While the German government prevaricates around its self-imposed energy crisis, citizens are taking matters into their own hands to keep themselves warm this coming winter with sales of cheap, reliable wood burners soaring in Europe.
That’s a Jøtul – we have one. Highly recommended.
‘Green’ Germany Prepares To Fire Up the Coal Furnaces
Somehow, Germany, a country where the government is firmly committed to “green” energy, is preparing to fire up coal-burning power plants. The move is even more remarkable given that officials stubbornly refuse to restart mothballed nuclear facilities, or even reconsider the timeline for retiring those that remain online. It’s an astonishing situation for a country that very recently boasted that it would soon satisfy all its energy needs with sunshine and cool summer breezes.
Germany will restart coal-fired power plants and offer incentives for companies to curb natural gas consumption, marking a new step in the economic war between Europe and Russia.
Berlin unveiled the measures Sunday after Russia cut gas supplies to Europe last week as it punched back against European sanctions and military support for Ukraine.
The steps, part of a broader strategy initiated after the invasion of Ukraine, aim to reduce gas consumption and divert gas deliveries to storage facilities to ensure that the country has enough reserves to get through the winter.
Germany says that its citizens may have to ration the use of natural gas this winter as the country faces an energy “crisis” due to Russia reducing its supplies last week.
Berlin’s top financial official announced on Thursday that Europe’s largest economy was activating the second phase of its three-step emergency plan for natural gas consumption.
BERLIN, June 21 (Reuters) – Germany’s government will not agree to European Union plans to effectively ban the sale of new cars with combustion engines from 2035, Finance Minister Christian Lindner said on Tuesday.
In its bid to cut planet-warming emissions by 55% by 2030 from 1990 levels, the European Commission has proposed a 100% reduction in CO2 emissions from new cars by 2035. That means it would be impossible to sell combustion engine cars from then.
h/t RM
The federal head of the German police union has largely blamed migrant-background youths for a mass brawl at a Berlin swimming pool over the weekend, stating that politicians “shy away” from the backgrounds of those involved.
A gas shortage and high prices will send “shockwaves through the country,” leading to landlords cutting the heat for tenants and widespread company bankruptcies, warned Klaus Müller, the head of Germany’s Federal Network Agency, which is the regulatory office for electricity, gas, telecommunications, postal services, and railway markets.
Müller paints a bleak picture about the crisis in an interview with German newspaper Rheinische Post, saying it will “send shockwaves throughout the country. Banks will ramp up their business with installment loans, and ailing companies will fall into insolvency.”
Müller’s office, which is a federal agency within the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Action, has a bird’s eye view of the economic situation in Germany and also special insight into how economic conditions will develop into the future.
Every country needs to be energy independent.
Germany’s Federal Court of Justice (BGH) has ruled against former Chancellor Angela Merkel after the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) sued her over her remarks on a 2020 regional election.
The court said that Merkel’s remarks violated the AfD’s right to fair political competition.
The incident dates back to early 2020 when, for the first time since the party’s founding in 2013, a German state leader was elected due to votes from the AfD.
… Under the guise of ‘Israel criticism,’ they [the Muslims] use classic anti-Semitic stereotypes, identifying Israel as having ‘Jewish characteristics’: ‘domineering,’ ‘greedy’ or a ‘child killer,’” sociologist Imke Kummer observed about the marchers.
The German government has a long record of downplaying Muslim antisemitism, and of exaggerating “far-right” antisemitism. Curiously, however, some of the incidents documented at the al-Quds Day march in Berlin have been classified by authorities as forms of far-right antisemitism, independent watchdog groups have discovered.
He warned the former Chancellor about the dangers of Russian oil dependence
In her first public appearance since leaving office, former German Chancellor Angela Merkel defended Berlin’s Russia policy during her 16-year tenure and expressed confidence in her successor, Olaf Scholz.
Judging by the newspaper headlines following her statements, there apparently was an expectation that she would apologise and take some responsibility for the Russian invasion of Ukraine, due to her policy of close economic and political cooperation with Moscow.
Angela Merkel has said she feels no regrets for her handling of Vladimir Putin during her time in power, arguing that Russia’s president would have perceived a 2008 Nato membership plan for Ukraine that was blocked by her government as a “declaration of war”.
The former German chancellor also claimed that an oligarch-run and democratically immature Ukraine would have been less prepared for an invasion then than it is now.
“I would feel very bad if I had said: ‘There’s no point talking to that man [Putin]”, Merkel said in an onstage interview at the Berliner Ensemble theatre on Tuesday night – her first public appearance since leaving office half a year ago.
Moment German-Armenian man, 29, is arrested by police after repeatedly mounting pavement and ploughing his car into shoppers in Berlin
This is the moment Berlin police arrested a 29-year-old German-Armenian man after he ploughed his car into crowds of shoppers early today, leaving at least one dead and 30 injured.
Footage shows police leading the handcuffed man – dressed in a yellow hoodie, dark tracksuit trousers and red trainers – to a black BMW and shutting him inside. Just a short distance away, the man’s own car sits buried in the front window of a perfume shop, as badly wounded people he just ran over lie on the pavement.
The suspect, who lives in Berlin, is known to police for ‘property crime’, Bild reported.
Fire service spokesperson says about 30 people have been injured in incident near scene of 2016 Muslim terror attack
A car has been driven into a crowd of people in western Berlin, killing one person, the newspaper Das Bild has reported.
A spokesperson for the German capital’s fire service told Reuters about 30 people had been injured.
Germany: Car drives into crowd in Berlin, 1 dead
He said the suspected driver of the vehicle was detained. It was unclear whether the incident was the result of an accident or whether the driver had intentionally driven into the crowd, Dams said.
The incident took place close to the scene of a fatal attack on December 19, 2016, when Islamist extremist Anis Amri, hijacked a truck, killed the driver and then plowed it into a crowded Christmas market in Breitscheidplatz. The attack killed 11 other people and injured dozens of others.
Germany has been forced to admit it was a terrible mistake to become so dependent on Russian oil and gas. So why did it happen?
On Sunday 1 February 1970, senior politicians and gas executives from Russia and Germany gathered at the upmarket Hotel Kaiserhof in Essen. They were there to celebrate the signing of a contract for the first major Russia-Germany gas pipeline, which was to run from Siberia to the West German border at Marktredwitz in Bavaria. The contract was the result of nine months of intense bargaining over the price of the gas, the cost of 1.2m tonnes of German pipes to be sold to Russia, and the credit terms offered to Moscow by a consortium of 17 German banks. Aware of the risk of Russia defaulting, the German banks’ chief financial negotiator, Friedrich Wilhelm Christians, took the precaution of asking for a loan from the federal government, explaining: “I don’t do any somersaults without a net, especially not on a trapeze.”
It is now extremely difficult for Olaf Scholz to pursue an independent foreign policy
The war in Ukraine has asked a fundamental question of Germany: how far does an aggressor need to go before Berlin rethinks its economic ties to the regime? The answer may be uncomfortable in relation to Russia. But Germany’s reliance on China is even more worrying.
Amidst inflation, war and domestic politics, the Xinjiang Police Files are only the latest cache of evidence about human rights violations in China. Yet, according to one recent survey, 94% of German companies want to maintain their presence in China; 71% want to even increase investment. Volkswagen Group China alone employs 90,000 people including in a factory in Ürümqi, the capital of Xinjiang province.
Our “Elites” are moral monsters.
Famous author Uwe Telkamp is cancelled for saying that most Muslim migrants are not fleeing persecution but looking for social welfare.
“I have to justify even being German, to dare to refer to Goethe. Suddenly, you are like a pariah.” This is how Uwe Tellkamp speaks at the Süddeutsche Zeitung. His is the cultural case of recent years.
Not only because in 2008 Tellkamp published the great novel “The Tower”, which sold over a million copies and describes the last years of the German Democratic Republic through the educated middle class of Dresden. It has won numerous literary awards and has been celebrated by all feuilletons and literary critics.
