Shortly before the elections in North Rhine-Westphalia, the two top candidates met on WDR yesterday evening for their only TV duel and personal showdown: Prime Minister Hendrik Wüst (CDU) and challenger Thomas Kutschaty (SPD). Both want to tackle crime with more police and against the educational misery with more teachers.
It only got funny when the two moderators read sentences from one of the two programs to the duelists – to guess which party was the originator of what they heard. Well, and as it is, with the bare sentences from party programs that nobody reads – they are damn similar.
And so both always typed on their own election program, but the sentences came from the SPD, sometimes from the CDU. The difference lies in the personality, and Hendrik Wüst is probably a few meters ahead.
Conclusion: It should be the next disappointment for Olaf Scholz. As they always say so beautifully on television: “It remains exciting.”
The omnipotence of the Communist Party stands above prosperity for all, absolute subordination above bourgeois consumer happiness. This is the tacit deal that has shaped the People’s Republic of China so far. This agreement is in jeopardy, the growth machine is faltering. This is apparently related to the new absolutism of the state ruler Xi Jinping, who, contrary to previous regulations, wants to rise like a god to become the neo-Maoist permanent ruler.
A zero-Covid policy, for which many celebrities have spoken in this country as well, is currently throwing the country completely off track. What happens when an entire metropolis like Shanghai is declared an isolation ward is described in our big weekend report: “The China Crash”.
Xi shares a lot with Vladimir Putin, the Russian brother-in-arms bent on crushing sovereign states: old men’s fear of being forced out of power; the conviction that one can make the world dependent on one’s own raw materials; the rejection of Western liberalism as “decadent”; the targeted use of the threat as a political stylistic device; the reference to a past somehow transfigured as glorious, be it the old Soviet Union or the innovative Chinese world empire of the Middle Ages.
The fact that even a Moscow-friendly company like Siemens, which once made 80 percent of its sales with Russia in the 19th century, is now fleeing after 170 years, shows the whole drama of the situation. The statesmanlike servants of Joe Kaeser, who had to be grilled for it on ZDF, were not worth it in the end.
(Photo: Andrea Ucini for Handelsblatt)
Some want out, others in – into a shelter against the gun-ridden Putinism. In Finland, President Sauli Niinistö and Prime Minister Sanna Marin have spoken out in favor of joining NATO “immediately”.. The state, which has a 1,343-kilometer border with Russia, no longer feels safe after the attack on Ukraine. The neighbor’s continued aggression touches on Finnish trauma caused by the “Winter War” of 1939-40, when Putin’s role model and Hitler’s temporary partner Josef Stalin invaded Finland – and ended up forcing territorial cessions, a familiar pattern.
In 2014, the year of the annexation of Crimea, only 20 percent of Finns were in favor of joining NATO; today it is 70 percent. The joint statement by the President and Prime Minister is clear: “It took time for Parliament and society as a whole to develop their opinion on this issue.”
(Photo: imago images/Lehtikuva)
The aim is to report on two economists and their careers. The most astonishing is that of labor economist Simon Jäger, 36. He received his PhD from Harvard University in 2016 and currently teaches at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). He attracted attention with research work, for example on the effects of co-determination on wages and investments. In September, Jäger takes over the management of the Research Institute for the Future of Work in Bonn, to whose research network he has been a member since 2009.
The second personal details concern the council of experts for the assessment of overall economic development, i.e. the “wise men”. Here, the Confederation of German Employers’ Associations has nominated the Bochum finance and economist Martin Werding. He succeeds Volker Wieland. In the past few years, Werding had already acted as a political advisor – and, for example, together with the Ifo Institute for the Federal Ministry of Finance, created long-term projections on the sustainability of public finances.
A fifth position remains vacant: that of the Freiburg economist Lars Feld, who got caught up in the political intrigues of the last black-red coalition.
My cultural tip for the weekend: “A Love in Cairo” by Amir Hassan Cheheltan. A historical novel not about Egypt but about Iran – the land that was once Persia. The Iranian ambassador is sitting in Cairo on the Nile in 1947 and is supposed to bring Queen Fausia back from her Egyptian homeland to her husband Reza Pahlavi in Tehran. He is also said to have the corpse of Shah Pahlavi’s father, which is stored in Cairo, transferred. Cheheltan, who left behind a masterpiece with the book “The Calligrapher of Isfahan”, describes the first years after the Shah’s accession to the throne in an artistic way.
The story is more relevant than it seems at first glance. It deals with the relationship between the Arab states and Iran and Palestine/Israel, but also with the West. At some point an Indian philosopher is quoted as saying: “The European is a savage, a thief who behaves as if he were the crown of creation, the best that the universe has to offer.”
The glorious FC Bayern Munich is causing excitement less in the Bundesliga than in its own business premises. His record goalscorer Robert Lewandowski, 33, with an estimated 24 million euros per annum best earner, will allegedly not extend his contract, which runs until 2023, according to a “Bild” report. In this case, the club would only get money – a lot of money – if the Polish striker switched to FC Barcelona this summer, who absolutely wanted to sign him. If that happens, sporting director Hasan Salihamidžić would have to find a suitable replacement. Not an easy situation. He is quoted as saying: “Now we have time to talk about what is after June 30, 2023.” Time is running out.
And then there is Transport Minister Volker Wissing, who is also responsible for digitization and is therefore concerned about data traffic. He publicly expressed doubts about the widespread desire to photograph the food to be eaten several times with a smartphone and send it around the world. “If you look at the number of photos of Essen around the world, you come to an enormous energy consumption,” said the FDP politician. Does that have to be? The network discussed and criticized. And old Wissing photos with food, such as Belgian waffles or pizza, were promptly found on social media. However, the minister does not want to know anything about “food porn”. He now sticks to the slogan that everyone should use the Internet freely as usual – in other words, everyone gets their fill in their own way. In any case, Wissing is also far removed from Mark Twain: “Hunger is the maid of genius.”
I wish you a gastronomically valuable, relaxing weekend.
Her
Hans Jürgen Jakobs
Senior editor