Germany

[RTH10260]

ISIS Fighter Convicted in Death of Enslaved 5-Year-Old Girl
In a trial held in Germany, the man was sentenced to life in prison for the death of the Yazidi girl, whom he allowed to die of thirst in Falluja, Iraq.

By Christopher F. Schuetze
Nov. 30, 2021

BERLIN — A German court on Tuesday convicted an Islamic State fighter for crimes against humanity and war crimes for tying up a 5-year-old Yazidi girl he had bought as a slave in Iraq, and leaving her in scorching heat to die of thirst.

The 29-year-old man, identified only as Taha Al-J. under German privacy laws, was sentenced to life in prison and ordered to pay 50,000 euros, or about $57,000, in compensation to the girl’s mother, who was a co-plaintiff in the case and was present when the verdict was read.

It was the first genocide conviction of a fighter for the Islamic State, which systematically persecuted the Yazidi ethnic group in Iraq, according to Christoph Koller, the judge overseeing the trial in Frankfurt. During its reign, the Islamic State killed thousands of Yazidi men, and kidnapped and forced into slavery thousands of Yazidi women and girls.

“This is the moment Yazidis have been waiting for,” Amal Clooney, a human rights lawyer and a member of the mother’s legal team, said in a statement. “To finally hear a judge, after seven years, declare that what they suffered was genocide.”

Even though neither the victim nor the killer were German, and the crime occurred in Falluja, Iraq, the trial was held in Germany on the principle of universal jurisdiction, which German courts have been using to try people accused of war crimes in countries like Iraq and Syria.



https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/30/worl ... rmany.html

[AndyinPA]

https://www.axios.com/olaf-scholz-germa ... 23a6b.html

Social Democrat Olaf Scholz was sworn in as chancellor of Germany on Wednesday, succeeding Angela Merkel after 16 years and launching a new era of German and European politics.

Why it matters: Scholz, a center-left pragmatist who served as finance minister and vice chancellor in Merkel's last government, will lead Europe's largest economy in a coalition with the environmentalist Greens and pro-business Free Democrats.

The big picture: Climate change, more progressive social and economic policies, and a stronger European Union are the central planks of the Social Democratic platform.

The experienced former mayor of Hamburg is seen as a continuity figure for Merkel's foreign policy, which has been driven in large part by the interests of Germany's export-driven industry.

[RTH10260]

Germany’s last three nuclear power stations to shut this weekend
Closures, delayed after Russia reduced Europe’s gas supplies, leave conundrum for energy policymakers

Alex Lawson
Sat 15 Apr 2023 07.00 BST

Germany’s three remaining nuclear power stations will shut down on Saturday, 12 years after the Fukushima disaster in Japan accelerated the country’s exit from atomic energy.

The closures mark the conclusion of a stop-start approach to atomic energy and a victory for the country’s vociferous anti-nuclear movement.

The facilities shutting are in Emsland, in the northern state of Lower Saxony, the Isar 2 site in Bavaria, and Neckarwestheim, in Baden-Württemberg in the south-west.

The shutdowns leave a conundrum for energy policymakers attempting to balance growing electricity demand in one of Europe’s industrial superpowers and efforts to decarbonise, against the backdrop of uncertainty caused by the war in Ukraine.

Germany last year delayed the closure of the three sites – which provided about 6.5% of the country’s electricity in 2022 – after Russia reduced European gas supplies, triggering concerns about a shortage of energy over the winter.

The country began phasing out nuclear power more than two decades ago amid a long-fought campaign against the technology, but, in 2010 Angela Merkel, then chancellor, announced an extension to the life of the country’s 17 nuclear plants until 2036 at the latest.

This policy was swiftly reversed the following year after an earthquake and tsunami caused the meltdown of reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant in Japan, triggering fresh anti-nuclear protests and political resolve to exit the technology.

Nuclear accidents at Three Mile Island in the US in 1979 and Chernobyl in 1986 had already entrenched the push against nuclear in Germany, which had begun earlier in the 1970s. Germany has switched off 16 reactors since 2003.

The final shutdowns have raised questions about security of energy supplies and the outlook for Germany’s carbon emissions. The country plans to close all coal-fired power plants by 2038, with the first round of closures planned in 2030.

However, its parliament approved emergency legislation to reopen mothballed coal-fired power plants to aid electricity generation last year. A push to build more terminals to import liquefied natural gas has also been accelerated since the Ukraine war began.





https://www.theguardian.com/environment ... is-weekend

[Suranis]

Interesting comment from a Youtuber on the results of two recent German state Elections. Presented without comment, aside from noting that it might be shocking to US Americans to hear some actual left wing comments and solutions, rather than what the US pretend "Socialists" talk about.

https://www.youtube.com/post/Ugkxe0B4qQ ... R40Gp3cjRk

Adam Something
4 hours ago
Here are some of my takeaways regarding the recent two German state elections. TL;DR: I stand by everything I said before German politics, and more.

During these elections, in Sachsen and Thüringen the far-right AfD came in first and a close second, while the other far-right (yes, far-right) party, the Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance, came in a strong third. The traditional centrist parties, with the exception of the right wing CDU took a massive beating.

Before anyone would panic, these two federal states are tiny: Thüringen has a population of 2 million, Sachsen 4 million. Germany's total population is 84 million.

That being said, the far-right is clearly rising across the board, which is a big problem. An even bigger problem is that establishment parties have no response to it, and are slowly dying (SPD, FDP, Grüne), or themselves radicalizing to the far-right (CDU, CSU).

Naturally, the far-right AfD would need a leftist antithesis, which simply doesn't exist (yet). The BSW (Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance) is said to be "far-left", but I consider that journalistic malpractice. The BSW opposes non-white immigration, and is very pro-Russia, in addition to being self-proclaimed nationalists among other things. These are far-right values.

The BSW as a party grew out by seceding from the Linke (Left) party, which, as I said in the past, also isn't a real leftist movement. Surely enough, the moment the far-right BSW was formed, the Linke voter base collapsed immediately to less than half. Some leftist movement that is: the members of which switching to the far-right at a drop of a hat. The Linke party itself was also pro-Russia, anti-Ukraine, anti-US, and so on.

Germany is suffering from the exact same problem every other Western European country is suffering from:

- There are problems, such as the cost of living crisis, or concerns about immigration.

- The centrist parties have been unable to solve the problems, and in some cases only made it worse. Consequently people do not trust them anymore.

- Populist parties feel fresh and new, drawing in disillusioned voters. However, we only have right wing populist parties, the left is almost completely absent.

- A left populist party would have to offer leftist solutions to problems: Cost of living crisis - let's decommodify parts of our economy, turning them into nonprofit public services. Immigration - let's have common sense immigration policies at manageable numbers, but let's also understand that the world is divided into the top 1% and everyone else, not to races. Growing wealth inequality - we're gonna democratize the economy baby, all workers will be board members, and billionaires will be banned, any net worth above 999M will get a 100% tax rate, and so on.

As long as our two choices are:

A) more of the same, i.e. the slow, downward spiral,
or
B) a supposed glorious return to some smoothbrained 1950s-esque white ethnostate utopia,

and there is no alternative, i.e. a leftist party, as long as such a movement doesn't exist, our elections will continue to look like this: every single one will be another death battle for our democracies, to try and see whether the disappointing, exhausted centrist parties can claw together uneasy alliances every few years, just big enough to stop the far-right from taking over.

People need to be inspired. They must be presented a new narrative, a new worldview, new things to look forward to. The far-right manages to do this with fake promises about a return to an imaginary, glorious past. The left could inspire people with things that are true, for a change. Promising to finish the project of the Enlightenment, having begun centuries ago, by enacting its final promise: democracy in the economy. We're gonna bring down the cost of living, decommodify large swaths of the housing market and the energy sector, we're gonna give workers democratic control over corporations, and we'll end the reign of above-the-law billionaire oligarchs who hoard an ever-larger proportion of our countries' wealth, making all of us poorer. We, <insert leftist party name>, will do all that, so vote for us, not the fake populist far-right, obsessed with pointless culture war issues.

I believe this is the only long-term way to save our democracies, and YOU can also be a part of this, by adopting the above-mentioned cool, leftist values, learning how to speak publicly, and joining a viable, local political party that would be the most receptive to these values. The more minds you change, and the more of your buddies you bring in (ones who agree with you), the more leftward any party shifts, giving you (us) a shot at building a true leftist populist party, with viable, popular policies and solutions, which can be an antithesis to the far-right culture war type populism. The long-term alternative, I'm convinced, is the loss of our democracies, so take your pick accordingly.

And seriously, if you're considering partaking in politics, LEARN PUBLIC SPEAKING SKILLS. It's an incredibly low-hanging fruit. Most established veteran politicians couldn't chortle out a coherent paragraph without a teleprompter if their lives depended on it, and their oratory energy would put a rabid horde of coked-out chimpanzees to sleep. In some political environments a fun, energetic, memorable and rousing speech would instantly propel anyone to national fame. It would be nice if the person giving such a speech would be someone other than Viktor Orban for once.

German state.jpg (46.87 KiB) Viewed 129 times

[RTH10260]

Just a note aside. In Europe there is seldom a party to win a majority in parliament. The overall winner in the election cycle will have to hash out an agreement with one or two other parties to get a local government together. Whatever extreme position the may have expressed pre-election gets watered down in the compromise to a gouvernamental program. The partners get to introdue some of their own pet peeves and gets one or more seats in the final government. They will always have the possibility to drop the agreement and step down, leaving the ruling near-majority in shambles.