Germany

Winter is coming: German agency head warns of gas shortages, bankruptcies, and massive price hikes that will send ‘shockwaves throughout the country’

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.

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by Sarcasticat••0•Posted inEnergy shortages, Germany

Germany: Top court rules against ex-Chancellor Merkel in AfD spat

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.

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted inGermany

Jewish Life in Germany ‘Under Massive Threat’ – But from whom?

… 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.

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted in"Islamophobia", Anti-Semitism, Anti-Semitism and the Left, Germany

Why didn’t Angela Merkel listen to Donald Trump?

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.

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted inGermany, President Trump, USA

No regrets over handling of Vladimir Putin, says Angela Merkel

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.

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted in"Ukraine - Russia", Germany, WTF?

One person reportedly killed, 30 injured as “German Armenian” drives car into crowd in Berlin … motive unknown

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.

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted inGermany, WTF?

‘We were all wrong’: how Germany got hooked on Russian energy

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.”

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted in"Ukraine - Russia", Germany

Germany’s dangerous dependency on China

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. 

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted in"China - Communist Slave State", "The China Class", Germany

Criticize multiculturalism and become a pariah

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.

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted in"Cancel Culture", "Diversity", "Islamophobia", "Multiculturalism", Germany, Islam, Islam and violence, Islamization of the West

Germany has not sent promised large arms to Ukraine, leaked documents show

German broadsheet Welt says it has seen official papers that show Germany has not supplied any significant weapons to Ukraine for weeks

Germany has failed to provide any heavy weapons to Ukrainian forces in recent weeks and appears to be scaling back its military support in a break from Western policy, leaked documents have revealed.

German broadsheet Welt said it had seen official papers that showed Germany had not supplied any significant weapons to Ukraine since the end of March, despite vowing to grant its forces the weapons they need to repulse the Russian army.

In the nine weeks since the end of March Germany has made just two deliveries to Ukraine consisting of small arms.

In contrast with Western allies who are sending huge quantities of anti-tank and air defence weaponry such as NLAW launchers, as well as artillery, Germany has provided around 4,600 anti-tank mines.

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted in"Ukraine - Russia", Germany

Afghan Accused of Sexually Abusing Two Ukrainian Refugee Children

An Afghan migrant who worked as security at German asylum accommodation has been accused of sexually abusing two Ukrainian refugee children aged six and seven.

The alleged abuse is said to have taken place at asylum accommodation in the town of Meßstetten in Baden-Württemberg, where the 24-year-old Afghan was contracted to work security.

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted in"Islamophobia", Germany, Islam, Islam and violence, Islamization of the West

Germany: Knife attack on train leaves 5 wounded – Muslim suspect a known wolf prone to ‘religious radicalization’

Several people are being treated in hospital after being injured during an attack on a train in the western German state of North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW), officials said on Friday.

Herbert Reul, the NRW state interior minister, said six people were wounded, including the suspected attacker. Reul said the suspect struck passengers “indiscriminately and arbitrarily.”

Reul also said that “based on everything that we know so far,” investigators believed the perpetrator’s intent was to harm as many people as possible.

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted in"Islamophobia", Germany, Islam, Islam and violence, Islamization of the West

Jeremy Warner: Thatcher’s prophetic view of German reunification

Rewind 32 years to one of those moments of great euphoria in European affairs — the reunification of West and East Germany. The celebrations were by no means confined to Germany. There was rejoicing too in the United States and much of the rest of the West, for Germany’s rebirth as a single country seemed powerfully symbolic of the end of the Cold War and the defeat of communism.

Both these two latter outcomes had long been the primary foreign policy goal of Britain’s then prime minister, Margaret Thatcher. But German reunification? This was regarded in No. 10 with great suspicion and foreboding.

Thatcher’s doubts have in many ways proved prophetic, no more so than in Germany’s deeply ambivalent attitude to today’s war in Ukraine, where Berlin seems, Janus-like, to face both ways.

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted inGermany

France and Germany evaded arms embargo to sell weapons to Russia

Paris and Berlin sent Moscow £230m of military hardware, including bombs, rockets and missiles, that is likely being used in Ukraine

France and Germany armed Russia with €273 million (£230 million) of military hardware now likely being used in Ukraine, an EU analysis shared with The Telegraph has revealed.

They sent equipment, which included bombs, rockets, missiles and guns, to Moscow despite an EU-wide embargo on arms shipments to Russia, introduced in the wake of its 2014 annexation of Crimea.

The European Commission was this month forced to close a loophole in its blockade after it was found that at least 10 member states exported almost €350 million (£294 million) in hardware to Vladimir Putin’s regime. Some 78 per cent of that total was supplied by German and French firms.

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted in"Ukraine - Russia", France, Germany