GER politics thread

[Skybird]

Blue Monday in the Green Vault. No Black Friday in sight.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-50545003

[Jimbuna]

German media say the thieves apparently twisted back some iron grille bars on a ground floor window to break into the treasury's historic collection, through a small gap.

Doesn't sound like security measures were up to the task.

[Skybird]

Tabloid Bild Zeitung writes jewelry worth "up to one billion" Euros was stolen. Howqever, the pieces are unsellable on the market, since they are too well-known.

I think they are likely to dissapear in a private collection.

The total collection stored in the museum has a material value of several billions. The immaterial value due to their historical and cultural relevance cannot be estimated.


They even were lucky, however. The Green Diamond, 41 Karat and the biggest green diamond in the world, was not "at home", but currently is on display in the Metropolitan Museum in New York.

[Skybird]

Gnnnnaahhhhh... They say the guards in the museum watched and recorded the robbery live on their video, and did - nothing, for self-protection. They are not armed.

One of the biggest treasury chambers in Europe.

Well.

Such "guard" nobody needs - automatic cameras and remote-controlled alarm sensor woukd be enough. Why having - and paying - guards that are not allowed to fulfill the task they are being hired for?

Guards that cannot fight off robbers, due to legal limitations, inability or lack of weaponry, are not guards, but - well, bystanders. Tourists.

[Catfish]

Private guards eh?
They were of course "allowed to interfere", you could even go as far as expect it from them; there is no rule or conduct that forbade that. They just chose not to.

Privatizing profits is good for you. Socialising losses is even better.


edit: some uniform-wearing person told the journalists that they were not allowed to use force because "human life counts more than jewels".
The curator also said that guards were not allowed to use physical force.
Another source claims the guards carried machine guns. Another source denies it.

[Jimbuna]

Originally Posted by Skybird

Gnnnnaahhhhh... They say the guards in the museum watched and recorded the robbery live on their video, and did - nothing, for self-protection. They are not armed.

One of the biggest treasury chambers in Europe.

Well.

Such "guard" nobody needs - automatic cameras and remote-controlled alarm sensor woukd be enough. Why having - and paying - guards that are not allowed to fulfill the task they are being hired for?

Guards that cannot fight off robbers, due to legal limitations, inability or lack of weaponry, are not guards, but - well, bystanders. Tourists.

Precisely

[Skybird]

Main news on State TV main channel reiterated that the "guards" in the museum did exactly what they were supposed to do: nothing, just telephoning to the police that a robbery takes place.

They also said that the museum has claimed to have gotten top notch security systems, rivalling the best in the world. Still, a gang of people were able to brake in, were caught on video, were watched to walk to a certain showcase, were recorded to smack it open with an axe, and were observed taking the jewelry and then moving out.

And the guards all the time did nothing. As was expected of them.

An electric junction box was set on fire. The fire brigade switched off the power in the block to extinguish the fire. In other words: it was the fire brigade that interrupted the power to the museum. The top notch security system, rivalling the best of the best in the world, had no independent power supply. Still, no reaosn for the guards to do anything. As was expected of them.

Dear Dresden museum and dear German legislative - you got what you have asked for. Top notch security system, rivalling the best of the best in the world, and the appropriate result. And the guards doing nothing, as expected of them.

Really, I could laugh my lower backside off over this. Well, its Germany, maybe I should not be surprised. Their idea of security and my idea of security seem to be a galaxy apart.

[Skybird]

https://translate.google.de/translat...a-1298889.html


A Muhammeddan soldier who refused to shake hands with women for religious reasons and was therefore released from the Bundeswehr has now filed a constitutional complaint.

[Skybird]

The former co-head of the AfD party Gauweiler said today:

"If the Greens, the reds and the dark-reds go together, there will come the day when a weakened CDU will have only one option left - us."

Well. Hate it or like it, he has a point. The polarization moves on. The sPD is dead, and the old promise to never form coalitions with Die Linke, ha sbeen vanished. I am certain the CDU vow to never go into coaltions with the AfD, is of limit5ed longevitxy as well. The CDU nevertheless will lose in relevance. The political middle is eroded after these great coalitions and then 16 years of Merkel stasis, the extreme poles left and right thus take over.

Gauweiler above referred to the coalition on federal state level between Die Grünen (greens), the SPD (reds) , and Die Linke (dark reds).

[Skybird]

The German football team must play against France and Portugal in group F in the first round of the European championship next year. The fourth candidate in that group still is not decided. But with Portugal and France (the ruling world and European champions), an early death of the German team in an international tournament once again is possible and absolutely not unrealistic.

Over the course of the last year or longer, an itense alienation process between fans and the DFB has taken place. It started already before the catastrophe at the last world championship, but since then has intensified. Many are stunned that no serious personell consequences at the boss positions have taken place and that Löw still is in place. The price policy gets criticised, and the identification with the team and the players is as low as never before. Almost non-existent. And many of the players have an obedient Milchbubi-image, streamlined and housebroken. What is missed are characters "mit Ecken und Kanten".

Personally my interest is even lower than at the world championship. Maybe they live through the first phase, maybe not. Its uninteresting now.

[Skybird]

The great coalition has been exposed to dramatically raised risk of breaking apart. The SPD voted against the pro-coalition pair Scholtz/Geywitz and made Walter-Borjans/Esken their new party bosses. Thy are representign the left wing in the left SPD, and some describe them as the trojan horses of the even more-left-leaning SPD youth organisation JuSo.



https://www.dw.com/en/germanys-spd-e...ers/a-51484038


The coalition would be no loss if dying early. Its record is desastrous charcaterised by opportunism and long.term risks and vulenrabilities raised, all in a bid to secure Merkel's term. The constellation was vouted out of office in last egnerla elections - and should not even exist today. Its the reaosn why the potlicla middle is eroding and the polarised edges of the spectrum gain in power and influence.

[Skybird]

At least some people fianlly have woken up. Or so it seems.



https://translate.google.de/translat..._11418849.html


This comes a week after a news report saying that even if just the minimum quota for electrifcation ofindividual traffic with batter-cars would be met over the coming ten years, this would mean that after wokring hours lights and heating in germany would be "switched off" just so to charge the dcars, and that therefore power for car charging would be rationized, which in return would mean that the in dovidual traffic, the private drivers, would run into mounting risks regarding the reach of their cars.


This battery-driven eletrification idea leads nowhere, I think. It can be only a solution for locally focussed, limited traffic , oike delivery services and such. All prvater hpuseholds running on batteries? I have stopped believing this already years ago. Producing hydrogene may need a lot of work and energy, but form nothign comes nothing, and the idea that we could live as before without self-limitations but reduce energy conummation rates, is for little children only.



This is part of the great self-deception anyway: to think we could have both: a cleaner world without cutting back luxury, consummation, and population numbers (globally). We may want to have it all - but we cannot have it.

[Skybird]

Das nackte Grauen.

https://www.focus.de/finanzen/boerse..._11424935.html

Und niemand empört sich. Niemand.

Atlas shrugged.

[Skybird]

A loong (50 minutes) interview with one of my most favourite commentators of contemporary Zeitgeist issues in Germany, Henryk Broder. Good entertainment , witty conversation and good fun is to be had, unfortunately only for people understanding spoken German - or who are satisfied with Googles automatic video translation textlines.

Have the Germans always been like this...?



The interviewing lady is Swiss.

"I'm just waiting for the first study showing that consensual sex has a damaging infleunce on climate, and I am absolutely convinced that within the next six months somebody will write his doctoral thesis about that."

Edit:
"Heil Broder!"

[Skybird]

Yesterday evening at Breitscheidplatz

On Saturday evening I attended a performance of Johann Sebastian Bach's Christmas Oratorio in the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church in Berlin. It was the traditional concert of the Bach choir conducted by the wonderful Achim Zimmermann.
On the way to the performance I paused briefly at the point where Berliners and their guests still remember the victim of the attack on the local Christmas market three years ago. Even this little prayer was a symbol that nothing is what it used to be. Our society has changed drastically, and unlike a notorious green politician, I can't be happy about it.
I thought of Anabel Schunkes article ("Three years of Breitscheidplatz - there is no empathy in the app store") about how badly the victims of the attack are neglected by politics, that the Senate did not consider it necessary to take those affected to this year's commemoration to the committee of inquiry, which found that the Merkel government failed to do anything to prevent the attack.
The Amris can still move around freely, new ones come every day, some directly from the Syrian battlefields, and if caught in crime, a cuddly justice system ensures that the consequences are minimal. A film is currently running in our cinemas, "The Last Bull", in which the Arab clans are glorified and the police are disparaged. The question is not whether the next attack will come, but only when.
I lit a candle and went on to the concert. The church was filled to the last seat. Only at the very edge had some additional chairs been set up for people like me who were getting on the last minute.


Police officers with guns in their arms

From the beginning, the first notes of "Jauchzet, frohlocket", I forgot the world. The music led the audience into heavenly spheres. Among the arias and choirs are first-class treasures, such as the aria "Close my heart" or "Merry shepherd hurries ... seeks to win grace", or the choir "Break, you beautiful morning light". "Bach has never created anything more noble in this form," says the program. I have nothing to add to this. Whoever hears Bach knows what makes our culture so strong.
At the final chorus "Death, devil, sin and hell are completely weakened" I felt strengthened and comforted. After the music had died away, the audience remained silent before the applause broke out.
When we left the church, the Christmas market invited to stroll. It was still well attended, but you could get mulled wine without waiting in line. We were in the process of deciding on a stand when police officers with their guns started clearing the market. They did it very professionally and without loudspeaker announcements. This prevented panic because a number of the people around us, especially young people, were immediately extremely excited, anxious and began to jostle. I saw fear of a terrorist attack on every face.
The evacuation was quick, no one opposed. My elation was completely gone and I felt my stomach cramp. The discomfort was exacerbated when black-helmeted motorcyclists dashed by at far too high a speed, followed by a sports car with camouflage paint and a howling engine.



The lightness of our being has been taken away from us

We pretend every day that our life goes on as normal. But our way of life has already been destroyed. The lightness of our being is taken away from us, our carelessness is gone. We can talk, laugh, enjoy, listen to music, play with our children, but we can no longer do anything carefree. Concrete bollards, security services at events, the insecurity of public spaces have become our everyday life. It will soon be forgotten that there was a time when women and children could move around without fear.
Our daily media shower tells us that we live in the safest Germany we have ever had, although terror and homicide have become a little more common. Because it is safer than ever, the politicians who got us into this move only with personal protection and in armored service limousines. A security ditch will soon be drawn around the Bundestag.
I can't stand these people anymore. I would like to curse them, like in the poem "The Silesian weavers".

https://www.achgut.com/artikel/geste...eitscheidplatz


Who is the author Vera Lengsfeld:
Vera Lengsfeld, born in Thuringia in 1952, is a politician and publicist. She was a civil rights activist and a member of the first freely elected People's Chamber of the GDR. From 1990 to 2005 she was a member of the German Bundestag, initially until 1996 for Alliance 90 / The Greens, and from 1996 for the CDU. Since then she has worked as a freelance writer. In 2008 she was honored with the Federal Cross of Merit on ribbon. - In Germany she now is beign demonised and defamed as a racist, right-winger, xeno- and islamophobe, anti.feminist etc etc etc. Different to all these big mouths today she belongs to a generation that indeed put somethign at risk when they went to the streets in the uprising GDR. She once described herseld as desillusionised and that the Germany of today is not the country that she once fought for.



I feel with her. I am so sick of this country as well. Its becoming sicker every day.