Germany’s Green Party is currently being rocked by a cronyism scandal, after it was revealed that several key figures in the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Action were not only ideological allies but also close relatives. These revelations forced economy minister Robert Habeck—a member of the Greens—to sack his closest aide and ally, Patrick Graichen, the former state secretary responsible for pushing through radical and costly green energy policies.
German investigators are sceptical of claims that Russian naval ships sabotaged the Nord Stream gas pipelines and are instead pursuing leads that point to the Ukrainian authorities, according to a report.
Three of the four strands of the pipelines, built to transport Russian gas to Germany on the bed of the Baltic Sea, were knocked out by underwater explosions last September, effectively severing the main energy link between the two countries.
The Bundestag’s war guilt is finally lifting
Wir schaffen das! Who could forget Angela Merkel’s one-liner on August 31, 2015 — best translated as “Yes, we can!” — after she opened her country’s borders to hundreds of thousands of migrants making their way from Syria, Afghanistan and elsewhere in the Middle East? In the liberal Anglophone press, Germany was practically re-branded as a humanitarian superpower overnight. It was as if, with this grand, risky gesture, Germany had finally atoned for the crimes of the past.
What is an Ossi’s favourite sport? The bobsled: there’s a wall on one side, a wall on the other, and it’s all downhill.
East and west Germans, crudely nicknamed Ossis and Wessis, have been trading ostensibly harmless jokes about each other for decades. They are part of the cultural furniture of reunification, a way for people on both sides to smooth over the difficulties of rebuilding a nation after 45 years of division.
Germany recorded 58,916 cases of politically motivated crime in 2022, an increase of some 7% compared with the previous year, according to figures released on Tuesday.
Interior Minister Nancy Faeser said right-wing extremism remained the greatest threat to German democracy, with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the COVID-19 pandemic also cited as important factors for the rise in politically motivated crime.
A significant increase was also recorded in crimes and acts of violence by the far-right Reichsbürger (citizens of the Reich) movement.
While the number of reported rapes in North Rhine-Westphalia—Germany’s most populous city—increased 25% in 2022 compared to the previous year, the number of rapes involving more than one perpetrator jumped by 43%.
In response to an information request by the national-conservative Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) party, data released by the Ministry of the Interior of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia revealed that 2,949 rapes were reported last year, which corresponds to eight rapes per day and represents an increase of more than 25% compared to the previous year.
The number of rapes involving more than one perpetrator—sometimes referred to as ‘gang rapes’—also rose dramatically across North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany’s most populous state, in 2022, climbing from 172 in 2021 to 246 in 2022, a year-over-year increase of 43%, the news outlet RTL Deutschland reports.
The accused was deemed harmless by a prison psychiatrist before being released from custody where he was being held because of an earlier knife attack.
Three months after the deadly knife rampage in Brokstedt that saw two young people murdered and five others injured, public prosecutors in Germany have brought forth charges against the perpetrator, Ibrahim. A., a 34-year-old Palestinian.
Ibrahim. A., who previously compared himself to Anis Amri—an Islamist terrorist who in 2016 killed 13 people and injured 67 after plowing through a Christmas market on Berlin’s Breitscheidplatz with his vehicle—on Thursday, April 27th, was formally charged by the Itzehoe public prosecutor’s office with two counts of murder and four counts of attempted murder, Der Spiegel reports.
Electric vehicles are taking over from German diesel
The European automotive sector — above all the German car industry — is a bulwark of the EU’s economic might. But for how much longer? It’s becoming increasingly clear that Chinese exports pose an existential threat.
This week, Brad Setser, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, tweeted out two charts that illustrate the astonishing speed and scale of recent developments.
So is Justin’s VW horse already on its way to the Glue Factory?
German authorities arrested a 28-year-old Syrian national on Tuesday morning, one of two brothers suspected of planning to blow up civilian targets using a homemade explosives belt for “radical Islamist and jihadist” reasons, a statement said.
Public prosecutors in the northern port city of Hamburg carried out searches as part of a joint probe with police, arresting the man whom they believed bought raw materials for bomb-making off the internet over several weeks.
The new figures, published in a press release on Thursday, April 20th, by Germany’s Federal Statistical Office (Destatis), revealed that the number of people living in Germany with so-called “immigration histories” increased by 6.5% in 2022 to a total of 20.2 million—equal to nearly one fourth (24.3%) of the total population of the country.
Bavarian Premier Markus Söder on Sunday proposed that his southern German state could assume control of the Isar 2 nuclear power plant, which was permanently taken off the grid, along with two other remaining power stations shortly before midnight.
Söder, who has been a staunch critic of Germany’s decision to transition away from nuclear energy, told the Bild am Sonntag newspaper that the move would require an amendment to the Atomic Energy Act to hand control of nuclear power from the federal to the state level.
It was a monumentally stupid decision to shut down the reactors.
On the other side of the Gate, there were protests, as demonstrators marched against the closure of Germany’s three remaining nuclear power stations.
By midnight on Saturday, Isar 2, Emsland and Neckarwestheim 2 had all gone offline.
At the Brandenburg Gate, where the Wall once divided Cold War Berlin, nuclear energy is an ideological fault-line that splits the country. It is an issue that is emotionally charged like few others. And particularly now as war in Europe again looms large.
First, France’s Macron said Europe shouldn’t follow the US on Taiwan. Then, Germany’s top diplomat said France’s China policy reflected the policy of the EU as a whole. How are these comments seen in Taiwan?
France’s Emmanuel Macron has prompted backlash by saying that Europeans should not be “followers” of either US or China when it comes to Taiwan and urging for more EU autonomy in international policy.
His statements came as China was conducting a massive three-day military drill around the self-ruled island, which Beijing sees as a part of its own territory. On Wednesday, Macron said he was standing by his comments and that “being an ally does not mean being a vassal” of the US. At the same time, he emphasized that France supported “the status quo in Taiwan” and was in favor of solving the situation peacefully.
At the end of March, Germany’s Environment Minister Steffi Lemke of the Green Party used just a few words to put an end to the dispute that has kept the country in suspense for years: “The risks of nuclear power are ultimately uncontrollable; that’s why the nuclear phase-out makes our country safer, and avoids more nuclear waste.”
Idiots.
The German reserve forces are only a fraction of the officially stated size, lack equipment and training, and is a force “that still largely exists on paper”, says the chief of the German reserves association.
