for psychologists, Vladimir Putin is probably a case study for the theory that out of repeatedly subjectively experienced frustration – Nato! East expansion! – Aggression is almost inevitable. And so the Russian President presented himself as a warrior in the Kremlin last night. The choreography of the last few days culminated in a vaguely historicizing threatening speech.
Ukraine has never had “real statehood”, Putin said, it was created by Lenin and is now in the grip of radicals and nationalists, run down by oligarchs – all under the Western curators. With this “superstructure” it is easy in Putinism to recognize the eastern Ukrainian regions of Luhansk and Donetsk with their many Russian citizens as independent “people’s republics” and to conclude a “peace treaty” with them.
A little later, Putin ordered troops to enter the zone of hyper nervousness. NATO “spit on Moscow’s concerns,” he left as an indication of the frustration of a political underdog. Now Putin is prominently singled out as an aggressor in the series of historical warmongers.
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States of war change emotions and identities. In economically troubled Russia, where support for Putin seemed to be waning, the “home to the Reich” strategy inspires even more national pride. That empowers the first man in the state to set himself up as President for all eternity. But the Donbass drama is also leading to solidarity in the West. EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and EU Council President Charles Michel immediately tweeted about a “blatant violation of international law, the territorial integrity of Ukraine and the Minsk agreements”: “The Union will react with sanctions against those who take part in this illegal action involved.”
For the time being, Nord Stream 2 would be nothing more than a ruined pipeline on the seabed and a package of financial sanctions against Putin’s oligarchy would be unavoidable. US President Joe Biden has already made an executive order around Donetsk and Luhansk criminalizing investments, trade and financing by US citizens.
(Photo: AP)
Federal Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock, who trained in London as a “Master in Law – with Distinction in Public International Law”, criticizes a “blatant breach of international law”.
With yesterday’s rapid events, an agreement that the governments in Paris and Berlin were proud of landed in the dustbin: the Minsk Agreement of 2015. However, the promised free elections in Donetsk and Luhansk and a ceasefire did not materialize .
In particular, Ukraine, which had agreed, was not interested. And the Germans and French had negotiated a roadmap to peace without having any influence on its implementation. “Minsk” became a phantom that only reappeared in the extreme emergency of Putin’s escalation policy. And that has now been completely shooed away by the Kremlin ruler: “We have come to the conclusion that there are no prospects” for the agreement.
And so you look at a six-year-old photo, see the “have-beens” Angela Merkel, François Hollande, Petro Poroshenko and involuntarily think of the fourth figure: Only Putin is quite the same.
The question once again arises as to how dependent the EU is on Russian natural gas. We are interested in your opinion: What do you expect in view of the already high energy prices? Does Germany have to become more independent from the Gazprom group, whose shares lost more than 25 percent yesterday? And what are the options: own natural gas production, more renewable energies, reactivate nuclear power plants? Write us your opinion in five sentences [email protected]. We will publish selected articles with attribution on Thursday in print and online.
So far, we’ve mostly heard that controlled immigration of highly qualified people is necessary, a “green pass” for talented people. Now the end of the self-deception appears: Everywhere Germany has a labor problem. This is eroding the basis for future gross domestic product. Our report shows: There is a lack of personnel for helper activities, semi-skilled jobs, airport jobs, service activities in hotels, parcel services. Deutsche Bahn alone wants to hire 21,000 people this year, including many unskilled workers. Many companies are demanding more openness when it comes to immigration – but bureaucracy prevents employable asylum seekers from working.
The prognosis of Herbert Brücker, migration expert at the Institute for Labor Market and Vocational Research in Nuremberg: “If we want to achieve growth similar to that of the last decade, we would need net immigration of well over 400,000 people a year.”
Tomorrow, Wednesday, the EU Commission will present its plan for a Europe-wide supply chain law. Apparently, Brussels also wants to oblige small and medium-sized companies to check suppliers for human rights violations and environmental sins. The federal law that will come into effect in 2023, on the other hand, only applies to companies with more than 3,000 employees (from 2024: 1,000). According to our information, the EU wants to allow those affected in Africa or Asia to sue companies for damages if they neglect their duty of care. In the end, the industry and business lobby groups protested against the far-reaching plans, apparently in vain.
And then there are script researchers who have solved two mysteries with the help of artificial intelligence (AI). On the one hand, they identified two previously anonymous creators of the conspiracy movement QAnon, who spread all sorts of nonsense in right-wing extremist circles (“Deep State”). Two research groups analyzed on 4chan and other platforms – and came up with the American Ron Watkins, whose father operates the platform 8chan/8kun, and the South African Paul Furber, a moderator at 4chan.
The second solved mystery concerns the writer Charles Dickens, who died more than 150 years ago. He left behind texts in a highly idiosyncratic shorthand script, a secret code that the master himself called “The Devil’s Handwriting”. Now it is known that in the “Tavistock Letter” he left behind, he had a dispute with those responsible for the “Times” in London. The newspaper had flatly rejected the advertisement for Dickens’ new magazine All the Year Round.
We conclude from the author of David Copperfield: “We must learn to play the comedy to the end. We must weary misfortune.”
I wish you a successful day full of happiness.
It greets you cordially
Her
Hans Jürgen Jakobs
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