GER politics thread

[Catfish]

Wasn't that a fox ?

[Skybird]

Huawei and 5G from China, now Transas from Russia. Its so good to cooperate with enemies.

The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung writes:

The FDP is concerned about the safety of German warships. The defense policy spokeswoman for the FDP parliamentary group Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann told the FAZ on Monday that she was “extremely irritated” by reports of Russian navigation devices on ships and boats of the German Navy. The subject came on the agenda in the Defense Committee.

A spokesman for the Ministry of Defense confirmed to the FAZ on Monday that devices from Russian production are on board. The ships and boats of the German Navy are equipped with "standard navigation systems", as they are also used in international shipping. They are a "standard product". The newspaper "Bild am Sonntag" reported that the "data encryption" on board the German submarines in particular did not meet military standards. The submarines would play a key role in the German North and Baltic Seas in the event of a crisis or war with Russia.

The manufacturer of the devices is the Transas company, which was founded in St. Petersburg in 1990. It is one of the global market leaders in technical solutions for ship and fleet operations, including devices and services related to navigation. Since 2018, Transas has been part of the Wärtsilä Corporation, a Finnish group based in Helsinki. The defense division of Transas is still based in Russia. The company's history lists a delivery of navigation devices to the German Navy for 2005. Under Federal Chancellor Gerhard Schröder (SPD) around a hundred ships and boats of the Navy were equipped with Transas systems. Schröder has worked for Russian energy companies for many years.

It is well known in specialist circles that the systems pose a danger. In June last year , the Hamburg State Office for the Protection of the Constitution, together with the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution and the Hamburg port authority HPA, warned of the vulnerability of modern navigation devices at a symposium. They are not only of interest to foreign intelligence services. There is also the risk of cyber attacks with which hackers could gain access to "central technical control systems", for example. In the worst case, there is a risk of complete loss of functionality.

[Catfish]

Get own satellite system and defend this. I would not trust any US system either after the last four years.

[Catfish]

In a way this is exactly what happens in Europe, geographically

Merkel's last stand: how rebellious states hurt Germany's COVID response.

[Skybird]

Originally Posted by Catfish

Get own satellite system and defend this. I would not trust any US system either after the last four years.

https://www.welt.de/wirtschaft/artic...he-im-All.html




Also, in times of war it might be irresponmisble to leave Gallileo switched on so that an enemy can use it with its superior precision.
US GPS for civiliajn use works with redcued precisipon, compoared to military use. Whether it makes a different whether a Tomwhawk slams into the gorund 5m nearer or further away form me, I have my doubt, however.


Worse it is your infrastructure depends desperately on GPS/Gallileo/Glosnass/Baidu, and then you want to switch it off due to a war, and then you find that you cannot do that without causing an implosion of your infrastructure at home.



Murphy's law: give it long enough time, and everything that could happen, sooner or later will happen.

[Skybird]

Originally Posted by Catfish

In a way this is exactly what happens in Europe, geographically

Merkel's last stand: how rebellious states hurt Germany's COVID response.

Federalism is a fair weather show.

[Catfish]

re Galileo did it ever work ?

[Skybird]

From the Neue Zürcher Zeitung:


The German justice debate has a systematic intention. In the super election year, the Greens, the SPD and the Left Party need as much inequality as possible in order to score with “taxes on the rich” and property levies. The real causes of the partial non-prosperity are seldom discussed. -

In the last ten years around 500,000 highly qualified people have left Germany to avoid a tax burden. In the last ten years around 500,000 highly qualified people have left Germany to avoid a tax burden. -

The book “Working Class - Why we need work that we can live on” by the journalist Julia Friedrichs comes as ordered. Just in time for the super election year, the young author complains that social advancement through gainful employment is hardly possible in Germany. On 323 pages, all kinds of data and concerns are cited as evidence why the middle class is no longer wealthy. Globalization, deregulation, financial capitalism and of course anti-social politics are to blame. So far, so well known - and not entirely wrong. -

The sound matches the mood, which is constantly being voiced anew: “Rich Germany” affords a lot of poverty. To underline the drama, a statistical trick has recently been used: The criterion is not actual material hardship, because according to the Federal Statistical Office it fell to a low of 3.1 percent in 2018. The number of recipients of Hartz IV, basic security or asylum seeker assistance has also declined. So a possible “risk of poverty” is constructed. Those who have to live with less than 60 percent of the median income are already affected. If a rain of money were to fall over Germany overnight and everyone's wealth increased tenfold, nothing would change in the statistical at-risk-of-poverty rate. -

Social justice is a constant topic in Germany. If Ludwig Erhard still wanted to create “prosperity for everyone”, today the main concern is to level out the differences between rich and poor. The Greens, the SPD and the Left Party, which are heading towards a change of power in Berlin in the fall, need as much inequality as possible to justify their demands for “taxes on the rich” and additional property taxes. Gladly garnished with a citizen's money or a guarantee, which should also be due to those who do not want to work. - The German debate on justice rarely goes beyond the banal demand for redistribution from top to bottom. That too has a system: the real reasons why the lower half of the population persist in relative non-prosperity are seldom discussed. Because thought through to the end, you would end up as guilty with those who complain the loudest about the “unjust conditions”. In truth, they are redistributing from the bottom up. -

This becomes particularly clear using the example of rising rents and skyrocketing real estate prices: Although only 14.4 percent of the 357,000 square kilometers in Germany are designated as settlement and traffic areas, the Greens have declared war on the “land spoil”. Wherever they are in charge, new building areas are prevented. If possible, single-family houses should no longer be allowed. This politically wanted shortage is driving prices up dramatically. Excessive building law and ever stricter energy-saving requirements also ensure that even high-earning middle-class families can put their make-up on the dream of their own four walls. The beneficiaries are the owners of land and real estate. A dynamic of less supply and more demand (also through immigration) allows their wealth to grow. Which in turn deepens the lamented gap between rich and poor. -

Without property one remains a tenant forever and thus cut off from accumulating wealth for old age. Here, Germany is at the bottom with an ownership rate of less than 50 percent. The Bonn economic historian Moritz Schularick has calculated that the poorest 20 percent of German households now spend almost 40 percent of their income on living. In 1993 it was still 23 percent. -

It is this group of people who suffer from the high energy prices: around 350,000 households can no longer afford the electricity price each year, and their electricity supply is turned off. According to the Federal Statistical Office, two million people in Germany lack the money to heat their own homes sufficiently. Even the Federal Audit Office criticized this one-sided burden in its latest report. Nevertheless, the Greens and the SPD want to drive up the prices for electricity, gas, petrol and heating oil further. This is supposed to slow down climate change, even though Germany hardly contributes two percent to global CO2 emissions. -

The beneficiaries of this energy turnaround are those wealthy who have roofs and land for solar plantations and wind turbines or who invest a lot of money in high-yield “green funds”. You can also afford the expensive e-cars, while the working commuter is spoiled for his old diesel, which he urgently needs to earn a living. In this way, too, the poor are taken away and given to the rich. -

So it goes on with the green-red redistribution. While there is not enough money at home to give dependent employees more of the gross, in Europe they are a major sponsor. Contrary to the clear legal situation, Finance Minister Olaf Scholz declares a debt union to be a political goal. The SPD's candidate for chancellor, who has taken an oath of office for the benefit of the German people, holds its own taxpayers liable in order to protect the much wealthier citizens in Italy, Spain or France from unpleasant reforms. -

With a median net worth of just 61,000 euros, the Germans are even poorer than the Greeks, whom they had to help with many billions. The EU average is 100,000 euros. At the same time, under the Merkel government, the country has not only reached the top of the tax burden among the OECD countries, but here the working middle class also contributes most of the tax revenue with 27.17 percent. All promises, especially to noticeably relieve the lower income brackets, are wasted. -

The issue of migration is completely ignored in the German justice debate. Even in official studies such as the “Social Report 2021”, a distinction is made between domestic and imported poverty at best. As one of the few well-known politicians, Friedrich Merz was the only one who called for the debate about differences in prosperity to be included in the fact that without immigration to the welfare system in 2015/16, there would be "one million Hartz IV recipients less". But the call for more transparency was immediately discredited as racism. The conservative Merkel opponent has the facts on his side. Of the 5.52 million Hartz IV (part of the scheme of the social wellfare system, Skybird) recipients at the time, around two million do not have a German passport. 980,000 are assigned to the group of people “asylum seekers”. -

The report now presented by the Federal Institute for Population Research also speaks a clear language: Above all, the immigration of educationally disadvantaged groups from Africa and Arabia as well as their significantly higher birth rate have resulted in the population in Germany not shrinking, but to the record level of around 83 million has risen. One in four of the total of 416,000 asylum applications that were made in 2020 in all 27 EU countries were received by German authorities. The vast majority of recipients remain permanently dependent on transfer payments. -

Meanwhile, around 500,000 highly qualified people have left the country in the last ten years to escape a tax burden that the Greens, the SPD and the Left Party want to increase even further for the so-called higher earners. This also creates a social imbalance. But you don't read a word about it in Julia Friedrichs either.


https://www.nzz.ch/meinung/die-deuts...tem-ld.1609611

- ----------

The author Wolfgang Bok was editor-in-chief of "Heilbronner Voice" and now works as a freelance journalist. The political scientist holds a doctorate and teaches strategic communication at Heilbronn University.

[Skybird]

An angry and sarcastic piece on the CDU's chancellor hopeful, Mr. Laschet, a gasbag as defined in dictionary. Funny to read in German at least, and very, very, very true. If the CDU makes him the candidate, they can stop participating in the elections right now, because then they will get sunk. Germans despise him by majority, nobody of sane senses trusts him anymore.

He is extremely unpopular even within his own party, but the party bosses want to push him through against the delegates 70+% majority that is against him, because he is a Merkel boy, or so they think, and most likely would continue Merkel's lines. The alternative is Mr. Söder by the smaller Bavarian sister party CSU, whom the CDU heads want to prevent, because they cannot make themsleves accept that Söder is - far - more popular than their own man - and is the one canddiate of all parties Germans currently would prefer as chancellor. I see him only as the least terrible of all terrible options.

The SPD's Olaf Scholz, an economically clueless turncoat of the worst kind who has shown his lack of principles and honesty repeatedly in his so-called career and unfortunately has a teflon skin, probably has little chances to become chancellor, so are the chances of the SPD to win. But the race is open between the CDU/CSU - if they nominate Söder - and the Greens, which for the first time ever announced their claim for the chancellor's office and are just 2 or 3% behind the CDU/CSU, whcih currentl yis in open fall due to their absolutely horrifying Corona management. The Greens plan to announce their candidate this month, it will either be this carricature of a male being, Robert Habeck, or Annalena Baerbock, an ice-cold, unscrupulous and power-hungry dragonlady of unfortunately quite some political skill who indeed has the needed "iceness" to win the race for the top seat in Berlin. There is a very realistic chance that the Greens could win the next national election. Unfortunately they have a very private-property hostile party program of extreme left-leanign tendency, cannto get enough of Germany financing the EU debts, and think the economic destruction done by the climate goals and Corona are still not enough, they must be multiplied and the economic and energy basis of Germany must be destroyed - not by intention they claim to have, of course, but by consequences they will cause if they get it their way . Also, plenty of planned economy ideas, market hostility and migrant and gender quotas they they want. The chances of the Greens being able to turn their party program into political guidelines for all Germany, are terrifyingly big, because they would seek coalition with the SPD-Reds, probably even the SED-Reds. But so is the outlook of more of the Merkel party. Plague, Anthrax or Cholera, that are the choices, and all of them are lethal. In other words, there are no choices for those who want to live a sane life, free life. I think the best would be to set Berlin aflame and burn it down, its a hopelessly run-down city with a totally incompetent ultra-red senate anyway.

I give the link to the Google translation as well, but it probably looses some of the bitter sarcasm. Sarcasm it may be, but again: it is so very and bitterly true. That man is a huge quantity of nothing.

https://www.spiegel.de/netzwelt/netz...7-e4c9fbd08a61


https://translate.google.com/transla...7-e4c9fbd08a61

[Jimbuna]

It would appear your politicians are very similar to ours

[Skybird]

The CDU fat cats first said the party base has no word in the deicison, and then decided that they make Laschet-der-Dummschwätzer their candidate.


Obviously they are craving to no longer carry the burden of governing in these chaotic times.



The CSU's Markus Söder leads polls by hiuge margin over hgis Green and SPD rivals. Laschet trails behind hopelessly behind his Green and SPD rivals.



If you ever plan to learn how to intentionally wanting to loose an election - here is where oyu cna learn how to do it.


That the CDU party members by almost a 70% majority do not want Laschet, but Söder, is just the cream on top and shows the political self-understanding of the fat cats.



The next German goivernment will be either Green-Red-Red, or Green-Red-Yellow (=FDP).
Consewrvative party across Europe in the past 8-12 years have overestimated their stand and underestimated the corrosive processes working against them. Italy, Holland, France being the most popular examples, especially France.



Laschet is Merkel's boys and wants to contiue Merkelism. He ha snot much in his head. As a highsdchool scholar he managed to lose the final exam works of his 28 students. Later hze suddenly showed up agai, with 35 grades. How he managed to come to gradesd without the written workds having been found menawhile, and who those mysteriously appearing 7 ghost studnets are, is unknown until today. Ein Schwafler und ein Schwätzer who does not really know anything about anything, and opportunistically turns his flag into the wind, every morning a new direction. He was the one who cave Corona the real biog starting boost last year when he ordered his federal state against all warnings to not close down Carnival. After he committed another sutpdi deed,s it usually does never tak elong until he suddenly pops up again and then behaves and babbles exactly the other way around and behaves as if he never had done and meant it any different.



Eine totale Null, eine komplette Lachnummer. Ridiculous, hilarious, laughable. Tells all you need to know abotu the CDU after 16 years of Merkel vampyrism. She sucked every drop of life out of it.

[Skybird]

FOCUS writes:


Söder is the first choice as a candidate for chancellor among the population as a whole.

When asked: “Which public figures, whether politicians, business representatives, scientists, artists or other celebrities, would you like to see Federal Chancellor?” 36 percent named Markus Söder(CSU), 11 percent Robert Habeck /Greens), 10 percent each Annalena Baerbock (Greens) and Olaf Scholz (SPD), 5 percent Friedrich Merz (CDU) and only 3 percent the CDU chairman Armin Laschet. 19 percent would rather see a different political actor than chancellor, 6 percent name names of celebrities outside of politics.

37 percent can therefore imagine voting with a candidate for Chancellor Söder at the top of the CDU or CSU. In the case of a candidate for Chancellor Laschet, the Union could currently only count on the votes of 13 percent of all eligible voters. Söder's result would therefore roughly correspond to what the Union would achieve with Angela Merkel as candidate for chancellor. A final decision on the CDU / CSU's candidate for chancellor is expected soon.

Go for the 3%, man! 3% is better than nothing!

[mapuc]

Saw a funny picture in one of the German news some days ago.

An artist had painted some of the candidate(this candidate was from München I think. He was trying to find the balance on a round shield This humoristic cartoon made me remember Asterix and the chief of his city Majestix(his Danish and Swedish name)

Do not expect any changes in the politics whoever take over the Steering wheel.

Markus

[Jimbuna]

[Skybird]

^ And if I am stoned, even a cactus speaks to me.

The SED-follow up party LINKE, , also has some nice stuff in its party manifesto. Dismantling the Bundeswehr (okay, not much to be dismantled there, but still...), leaving NATO, or better: dismantling NATO as well and no longer confronting Russia.

Of the two, Die Linke has far better chances to end up in a power-share coalition Greens-SPD-Linke. Not realistic chances, but better chances than the AFD. Nobody will make a coalition with the AFD.