Do they mean the Energiewende (the Green renewable “energy turnaround”)?
Oh. They’re only talking about Wirecard. Yeah. That one was pretty cool too. Peanuts compared to the Energiewende fraud, though. But still.
The tech company Wirecard was embraced by the German élite. But a reporter discovered that behind the façade of innovation were lies and links to Russian intelligence.
Olaf Scholz has not delivered on his sweeping vision for a more modern, more active German military.
And anybody who thinks will ever live up to their promises about defense spending is a fool.
Chancellor Olaf Scholz summarized his country’s approach to the war in Ukraine. “Despite all the pressure to take action,” he said, “caution must take priority over hasty decisions, unity over solo actions.” The line provided Scholz’s most explicit defense to date of Germany’s cycle of denial and delay.
A year ago, Scholz announced a special investment fund of more than 100 billion euros to strengthen the German military, but less than a third of those euros have been assigned to contracts. Defense Minister Boris Pistorius recently aired concerns that Germany’s stockpiles have been depleted by its generous transfers to Ukraine. These comments strain common sense when most of the “special funds” remained unspent until December, when lawmakers finally approved the first procurements. This month, Scholz also abandoned plans to establish a National Security Council, a body that would have been well suited to manage an expanded role in the defense of Europe.
A German politician’s unfortunate slip twenty years ago, “children instead of Indians,” certainly didn’t work.
Demographics can be a bitch.
Germany aims to ease visa process for India’s IT workers – Berlin wants to encourage information technology experts from India to come and work in Germany. The plan would be to make it easier for them to come to the country with their families.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said on Sunday that his government wants to ease the path for information technology experts from India to obtain work visas in Germany.
While Germany faces a shortfall in skilled worker numbers, India cannot always provide jobs for its large, young population.
Ukraine updates: Germans see arming Ukraine as involvement.
A poll conducted by Germany’s DPA news agency suggests many Germans disapprove of arming Ukraine in its war against Russia. Meanwhile, Russia’s Medvedev denied the country was running out of missiles.
Fifty-one percent of the respondents thought arming Ukraine meant being part of the war, an argument that Russia has been pushing. Meanwhile, 37% disagreed with the statement.
Germany has approved some €2.6 billion ($2.75 billion) worth of weapons and armaments since the start of the war.
Forty percent of those polled considered the amount of weapons support from Germany to be too much, 22% thought it was too little, and 23% thought it was just the right amount.
That means bureaucracy.
Warning: This is taken from yet another regularly occuring German article about how German bureaucracy is way out of control and somebody needs to finally do something about it but no one ever will of course because everybody here in Germany knows this is precisely the way the Germans like to have it.
Germany’s aging bureaucracy risks undermining ambitions – From immigration to the energy transition, the success of Germany’s biggest economic priorities relies on an increasingly older, paperbound bureaucracy getting its act together.
When will it ever end?
Turtles from America are spreading – North American freshwater turtles have arrived in Europe with the pet trade. Three species are now native to Baden-Württemberg. For local turtles, the immigrants could become a danger.
And these weren’t the first animal imperialists either. The next thing you know they’ll move up to house pet level and American German Shepards will start taking over.
Kill the trees!
Those windmill thingies are kind of like trees so deal with it, conservationists. You can’t have both. Boy, these Greens sure have come a long way, haven’t they?
Germany’s wind energy: Conservationists fear for forests – Germany is counting on wind energy to help replace fossil fuels. But critics say massive investment in the sector is ignoring a different environmental crisis.
By 2032, the government wants to have 2% of land area allocated for onshore wind power. This means installing between 1,000 and 1,500 new turbines a year, or four to five a day by 2030, as German Chancellor Olaf Scholz recently said.
Germany needs wind energy to meet its goal of becoming carbon neutral by 2045, a target it’s currently in danger of missing, according to multiple studies. The country also missed its emissions reduction targets the last two years in a row, according to think tank Agora Energiewende.
“If Germany fails to meet its climate targets, we will not be able to demand that others meet theirs,” Germany’s Economy and Climate Minister Robert Habeck said in February.
That means deportations. German deportations. Deportations that don’t work, in other words. Migrants deported for criminal offences just turn around and come right back to Germany again. Why, how criminal or something. That they’re able to do so, I mean.
Thousands of deported migrants reenter Germany – Nearly 6,500 people deported from Germany sneaked back to the country over the past three years, police told Bild newspaper.
Citing federal police statistics, the newspaper said 6,495 foreigners had returned or tried to return over the past three years.
During that period, the number of returnees increased by 74%.
“These numbers reveal the enormous gaps in Interior Minister Nancy Faeser‘s security policy.”
That means refugee chaos. You know, as in “Germany threatened with new refugee chaos?”
Hey, what’s one million+ refugees and migrants (every year) for a country like Germany (80 million inhabitants – a considerable number of those also refugees)? Ain’t no big deal. Nancy Faeser (SPD) says she has everything under control.
Germany faces repeat of 2015 refugee crisis as 1mn Ukrainians seek safety – Figure exceeds number of migrants who arrived in the country in 2015-16.
Germany is facing a refugee crisis on an even greater scale than in 2015-16 when almost 1mn asylum-seekers surged into the country, officials said, as Ukrainians pour into Europe’s largest economy in search of safety.
“The problem is now bigger than it was at the peak of 2016,” said Reinhard Sager, head of the Association of German Counties, saying the huge number of Ukrainians had come on top of the many immigrants from other countries as well as those who arrived in 2015-16.
“The mood in the country threatens to tip over,” said Peter Beuth, interior minister of the western region of Hesse. He called on Berlin to do more to reduce the numbers of migrants by speeding up the deportation of failed asylum-seekers to their countries of origin.
The same pointed political messages, the same leftist championing of disturbing themes, the same provocative (yawn) political exhibitionism from woke virtue signaling political stooges everywhere. What to expect? The same procedure as every year, James.
Berlinale: What to expect at the 2023 Berlin film festival – A look at the highlights of the Berlinale, from the stars on the red carpet to the competition for the Golden and Silver Bears, and the festival’s focus on Ukraine and Iran...
The festival publishes detailed statistics related to gender diversity. Only six films in the competition are directed by women; but taken together, 38.7% of the current productions are directed by women, and 4% of them by non-binary filmmakers.
While there are not any African titles in the main competition, sections such as Panorama and Forum feature several works from the continent.
Observing Hermann 