GER politics thread

[Skybird]

https://www.faz.net/aktuell/feuillet...-17589224.html


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

[Catfish]

Originally Posted by August

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

Yes, all of them lol

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

re Skybird
Thanks, I will be watching this

[Skybird]

Zum Haare raufen.



ZUM HAARE AUSRAUFEN. Doofheit in ihrer pursten Form.

Made in Germany.

"Wenn wir das spüren, dann wird das zwei, drei Jahre dauern, das werden ganz harte Jahre, so 2023 bis 2026, wo wir wirklich durch ein tiefes Tal von Energieknappheit durchmüssen. (...) Wir kriegen diese Kurve zur Realität nur hin, wenn es zu Erfahrungen kommt, und das werden bittere sein."

I think that is a understatement. It will destroy major parts of the energy-intensive industry branches, with all social fallout from that. And it will cost private households as well, way much more than many households can afford.



Deutschland schafft sich ab.

[mapuc]

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

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

Markus

[August]

Originally Posted by Catfish

Yes, all of them lol

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

[Catfish]

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

[Skybird]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[mapuc]

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

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

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

Markus

[Skybird]

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Skybird]

The Wirtschaftskurier writes about the German state media:


Our media are too close to the state

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

By Wolfram Weimer

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Skybird]

Manfred Haferburg writes for AdG:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[mapuc]

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

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

Markus

[Skybird]

All existing pipelines wit the exception of Nordstream 2 lead thorugh belarus or the Ukraine or Turkey. I want all three countries not being able to blackmail Europe with cutting gas, or stealing from the transits.

Nordstream 2 has it charms, regarding this.


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

[mapuc]

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

Markus

[Skybird]

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


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