GER politics thread

[mapuc]

A little off topic input

Your latest comment made me remember what I once told my cousin.

I'm a offensive pacifist-Meaning I would give the fingers to our authorities, if they said to me-Pack your things we are sending you abroad to fight for our interest.

Defensive-Well here there's no such thing called Pacifist.

End of A little off topic input

Markus

[Rockstar]

Originally Posted by Skybird

… their attempt to reduce German history to just 12 fascist years, ignoring over 900 years that were before. So it seems that there are things, developments and names and traditions, arts and scientific accievements I think would be worth to fight for, else I would not be angry at the present Germans ignoring and rejecting and denying all of that.

Exactley, and don’t forget that since those twelve years Germany has also become and economic powerhouse compared to other E.U. Members and done pretty well for itself. However as I said before regarding the seemingly post unification bipolarism Germany appears to suffer from. It’s going to take a few more generations for your country and particularly your neighbors to see beyond those 12 years. Right now it’s not easily forgotten especially when as Glenn Greenwald said: “The corporate media's ability to -- overnight -- turn anyone who dissents in anyway into some sort of fascist or even Hitler-like figure, and then have millions of their followers go around mindlessly repeating it…”

We had a saying when I was in the service. One nastygram can wipe out all of your attaboys. In other words you can be the best of the best. But screw up just once and none of your past good deeds can save you. I’m afraid neither you or I will ever see the day when people can move past those 12 years. Not saying it should be forgotten, god forbid. But just seen as a history lesson learned and for everyone to move on to bigger and better things. Until then others will hang those twelve over your heads to sway opinion and get their way.

[August]

This is why they hate us. We're mostly descended from the ones they kicked out!

[Rockstar]

I don’t think it was as all simple as that. Even within German communities in America such as where my Prussian great grandfather and German great grandmother settled and also my home town. He worked the land as a farmer and was known to warn other‘s about those ‘progressive’ Germans. It was said he had a strong dislike for them, and that they shouldn’t be trusted.

[August]

Originally Posted by Rockstar

I don’t think it was as all simple as that. Even within German communities in America such as were my Prussian great grandfather and German great grandmother settled and also my home town. He worked the land as a farmer and was known to warn other‘s about those ‘progressive’ Germans. It was said he had strong dislike for them, and that they shouldn’t be trusted.

Might just be their nature dude. My mother emigrated from Germany. She had 10 brothers and sisters and all of them are divided into constantly bickering factions.

[Rockstar]

Originally Posted by August

Might just be their nature dude. My mother emigrated from Germany. She had 10 brothers and sisters and all of them are divided into constantly bickering factions.

Hell, that’s Europe in a nutshell. Map makers can’t keep up with all the new borders being established.

[Skybird]

Originally Posted by Rockstar;

and was known to warn other‘s about those ‘progressive’ Germans. It was said he had strong dislike for them, and that they shouldn’t be trusted.

For a moment I thought you wanted to imply I were your grandfather...

[Rockstar]

Originally Posted by Skybird

For a moment I thought you wanted to imply I were your grandfather...

Who knows, maybe there is some connection

[Skybird]

Why Berlin is the ungovernable dump that it is - and why it will never be anything else than just that.

https://www-achgut-com.translate.goo..._x_tr_pto=wapp


I did not know the background of these structural-administrative deformations, but they explain a lot of that anarchistic chaos in that place. There is no other place in Germany that is as badly governed and administered, than Berlin. Of course, it does not live of its own means.


Mismanagement, incompetence, corruption, hyper-bureauracy, ideological fanatism, anarchism, wanted erosion of law-and-order. Even life-long old Berliners of high age increasingly flee.

[Skybird]

Neue Zürcher Zeitung:
---------------------------


Media scientist Norbert Bolz: "I'm sure that many leftists want nothing to do with this crap".

As a university professor, media scientist and publicist, Norbert Bolz belonged to Germany's intellectual elite. Today, he is one of the loudest critics of the left-green zeitgeist, which he says dominates universities, the media and politics.

On Twitter, he has long been an irritant. There, according to his own advertising, Norbert Bolz spreads "the truth in one sentence" every day. On February 16, for example, he came up with this sentence: "What's different from '68: The extremists are in power." With his witty, often polemical and sometimes sweeping truths, the 69-year-old media scientist has made himself as popular as he is hated. Critics complain that he has radicalized himself on Twitter and is pandering to the far right; a well-paid, media-savvy prophet of doom who presents himself as a victim of the "cancel culture."

To this day, he sees himself as a supporter of the right wing of the SPD, which still thinks the same as it did 20 years ago, but is considered an old white man because of the shift to the left in society. In his latest book, Bolz defends this old white man in the usual way: brilliantly, peppered with fighting words such as "gender gaga," "cultural Taliban" and "language dictatorship. He appears for the Zoom interview in a sweater and in a good mood.

Mr. Bolz, in your book you speak of the cultural civil war in which Western societies find themselves, of political correctness as an intellectual climatic catastrophe. Is it that dramatic?

Yes. But the emphasis is on "cultural." It's not like we're going after each other with guns or that people are being put in jail. In public discourse, there is a sharp division between the good guys and the bad guys. Opposing positions are no longer fought out argumentatively, but the main role is played by feelings, affects, anger, rage, resentment. This inability to debate is a clear sign that we are dealing with an ominous development.

Is this development new? In the 1970s, every leftist was considered a traitor to the country and every bourgeois an anti-communist agitator or cold warrior.

True, there are striking parallels to the late 1960s and early 1970s, that is, to the student movement and its aftermath. I experienced that myself as an onlooker. Those were big, academic debates that were going on, and even philosophy professors were involved in them. A conservative status quo attitude was pitted against a revolutionary neo-Marxist theory, and vice versa. The left acted as a kind of Praeceptor Germaniae, as a teacher of Germany; it was theory-led. The debate was tough and polemical, but unlike then, no arguments are brought into play at all today.

What do you mean?

Today, feelings are enough for one's own position. It makes a difference whether someone angrily puts forward an argument or whether he is just angry. If he's just angry, there's nowhere to hook. Back then, you could at least make a Marxist doubt if you did it cleverly. Today, one doesn't even know where to apply the lever of reason and argument.

One could contradict nevertheless. Is there no more resistance from liberals and conservatives today?

At any rate, I can't detect it. Perhaps a miracle has occurred in the three years since I retired and no longer work at the university myself. Rather the opposite is the case: most professors keep completely out of it. They either conform so as not to jeopardize their careers or go into a kind of inner emigration. I don't see any controversy anywhere, apart from a few lone wolves. In the 1960s, 1970s, there were still conservative schools, such as the Ritter School in Münster. The university in Cologne was also somewhat conservative. I no longer see such an opposition today.

People are too cowardly to fight back?

They must not forget one thing: What many scientists live on, the famous third-party funding, the projects that are then also government-funded, that also depends on their political denomination, whether or not they commit to certain topics. If you want support for a project, you have to take up one of the big issues: Anti-colonialism, climate crisis, migration, racism, gender. If you don't do that, you won't get anything. You see this in the cultural sector as well. If you want to produce films for television in Germany, you have to meet certain quotas to ensure diversity.
It takes so and so many women, so and so many people with an immigrant background, and at least one of each sexual orientation. Even crime novels are no longer about who the murderer is, but what political problems can be dealt with as well. And there is one more crucial point.

Please.

I have already been accused of radicalizing myself with my Twitter behavior. That would then also have to affect my publications. But the explanation is quite simple: I have retired. There's nothing better than being retired when you can still think and work halfway. Because then you are really free. Nobody can do anything to me anymore. Shortly before I retired, the president of the TU Berlin, where I taught, summoned me and asked me about my Twitter account. He was worried that the reputation of the Technical University was suffering because of my tweets. And by the way, they were even more harmless back then than they are today.

If you expose yourself in such an institution, you have to expect reactions from superiors, that's normal. There are also leftists who are warned off.

I don't know of a single case. If you're on the left, you can be very rude - to put it mildly. The permissible level of vulgarity and aggressiveness is judged very differently. As a conservative, you are immediately considered an agitator or a hate preacher. There is a clear asymmetry in dealing with the right and the left. That applies to all public spaces.

In your book, you speak of a uniforming of opinions, although today everyone behaves as individualists and free spirits. What role do the media play?

It's very difficult for me not to become sweeping on this point. Public broadcasting in Germany is now navigating a hair's breadth past propaganda, to say the least. It depresses me that the private stations hardly offer any counter voices. Helmut Kohl practically gave birth to Sat 1 so that private stations would be a voice of dissent to the public broadcaster. But that's not the case here. And unfortunately, the situation is similar in the rest of the media landscape. Newspapers that I used to praise to the skies, like the FAZ, make me wonder. What's going on with them? What's pushing them to take such a radical government course?

What is your theory?

I think that for the first time, the majority of intellectuals and journalists have the government they want. That's why this conformism, this criticism of the government that can hardly be taken seriously anymore. Enzensberger once called it a puree that you can only wade through with sticky feet.

You accuse the media of telling white lies, that is, not lying but exaggerating and omitting facts that don't suit them. At the same time, you write that the Cancel Culture prevails "unrestrictedly" in public broadcasting. With that, you yourself are spreading white lies. Sahra Wagenknecht, to name just one example, is a permanent guest on talk shows.

Of course, we are not in a dictatorship or a totalitarian system. Our society is much more sophisticated and refined. Just look at a normal talk show, how this has been going on for years. There are usually five people sitting there, four hold practically the same opinion, one has an opposing opinion, and he is then talked down to.

You notice a cancel culture everywhere, especially with regard to the opinion of the old white man. Now you have published a book as an old white man. You give interviews, give lectures, write guest articles. Isn't that a bit of a strange complaint?

No, I'm not complaining. This whining of the old white man is unmanly. I'm about something else. My book is a kind of argumentative aid for all those who have become speechless, so to speak, because of political correctness. My hope is not that I, as a liberal or conservative, can change anything about this cultural dilemma. But I do have the hope that intelligent leftists - and there are still some - will be disgusted when they see the inane nonsense that is being spread in the name of the left today. Because it has nothing at all to do with being left-wing in the classical sense. I have said to some left-wing intellectuals: "What I hope for from you is a comingout, in the sense of: If this is supposed to be left-wing, I'm not left-wing, and that's fine." I'm sure a lot of leftists don't want to have anything to do with that crap.

What are the consequences of not wanting to name things like Islamist anti-Semitism anymore and repressing the unpleasant or just making it taboo?

Sigmund Freud speaks of the repressed returning, and in a distorted and ugly way. The current unculture is about exactly that. I can only explain this crazy aggressiveness and rage in this way. What can never be touched, then creates itself expression nevertheless. Thus we are developing more and more into a therapeutic society. Citizens are no longer treated as citizens, but as patients.

In this snivelling, therapeutic society, what the old white man stands for is increasingly devalued, you write. Yet we owe everything we could be proud of to the old white man. A steep thesis.

Western culture is responsible for the great scientific and technological development that has modernized the whole world. This is how Max Weber put it more than 100 years ago, and even then the objection was raised as to what happened to the ingenious developments of Chinese science or the Indian mathematicians. That's all true, but it was the West that put the great inventions of the others to economic use in order to revolutionize the entire world. Behind this is none other than the old white man or sometimes young white men. In any case dead white men.

Where does the urge come from to make everything bad and to look for only deficits, discrimination and oppressed people everywhere, although society has never been so free, equal and prosperous?

Both England and France on the one hand and America on the other hand as well as Germany have had their great catastrophes, which are now used against them and which they turn above all against themselves in a kind of self-flagellation. With the French and the English it is colonialism, with the Americans racism against the blacks and with us in Germany the Holocaust. Everything is fixated on it, and so now we discuss anti-colonialism, anti-racism and wage the eternal battle against Hitler.

Can we cultivate this bad conscience especially well in the Western world because we are doing so well?

That is an important reason. But the intellectuals also have a kind of status inconsistency problem. That is, they earn less than the people they read the riot act to, the politicians or the entrepreneurs. It's true that the intellectuals are culturally highly placed. But compare the income of a savings bank director in some provincial village with that of a university professor. Intellectuals are therefore inclined to resentment, which they then call social criticism. Self-criticism, mind you, is a unique feature of Western intellectuals. In other cultures, people don't beat themselves up like that. Today, this self-criticism has turned into self-flagellation. Instead of arguments, people only moralize. This ultimately leads to a dumbing down of intellectuals.

Let's go back to the man. Geniuses would be found exclusively among men, you say. We assume you are prepared for the outcry of the feminists?

Oh yes, I'm expecting a beating. But my statement is supported by the so-called bell curve, and all the data confirm it: there are both very brilliant and incredibly stupid men. Among women, however, intelligence is concentrated in the middle on average, they are higher in average intelligence than men. Only in the extremes this is not true. Women are also more diligent. That's why there are more and more women in important positions in society, and completely justified. The stupidest of the stupid is a man, but also the smartest of the smart. Let the men have at least this little. Let them spit out a few geniuses now and then. They also represent the embarrassments of society at the other end. After all, they are regarded as the nation's fools anyway.
-------------------

Norbert Bolz: Der alte weisse Mann. Sündenbock der Nation. Langen-Müller-Verlag, München 2023. 256 S. Fr. 36.90.




A good man ^. I met him personally, twice, many years ago, over twenty years ago. Two brief but incredibly intense conversations that developed very fast although we were strangers to each other. I was very impressed.

[Skybird]

It gets worse and worse. FOCUS writes (and I mark in bold what really itches me):
-------------------------------
Draft with twelve guidelines: Baerbock wants new ambassador for "feminist foreign policy"

The most important:
The Green Party around Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock is pursuing the goal of a "feminist foreign policy."
To this end, Baerbock wants to appoint her own ambassador.
In total, the Foreign Office is proposing twelve measures that will be officially presented on March 1.


Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock aims to make women more visible and influential in foreign policy. On March 1, the "Guidelines of Feminist Foreign Policy" are to be presented. Der Spiegel" has now published a draft of the 41-page paper.

The draft states that feminist foreign policy applies not only to women, "but to all members of a society." In doing so, it says it "stands up for all those who are pushed to the margins of societies because of gender identity, origin, religion, age, disability, sexual orientation or for other reasons." [Skybird: Obviously somebody has not understood what feminism means and what not]

According to the draft, Baerbock herself will see to it that these values are enforced. As support, "an ambassador for feminist foreign policy" will be appointed. This ambassador is to "further develop the guidelines and ensure their implementation.

The Federal Foreign Office is presenting a total of twelve guidelines to enforce this stance throughout foreign policy.

1 . The "gender competence" [what the hell is that?] of diplomatic staff is to be strengthened and even serves as a hiring criterion. [desastrous signal: quota before experience and qualification] In addition, every new manager is to undergo "anti-bias training" in order to "deal with prejudice and privilege". [comeback of the political commissars, hooray]

2 . The Office announces that it will "train a 'feminist reflex.'" This should help to exclude discrimination. In the course of this, the Foreign Office wants to "correct" the fact that, contrary to announcements in recent years, only 27 percent of foreign missions are still headed by women. Reflex also aims to support and raise awareness of the fight against sexism and sexual harassment.[from training reflexes to brain surgery it is not that far, and the inhibitions certainly do not exist anymore]
3. the project is also to receive strong financial support, as announced in the draft. In every budget decision and allocation of funds, it should be ensured that a fixed portion of the money is used for equal rights for women, it says. [Wir haben es ja...]
4 . The State Department, however, dampens expectations. "Feminist foreign policy does not hold a magic formula to deal with immediate security threats," the draft states. Nor is it "synonymous with pacifism," the paper states. Human lives must also be protected by military means. [makes it pretty pointless then, even antiproductive]

5 . The feminist guidelines are also to be brought into the EU. "Even if there is no consensus on this in Brussels so far, we want to lay the foundations for a European foreign policy that puts women's concerns more at the center and includes all people in our foreign policy," the office writes. [yes, of course: for less the German of today does not even get started]

6 . One priority of the German candidacy for a non-permanent seat on the UN Security Council in 2027/28 is to be the protection of women in conflict areas and their participation in peace processes. [why not, but good luck with that, impotent as you are, Germany]

7 . The foreign missions are to receive "up to one million euros" in additional funding for queer cultural events. A major conference is planned for 2024 for this purpose, with a focus on the rights of LGBTIQ* persons.
As an incentive, a "best practice" prize is to be awarded in office ["Veruntreuung öffentlicher Mittel" its called in German. Zum Kotzen]

8 . For civil servants who cannot or do not want to go abroad, positions are to be created in the Office that are not subject to rotation. This is to increase the diversity of the workforce. [holy cow, no longer the staff must meet the needs of the minstry, but the minstry must meet the wishes of its staff, this alienaiton from the real world will cost the already illusion-driven German foreign policy dearly. Experience come slast but not leats from serving oversea: instead here they now breed a generation of reality-disconnected desktop-doers. Which is typical for planned economies and party tyrannies]

9 . feminist thinking is to be transferred to other areas - such as foreign energy policy or foreign economic policy. [The loud booom we hear in the future is when the dream crashes on the hard bottom of reality]

10 . A "Best Feminist Practice Award" is to be awarded in the Office to provide an "additional incentive for engagement in feminist foreign policy." [now its gets really and involuntarily hilarious and funny]

11 . In the future, the participation of representatives of the Foreign Office in events will depend on whether they are equally staffed. [So to get rid of these idiots you only need to have a gender disparity of 51:49. Good to know there is a cheap way to keep them away]

12 . Baerbock continues to focus on meetings with women during her trips. In the future, her delegations from business, civil society and politics should also have equal representation. [who cares?]

https://www.focus.de/politik/deutsch...186318979.html
----------------------------


Germany - leading power in the centre of Europe...?


Ridiculous.

[Catfish]

She looks better than Lavrov.

[Skybird]

In the city of Lörrach in Baaden-Würthemberg, the city has terminated 40 tenants of a city-owned apartment block at the end of the year in order to use their apartments as refugee accommodation for 100 refugees from Ukraine.

A devastating signal for what the lousy politics in Germany is still willing to do to the Germans for leftist ideologists' missionising mania.

The letter from the city to the tenants, in which they also hiss for understanding, is particularly cynical. Those who are being evicted are told they will be given replacement apartments, but in times like these they will be more expensive no matter what the appeasers say, and many of the tenants who have been screwed are long-time tenants and of advanced age. They are now being told that they should please understand that their own freedoms are being denied and that they will have the rug pulled out from under their feet. And that they should understand it.

The legal validity of the argument "evict the Germans for refugees" is in doubt and the tenants' association will probably proceed against the decision, so I would expect at least. But the fact alone that a city council is trying to pull off this coup shows where the journey is going in Germany.

I would remind you that the legal and technical foundations have been and are being laid for municipalities and the government to arbitrarily cut off electricity by central order in the future, or for e-cars connected for charging to be "emptied" in the event of industrial need and for the proclaimed interest of the greater good. For all disadvantages, which result from it for the private citizen, if he cannot go to work for example on time or not at all, of course not the criminal politics, which has messed up things in such a way that Germany falls apart, is responsible, but said private citizen. And he, too, gets a kick up the backside for the way home: he, too, is being wooed for understanding, because it's all so terribly great.

The Greens, by the way, already want to bring down the 2% defense budget and want to enforce a criterion- and examination-free admission of all asylum seekers in Germany.


I am so done with this lunatic asylum Germany. It is getting worse and worse. In the past it was yearly, now it feels like quarterly. And no, this is not the war. Without the war, these lunatics would be doing even better, because then they wouldn't have to pay tribute to certain constraints caused by the war. But the postponement comes at the price of horrendous interest rates, we can assume.

I some other small village whose name I forgot, with a population of 400, they want to bring in 600 migrants from Syria. And then the adminstrators are surprised that the population turned hostile and revolted - while beign turned into the minority inside their own region.

The biggest enemy of Germans is - their own politicians.

Sooner or later we will get our German equivalent to Trump - or somebody much worse and leaning more right than just right. No matter how extremist this somebody will become, I will deliberately refuse to defend this current order and country by any means, in any way, I will not move the little finger in support and will watch unmoved and passively how desaster unfolds. Im done with this country and these politicians - and these Germans, who not only let everything happen to them without seriously rebelling, but also legitimize these criminals again and again, and bring them to power. I have no kids and no own family, so one could say at my age I have no more own skin in the game.

[Catfish]

^^ my post above yours is certainly only my helpless try of being funny while looking at an unfolding blunder and disaster.

I only hope the pendulum swings into a more rational position.. in the moment there seems to bo no bigger problem in Germany than changing the language to genderism-correct and at the same time awkward articulation.
Good we don't have bigger problems like earthquakes or wars

[Skybird]

A pendulum that swings back to the centre hardly will stopp when being there, but swings through to the other side.


And sorry for not olaughing, but I found Germany not funny to laugh about anymore. Its turning into a desaster, and a fallback to what we thought we had overcome in 1989.