German middle finger, too

 Hans Modrow, the last Communist prime minister of East Germany, died at age 95. Many of today's news reports mention that he oversaw democratic reforms that opened the way to German reunification in 1989. However, they don't mention that in 1993 he was convicted of vote rigging in the municipal elections held in Dresden in May,1989. Or that he gave orders to destroy incriminating Stasi files.

It's quite interesting to consider Modrow's career path. He was a Nazi soldier in WW2 who the Soviets captured and sent to an anti-Fascist indoctrination camp. 

April 11. 2023

 Austria plans to extend checks at its borders with Slovenia and Hungary by another six months from May 11, when the current six-month suspension of free travel over those boundaries expires, and I bet Germany doesn't complain. Illegal immigration is a major world-wide issue regardless of the feelgood rhetoric.

April 20, 2023

"Flashes of Memory: Photography During the Holocaust" is an interesting exhibition that moved from Israel for the first time and is currently presented at Berlin's Museum of Photography. It's a reminder that photography during the Nazi era was used as a tool to manipulate the public opinion but also served to document atrocities for later war crimes trials. So kids, you gotta take the good with the bad. Learn from history, don't deny or erase it.

May 24, 2023

The Fehmarn Belt Tunnel, the world’s longest immersed tunnel, will link Denmark and Germany, and create a land route between Sweden and Central Europe that will be 160 kilometers shorter than it is today.

June 14, 2023

Germany boosts coal imports from Colombia while seeking to phase out fossil fuels at home.

July 12, 2023

 AfD, which is labeled the far right, has nationwide support in Germany of 20%., mostly due to the out of control migration problem. No one wants to work with them, nor address the migration problem. Demonization of AfD is not working.

July 24, 2023

Friederich Merz, the leader of center-right CDU in Germany, now claims he'll work with the AfD on the local level. His tune will change more.

Aug 7, 2023

AFD's polling numbers are on the rise in Germany while it calls the EU a failed project. Will CDU have to work with AFD?

Sept 22, 2023

Is Bavaria with its own border police, the "Texas" of Germany?

Oct 9, 2023

Free Voters and the AfD look set to claim around 30% of Bavaria's vote. Soder(CSU) needs an attitude adjustment. 1, 3, and 4 are center right to right. 

nov 18, 2023:

On November 12, the old 485s trains(Coke cans) took their last runs on Berlin streets. 

Jan 14, 2024

The Dortmund District Court in Germany is pressing forward with deportation proceedings for a Tajik national accused of planning the New Year's Eve terror attack on Cologne Cathedral.

I'm stunned.

Feb 21, 2024

Hamburg is testing debit card for asylum-seekers to prevent state benefits from being sent outside the country. And one recipient is mad because she can't send money back home to pay her debts.

Feb 23, 2024

Former Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz, who is charged with making false statements to a parliamentary inquiry into alleged corruption, will receive the court verdict soon. He could get three years in jail.

April 9, 2024

Germany sends its first soldiers for a permanent Lithuania force to be named Panzerbrigade 45.

Lithuania has a border with the Russian Baltic Sea exclave of Kaliningrad and Belarus.

Suwalki Gap is around the border between Lithuania and Poland, and centers on the shortest path between Belarus and the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad Oblast on the Polish side of the border. 

April 18, 2024

Bavaria asks: Get drunk, not high at Oktoberfest. In my party days, I'd say why not both.

June 5, 2024

Germany will likely deport Afghan migrants who pose a security threat back to Afghanistan, which runs counter to its usual stance of not repatriating people to countries where they are threatened with death. It's election time!

Interior minister Interior Minister Nancy Faeser said it must be done quickly.

June 24, 2024

   Djir-Sarai , one of Scholz' coalition partners, calls for a slash to benefits for Ukrainian refugees in Germany, while Scholz suggests Milei work on more socially acceptable policies in Argentina.

Sarai serves on the Committee on Foreign Affairs.

August 17, 2024

Nancy Faeser, the IM of Germany, gave a chilling response, to a German court provisionally lifting the ban on Compact, a right-leaning magazine. Basic Law "expressly provides an instrument to ban organizations in order to protect democracy from enemies of the constitution."

Aug 28, 2024

Germany’s AfD party is using opposition to renewable energy projects in rural areas to clinch its first wins in two east German state elections on 9/1/24.

It proposes tougher new planning rules for constructing turbines

Sept 5, 2024

AfD's record result in the eastern German state of Thuringia confuses so many folks. The center and mild right  refusal to deal with migration issues is the major reason for the AFD's success. 

Sept 16, 2024

Austria's Chancellor Karl Nehammer 's response to Germany tightening its border controls will be to send more people eastward towards the Balkans. No one is listening to the EU bosses.

Sept 25, 2024

 Nouripour and co-leader, Ricarda Lang, who took the helm of the German Green party in early 2022, are stepping down after disappointing  election results in eastern Germany. 

Sept 29, 2024

Germany has stopped approving war weapons exports to Israel, but continues to insist that there is no ban in place.

It appears many weapons' approvals were granted late in 2023 but  the spigot has been nearly shut in 2024.

Nov 8, 2024

AFD is pushing for Chancellor Scholz, whose coalition has disintegrated, to face a vote of confidence next week. I bet he won't.

Earlier blog on Germany:  

German middle finger

The German middle finger

 

My blog entry  Sour Krauts  has ambled off the tracks so here's the latest on the German approach  to Covid. #visitberlin , a tourism board, insults the public/anti-maskers .

 Oct 17

I never heard of Currywurst, but German fast food restaurant Herman Ze German on Monday announced the closure of its London outlets, which specializes in it. 

Nov 21

 One  participant  in the protests against the latest German covid law restrictions wore a face mask with the words "Merkel-Muzzle," Many of the pro-law legislators are upset that there law is being compared to  the Enabling Act of 1933 that paved the way towards Adolf Hitler's dictatorship, as if they're being nicer about restricting rights.

Dec 13

AfD's #AliceWeidel on the pandemic: It has served to "accelerate and worsen" existing trends, such as the "mainstreaming" of political correctness.

Jan 22, 2021

I wonder why #Navalny returned to Russia where he is being held in Matrosskaya Tishina prison in Moscow. They imprisoned  him for failing to report regularly under the terms of a suspended sentence while he was recovering in Germany and for libeling a WW2 veteran. His current detention has  increased pressure on Germany to halt a Russian gas pipeline.

Feb 7, 2021

#Stasi operation , "Aktion Licht" (Light Mission),  was conducted in  a few days January 1962 to fill the GDR  coffers with foreign currency by securing state ownership of valuable paintings, silverware, postage stamps, porcelain and stocks.   Here's one of the tactics:  the implementation of an exorbitant tax for owners of works of art in East Germany, and the confiscation of that property if the taxes weren't paid.

March 4, 2021

BFV, Germany’s intelligence agency, opened an investigation into the AFD as a potential threat to the constitutional order, which is vague enough to make one wonder if this is a political hit. If the BFV has proof  of actual threats , other than we think they're too far right, then spell it out clearly. This type of investigation into a political group elected to the federal parliament is without precedent in the country’s  recent history and could remind some of  a Hitleresque move in the 1930s.

June 9, 2021

 As NATO forces prepare to withdraw from Afghanistan, Germany plans to send more than 22,500 liters of beer home along with its 1,100 troops

June 14, 2021

Some members of the The Green Party in Germany want their chancellor candidate to run the country, but don't want the word German used in their campaign slogans . It's one of many reasons for their recent slide in polling numbers.

Aug 8, 2021

On July 20, 2021 a court in Berlin ruled against Saxony-Anhalt's  block on a fee increase arguing that the funding of public broadcasting could not be jeopardized, especially in times of "increasingly complex information on the one hand, and of one-sided representations, filter bubbles, fake news and deep fakes on the other hand."  So the court  is also saying that public broadcasting is free of bias. WOW!!!!!

And this week a federal court upheld the ruling.

Oct, 1, 2021

Ms Furchner (96) , a former secretary of an SS commander  of  the #Stutthof concentration camp, was nabbed after taking a taxi to skip her trial as a juvenile  for WW2 war crimes. The case against her relies on German legal precedent that anyone who helped Nazi death camps and concentration camps function can be prosecuted as an accessory to the murders committed there, even without evidence of participation in a specific crime.

Nov  21, 2021

Austrian Chancellor Schallenberg's lockdown on 8.9 million Austrians starts tomorrow. Citizens will not be allowed to leave home except to go to work, shop for essentials and exercise for 20 days with a plan evaluation after 10 days.

Next, there are plans for making vaccination against COVID-19 mandatory in the country beginning February 1, 2022.  Hitler, who was born in Austria, is laughing in his grave.

Jan 22, 2022

Germany keeps proving it's in Putin's pocket by blocking Estonia from providing German-origin military support to Ukraine.

May 24, 2022

I haven't looked at the Krauts in awhile.  Germany is negotiating gas field exploration  in Senegal.

Polish energy group Unimot is expanding international trading as it seeks to import diesel to German via a terminal in Denmark.

June 27, 2022

Vienna, Austria topped the list of most-livable cities in an annual index published by The Economist, which used stability, health care, culture environment, education, and infrastructure to create the rankings. I'm unsure how one measures stability.

July 2, 2022

Food for thought from history: Some view Germany's occupation of Ukraine in 1918 as little more than expansion under a cloak of self-determination with priorities to extract grain and raw materials.

July 4, 2022

Looking back to summer of 1848 in Austria:  Political uncertainty and a reduction in demand caused by a steady flight of the well-to-do from Vienna.  Or perhaps Count Hubner caught the mood: " in the streets one meets only slovenly students, national guards struggling with their sabers, proletarians, and low-class whores"

July,15, 2022

Some German cities have banned the song "Layla". However, it's not the tune of the same name by Eric Clapton. It's a tune by Ballerman about a lustful brothel madam named Layla.

July 31, 2022

 Starting October 1: Gas customers in Germany will have to pay a "solidarity levy" of €0.05 per kilowatt hour to prop up gas importers affected by Russian cutbacks. 

Aug 25, 2022

Autobahn turns 90!

The A555, Germany's first intersection-free motor road, was opened in August,1932 between Cologne and Bonn. Construction began during the Weimar Republic. 

In 1933 Hitler cranked up this type of road project construction.

Oct 8, 2022

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz will meet with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban in Berlin on Monday, but no joint news conference will occur after the meeting. Too bad because that would be interesting.

Dec 3, 2022

Germany's confectionery industry has produced 169 million Christmas chocolates and Santa Claus miniatures in 2022, which represents a 5.6% increase over 2021. Just keeping it fun this morning!