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And it's so futile, too. I mean, look, Scholz often did too little and too late, but he did help Ukraine. More than I ever thought he would. But the part of the electorate that disagrees – East Germans and the West German peace movement, which was basically founded by Moscow during the 1980's – will never be won back by him pretending to negotiate now.
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Germany agrees to export Typhoons to Turkey and then right after Turkey breaks off any contact with Israel and hosts the Hamas leadership.
Scholz calls Putin and a few days later russia launches a major attack on Ukrainian infrastructure.
Does this guy actually realize that he's being made a fool of? Or does he know he is, but as a public servant he feels that's just part of his job?!?
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I would quote the (in my opinion quite formidable) German defence expert Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann:Germany agrees to export Typhoons to Turkey and then right after Turkey breaks off any contact with Israel and hosts the Hamas leadership.
Scholz calls Putin and a few days later russia launches a major attack on Ukrainian infrastructure.
Does this guy actually realize that he's being made a fool of? Or does he know he is, but as a public servant he feels that's just part of his job?!?
"After three years of this, I have to say that he is virtually autistic – both in terms of his way of dealing with others and his inability to explain his actions. You can't get through to him because he is such an obtusely self-opionated person."
That's how a member of his own administration was talking about him.
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FPD may not enter the next German parliament, while BSW damaged die Linke and AfD.
Pistorius stays very popular:
www.zdf.de
Pistorius stays very popular:
Große Mehrheit: Mit Boris Pistorius würde SPD besser abschneiden | ZDF-Politbarometer
Eine große Mehrheit glaubt, dass die SPD mit Boris Pistorius bei der Bundestagswahl besser abschneiden würde. Das zeigt das ZDF-Politbarometer.
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@muck
What’s the reason for BSW losing 1/3 of its voters since September?
That’s a massive dive:
www.politico.eu
What’s the reason for BSW losing 1/3 of its voters since September?
That’s a massive dive:
POLITICO Poll of Polls — German polls, trends and election news for Germany
POLLING FROM ACROSS EUROPE. UPDATED DAILY. READ IN GERMAN / AUF DEUTSCH LESEN Germany — 2025 general election Germans will go to the ballot box on Feb. 23 for a federal election, following the coll…
www.politico.eu
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Some voters have caught on to the fact that Sahra Wagenknecht is just on a massive ego trip.@muck
What’s the reason for BSW losing 1/3 of its voters since September?
That’s a massive dive:
POLITICO Poll of Polls — German polls, trends and election news for Germany
POLLING FROM ACROSS EUROPE. UPDATED DAILY. READ IN GERMAN / AUF DEUTSCH LESEN Germany — 2025 general election Germans will go to the ballot box on Feb. 23 for a federal election, following the coll…
(Who knew a woman who names her party after herself could be self-centred?)
In Saxony, the local CDU and SPD chapters were actually willing to form a coalition government with BSW.
Wagenknecht forced the Saxonian BSW chapter to demand a joint CDU-SPD-BSW "peace resolution" demanding peace in Ukraine and an end to German military help for Kyiv (even though German states are constitutionally prohibited from pursuing foreign affairs).
CDU and SPD were like, well, we can pen a (legally pointless) letter expressing that we're concerned about the war in Ukraine and want diplomacy to prevail. BSW agreed.
Then, they argued a whole month about how the letter should be worded. Hoping to avoid a minority government, CDU and SPD made concession after concession. They agreed on everything but a single word. A word so insignificant I can't even remember what it was anymore. Then, Wagenknecht intervened and ordered the Saxonian BSW to leave the coalition negotiations.
BSW's aim is not to produce results. They solely exist to obstruct. And after Wagenknecht travelled to Moscow and posted selfies with Anatoly Sobchak's daughter (Putin's political mentor of old), I'm now firmly of the belief that Wagenknecht is a Russian asset. Probably always has been.
Last edited:
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Since Sobchak is a Polish name, I clearly remember having read about his death in 2000.
Wagenknecht was 31 years old when he died, probably poisoned by Putin’s guys:
Anatoly Sobchak - Simple English Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The RuZZian dictator fell out with Sobchak at some point.
Sobchak’s daughter fled from RuZZia in 2022 after having been sh1tlisted:
Ksenia Sobchak - Wikipedia
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As it turns out, I was quite right about this.
A week ago, a confidential paper titled "D-Day Scenario" (Jesus!) emerged proving the Liberal Party was looking to create a scandal which in turn would prompt Scholz to fire the liberal ministers. That way, they meant to avoid the stigma of regicide.
That's spectacularly backfired for them, though, as they denied the paper existed at first. They've had to acknowledge its being genuine in the meantime, and their approval is plummeting. The incompetence is stunning. Imagine toppling the most unpopular administration in the history of German democracy and being unable to profit from that.
In other news, Scholz has accused CDU's Merz (who wants to give Ukraine Taurus) of wanting to "play Russian roulette with Germany's security". This campaign is going to be ugly, and it's going to be the first one in decades decided by foreign affairs and defence.
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Thoughts @muck and our other Germany located members?
When Angela Merkel left the German chancellorship in December 2021, after 16 years in power, she had a credible claim to being one of the greatest politicians of the 21st century (so far). Now, after three years of deafening silence, and with her legacy in shambles, she is promoting her forthcoming political memoir. Her silence was more persuasive.
She gave her first interview to the German weekly Der Spiegel, defending major policies that helped to shape Germany and Europe as we know them today. Among these were her appeasement of Russia, which adhered to the Cold War principle of ‘change through trade’ (Wandel durch Handel); her welcoming of more than one million refugees (mostly from Syria and the Middle East) in 2015; and the phaseout of Germany’s nuclear power plants.
A fourth issue concerns not a policy but the lack of one. Owing to Merkel’s failure to do anything noticeable to adapt the German economy to this century’s technological challenges, the country remains under-digitalised, with embarrassingly poor internet access, an absurdly overgrown bureaucracy, governing institutions that still use fax machines and once-dominant companies that can no longer compete with their American and Asian counterparts. German highways and bridges are crumbling, trains regularly run late and major infrastructure projects (like Berlin’s rail station and airport) take two or three times longer than they would in Poland or even Romania.
Where once Germans heaped scorn on Poles for supposedly being foolish and incompetent, now the tables have turned. Visit Germany nowadays and you may find that you cannot even pay for breakfast with your credit card. You will have to run to an ATM, but you may find that it is broken or does not accept Visa or Mastercard (as is the case two-thirds of the time). And don’t even think about connecting to wi-fi. You will find better access (and a more dynamic information-technology sector) in Belarus—a Russian vassal state.
Moreover, Merkel did nothing during her 16 years in power to prod the industries that Germany prides itself on—chemicals, pharmaceuticals, internal-combustion vehicles—to adapt to the 21st century, and now it shows. The German army, meanwhile, is regularly an object of ridicule in the European press.
If Germans prefer to use fax machines and avoid the internet, that is their business. Unfortunately, though, their government’s decisions affect all of Europe. Merkel’s moral argument for providing aid and shelter to refugees in 2015 is uncontroversial. But surely she should have known that immigration on such a massive scale would produce a populist backlash, not only in Germany but throughout Europe. Merkel made a show of standing up for liberal democratic values, but her policy yielded an assault on them. The result was weaker liberal democracy and less immigration.
Similarly, by stubbornly insisting on the Nord Stream and Nord Stream 2 pipeline projects, Merkel and other German leaders empowered a dangerous dictator who had revisionist designs on eastern Europe. And by blocking NATO from offering a ‘membership action plan’ to Ukraine and Georgia at the 2008 Bucharest summit, Germany effectively invited Russia to invade. Anyone with an elementary knowledge of Russia’s foreign policy knew that the Kremlin would exploit the resulting uncertainty.
In her Spiegel interview, Merkel blames others for this litany of failures. She says she was not the only one against a NATO accession process for Ukraine and Georgia; but is that supposed to excuse her? Europeans took their cues from Germany in those days, and Merkel’s voice mattered more than others—as she well knows.
Similarly, Merkel is still repeating the canard that Nord Stream was a purely economic project, even though it obviously was not. In defending appeasement of Russia, she argues that Poland and Ukraine did not mind having gas transit through their territories as long as they profited from it. But the controversy around Nord Stream was that by circumventing Poland and Ukraine, it diminished whatever influence they had vis-a-vis Moscow. Merkel decided that cheaper gas was more important than Polish or Ukrainian security. In the end, her approach brought an energy crisis and was one of the causes of a new land war on the European continent. The result was no cheap energy and no security.
Merkel’s decision, following the 2011 Fukushima disaster in Japan, to phase out Germany’s nuclear power plants also empowered Russia by making the German economy even more dependent on Russian hydrocarbons. Again, such choices could still be defensible if we lived in blissful ignorance of Vladimir Putin’s true character. But after 2008, and especially after 2014, there was no longer any question about who he was and what he intended to do.
Merkel herself was repeatedly warned. As early as 2006, Radek Sikorski, then Poland’s defence minister, was comparing the Nord Stream project to the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact (the secret 1939 agreement between Hitler and Stalin not to attack each other). Five years later, he was still beating the same drum, warning that Poland and Europe had more to fear from German passivity than from German power.
Merkel ignored these arguments. During her long tenure, Germany tried to trade Eastern European security for cheap energy, abandoned an existing renewable-energy source, and gave nativist populists a potent campaign issue. She made Europe less safe from threats both foreign and domestic. Today, with Germany mired in a leadership crisis and buffeted by new global headwinds, Merkel continues to tell herself that she did everything right.
Slawomir Sierakowski, founder of the Krytyka Polityczna movement, is a Mercator senior fellow. This article is presented in partnership with Project Syndicate © 2024.
https://www.aspistrategist.org.au/h...gnMonitor&utm_term=Has Angela Merkel no shame
When Angela Merkel left the German chancellorship in December 2021, after 16 years in power, she had a credible claim to being one of the greatest politicians of the 21st century (so far). Now, after three years of deafening silence, and with her legacy in shambles, she is promoting her forthcoming political memoir. Her silence was more persuasive.
She gave her first interview to the German weekly Der Spiegel, defending major policies that helped to shape Germany and Europe as we know them today. Among these were her appeasement of Russia, which adhered to the Cold War principle of ‘change through trade’ (Wandel durch Handel); her welcoming of more than one million refugees (mostly from Syria and the Middle East) in 2015; and the phaseout of Germany’s nuclear power plants.
A fourth issue concerns not a policy but the lack of one. Owing to Merkel’s failure to do anything noticeable to adapt the German economy to this century’s technological challenges, the country remains under-digitalised, with embarrassingly poor internet access, an absurdly overgrown bureaucracy, governing institutions that still use fax machines and once-dominant companies that can no longer compete with their American and Asian counterparts. German highways and bridges are crumbling, trains regularly run late and major infrastructure projects (like Berlin’s rail station and airport) take two or three times longer than they would in Poland or even Romania.
Where once Germans heaped scorn on Poles for supposedly being foolish and incompetent, now the tables have turned. Visit Germany nowadays and you may find that you cannot even pay for breakfast with your credit card. You will have to run to an ATM, but you may find that it is broken or does not accept Visa or Mastercard (as is the case two-thirds of the time). And don’t even think about connecting to wi-fi. You will find better access (and a more dynamic information-technology sector) in Belarus—a Russian vassal state.
Moreover, Merkel did nothing during her 16 years in power to prod the industries that Germany prides itself on—chemicals, pharmaceuticals, internal-combustion vehicles—to adapt to the 21st century, and now it shows. The German army, meanwhile, is regularly an object of ridicule in the European press.
If Germans prefer to use fax machines and avoid the internet, that is their business. Unfortunately, though, their government’s decisions affect all of Europe. Merkel’s moral argument for providing aid and shelter to refugees in 2015 is uncontroversial. But surely she should have known that immigration on such a massive scale would produce a populist backlash, not only in Germany but throughout Europe. Merkel made a show of standing up for liberal democratic values, but her policy yielded an assault on them. The result was weaker liberal democracy and less immigration.
Similarly, by stubbornly insisting on the Nord Stream and Nord Stream 2 pipeline projects, Merkel and other German leaders empowered a dangerous dictator who had revisionist designs on eastern Europe. And by blocking NATO from offering a ‘membership action plan’ to Ukraine and Georgia at the 2008 Bucharest summit, Germany effectively invited Russia to invade. Anyone with an elementary knowledge of Russia’s foreign policy knew that the Kremlin would exploit the resulting uncertainty.
In her Spiegel interview, Merkel blames others for this litany of failures. She says she was not the only one against a NATO accession process for Ukraine and Georgia; but is that supposed to excuse her? Europeans took their cues from Germany in those days, and Merkel’s voice mattered more than others—as she well knows.
Similarly, Merkel is still repeating the canard that Nord Stream was a purely economic project, even though it obviously was not. In defending appeasement of Russia, she argues that Poland and Ukraine did not mind having gas transit through their territories as long as they profited from it. But the controversy around Nord Stream was that by circumventing Poland and Ukraine, it diminished whatever influence they had vis-a-vis Moscow. Merkel decided that cheaper gas was more important than Polish or Ukrainian security. In the end, her approach brought an energy crisis and was one of the causes of a new land war on the European continent. The result was no cheap energy and no security.
Merkel’s decision, following the 2011 Fukushima disaster in Japan, to phase out Germany’s nuclear power plants also empowered Russia by making the German economy even more dependent on Russian hydrocarbons. Again, such choices could still be defensible if we lived in blissful ignorance of Vladimir Putin’s true character. But after 2008, and especially after 2014, there was no longer any question about who he was and what he intended to do.
Merkel herself was repeatedly warned. As early as 2006, Radek Sikorski, then Poland’s defence minister, was comparing the Nord Stream project to the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact (the secret 1939 agreement between Hitler and Stalin not to attack each other). Five years later, he was still beating the same drum, warning that Poland and Europe had more to fear from German passivity than from German power.
Merkel ignored these arguments. During her long tenure, Germany tried to trade Eastern European security for cheap energy, abandoned an existing renewable-energy source, and gave nativist populists a potent campaign issue. She made Europe less safe from threats both foreign and domestic. Today, with Germany mired in a leadership crisis and buffeted by new global headwinds, Merkel continues to tell herself that she did everything right.
Slawomir Sierakowski, founder of the Krytyka Polityczna movement, is a Mercator senior fellow. This article is presented in partnership with Project Syndicate © 2024.
https://www.aspistrategist.org.au/h...gnMonitor&utm_term=Has Angela Merkel no shame
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Well some is correct some are usual stereotypes which are untrue.
I travel a lot Germany is still very good regarding infrastructure comoared to other countries.
The bridge that collapsed was made of low qualite GDR steel.
The uncompetitive companies are? A merc or a bimmer are still on top.
Restructuring because of chsnged environment is normal I would rather be didturbed by the Chinese model were everything is super but peoples lives still are way off the Western level in the majority.
Its VW with its unsustainable model they go the way of GM if they do not change. But still they offer good cars.
The Fax machine well a running joke some bureacrats still use them no private companies.
Private companies do their pwn thing over here mostly incontrolled and they arexway more modern than our bureacracy.
That is a real problem as lazy bureacrats need 20 years for everything and cost billions because of their slow movement on some cases they actively work against the economy because their salary comes from heaven and the world around them doesn't interest them.
Germany already once sacked 400.000 bureacrats in the 1920s.
They can also not be fired for life and are among the sickest population group.
They are the main group with long covid. Retire the earliest and pay nothing into the oension scheme.
The idea was that they are more loyal to the state with all thise privileges but now rhey firm their oen "caste" making theirvown laws to not have to work or do complicated things.
If a gov office gets a task they immediately search to outsource their work eith tax money to happy outside provate companies.
Real stupid things geg so e and lots of money wasted. They build bridges fir frogs for example or make an inland port whichs waterway is to shallow to be reached by the ships destined there.
Then you have the big companies like BASF hijacked by the China connection and deprndent on Russian gas.
Internet is good where I live in the city and deprnds a lot on the provider.
I have Vodafone my friends O2. I seldomly have no net they a lot.
Telekom is also very good.
We also ha e lots of remote areas which nobody seems to be interested in so the providers have little incentive to provide expensive nets there.
Does the US have coverage even in the most remote Alaskan fields?
But its true Merkel did nearly nothing of value except a lot for our enemies.
What was done was done by the free market companies.
And there is an inherent adversion against new tech but even my 80yeo parents have smartphones and tablets and can use facebook and such.
Germany is still very technologically advanced many try to talk us down into giving up but they will have to compete none the less with our products.
German vehicle engineering ist still leading by great margins in patents.
We also specialise in many niches like automation.
Chinas only roboter producer Kuka was sold to them by Merkel.
Btw.
Germany has the 3rd place after the US and China in RnD spending worldwide.
In 2025 3,5 % of the GDP will be invested in RnD.
You take that multicultralism and like it.
www.dailywire.com
We are for "womens rights!" Sure...
Germany Charges American For Stabbing Migrant Who Sexually Assaulted Her
An American citizen could face ten years in German prison for stabbing an African migrant who sexually assaulted her in a train station after prosecutors rejected her self-defense claim.
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You take that multicultralism and like it.
We are for "womens rights!" Sure...Germany Charges American For Stabbing Migrant Who Sexually Assaulted Her
An American citizen could face ten years in German prison for stabbing an African migrant who sexually assaulted her in a train station after prosecutors rejected her self-defense claim.
The prosecutors dropped a bollock right here, I’m not aware enough of German law (@muck?) but I reckon you can’t legally carry a knife in France and I imagine it’s not different over there.
Good on her for stabbing this scumbag; issue is prosecutors probably considered this excessive use of possibly lethal force…
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I can only surmise the Daily Wire mistranslated the original press release there, because the original reads a tad different.
You draw a knife to scare someone off – that's self defence.
But the law requires you to back off yourself as soon as the imminent danger is over. Which this woman didn't do.
I've seen the CCTV footage from the incident. She followed him as he moved backwards, making swiping motions with her knife. Only after the second swipe did he try to deflect her arm, in the course of which she plunged her knife straight into his chest.
I'd be lying if I said that I can't understand why prosecutors would accuse her of having crossed the line from self defence to exacting retribution.
Anyway, this woman will likely claim she was still afraid for her safety and should be excused on grounds of Section 33 StGB: "Whoever exceeds the limits of self-defence due to confusion, fear or fright incurs no penalty." And she'll probably receive that excuse.
Case closed. It's a waste of time, essentially. But a grievous injustice it is not. You'd find better arguments to further your narrative, @haze99.
You draw a knife to scare someone off – that's self defence.
But the law requires you to back off yourself as soon as the imminent danger is over. Which this woman didn't do.
I've seen the CCTV footage from the incident. She followed him as he moved backwards, making swiping motions with her knife. Only after the second swipe did he try to deflect her arm, in the course of which she plunged her knife straight into his chest.
I'd be lying if I said that I can't understand why prosecutors would accuse her of having crossed the line from self defence to exacting retribution.
Anyway, this woman will likely claim she was still afraid for her safety and should be excused on grounds of Section 33 StGB: "Whoever exceeds the limits of self-defence due to confusion, fear or fright incurs no penalty." And she'll probably receive that excuse.
Case closed. It's a waste of time, essentially. But a grievous injustice it is not. You'd find better arguments to further your narrative, @haze99.
Volkswagen CEO's Speech to Workers Drowned Out By Boos After He Says Company 'Isn't Operating in a Fantasy World'
The carmaker has been in heated discussions with unions after announcing this fall that it would have to take drastic measures to cut costs
www.latintimes.com
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