JQARGJN4IRFM7ITVLJOQHAPAU4.jpeg
]

Psychologists call regression to the mean the tendency to fall back into old patterns after a shock. This applies not only to individuals, as it turns out, but also to parties and entire nations.

I was with the winegrowers in the Ahr Valley. The winegrowers' association had invited me to its annual meeting. I was to say a few words of encouragement about the political situation. My specialty: to find something cheerful even in the face of horror.

I can only recommend a visit to the Ahr to anyone who despairs of Germany. It is impressive what love of one's homeland, solidarity and perseverance can accomplish. You can still see the traces of devastation everywhere. But the reconstruction work is amazingly far advanced.

I don't know if I would have found the strength to start all over again after the disaster. The water was eight meters high. At lunch, my seat neighbor told me that a car was suddenly stuck in the window at her house on the second floor. Others had the neighbor's oil tank in their backyard. What was upstream had made its way through the water.

The stench was the worst, the winegrowers recounted. When the water finally receded, an oily broth remained, contaminating everything it caught hold of. To this day, the first floor in many houses is uninhabitable because the oil soaked into the walls.

The grotesque bill of a Mainz bureaucrat

One would think that the authorities would do their best to make life easier for the long-suffering people. Just what you think when you have the announcements of the summer of 2021 in your head. But if it were, we wouldn't be in Germany.

The region is famous for its wine. The vines reach right up to the road. It's been that way for hundreds of years. Now the word is out: the lower ten hectares must give way to create a protected zone. Someone in Mainz has calculated that the vines cause backwater during floods.

When I asked the chairman of the winegrowers' association by how many meters the vines had contributed to the flood, he said: 1.5 centimeters, mathematically. I thought he was joking. But he wasn't in the mood for jokes, as I quickly realized.

If I were a winegrower, I would storm into the state capital with a flail

That's German thoroughness: We save 1.5 centimeters on the next eight-meter flood. In exchange, we sacrifice the livelihood of people who have survived by the skin of their teeth. If I were a winegrower, I would take a flail and storm into the state capital. Fortunately, I'm just a journalist.

We are perishing because of our bureaucracy. It is inevitable. I don't see any way out of it. Our regulatory frenzy is a noose that keeps tightening. No one can do anything about it, not even the politicians who promise to remedy the situation.

Bureaucrats are not malicious people

I don't blame the bureaucrats. It is possible that they themselves find what they instruct absurd. After all, they are not stupid people who work at the office. Nor are they malicious or take pleasure in tormenting their fellow human beings. They simply want to do their job conscientiously. And if the task is to ensure water protection or flood prevention, then they throw themselves into it.

There was a report in "Die Zeit" about nursing staff from the Philippines. We desperately need people to help in the care sector. Currently, 20,000 positions are unfilled. By 2030, the need is estimated at 500,000 such professionals. In the Philippines, they have specialized in nursing. There are universities where you can get a relevant bachelor's degree. The applicants even speak German because they have completed language courses at the same time.

If it weren't for the regulatory authorities

A perfect match, one would think: We have the jobs, in the Southeast Asian country they have the personnel. It could be so simple if it weren't for the supervisory authorities. In the responsible district governments, they have recalculated that the Filipinos spent only 1776 hours in practical training during their studies - and not the required 2500 hours.

"The basis of comparison for training acquired abroad is the respective training and examination regulation of the corresponding regulated reference profession in Germany," they say. In German: better no nurses, than with the number of hours cutbacks made. In Canada, Australia or Great Britain the Philippine conclusion is recognized without problems. There they also urgently need nurses, which is why many of the nurses who wanted to come to Germany are now moving to Canada or Australia.

It goes on and on like that. An acquaintance was thinking about becoming a teacher. She would enjoy it. She works in the human resources department of a large German corporation, but she would like to do something different. She would also be willing to give up salary for that.
Excellent law exam worthless for teacher trainees in Germany

Then she asked what you have to do to become a teacher. She heard that lateral entrants were wanted. She graduated with honors in business administration and law. But that doesn't count. Nothing works without a state examination plus a traineeship. Where would we end up if we unleashed people on our children who have a practical background and enjoy teaching?

Would you like another example? Germany is looking for 100,000 educators. In many places, daycare centers are closed because of this, or parents have to pick up their children earlier than work actually allows. There is a legal right to a daycare place, but that's not the case. We are great at writing laws. Unfortunately, we are not quite so great when it comes to filling the beautiful plans with life.

My children attend a private daycare center, so we can be less strict about the rules. One caregiver is from Wales, another from Thailand. I didn't ask about degrees, but I would be surprised if the educators who are not from Germany all have certificates. What they may lack in state certified qualifications, they make up for in love and attention.

I have never heard any complaints from my children. But perhaps I am too carefree. The next time I hear the word "turn of the times," I have to laugh hysterically. I am a skeptic by profession. When someone says that everything is going to be very, very different, I think: let's see. But the fact that we make no effort whatsoever to adjust to the changed reality baffles me.

Preventing learning success ourselves: Parties also suffer from the tendency to "regress to the mean

Psychologists call regression to the mean the tendency of people to return to their old ways after the initial shock. This applies not only to individuals, as can be seen, but also to large organizations such as parties.

The Greens are pushing through their energy turnaround, regardless of the fact that the loss of Russian gas has fundamentally changed the basis of their business. The SPD continues to rely undaunted on the concept of trade through change. As a morning gift on the chancellor's trip to Beijing, Olaf Scholz has in his luggage the sale of 24.9 percent of a terminal in the Port of Hamburg to the Chinese state-owned company Cosco.

At the beginning of the week, it became known that the Chancellor's Office, against all odds, also supports the Chinese entry into the chip company Elmos. The technology is outdated, the Chinese can't do anything with it, it is now said for reassurance. But if nothing can be done with it, why do the Chinese want to buy into Elmos? I have a number of prejudices against the Chinese. That they are morons is not one of them.

The explanation for the Chancellor's trip to China is that it is a matter of presenting the German arguments to the Chinese in order to make them think. I can see it in my mind's eye how the chancellor meets the Chinese president, who says after a long, trusting conversation: "I have listened to the arguments of our German friends. They have convinced me. We will stop our support for the Russian war of aggression in Ukraine today and make human rights and climate protection a priority in the ten-year plan."

That's what will happen, I'm quite sure.
-----------------------

Skybird

11-05-22, 03:30 PM

RWE is silently preparing its leave out of Germany, I wrote weeks ago.

VW and BASF reduce their production in Germany, and invest 2-digit billions of dollars in China instead, I wrote.

The rate at wich companies leave Germany or shut down, has accelerated by several factors over the past 10 years and again in the past 9 months, I wrote.

But foreign investors in Germany also decide increasingly against going to Germany. Today I read the latest such example. Swedish battery producer Northvolt, a heavyweight in this market, wanted to build one of Europe's biggest battery factories for e-cars and rechargable batteries for private and commercial/industrial customers in Northern Germany. Since October, that plan was under reconsideration. It now got reported that the Swedish have decided to correct their decision at the last moment, and now have shifted the whole project to - the US. They quote the negative results of their assessment study of German energy security in the coming decade (!) and think that their production in Germany over the long run would be at too huge risk, and due to energy shortages: unsustainable.

They are not alone.

The German political scene still seems to either be unaware for this trend (thats what it is now: a trend), or not to care, or it wants it - I say since long time that a signfiocant part espcially of the Greens actually do want the destruction of the industrial basis of Germany, for economical and eben more relevant: for social-ideological reasons, to create their new utopic super-left society. No reaction is to be seen from the government, nor is any expected (by me at least). Reports ion the past days say that Germany is fialing in its self-declared climate goals, and that the gap bewteen plan and relaity becomes wider and wider. Polticla reactions opnly say this: that we must try even harder to make the impossible poissible and then, this always gets implied, when Germany has shown that the laws of nature, physics and market can be altered at will, the world will be eager to follow the Ger,man exmaple. Its so hilarious, how often the Germans not only ignore reality, but even imply that after they made miracels and wonders true the world would just jump out of the staraing block and follow the Germans' way. LOL

Jimbuna

11-06-22, 07:44 AM

Backlash for Germany’s Baerbock over crucifix removal at G7 meeting

Christian Democrats criticize the move as insensitive to tradition and history.

BY WILHELMINE PREUSSEN

German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock came under fire Friday over the removal of a 482-year-old crucifix from the venue for a G7 meeting in the German city of Münster.

The Federal Foreign Office had the historic wooden crucifix removed from the conference venue in Münster as part of a larger redesign of the city’s town hall, a ministry spokesman said on Friday in Berlin. Baerbock, from the Greens, was not involved with the issue, he said.

“It was not a conscious decision, certainly not a political decision, but obviously an organizational decision,” Baerbock commented Friday after meeting with her G7 colleagues. “I would have liked it if we hadn’t put it away.”

Nevertheless conservative Christian Democrats criticized the move as insensitive to tradition and history. Markus Söder, Bavarian state premier with the Christian Social Union (CSU), who controversially ordered crucifixes to be hung up in public buildings in Bavaria in the past, complained in a tweet that this would not happen in any other country and asked: “Is this the new foreign policy?”

Thorsten Frei, a senior member of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), said that “only those who stand by their own tradition and social character can also approach others openly, confidently and self-assuredly,” Welt reported. Frei argued that the “Christian image of man is precisely the common basis of the liberal and constitutional democracies of the G7 countries,” according to the newspaper.

Baerbock hosted the foreign ministers of France, Italy, Japan, Canada, the U.S. and the U.K. as Germany currently holds the G7 presidency. The leaders discussed, among other issues, the consequences for Europe of Russia’s attack on Ukraine, transatlantic cooperation and relations with China.

The Münster town hall is considered to have great symbolic value for Christianity in Europe as it was the site for negotiations of the historic Peace of Westphalia. The agreement ended the devastating Thirty Years’ War fought over religion across the Continent.
https://www.politico.eu/article/backlash-for-germanys-annalena-baerbock-after-foreign-ministry-removed-crucifix-for-g7-meeting/

Skybird

11-07-22, 09:28 AM

FOCUS writes:
----------------------

Ahead of climate summit, Baerbock's climate chief exposes German dilemma

Jennifer Morgan is a special negotiator at the United Nations climate summit. The former Greenpeace chief admits: Germany cannot save the climate on its own. An almost revolutionary insight.

Jennifer Morgan's old employer has a lot to criticize about the German government, especially recently. The 49-euro ticket - "a missed opportunity," says Greenpeace. The chancellor's word of power to keep three nuclear power plants running longer? Wrong, says Greenpeace. The same goes for his policy of opening up new gas fields in Africa. The Europeans' decision to phase out fossil-fuel cars - seven years too late for the 1.5-degree climate target, says Greenpeace. Jennifer Morgan was head of the climate activists for six years.

Since leaving Greenpeace, Jennifer Morgan has enjoyed a rapid career boost. After her naturalization in a flash, the American-born Morgan first became secretary of state in the German foreign ministry led by the Green Party's Annalena Baerbock. Now she is chief negotiator at the United Nations climate summit in the Egyptian resort of Sharm El-Sheikh. But that hasn't made her life any easier.

There are reasons for that: The United Nations itself has now abandoned the goal of raising the earth's temperature by no more than 1.5 degrees by the end of the century. There is "no plausible way" to achieve this goal, according to the UN development organization Unep.

Climate activists are rather resigned about the prospects of moving climate issues forward in Egypt at the mega-meeting in Sharm El-Sheikh. "There will be no breakthroughs," says climate researcher Mojib Latif. Papers with little substance are "celebrated as great progress," judges the Hamburg-based president of the Academy of Sciences.

Jennifer Morgan's boss says, just in time for the summit kick-off, what Greens like to say: "Humanity is heading for the abyss." Annalena Baerbock conjures up the end of the world.

However, it can be said in general terms that the apocalypse has so far failed to materialize. Neither the plague in the Middle Ages nor the forest dieback in modern times has driven mankind to its doom. Even the "atomic death" prophesied in Germany in the 1950s remained only a prediction that did not come true. The resilience of Homo Sapiens is obviously great, as great as his inventiveness. Even if this has not yet reached climate glues.

Rarely, we must enviously acknowledge, has an interview unmasked someone as much as the conversation that "Der Spiegel" now had with Jennifer Morgan about the climate summit. Not only because she simply did not know any concrete answer to the questions, what the government of the traffic light, and especially its foreign ministry, has actually brought forward so far in the topic of climate foreign policy.

Other answers were also telling. Two samples: "We must not allow the climate negotiations to fall victim to geopolitical polarization," says Morgan. "So you will also talk to the Russian representatives?" asks Der Spiegel logically. "No, no such talk is planned." But how are you supposed to move climate protection forward if you don't even talk to one of the biggest climate offenders? And wouldn't that be precisely the job of a negotiator on behalf of the United Nations, on whose Security Council the Russians sit?

Jennifer Morgan talks about the developing countries, which are now called the "global south" in politically correct terms. It is about the climate damage there, caused in the past by the climate sinners of the developed countries. Morgan slogans: "We take our responsibility very seriously and are ready for more solidarity." Then, one specific sentence further, "But reparations are out of the question."

Now, one may be of the opinion - of Americans, for example - that reparations payments for the damage done in the past could turn into a bottomless pit, and would also be tactically unwise because they would discourage developing countries from making their own efforts to protect the climate. But: Wouldn't it be the job of a UN negotiator from Germany to at least address the issue? Germany's policy is likely to leave the developing countries with this impression: Wash my fur, but don't get me wet.

Germany's climate credibility is not very good right now, which is a devastating finding. After all, Germany's credibility is the only justification for subjecting the Federal Republic to such a far-reaching, expensive and risky energy turnaround. A great deal hangs on the German government's self-assertion that Germany is a "climate role model." Jennifer Morgan knows exactly why. After all, she was there at the first climate conference; a certain Angela Merkel was Federal Environment Minister in Helmut Kohl's government at the time.

"Going it alone, Germany can't do anything about the climate crisis." This is a very great sentence by Jennifer Morgan. Not only because it is quite simply true, because Germany is only responsible for two percent of climate poisoning. But also because the Greens in particular have been giving the impression for decades that Germany would be able to achieve the 1.5 degrees quasi single-handedly.

In the meantime, it has become clear that saving the world from Germany has been cancelled for the time being. This can be seen in the example of South Africa. 15 years ago, German companies built one of the largest coal-fired power plants in South Africa. Just over a year ago, the German government - it was still the grand coalition - decided to help South Africa phase out coal for the sake of the world's climate, which is likely to be a project of the century anyway for a country that is almost 90 percent dependent on energy from coal. And in the meantime, Germany is once again importing coal from South Africa.

The fact that Germany has long since ceased to be a climate role model is due to these facts:

- The German government is building LNG terminals at full speed, i.e. relying on liquefied natural gas, a fossil fuel. The terminals can run until 2045; if they do, climate neutrality cannot be achieved.
- The German government is relying on American fracked gas. But fracking in Germany - a proven technology for decades - Morgan indignantly rejects in the Spiegel interview. "It's out of the question. Fracking has a number of negative environmental consequences, and the production is also particularly harmful to the climate compared to other gas." So if fracking is climate madness, we're participating in it right now.
- The German government is phasing out nuclear power, which other countries care about because it makes their energy bills more expensive. In the meantime - Poland has just announced an ambitious nuclear power program - it almost looks like the kind of German go-it-alone that Olaf Scholz usually tries to avoid.

This is the current state of affairs: The German government's climate expert council has calculated that the traffic light will miss the targets it has set itself. The German president is officially dampening expectations for the UN climate conference.

And Annalena Baerbock's top climate diplomat Jennifer Morgan exposes Germany's dilemma: Germany is too small to be a moral world champion and climate role model. And secondly, too much of a climate sinner. And thirdly, too stingy. If one had to comment on this process, the comment headline could read:

Big mouth, nothing behind it.

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

Skybird

11-07-22, 05:23 PM

These scientists and doctors are now free game, the witch-hunt is opened. NZZ writes:
----------------------------
"Tendency- and ideology-based reports": Scientists and doctors call on ARD and ZDF to return to facts when it comes to human biology

A group of scientists and physicians has issued an appeal against what it sees as ideology-based reporting on public broadcasters. Especially in youth programs, contributions on sexual identity, for example, would violate journalistic standards.

Transgender ideology in the "Sendung mit der Maus," videos about drug sex and vampire fetishes: a group of scientists and doctors has launched an appeal and demanded a return to fact-based reporting of biological issues in public broadcasting (ÖRR) in an article in the "Welt."

"We call on the ÖRR to present biological facts and scientific findings more truthfully," reads the appeal, which the authors say has already been joined by 120 scientists, physicians, psychologists, educators and representatives of other professions from across Germany. "We as scientists resolutely oppose the idea that women and men are merely social constructs or perceived identities," it continues.

They criticize the fact that, especially when it comes to the trendy topic of "trans," neither biological facts nor scientific findings are presented truthfully. In a 50-page dossier, the initiators list numerous examples of reporting in the ÖRR, which they describe as "tendentious" and "ideology-based". In particular, they criticize the term "multisexuality," which is used numerous times, as it constitutes a false statement.

The dossier lists numerous reports, especially from the youth programs of ARD and ZDF such as "Funk," "Reporter," "Die da oben" and "Y-Kollektiv," which the authors believe are unreflective and also fail to meet journalistic standards. As examples, they cite reports on cannibalism (over 2.5 million views), vampire fetishes (over one million views) and "What's it like to be raped?" (over three million views).

Also freely available, for example, was a contribution by "Y-Kollektiv," a YouTube channel of "Funk," about so-called chemsex. There were well over half a million views for this reportage, in which a teenage reporter films gay men having group sex with other homosexuals and introducing the drug crystal meth anally, as the initiators of the appeal write.

The initiators object to the fact that gender reassignment surgeries are portrayed as a "child's play" in articles for children and young people. The psychological and physically irreversible consequences of using puberty blockers, administering opposite-sex hormones and surgically removing the penis, breast and uterus are mentioned at best in passing, they write.

"We are therefore expressly not concerned with the abolition of the ÖRR, but with its return to its broadcasting mandate. After all, the fee-financed formats are particularly committed not only to the principles of the press code, respect for the truth and careful research," the appeal says.
----------------------

Skybird

11-08-22, 05:50 AM

The German government swings around, economy minister Habeck now all of a sudden wants to prohibit the sale of chip manufacturer Elmos to the Chinese. Just days ago he was still insisting on that Elmo's chips are so outdated that they would give th echinese no advanatge and they could therefore have Elmos.

Another of his many verbal volleys intercepted and debunked. If the chips by Elmos are so unmodern and outdated - why did the Chinese then tried so hard to buy Elmos...?

Bubble-Olaf seems to be not satisafied what he got from his China kow-tow, an so now tightens the thumbscrews! :D

Skybird

11-08-22, 06:15 AM

Die Welt writes:
-------------------
Germany loses almost 110 billion due to high energy prices

According to calculations by the Ifo Institute, the rapid rise in energy prices is costing Germany a total of almost 110 billion euros in lost real income. According to the Munich economists, there will be correspondingly less to distribute to employees in wage and salary negotiations. "The current decline in real income is likely to persist in the coming years," Ifo economic researcher Timo Wollmershäuser said on Tuesday.

"On the one hand, energy prices will probably remain permanently high with Russia no longer being a supplier. For another, Germany's dependence on imported energy will not change anytime soon." The institute published the study against the backdrop of the current round of collective bargaining in the metal and electrical industry.

Real incomes are incomes adjusted for inflation. According to the study, the billions lost are the sum that flows out of Germany to pay for energy imports abroad, which have become much more expensive - 35 billion euros last year, 64 billion this year and another nine billion in 2023. In total, according to Ifo, this would be the highest loss of real income since the second oil crisis at the end of the 1970s, at 3.0 percent - when it was 4.0 percent.

The overall economic loss of purchasing power from 1979 to 1981 would not have been recovered until 1986. At that time, a sharp drop in oil prices set in, while at the same time the deutschmark appreciated noticeably against the dollar. This made energy imports, which were mostly invoiced in U.S. currency, cheaper.

Wollmershäuser and his colleague Wolfgang Nierhaus assume that German companies will initially be able to raise their export prices much less sharply than import prices will rise. "A good part of the higher prices for imported energy is therefore likely to be borne by domestic end consumers," the researchers write.

Quantifying real income losses is important in any distribution discussions, Wollmershäuser stressed. The high prices for goods and services produced in Germany are not the result of a boom, but primarily reflect the high costs of imported energy and intermediate products. The income to be distributed between employees and entrepreneurs "must therefore be corrected for the real income losses.
------------------------------

The number will be corrected upwards, it bases on the assumption that for next year they already "know" the additional costs will be limitedcapped to 9 bn. I predict they will become several times as high.Next winter most likely will become much more problematic regardign gas supplies, than this year.

BTW, the economy ministry had to admit that they do not know how much of the German gas reserves actually are available for Germany, since it is gas stored and owned by companies, not by the state, and these companies sell it on international markets, inner-European markets, and additionally Germany is bound into obligations to deliver gas to European countries. Germany, if things go bad, could indeed maybe benefit only of a fraction of those gas reserves stored in Germany, who knows - the government says it does not know the specific numbers...:doh: And if Germany has treaty obligations, but does not fulfill them and keeps the gas for itself, no matter whether the others do the same with their reserves and their obligations to share or not - it will again mean big troubles in little Europe and make Germany the big bogey man once again.

Skybird

11-08-22, 03:25 PM

Die Achse des Guten writes:
------------------------------
Something is brewing between Germany and France

Travel is educational, and sometimes it is necessary to gather information on the spot that the court reporters of the leading media or the public broadcasters withhold from the German public. This includes the unabashed statements of Parisian essayists and self-proclaimed economists who have recently been trying to impress upon the French, especially the Parisian, public that Germany poses a threat to Europe and has basically remained an enemy of France.

Jacques Attali, the most colorful figure on this stage, a longtime advisor to President Mitterand, has even suggested that war between Germany and France is possible again. Earlier, Eric Zemmour, writing in the right-wing nationalist magazine Valeurs Actuelles, had suggested that in order to survive in Europe, France would have to crush Germany.

Such statements are not only shocking and meet with a reserved response from broad sections of the French population, but they are systematically circulated in the predominantly state-controlled broadcasting system in Paris without ever reaching Germany. These circles, and with them the entire Parisian elite, take exception to the fact that Germany, solely because of its economic importance, is no longer France's political annex, as it was in the 1960s and 1970s, and in certain constellations formulates its own economic interests.

Now, however, the less than forward-looking foreign energy policy toward Russia, criticized by France, has fallen on the feet of Germany and its provincial politicians. Instead of smiling pityingly at the Germans for their lack of awareness of sovereignty, French politicians think they are authorized to subject the 200 billion euros in debt that the German government wants to take on in order to mitigate the rise in energy prices to a French reservation of permission.

Talk of distorting competition

Macron is the spokesman for all the countries that - for the first time, by the way - are talking about state aid and distortions of competition in this context. The background to this probably unique demarche, which distracts from France's deep intervention in price regulation on the energy market, is the unease with a Germany that wants to be more than a rich province, which, as with the EU-New-Generation debt fund, limits itself to financing the EU subsidy economy with high financial contributions and risk assumption. The fact that, because of the current situation, the German government wants to set up an air defense umbrella together with Israel is castigated by Macron, the increasingly autocratic president, as "un-European." Previously, France had done everything to put Airbus, the company involved in this technology, under French curatorship in such a way that Germany is slowly but surely losing all industrial interest.

The situation is similar with the FCAS aerospace armaments project. Here, France with its Dassault company is demanding not only technological leadership, but the reduction of German industry - which is already decimated in this field - to the status of supplier. If it were not for the protest of German industry, the German government would probably have capitulated here as well. The same applies to the project for an MGCS, i.e. a new tank system, for which Germany is to be given the lead. This project is as superfluous as a goiter, especially since German industry has produced the best-selling main battle tank in the world and has no need whatsoever for technological cooperation with the French tank builder, a state-owned company called Nexter.

Nevertheless, Macron unabashedly and almost touchingly claims that Germany wants to isolate itself in order to conceal that he is doing everything in the European Council to isolate Germany. Probably, these attacks are only understandable against the background of the future demand for another EU debt fund, of course in the name of European solidarity. Having promised the Germans on high that the 800 billion euro EU Next Generation Fund would remain a one-off project, German party politicians will have a hard time convincing the Germans once again to follow France and take on new risks in the name of Europe. Perhaps we need these inflationary expressions of Parisian nationalism in European guise to finally understand:

With Macron's France, it will be difficult to build a Europe of equal peoples

Markus C. Kerber is Dr. jur. Professor of Public Finance and Economic Policy at the Technical University of Berlin, Visiting Professor at the SGH in Warsaw and at the University Paris 1 Sorbonne, author of the book "Europe without France? German Notes on the French Question. "Suhrkamp 2006/ Edition Europolis Berlin 2015.
---------------------------------------

I always said it and I still stick to it: France sees the EU only has a vehicle to boost French dominance in Europe for which it expects Germany to pay. It always was like this, and it will remain to be so.

Catfish

11-08-22, 03:36 PM

[achgutblah]
I always said it and I still stick to it: France sees the EU only has a vehicle to boost French dominance in Europe for which it expects Germany to pay. It always was like this, and it will remain to be so.
Strange, i always thought that foreign countries (foreign to Germany, that is) are seeing Germany as being "the dominance" in Europe, with France trying to steal this role. I do not think either one is so well suited, not do i think Germany ever was so dominant.
Especially with those at the helm in Germany right now.

Skybird

11-08-22, 07:10 PM

Strange, i always thought that foreign countries (foreign to Germany, that is) are seeing Germany as being "the dominance" in Europe, with France trying to steal this role. I do not think either one is so well suited, not do i think Germany ever was so dominant.
Especially with those at the helm in Germany right now.

The name of the game is "Germany, you be my ducat-shi++ing golden a$$, or I'll call you an evil Nazi and remind you of the guilt of your forefathers again".

Jimbuna

11-09-22, 09:11 AM

Skybird

11-09-22, 09:46 AM

That is my understanding also :yep:
This claim of Germany being too powerful and dominant is always raised when Germany showed unwillingness to pay for the others. ;) As long as the others could hand us their bills and we saw for straightening them, we were true Europeans and solidaric.

Just look at the Target-2 balance sheet. Roughly around 2 trillion of credits Germany has accepted for other nations' central banks' benefit - and that the ECB would now need to pay back to Germany, owes it to Germany - AND NEVER WILL PAY OUT FOR SURE. Everbyody nows it.

TWO TRILLION.

Außer Spesen nix gewesen. Just a clap on the shoulder and a lukewarm handshake. France and the Club Med nation wnat to lead this dsysbalance to new extremes and have the other net payers being abused to new extremes. Thats what is behidn their demand that all EU nation'S debts should be collectiovised. France will not pay for that. It will get payments. Mostly from Germany. Thats why I show this proposal my middle finger.

BTW, Poland and Greece need money, and so they demand WW2 reparations once again, issues that by valid treaties, signed agreements and international laws are set and settled already. Poland wants 1.3 trillion Euros. Greece wants 300 billion Euros. Due to forum regulations I cant say what I would tell them both. You can safely assume it is nothing friendly.

Skybird

11-09-22, 10:03 AM

This morning, in stuttgart. Germany tries to slay the big bad evil dragon again. The AdG writes:
--------------------------
This morning, the public hearing took place on the Stuttgart Declaration of the 20 professors who use scientific arguments to advocate the continued operation of the three remaining nuclear power plants and the restart of the three nuclear power plants that were shut down last year.

Their petition reached more than 58,000 signatures, forcing the Petitions Committee to address the issue in a public hearing. It was an object lesson in how fact-resistant the traffic light government is acting and that, with exceptions, parliamentarians have forgotten what their job is - to keep a critical eye on the government.

After the opening statement by Professor André Thess, initiator of the "Stuttgart Declaration", the Parliamentary State Secretary in the Ministry of the Environment, Christian Kühn, took the floor and, in addition to the usual phrases from the 1970s and the reference to Fukushima, which after all was not a "normal" nuclear accident but one caused by the millennium tsunami, which has not claimed more than one life to date, offered the claim that there is still no final repository for nuclear waste. Thus he revealed his ignorance.

Because, first, there already is, and second, he could read in the final report of the "Final Repository Working Group," which was set up by his party colleague, ex-environmental minister Jürgen Trittin, and, unlike later "expert groups," was still staffed with real experts, that there is still no final repository in Germany because it is not politically wanted, not because there are no suitable salt domes. Now, according to Kühn, the search is on again for a final repository, but the political will to find one is still lacking, because that would remove a cornerstone of the anti-nuclear policy.

The Parliamentary State Secretary from the Ministry of Economics, Stefan Wenzel, had already looked at least once into an IPPC report and was able to lecture from it. Overall, however, little more than phrases could be heard from the government. Parliamentary state secretaries are not in this post because they are experts, but because parliamentarians need posts. So the government did not send an expert to this hearing.

Strict rules applied at the hearing. Precisely limited speaking times for the questioners and the answerers. However, only Prof. Thess and Anna Veronika Wendland, whom he had brought to his side, adhered to these rules. The SPD directed at least one question to Prof. Thess, but the others to the government. This is a popular way of not letting the petitioners have their say. The Greens took it to the extreme, asking only the secretaries of state, and in such a way that they could comfortably reel off their ideological positions on "risk technology," the "national consensus on nuclear phase-out after Fukushima," and the correctness of the nuclear phase-out. The opposition's critical questions about the suppression of the opinions of supporters of continued operation in the ministries and formulations dictated by the top were not answered. Instead, Kühn stooped to the assertion that dissenting opinions are welcome in the Ministry of the Environment. If that is the case, one does not feel anything about it.

It was interesting for me to observe how the Green and SPD delegates reacted to Thess' and Wendland's statements: increasingly hysterical. I sat directly above them and heard their indignant whispering. They are obviously no longer used to hearing other opinions. One SPD delegate was so annoyed that he accused Thess of always arguing with scientific facts. Where would we end up if decisions had to be made according to facts!

Finally, Anna Veronika Wendland managed to give a good answer to the government phrases about risk technology: "If Isar 2 had been in Chernobyl, we wouldn't know the name today, if Isar 2 had been in Fukushima, the reactor accident wouldn't have happened."

Germany has the safest nuclear power plants in the world. They should be shut down not because of their actual risks, but because in the midst of the worst energy crisis in the Federal Republic, the Greens don't want to give up a foot of their ideology.

Jimbuna

11-09-22, 10:52 AM

This claim of Germany being too powerful and dominant is always raised when Germany showed unwillingness to pay for the others. ;) As long as the others could hand us their bills and we saw for straightening them, we were true Europeans and solidaric.

Just look at the Target-2 balance sheet. Roughly around 2 trillion of credits Germany has accepted for other nations' central banks' benefit - and that the ECB would now need to pay back to Germany, owes it to Germany - AND NEVER WILL PAY OUT FOR SURE. Everbyody nows it.

TWO TRILLION.

Außer Spesen nix gewesen. Just a clap on the shoulder and a lukewarm handshake. France and the Club Med nation wnat to lead this dsysbalance to new extremes and have the other net payers being abused to new extremes. Thats what is behidn their demand that all EU nation'S debts should be collectiovised. France will not pay for that. It will get payments. Mostly from Germany. Thats why I show this proposal my middle finger.

BTW, Poland and Greece need money, and so they demand WW2 reparations once again, issues that by valid treaties, signed agreements and international laws are set and settled already. Poland wants 1.3 trillion Euros. Greece wants 300 billion Euros. Due to forum regulations I cant say what I would tell them both. You can safely assume it is nothing friendly.

Reason enough for Germany to consider leaving the EU perhaps?

Skybird

11-09-22, 11:28 AM

Reason enough for Germany to consider leaving the EU perhaps?
:har: That was a good one! :haha:

mapuc

11-09-22, 12:07 PM

Germany is EU-They are the superpower in EU.

Markus

Skybird

11-09-22, 12:18 PM

Germany isEU-They are the superpower in EU.

MarkusWouldn't be so sure about that anymore. The centre of gravity is shifting, to the East (Poland), and South (Club Med). The fallout of the multi-factoral crisis has just started to reach Germany. The current government is determined to slam the basis of the economy - affordable and stable energy - frontally against the wall and to leave dependecies form Russia for a headjump into even more vital dependencies from China.

As if we were not already lethally depending from China.

Twice vaccinated and triple boostered against learning effects! :yeah:

Skybird

11-10-22, 03:06 PM

DER TAGESSPIEGEL:

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

Dependency alarms German government: 39 of 46 strategic raw materials have to be imported

A study by the Ministry of Economics reveals the extent of Germany's dependence on raw materials. The Asian model could become the alternative.

Germany is significantly more dependent on critical raw materials than previously known. That is the finding of a study commissioned by the German Ministry of Economics and obtained by the Tagesspiegel. According to the study, Germany must import 39 of 46 strategically relevant raw materials.

Above all, the increasing dependence on China is a cause for concern; the country is "already in a strong dominant position," the analysis says. In fact, China is the world's main producer of 23 of the 46 raw materials; Germany, for example, obtains more than 90 percent of rare earths from the Middle Kingdom - an element that is necessary for the production of smartphones, notebooks or electric motors.

The German government is sounding the alarm in light of the report. "If the energy turnaround and the climate-neutral transformation of the economy are to succeed, we must secure access to critical raw materials in the long term," Franziska Brantner (Greens), the responsible parliamentary state secretary in the Economics Ministry, told the Tagesspiegel. "The pressure to act is great," Brantner continued, "The international race for raw materials is in full swing, and Germany must not be left behind."

Experts have long criticized raw material dependencies. "Greater efforts should be made to diversify the countries of supply more," said Lisandra Flach, head of the Ifo Center for Foreign Trade.

Many critical raw materials are needed to produce solar panels, wind turbines or battery technology. Brantner, who will accompany German Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD) for raw materials talks on his trip to Asia this weekend, now wants to develop a more active government raw materials policy. The present study provides groundbreaking insights for this.

According to the study, raw material prices for countries with an active raw material policy, such as South Korea or Japan, have been consistently lower than European raw material prices over the past ten years. In Japan and South Korea, for example, there are state commodity agencies that are involved in the purchase and exploration of raw materials. There is also a large stockpile of raw materials, which companies can draw on in the event of shortages or high price phases.

For the government, the Asian model could be a model. "An active raw materials policy is to the advantage of companies, as they can gain more favorable access to raw materials," says Brantner. He said the intention now is to develop key points for the raw materials sector. "In addition, we will develop concepts for stockpiling and a raw materials fund," Brantner announced. This will be discussed with the European partners within the framework of the Raw Material Act.

The opposition is ambivalent about greater state activity. The CDU considers a state-owned raw materials company conceivable. "Such an instrument is suitable to better support companies in their urgently needed direct access to raw materials," CDU raw materials expert Stefan Rouenhoff told the Tagesspiegel.

When it comes to stockpiling, on the other hand, the state should not interfere, he said, but should make reserve expansion more attractive from a tax perspective. "Companies themselves know best which raw materials they need for their production," Rouenhoff said.

Business representatives reacted skeptically in view of a possible change of course by the traffic light in raw materials policy. A raw materials company based on the Japanese model would face very complicated questions of purchasing and distribution. "You could not transfer the Japanese model of a state raw materials agency one-to-one to Germany, with its medium-sized economy," said Matthias Wachter, head of the International Cooperation, Security and Raw Materials department at the Federation of German Industries (BDI). Stockpiling would make sense, but would have to be organized by the companies themselves.

The BDI also sees considerable potential in the circular economy, saying recycling rates for critical raw materials are still far too low. "We should not only rely on imports, but also promote the domestic extraction of raw materials," Wachter told the Tagesspiegel.
-------------------------------

What took them so long to realise this...? If they would have asked me they could know it since many years. :O: :haha: