During the last few meters, coalition negotiations are pure stress, as the leaders of the SPD, the Greens and the FDP can confirm. Those willing to use the traffic lights had been sitting together in the Willy-Brandt-Haus since 11.30 a.m. It was about her last priority topic, stricter corona measures, and that shortly before the end of the “epidemic emergency”, which made it easy for her to order coercive measures.
Back at the SPD headquarters, the three parties were apparently still fighting over important individual issues. For example, it was about the financing of the entry into a funded old-age provision, i.e. about the urgently needed share savings for everyone, forced by the FDP. The Greens’ desire for a veto right on climate issues is also controversial. That would then probably be a matter for co-party leader Robert Habeck, who would take over an upgraded environment ministry. His colleague Annalena Baerbock, on the other hand, would get the foreign ministry, while FDP chairman Christian Lindner held the job of treasurer.
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For the Greens – who are in disrepute for having negotiated badly – a treat was apparently agreed for their clientele: The coal phase-out should now definitely come in 2030 and no longer “ideally”, as it was said in the exploratory paper. We’ll know exactly in a few hours. Members of the Bundestag Kevin Kühnert (SPD) and Stefan Gelbhaar (Greens) publicly stated that the coalition agreement could “probably” be presented on Wednesday.
If the efforts of the three parties succeed, one can think of Hermann Hesse: “Opponents often need each other more than friends, because without wind there is no mill.”
Big crises require big responses, and that’s why US President Joe Biden is now doing his best. It releases 50 million barrels of the country’s strategic oil reserve, almost ten percent. It’s almost Christmas, people are going on vacation, so towering gasoline prices shouldn’t spoil the fun.
Biden himself knows that the desired price effects will still be a while in coming, the campaign will “not solve the problem of high energy prices overnight,” he explains. In the long run, however, the oil dependency will be reduced by switching to clean energies. His latest maneuver is coordinated with states like China, India, Japan, Korea and Great Britain.
Most important side effect: The president appears as a hands-on doer who does not even stop at domestic oil and gas companies that have exploited the situation for extra profits. If it continues like this, the newspaper cartoonists will dress him up in a Superman costume.
A hacker attack on Media Markt and Saturn recently shocked the retail world. IT was only working smoothly again after almost two weeks. This has now driven Dieter Schwarz and his group of companies (Lidl, Kaufland) into the Mergers & Acquisitions department, as my colleagues have found out: They are taking over the IT security company XM Cyber, which focuses on the defense against digital attacks, for an estimated $ 700 million is specialized. It simulates the maneuvers of the cyber pirates.
The company is largely unknown in Germany, but one of its founders is extremely prominent in Israel: Tamir Pardo, once head of the Mossad foreign intelligence service. This organization was good for everything, for finding the Holocaust organizer Adolf Eichmann as well as for getting medical equipment in the pandemic. The Lidl order secures the former Mossad driver a monetary entrance into Germany’s economy.
Monaco’s Prince Albert had a good relationship with Russia’s President Vladimir Putin for a long time. Many rich Russians have to do with the tax oasis, the oligarch Dmitri Rybolowlew even controls the domestic soccer club AS Monaco. But the relationship is now clearly suffering. Russian sources are said to have produced ugly corruption rumors about Monegasque celebrities, for example about the foreign minister or the most important court president.
Prince Albert was now forced to scourge a “campaign of destruction by hostile forces” in the central organ of the dwarf state, “Monaco Matin”. There is a targeted dissemination of false reports that are supposed to harm the “honesty and loyalty” of those affected.
When Axel Springer boss Mathias Döpfner, 58, was asked to formulate his rise from musicologist to corporate boss in a “picture” -typical sentence, he said: “As a tabloid journalist, I never had a special talent. I’ll try it: He came to stay. “
Well said, but this Wednesday it is highly uncertain whether he will be allowed to remain as President of the Federal Association of Digital Publishers and Newspaper Publishers (BDZV). The Presidium meets in Berlin, and many established publishers have called for his resignation. The association tribunal is again reminiscent of Döpfner’s SMS affair, of the way he defended the salvos of his then “Bild” editor-in-chief against the German corona policy in a private message to writer Benjamin von Stuckrad-Barre.
The (meanwhile killed) colleague Julian Reichelt is “the last and only journalist in Germany” who is still brave “against the new GDR authoritarian state”, said Döpfner, and almost everyone else has become “propaganda assistants”. With quotes like this one reaps – non-partisan – that general rejection that a presidential industry lobbyist doesn’t need at all.
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And then there is the disappearance of the Chinese tennis player Peng Shuai, 35, which ensures international solidarity addresses – even after Beijing has spoken out. “Some people should end their malicious allegations and not politicize this matter,” said the State Department spokesman. And from the Chinese state and party leadership it can be heard that this is not a diplomatic matter.
Previously, Thomas Bach, President of the International Olympic Committee (IOC), had apparently been harnessed a few weeks before the Winter Games in Beijing – and talked to Peng Shuai via video switch. The athlete said that she would live safely in her Beijing home, which many observers doubt. In early November, she accused a high-ranking ex-politician on the Weibo social network of forcing her to have sex. After a short time, first the posting disappeared, then the author.
Kurt Tucholsky commented briefly and precisely on such phenomena: “Censorship consists of cheek and fear.”
I wish you a happy, fear-free day.
I warmly greet you
you
Hans-Jürgen Jakobs
Senior editor
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