if “image” praises, then right. So on April 20, 2005 it said: “We are Pope!” Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger had just been elected head of the Catholic Church. But what do we headline about Benedict XVI emeritus? “We’re embarrassing!” Perhaps, as the “taz” put it in advance? Or is it: “We are Pinocchio!”?
The cross is crooked after a new study on sexual abuse in the Archdiocese of Munich and Freising for the period 1945 to 2019 is available: 235 alleged perpetrators, at least 497 young victims. And Benedict XVI. As the archbishop of Munich at the time, he did not intervene against accused clerics in four cases, although he should have known about it. That’s what the lawyers at the investigating law firm Westpfahl Spilker Wastl say.
The experts are certain that Ratzinger knew about the conviction of priest Peter H., who had come from Essen, as a pedophile. The incumbent Munich Cardinal Reinhard Marx, himself accused, apologizes: “I am shocked and ashamed.” And the 94-year-old Benedict XVI? Deny all allegations and pray for the victims.
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The eighth commandment is: “You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.” That is why the departed, aged pope prefers not to speak at all. Perhaps an ecumenical borrowing from Martin Luther will help in this case: “A lie is like a snowball: the longer you roll it, the bigger it gets.”
In the Ukraine crisis, communication continues as usual. One threatens (sanctions) and entices (dialogue). US Secretary of State Antony Blinken warned against an invasion of Ukraine ahead of his Geneva meeting today with his Russian colleague Sergey Lavrov: “It’s a real risk and it’s a high risk.”
Blinken repeated yesterday that an operating license for the Nord Stream 2 natural gas pipeline would only be an option if Vladimir Putin withdrew his soldiers from the Ukrainian border. In this way, Nord Stream 2 becomes a bargaining chip in the geopolitical struggle, even if it is actually only supposed to be about secure energy supply.
Manuela Schwesig (SPD), Prime Minister of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, therefore thanked the Committee on Eastern European Economic Relations, which is also urging gas to flow through the Baltic Sea pipeline to Germany soon.
In the weekend report we deal with the “world risk Putin” on many pages – and with its chances of success in the challenge of the West. The authors find that they are not small. The weakness of the US President, the internal turmoil in the US and Europe, the West’s fear of the economic consequences of a war in Eastern Europe, Germany’s dependence on the state-owned company Gazprom – all of this is helping Russia’s President in trying to overthrow a new regional order to force the Europeans away.
Putin is currently louder than his sluggish economy actually allows. Russia’s economy is smaller than Italy’s. And “the West” no longer exists for the former KGB agent, only America and its own political vassals and claqueurs.
“Putin currently has many more options than the West,” explains Berlin political scientist and author Herfried Münkler in an interview. In detail he says about…
- the German influence on Putin: “With Nord Stream 2, we are dealing with a mock German debate that is more about symbolic politics than actual support for Ukraine. That can definitely be found in the tradition of German foreign policy.”
- a possible offer from the West: “The West could promise that neither Ukraine nor Georgia will join NATO in the next ten years. The prerequisite would have to be that the Donbass is pacified and Russia no longer supports the separatists.”
- power politics: “The major powers may not say so, but they understand the situation in such a way that not every country can decide which alliance it wants to belong to. The Europeans are probably the only ones who don’t see it that way.”
Stuttgart is in Swabia, but Daimler Chief Technology Officer Markus Schäfer, 56, apparently thinks the city is in the galaxy. “The lunar module has landed,” he says. “We are pioneers.” The Dax group has received the world’s first official approval for highly automated driving (Level 3). You approach the robot car from level 5.
Anyone who buys a new S-Class, for example, can be chauffeured along the autobahn at a maximum speed of 60 kilometers per hour in traffic jams or slow-moving traffic. From 2024, it will be the turn of Daimler small cars like the A-Class – here, too, there will no longer be a driver who operates the steering wheel, but only “power napper” who use the drive to take a nap.
A small country comparison: Austria introduces comprehensive vaccination requirements in February, Germany continues to work on the basic problem with the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) and the Paul Ehrlich Institute (PEI). In our neighboring country, the vaccination rate is expected to rise from the current 75 percent to 85 to 90 percent.
Among other things, this should go with a vaccination lottery: every tenth stitch will be rewarded with 500 euros. “The more people have a corona vaccination, the fewer die as a result of a corona pandemic,” says Austria’s Health Minister Wolfgang Mückstein.
His German counterpart Karl Lauterbach has other concerns. He fears that several hundred thousand will soon be infected a day and accepts a few serious changes. People who have survived a corona infection are now only considered to have recovered for three months (previously six months) – communication about this was largely absent due to the corona. Lauterbach had announced: “We will inform you so that you do not have to regularly look at the pages (of the RKI and PEI) and check whether anything has changed.”
My cultural tip for the weekend: “The Wannsee Conference” by Matti Geschonneck on ZDF – Monday, 8.15 p.m. and in the media library. Cinematic highlight of public television based on the minutes of the trial against Adolf Eichmann, which actually confirms all the eulogies of the feuilletons. Director, screenplay, actors – everything impressive.
The chamber play shows how 15 people from the NSDAP, SS and ministerial bureaucracy negotiate the murder of eleven million Jews over a light breakfast on a January morning in 1942 in a Wannsee villa. Namely as a competition for competence, vanity, being right, threatening effect. Towards the end of the service conference, it is noticed that it would take more than 400 days to shoot everyone. There “Zyklon-B” is mentioned. It was this killing industry that made Paul Celan write: “Death is a master from Germany”.
And then there’s Klaus Schwab, 83, creator of the “Davos Man”, of the cosmopolitan who works in the name of good, who of course visits the “World Economic Forum” every year when it’s not Corona. The German economist Schwab is admired because every year he invents a new wacky title for the always same world rescue show of the rich. In the Handelsblatt guest commentary, he develops his euphonious theory of “governance 4.0” with modern stakeholder capitalism, sounding like Blackrock boss Larry Fink, perhaps the most powerful “Davos man”.
“Governance 1.0” was the period of power of a boss. “Governance 2.0” on the other hand: Milton Friedman, shareholder myth, global financialization. And the current “Governance 3.0” is operational crisis management, caused by Corona. Sounds like a theory, but it’s probably an invitation to discuss it in 2023. After all, Davos must not die.
I wish you a flowery day.
Best regards
Her
Hans Jürgen Jakobs
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