GER politics thread

[Jimbuna]

The German city of Hanover has turned off the heating and switched to cold showers in all public buildings because of the Russian gas crisis.

It's the first big city to turn off the hot water after Russia dramatically reduced Germany's gas supply.

Germans have been told to expect sweeping gas reduction measures and extra charges on their energy bills.

And the EU has agreed to lower demand for Russian gas this winter by 15%.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-62335911

[Skybird]

Justice Minister Marco Buschmann (FDP) and Family Minister Lisa Paus (Greens) present the key points of the new self-determination law: At the registry office, anyone over the age of 14 can determine their own name and gender - even without a sex change. You can change your gender up to once a year. And: Anyone who, for example, names a person's old name after a change (deadnaming) must expect a fine.


Compare to just a few weeks ago:


The Humboldt University in Berlin cancels the lecture of a female scientist at short notice before the "Lange Nacht der Wissenschaften 2022". The biologist and doctoral student at HU, Marie-Luise Vollbrecht, is not allowed to give her lecture "Geschlecht ist nicht gleich Geschlecht. Sex, Gender and why there are only two genders in biology" because she wanted to deduce evolutionary biology, why there are only two genders from a biological point of view and that biological sex (sex) and gender roles (gender) are different things. This is too much science for some activists who call themselves "Arbeitskreis kritischer Jurist*innen an der Humboldt Uni Berlin", accuse the biologist of "transphobia" and threaten to see each other "on the street". Therefore, the university cancels the lecture because of "security concerns". Ideology beats biology.

[Skybird]

Berlin's Grunewald in flames.



Thats as if the Central Park in New York would be burning.

Saddening. The forests and lakes in Berlin are one of the few good things the city has to offer. I tremendously enjoyed staying and wandering around there.

A police blast site was the starting point of the fire. Of the explosive devices still stored on the site, some have already gone off uncontrolled, making an approach dangerous.

The east of Germany is repeatedly affected by the most severe droughts and hot spells in Germany, a hotspot. The forests are dry tinder, the ground completely parched.

I know the place and the surrounding forest area. If the weather, the wind, opposes the emergency forces, they still get real problems, especially since it's Berlin.... If the wind has a good day, they are lucky. Today, a particularly intense heat front is supposed to pass over Germany. The main thing is that any crazy local politicians and administrative dorks do not straddle the emergency forces from the side.

Several fire sources were identified. The fires are currently spreading uncontrollably, they say they currently do not try to extinguish the flames, reason unknown, I assume lacking capacities and risk from explosives in the ground. Could be they need to let the fire widening before they move in on it, so that all explosives have gone off. And that gives the fire huge opportunities. They cannnot let it widening forever. However, its Berlin, so...


Famous AVUS motor highway and a nearby railtrack are completely shut down. The traffic situaton in Berlin could become interesting today.

[Jimbuna]

Looks like the game of 'silly buggas' continues.

Russian energy giant Gazprom says it is impossible to take back a turbine that is vital for gas supplies to Europe due to Western sanctions.

The 12m (40ft) turbine is stranded in Germany after returning from Canada where it was repaired.

Berlin insists the equipment is not affected by sanctions and accuses Russia of not honouring its contracts for political reasons.

On Wednesday, Chancellor Scholz paid a visit to the Siemens Energy factory where the turbine is stranded, and said the turbine was ready to be shipped back to Russia at any time.

"But someone needs to say: I want to have it," he added.

Moscow says it can only reinstall the turbine - and increase gas supply - after it receives documents showing that the turbine does not fall under Western sanctions.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-62408993

[Skybird]

You should have seen Scholz visiting the turbine yesterday. Its a really kind turbine, they say, it must be great to meet it and chat with it, also telling the experts whether or not it is working or not. This chancelloring person knows, and it/he/she does and gets thigns done! And little Bubble-Olaf stood there, and VERY pressingly said that this shows that the Russians have REALLY no reason to not take it back, and that it is all just show - I watched him in disbelief that he was not shy to make himself looking like an idiot once again, I just almost waited and expected him to swing a pathetic fist and stomp his angry feet on the ground, instead he stood there like a preacher, hands folded, and obviously had no idea whatsoever of anything, somethign, whatever. It was a hilarious, almost pitiful sight to see. And he does not even realise what impression he gives to the cameras! Sometimes I can only feel sorry for this pathetic figure, but then I remember how mercilessly greasy he has been throughout his career, shirking any responsibility and always sneaking away and weaseling out. A sloganeer and dazzler of the very first order. A decal of a state-supporting personality. A failed caricature.

Logically, he earned nothing but scorn and mockery and ridicule. The Achse des Guten posted a selection of bitterly ironic, sarcastic comments to an article about the event:

Men staring at turbines

Let it be said that the Chancellor can only grin smurfily and has no sense of humor. That's not true. He just lacks a sense of unintentional humor.

In the gas dispute with Russia, Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD) on Wednesday inspected the turbine for the Nord Stream 1 pipeline, which is being temporarily stored in Mülheim an der Ruhr on its way from Canada to Russia. How now? Didn't Vice Chancellor Habeck already say two weeks ago that the turbine was at Gazprom and that the technical problems were just faked?

By circumventing its own embargo, the clever German government is playing a trick on Putin from which he won't recover for a long time. "By supplying the turbine, we called Putin's bluff," he said. "He can no longer use this pretext or put forward technical reasons for failing to deliver gas."

Now the chancellor himself has visited the gas turbine at Siemens in Erlangen. You can't make this stuff up, and even the weekly show wouldn't have come up with such a crazy idea. Readers and twitterers are having pure fun with this cabaret act. On RP Online, a reader comments, "What nonsense is this Scholz talking about, when he visits the turbine in Mühlheim, it can't very well be delivered to Russia at the same time." And on Twitter, a rj comments on the corresponding Tagesschau report: "I thought he was still on vacation? Wish Turbine lots of fun, take a selfie, he'll never come back."

Particularly entertaining are the almost 900 reader comments on a Welt Online article, they come with delicious humor, here is a small selection:

Wilfried F.: Someone has a screw loose in this game. It's not the turbine.

Georg G.: Humor is when you laugh anyway! I could cringe at the following image: Scholz in his overalls smurfing through the turbine and then certifying that the part is fine!

Harald W.B.: And next week also Mr. Habeck must visit the turbine. On it the week it is then officially adopted by the party executive committees of SPD and Greens to the departure to Russia.

Hassan Liebeaus B.: Men staring at turbines. Coming soon to your cinema

Angelika A.: Build a museum around this turbine and charge admission. This message has comedian format and is cabaret at its best.

Fabian S. I am curious about the meeting with the turbine. It's good to know each Turbine personally.

Hans D.: Sure, we'll visit a turbine. What comes after that? We visit a nuclear power plant and a wind turbine.

Marc D.: The chancellor visits enz turbine:in. Or turbine end? [Refering to typical German gender-correct Schwachkopf-Neusprech, Skybird] Please clarify urgently before this big event.

Holger D.: Visiting things is supposed to work wonders. Perhaps the chancellor should consider kissing the turbine? It is supposed to be a very nice turbine. It will probably be painted in rainbow colors.

Matthias K.: Now we know why the turbine is still in Germany: Scholz was on vacation in the Allgäu and only after his return an appointment was found in which he can announce with the Siemens Energy boss at a photo session that the famous turbine will first go on a tour of Germany so that everyone can say goodbye.

Rebellion Extinction: If necessary, the turbine could be fenced in and admission charged? Students pay half of the entrance fee.

Thomas S.: If the turbine is transported by German Railways, it might take some time.

Heiko M.: Maybe it is a very beautiful turbine and worth seeing.

Johannes H.: Are there also public viewing dates? Or will one be able to admire the turbine during a slow drive, through the whole of Germany?

Ralph A.: I have been waiting for my new car for quite some time. Could Mr. Scholz take a look at where it is?

[Skybird]

What had already been foreshadowed recently has now been confirmed: after Habekc's media-effective trip to Qatar and his loud-mouthed announcement that the Qataris would act as saviors of Germany's energy misery, it now turns out that not only were there and are no contracts, but also that the so-called non-binding "partnership declaration" has completely collapsed like a house of cards. "Aus die Maus." The Qataris were not prepared to accept Germany's terms for a deal on gas or hydrogen, and obviously had no need to respond to the restrictions and time limits that the needy Germans had in mind.

At the time, Habeck lied to the German public about the results of his propagandistically hyped trip.

Why am I not a bit surprised?

[Skybird]

First voices ask what Germany will do about not the next winter - but the winter in two years. Because if Russia does not deliver gas, in spring 2023 the German results will be empty, and despoite lng terminals and repalcmeents sought for, Germany will not be able to build sufficvient reserves for the winter 2023/24. In other words, the seocnd winter from now on is set to become much worse than the winter ahead of us in 2022/23.

To help ourselves by starting to produce our own gas (as is possible) and to extend the use of nuclear energy, still is beign ruled out. Juzst days agao the goivenrment of Lower Saxony has categorically ruled out to extend the use of powerplant Lingen(Emsland), and the fracking of Germany's not small gas reserves also i still beign categorially ruled out. Instead one expects other nations to make sacrifices and provides Germany the energy it rejects to produce itself.



The industry said already in April they could manage to complete delivery of new nuclear fuel by Octobre this year if they would place orders now (=then). The govenrment since then wasted four and a half months, doing nothing, and still doing nothing. Now the dleoivery times have been extended again, globally. If orders for nuclear fuel would be placed now, they will most likely come too late to help preventing power outages in winter when hundreds of thousand of newly bought electric heaters will be switched on simultaneously.



In the coming days, the ships on river Rhine will no longer be able to pass certain key points where the water has dropped below 40cm. (!) Then coal and oil cannot be transported to powerplants anymore. And the railroad? Is in the poorest shape it was ever in during my whole lifetime, and already in better shape was not able to replace shipping of these quantities of coal via waterways.



Hehehe! Deutschland schafft sich ab. Self-made and self-inflicted.


I hope that this winter there will be a real crack and creak in the woodwork and that many people will be seized by the great jitters - from cold and from naked fear - and that there will be a serious crisis. I really hope so: because it seems that only hard lessons of suffering can bring about necessary learning and adaptation processes to reality. So far, ideology and hubris still beats the necessary will to adapt, and politics is still in self-destruction mode in order not to have to give up cherished ideologisms and delusions and not to have to admit that one was on the wrong track for years and decades.
Nobody takes the German energy turnaround as a model - the others are not that stupid! Germany is the lauhging joke of the world.

[Jimbuna]

Originally Posted by Skybird

Germany is the lauhging joke of the world.

Only after we rid ourselves of Boris

[Skybird]

The Rhine at Duisburg...





... and Köln





They say gas is a problem. I object to that. I say: soon electrical power will be our greatest problem.


The ideology-driven Schwachkopf-regime still refuses to consider ordering new nuclear fuel and extend the runnign time of three to be shut down powerplants and reatuvating threee others that from the technical side is in a state that this is possible.



The governmental suicide squad also still refuses to consider fracking German gas of which we seem to have so much that it would keep us afloat until far into the next century.


Bubble-Olaf did not like what the Norwegian government told him: that Norway cannot produce more gas and that it is not willing to agree short-termed contracts of limited duration as the Germans wanted them.



The suicide squad in Berlin still rates ideology and party illusions above state reason, rationality and national interest. Not to mention: the common good. "The party, the party over everything, over everything in the world..."



Bubble-Olaf still blocks any European pposiiton to make Russians responmisble for their silent support of the war and Putin. He still tries to marginaölise it by calling it "Putin'S war." Easteuropean and Baltic state viscously object to that naive view, and rightly so.


Berlin still blocks delioveries of amroured troops carriers thsat stand readfy fpor dleiovery by the many dfozens, Belrin doe snto want the ukrainian counteroffenve to run too successfully, so to not "not-appease" their gas master in Moscow. Forgive that word, I only try to follow Bubble-Olaf's illusive, evasive word mastery.



Plenty of super-specific super-clever caöculations done in Germany on what to save in en ergy to make it over so and so muzcn time. What they all desperately ignore is that if Russia sees that the German mind game works, they will just shut down the remaining 20% of transport volumes for gas, too, to make sure that it will not work.



I'm tired of having to look at Habeck's offended face when he announces one more time and then again that Russia won't let itself be defenseless in the face of what Europe is doing and will fight back with means that hurt us. What did this whiner expect...? He tries to bribe the Germans by fishing for sympathy. That is so insidious. I cannot get it why so many Germans fall for him, while he still blocks needed measures to secure even minimums of safe power supply.



Germany would need 30-35 LNG tankers exclusively driving for Germany to cover its trnasportaion needs once the LHNG temrinals are ready next year. The market has not this many free ships. So far, Germany managed to charter 4 such tankers. 4 of 30-36.



Next winter will become far worse than the now coming one.



What remains is whistling alone in the dark forest. I hope that the chillfs from the cold and trembling with fear and financial worries goes deep into the bones of the Germans, so that they finally learn to walk upright and defend themselves against the political caste and rotten ideologues that have brought us to this pass and still try to drive us ever deeper into the mess.

[Skybird]

Die Welt:

Natural gas is actually a scarce and expensive commodity in Germany. Nevertheless, significantly more electricity was produced by gas-fired power plants in July than in the same month last year. While the amount of electricity generated in July 2021 was 3558 gigawatt hours, one year later it was 4036 gigawatt hours. This is an increase of 13.5 percent, according to the Federal Network Agency's electricity market data portal Smard.

In May 2022, the amount of electricity generated was also significantly higher than in the previous year, although in June it was slightly lower. Looking ahead to 2020, the figures for all three months are again well above all the values for 2021 and 2022. Gas-fired power plants, for example, generated 5888 gigawatt hours of electricity in July 2020.

The industry association Zukunft Gas suspects that the reason for the current plus is a sharp increase in demand for electricity from France, where numerous nuclear power plants are currently not on the grid, and from Switzerland, where not as much electricity can currently be produced from hydropower due to the drought.

Already in the second quarter, electricity exports from Germany to France had increased almost six-fold compared to the previous year. In the case of exports to Switzerland, the increase was even more than six times. "These quantities of electricity were probably produced and exported in part with gas-fired power plants," a spokesman told the Deutsche Presse-Agentur.
Federal Network Agency speaks of "solidarity" - and expects gas shortage

In this context, the President of the Federal Network Agency, Klaus Müller, had spoken on the ZDF talk show "Markus Lanz" of an effect that had something to do with "neighborly solidarity", "even if it is not desirable from a gas point of view".

At the same time, Müller believes a gas shortage is likely, at least regionally. "Presumably, the restrictions would first be temporary and can also end again or occur several times," said authority head Klaus Müller to the website "t-online" in an interview published on Thursday. In that case, he said, it would be necessary to ensure that gas was transported well across the country.

To avoid a gas shortage, he said, it must be ensured that gas imports will be larger next year - for example, because the two additional private liquefied natural gas terminals will be ready as early as possible or Germany will receive additional gas from France. "Then we could expect to fill our storage facilities faster again next summer."

Mueller believes it is unlikely that the storage facilities will be nearly full before this winter. "We miss an average fill level of 95 percent by November 1 in all our scenarios. We'll barely manage that because individual storage facilities started from a very low fill level."


----


Skybird says: the fun starts next year. Next summer storage facilities will start from a much lower level than this year. The LNG terminals as planned so far can replace only 20-25% of the Russian gas volume, and the govenrment has managed to find only four available LNG tankers - of a needed 30-35. Also, these tankers need to be filled before they cna unload in Germany, and the avialability of LNG starts to become more difficult than expected (German for: hoped). Quatar: fail. Norway: cannot and do not want to deliver more. US: growing resistance there to keep bigger gas reserves for themselves, longterm perspective of access to that gas, from a German point of view: unclear.



Electricity will become the bigger problem than gas anyway, I think. Europe will not leave the crisis mode any time soon. Not for many years to come.



If ever during the rest of my lifetime. Yes, this time my sense of realism ticks indeed very pessimistic.


-------------


waterstandings in German rivers still are critically low, some locations report weater levels of "Zero". Ships have started to no longer ship loadings, because it is not economic for them, the costs are not covered anymore, so they stay docked. Ciosts had jumped up high already for shipping, because ships were loadedonly 50%, and less. From some number on the finances just do not click green anymore.



At some points ships sail with less than 30cm water under the keel.


---------------


We got oil last week, and paid twice as much as last time, early January. I got a raise for eletricla power from the Public Utilities, a raise of 20% for electrical power. I expected more, but more can still come later ony.



Its very different in different places in Germany, the rising prices are not equal everywhere, due to public utilities and private providers all manage and budget on their own account and within their own responsibility. With different outcomes, over time.

[Skybird]

NZZ:


It's bizarre: Germany is bailing out Uniper, an energy company majority-owned by the Finnish state, in part through the gas levy. Protecting Uniper's owners is wrong, but it won't change the coming jump in costs for natural gas customers.

German energy giant Uniper, majority-owned by the Finnish state and now reporting a net loss of more than 12 billion euros, has been a resounding failure with its business strategy. Now it is being partially nationalized to the tune of 30 percent and is being rescued from insolvency mainly by the German taxpayer and by German natural gas customers (companies and private individuals) through the planned gas levy. Couldn't there have been a better solution?

The Düsseldorf-based company with its 11,500 employees is, among other things, a major energy trader, buying and selling natural gas and coal, for example. The former E.On subsidiary is now 78 percent owned by the Finnish energy group Fortum, which in turn is almost 51 percent owned by the Finnish state.

For years, Germany's largest gas importer did lucrative business with Russia and cultivated its ties to Moscow. Management praised Russia as a reliable supplier, was one of Gazprom's biggest customers in Europe and played a key role in driving the construction of the Nord Stream 1 and 2 Baltic Sea pipelines.

These businesses are now in ruins. In addition to substantial write-downs, the massive gas supply cuts by Gazprom and Russia in recent weeks and months have become an existential problem. Uniper now has to buy the missing cheap natural gas from Russia very expensively on the market at current prices in order, in turn, to meet its contractual obligations to its own customers, who, however, can still pay the prices contractually agreed before the war. This fact has plunged Uniper, whose customers include over a hundred municipal utilities and industrial companies, into an existential crisis.

Uniper is not alone in distress. Twelve companies are said to have applied for compensation of 34 billion euros in view of the planned gas levy, but more than half of the sum is attributable to Uniper. As a result of the gas levy, private individuals and companies will have to pay 2.42 cents more per kilowatt hour from October onwards, which will mean a borderline burden for many customers - irrespective of the planned reduction in value-added tax on natural gas, which the Chancellor has just announced.

The state-orchestrated stopgap gas surcharge may be economically justifiable, but once again it also creates misaligned incentives. It is wrong to save the owners of Uniper, the shareholders, among whom there are hardly any private investors, from the total loss they have brought on themselves. The same applies to the owners of corporate bonds. The state should have sent the Group into insolvency, but then de facto taken it over and at the same time ensured its smooth operational survival. After the restructuring, it could then have been reprivatized.

Unfortunately, it is unavoidable to continue serving creditors from the corporate world, because Uniper is too interconnected to fail completely. This interconnectedness would otherwise have sent hardly foreseeable shock waves through Europe, including Switzerland, similar to what once happened with the uncontrolled bankruptcy of the investment bank Lehman Brothers.

Furthermore, in an ideal world, only Uniper's customers should have been held accountable for the now higher prices, and not the totality of all natural gas consumers. The same would apply to other distressed natural gas traders and, in turn, to their customers. In this way, customers would also painfully learn to be much more aware of supplier risks in the future.

In the end, however, there was probably no justifiable alternative for the operational rescue of Uniper. This also applies to the planned passing on of the enormously high natural gas prices to private individuals and companies. This is the price Germany has to pay for Russia's attack on Ukraine, the subsequent exchange of blows between the West and Moscow, and above all for its self-inflicted dependence on once cheap Russian natural gas.
--------------
This is the price to be paid for an "energy transformation" that is as blasé and out of touch with reality as it is dreamed up in a planned economy scheme. Have the ladies and gentlemen top experts and know-it-alls at least somehow become more modest and less know-it-all and ideologically whipped up? No. Of course not. They don't need any proofs of their wisdom, and a reality that disproves them doesn't bother them. They "know" that they know better and, above all: they mean well. That beats competence and knowledge any time these days.

[Jimbuna]

^ Crazy times indeed

[Catfish]

Germany's chancellor Scholz has outruled further weapone support for Ukraine.
Out of gratitude Putin will stop gas delivery to Germany completely from august 28th to september 2nd.
There should be either a revolution or some of us will see to other means.

[Jimbuna]

Not having a go at Germany Kai but I'd not be very happy either if it was the UK acting in such a manner.

[Skybird]

The Achse des Guten writes:


German illusions at the gas tap

"Illusions, blooming reality," the song says. German politicians also love illusions. Some, for example, can believe so intensely in saving gas supplies that they accept disastrous consequences in return.

My highly esteemed colleague Wolfgang Kubicki [prominent member of the FDP, Skybird] recently called for the Nord Stream 2 pipeline to be put into operation. He concedes that the technical problems with Nord Stream 1 are pretextual, but he says we should not make it so easy for the Kremlin to get away with it. He therefore believes that it is expedient to open Nord Stream 2, because there is no point in "driving Germany up the wall," to put it succinctly.

First of all, I find it extremely welcome that - finally - lively debates are being held again in Germany. This applies explicitly even when opinions are expressed that I do not share or even consider aberrant.

I do not share Kubicki's view for the following reasons:

1. there is agreement insofar as it makes no sense to ruin Germany. I have demonstrably held this view for a long time. For this, it is of fundamental importance to provide the country with a reliable and stable supply of inexpensive energy.

However, the statement that it is clear that the technical problems with Nord Stream 1 are pretextual and the demand on the other hand that Nord Stream 2 be put into operation are contradictory. It is the same way of thinking that concludes that if one wind turbine does not provide enough energy when there is no wind, then build more. Multiplying by 0 is and remains 0.

No gas from two pipelines is also no solution

Since there is apparently agreement that Putin turns on and off the gas tap at will, i.e. that gas deliveries are not reliable, the danger for Germany cited by Kubicki has not been averted by the commissioning of Nord Stream 2. Whether one or two pipelines do not deliver gas, or sometimes more and sometimes less, is irrelevant.

A stable energy supply would therefore not be ensured even with Nord Stream 2. This is wishful thinking at best, but it has also been a characteristic feature of German policy up to now.

The idea expressed by him that one should not make it so easy for the Kremlin is irrelevant with regard to the issue of security of supply. It is a pedagogical consideration, the purpose of which is apparently to convince even the last doubter. Whether this will succeed is rather unlikely. Those who have not understood it so far will not understand it further.

If one wanted to have cheap and reliable energy, there would be various other possibilities. Before these are not exhausted, considerations are forbidden, a state, which leads a war of aggression and this also still in criminal way, additional sources of income to provide. This is by no means a moral consideration, but a foreign and security policy one. It is in our own interest.

With its "dumbest energy policy", Germany has truly earned the worldwide gloating. It is understandable that those who bear responsibility for this policy want to continue it today. A tried and tested means is the presentation of a supposed "lack of alternatives.

This, however, is not the case. The possibility of fracking for gas extraction has been sufficiently pointed out. If fracking had been started immediately in recognition of the turn of the times, the gas problems would have been largely obsolete this winter. The FDP is in government - why didn't they make sure of that? There is still time now, too.

The mendacity of the debate

But there is not only fracked gas, there is also quite "normal" natural gas. Germany's reserves are limited in this respect, but they are enough for this winter and for many more to come. It would be possible to expand existing gas production in the short term. The FDP is in government - why didn't it make sure of that? Here, too, the clock is ticking.

Incidentally, there is still coal seam gas from mines; here, politics shines through inaction. Coal-fired power plants could come back online on a larger scale, nothing is happening.

The mendacity of the debate is made clear by the fact that people are still arguing about the necessity of continuing to operate the last nuclear power plants. Those who exacerbate the problem by shutting down the nuclear power plants see no urgency whatsoever. But then we don't need to talk about Nord Stream 2 at all.

So it is by no means the case that a catastrophic winter has to come. If it does come, it will be because German politicians have not done everything in their power to avert it.

3 The consideration of opening Nord Stream 2 is therefore neither imperative because there would be other ways, nor is it expedient because a reliable gas supply would not be secured even then.

However, such an approach would have significant negative consequences, which have been largely ignored so far. Our partners in the EU (as well as other allies) have insistently tried to dissuade us from an energy policy that weakens us and makes us dependent, but in contrast strengthens a potential and, for all to see, belligerent opponent. Outside Germany, our role is viewed extraordinarily critically across party lines. This is considerably underestimated here. German money was used to build up the Russian war machinery, as were German components. The unwillingness to see Russia as the danger it represents and to counter recognizable dangers inadequately with continued wishful thinking were major factors contributing to this war.

Wishful thinking leads to dependence

Likewise, it is clear that Putin is counting on the effeminate Germans to buckle at the first problems, which would drive a wedge into the Western alliance. It is not for nothing that just when the discussion about Nord Stream 2 is boiling up here, no more gas comes via Nord Stream 1, he tightens the thumbscrews, so to speak. If we were to give in to his blackmail, the consequences would be catastrophic and far-reaching: The pressure for change toward a sensible energy policy would be gone (which politicians would welcome), and Germany would continue to depend on Putin's mercy. The Western alliance, already increasingly alienated, would clearly distance itself from us, which is in line with Putin's calculations.

There is already a realistic danger that the Central and Eastern European states, together with Scandinavia, the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand (probably also with Singapore, South Korea and Taiwan), will form an axis in which Germany no longer plays a role. We would then be more clearly cut off from world trade than we could imagine in our worst dreams, because China could not compensate for this even if it wanted to. It is obvious that complete dependence (on Russia for energy, on China for the economy) is fatal for us. However, this danger is already looming because of the behavior of the German government, which has proven to be too uncertain a cantonist. Worldwide, it is very clearly noted that there is an enormous gap between words and deeds with regard to Russian aggression.

But if Germany does not even get its act together now, but buckles, we will also lose the support of other European partners. Whether states in South America or Africa go along with the strict line against Russia or not is irrelevant in the end. Their economies do not play this significant role, and they are also strategically far from the firing line with regard to this war. Germany is a different story.

So commissioning Nord Stream 2 does not reliably ensure a warm winter. This is pure wishful thinking. On the contrary, it increased dependence on Russia and at the same time minimized the pressure to finally implement a rational energy policy. In terms of foreign, security and economic policy, such an approach would have very serious, negative consequences in the long term. Many of those who currently advocate commissioning are closing their eyes to these consequences. Often - as is unfortunately also the case with Mr. Kubicki - it is precisely those who have already completely misjudged Putin and his intentions.

It is a negative characteristic of German politics that one accepts disastrous long-term consequences for a supposed, short-term advantage. These are ignored, glossed over, or people who point them out are muzzled. We are now seeing the result. If Germany does not show that it is learning from its mistakes, we will be lonely. And we will have to ask ourselves whether we really want to belong to the states that will then be our partners. Because, let's not kid ourselves: If we open Nord Stream 2 now, despite everything, there will be no turning back. Everything else is an illusion.

How did Udo Jürgens once sing? „Illusionen, blühende Wirklichkeit, zum Tanz der Jugendzeit. Ein erster Hauch von Leid wird sie verwehen.“ (Illusions, blooming reality, to the dance of youth. A first breath of sorrow will blow them away.)