GER politics thread

[mapuc]

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]

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]

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. 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.

[Skybird]

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:
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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.
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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]

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.

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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]

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."
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[Skybird]

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.

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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.
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[Rockstar]

WORLD Germany agrees plan to legalise recreational cannabis

Read more: https://www.digitaljournal.com/world...#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.

[Rockstar]

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/w...sultPosition=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]

Originally Posted by Rockstar

WORLD Germany agrees plan to legalise recreational cannabis

Read more: https://www.digitaljournal.com/world...#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]

Originally Posted by Rockstar

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/w...sultPosition=1



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

He said vermany provided armoured providex armoured personell carriers, that is not true. They provided some armoured rover-like pickups, but no APCs like for example Fuchs or M113, and certainlyno IFVs. The German industry has 30 Marder ready for delivery, and 70 more parked.

[Jimbuna]

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]

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]

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]

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.

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