Joe Biden won the US presidential election with 306 electoral votes. But incumbent President Donald Trump has yet to concede, and the Republican Party seems to be at a crossroads after four years of Trumpism. What direction will the GOP take going forward?The Lincoln Project's Rick Wilson offers a very bleak outlook into the GOP's future. He says 'the Republican party has sold out itself to Trump' and what follows Trump will be more dangerous, because it will be more sophisticated.
Showing posts with label Deutsche Welle. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Deutsche Welle. Show all posts
20 January 2021
15 December 2020
Deutsche Welle: Moroccan-Israeli peace rapprochement: An (un)expected surprise?
Morocco's reconnection with Israel marks the return to their previous low-level diplomatic relations which had developed in the context of the Oslo accords in the 1990s and had ended with the Second Intifada in 2000. However, cultural ties date back to the pre-Roman Jewish colonies of Mauretania Tingitana around 2,000 years ago.
Despite major waves of migration from Morocco to Israel in the 1950s and 1960s, Morocco is still home to the largest remaining Jewish community in North Africa, while Jews with Moroccan heritage make up the largest minority group of Jewish immigrants in Israel, totaling around 900,000. [...]
In Israel, however, the destiny of the Sahrawi nation does not appear to be a priority. On Thursday, the first day of the Jewish holiday Hanukkah, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu focused on celebrating the new ties with Morocco.
16 October 2020
Deutsche Welle: Opinion: China's ethnic socialism
Just a few weeks ago, Beijing introduced a new language policy for schools in Inner Mongolia, whereby instruction in Mongolian will be replaced with lessons in Mandarin in a number of subjects. Many fear that this will massively impact on Mongolian culture. [...]
Most of the inhabitants of Xinjiang, Inner Mongolia and Tibet are not Han Chinese, who constitute the majority in China. Until 2012, when Xi Jinping took office, all 56 recognized ethnic groups in China enjoyed equal rights. But Xi, who, if things go very wrong, will be able to let himself be chosen as president for life in 2023, put an end to that equality. [...]
The West did not understand why Beijing could not wait until 2047, when the "one country, two systems" policy would have expired anyway and China would have won. However, for China, this is not a question of rational politics but of ideology, one according to which the Han are considered superior to China's other ethnic groups. The people of Hong Kong, Tibet, Inner Mongolia and Xinjiang are not seen as equal partners, and this explains the Communist Party's inhumane treatment of certain groups, who are nonetheless all citizens of China.
10 August 2020
Deutsche Welle: How the coronavirus has spurred change in Germany
But now, more than half a year after the pandemic broke out, an increasing number of people are seeing COVID-19 not solely as a disaster, but also as a possible catalyst for reforms. And as an event that has torn down mental barriers that were hitherto thought permanent. [...]
Claussen said he was particularly impressed by the German government's Neustart Kultur ("Culture Relaunch") intitiative, a €1-billion ($1.2 billion) scheme passed by parliament at the end of July. "There is no premium for scrapping cars, but money for art and culture," he noted, referring to aborted plans to boost the car industry by paying car owners to trade old cars for new. For Claussen, this was a sign that Germany still saw itself as a country that values culture even amid the coronavirus crisis. [...]
German Labor Minister Hubertus Heil is already working on a bill that will give people the right to work from home if possible. Heil, from the center-left Social Democrats (SPD), has pushed for changes during the pandemic — especially, for example, in the meat industry. After COVID-19 outbreaks in several slaughterhouses, contracts under which workers are employed by sub-contractors will be banned in the sector, along with the use of agency workers.
The coronavirus is also speeding up some climate protection measures in the energy sector. Politicians were forced to link both the German government's €130-billion aid package and the historic €1.8-trillion EU aid package to climate protection measures.
21 June 2020
Deutsche Welle: In search of identity: The new generation of photo artists from China
The Alexander Tutsek Foundation is now showing "About Us," an exhibition of contemporary photography from China, with works by internationally renowned artists such as Chen Wei, Ren Hang and Yang Fudong, as well as names that are still largely unknown outside China, such as Gao Mingxi and Liang Xiu.
Seventy photographs from the last 20 years by 14 Chinese artists are presented in the show — works reacting to the radical changes in Chinese society.
The themes of this new generation of artists revolve around self-perception, subjective experiences, and daily life. They look at memory and history, melancholy and resistance, dreams and visions, the body and individuality — and the common denominator for all of them is the search for their own identity. How can one anchor oneself in a country that is changing as rapidly as China?
20 June 2020
Deutsche Welle: The dark legacy of sexual liberation in Germany
In Germany in the 1960s, people in some circles viewed sex with children not as a taboo but as progressive.
One key figure behind such thinking was the Berlin-based psychology professor Helmut Kentler. Today, it is clear that he was nothing less than a matchmaker for pedophiles. But for a long time, he was widely viewed as a visionary and one of Germany's most prominent sexologists, or sex experts.
His books on education sold well, and he was a popular expert and commentator on radio and TV. His theory of "emancipating sexual education" was based on the premise that children are also sexual beings who have are right to express their sexuality. [...]
Abuse was also systematic at one of West Germany's most "progressive" schools: the Odenwald boarding school in the southwestern state of Hesse. As many as 900 pupils were victims of sexual abuse in the three decades from 1966 to 1989. [...]
But the vulnerable boys were not just turned over to "pedophile caretakers." The Hildesheim report is clear: "Evidence so far gathered shows that the care homes were, in fact, men living alone, often powerful and influential men (…) from academic life, research organizations and other educational contexts."
3 May 2020
Deutsche Welle: Russia removes Vladimir Putin mosaic from military church
An image of the mosaic, which showed Putin alongside Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, was first made public in Russian media last week. While the Kremlin has not publicly commented on the mosaic, the decision to remove it apparently came from Putin himself.
Bishop Stefan of the church in question denied reports that the mosaic had been dismantled, but told Russian media that it had indeed been removed from display "in accordance with the wish of the head of state [Putin]." [...]
Meanwhile, Vladimir Legoyda of the Synodal Department for Relations between the church and the media told Russian media that a second mosaic depicting former leader Josef Stalin should also be removed.
"With his name associated with many troubles in the lives of people who can not be crossed out of history," he told Russian radio program Faith, while acknowledging that the featuring of secular figures in churches is not abnormal.
31 May 2019
Deutsche Welle: Poland: Where Keynes meets Jesus
Brian Porter-Szucs, author of the book "When Nationalism Began to Hate," believes that Kaczynski hasn't suddenly turned "a communist," and adds: "But many wanted a state that would preserve the communist party's commitment to social cohesion, cultural homogeneity and nationalism, just imbue it with a Catholic rather than a leftist conceptual vocabulary."
Kaczynski himself rarely speaks with anything but a Catholic conceptual vocabulary. That is why some in PiS see the current administration as part of a long-term plan to remold Polish state and society, with a socially conservative, church-infused rhetoric combined with a Keynesian-lite attempt to rebalance a capitalism that some believe has gone far enough in the post-communist country.[...]
The spending plans could also bring Poland close to the EU's budget deficit limit of 3% of GDP in 2020, from under 0.5% in 2018. Some economists even fear Poland could breach the limit. They also think that there will be hardly any money left in the budget for urgently needed increases to public sector pay. [...]
"The schemes were criticized as being too expensive, but Poland's public deficit has fallen, not risen. Rather, these policies have stimulated economic growth while dramatically reducing child poverty and increasing school enrolment." he argues, and adds: "A new European political order seems to be emerging — one that is likely to leave traditional parties of both the left and the right behind."
29 May 2019
Deutsche Welle: Analysis: Key takeaways from the EU election results
The European parliamentary elections have seen their biggest turnout in 20 years. Participation in the EU elections was up by neary 10 points compared with five years ago. Europe's traditionally large centrist parties have suffered significant losses, as Greens, liberals and nationalists gained ground in Brussels. But voters delivered a complicated message: it’s a patchwork result from a patchwork union.
25 February 2019
Deutsche Welle: Catholic Cardinal Marx says files on child abusers 'destroyed'
"Sexual abuse of children and young people can be traced back, in no small part, to the abuse of power in the area of administration," Marx said in his address with the pope in attendance.
Vatican officials were "trampling on the rights of victims" by deliberately canceling or overriding procedures for investigating child abuse, according to Marx.
"It was not the perpetrators, but the victims who were regulated and pushed into silence," said Marx, who also serves as the head of the German Bishops' Conference. [...]
On Saturday, Cardinal Marx called for transparency in order for the church to win back "trust," saying that secrecy provoked "conspiracy theories."
He urged the church to redefine its standards of confidentiality and make its judiciary more open, as well as report numbers and details linked with abuse cases.
5 February 2019
Deutsche Welle: German town votes 'No' to street names
The residents of Hilgermissen, a small town that lies between Bremen and Hanover, have rebuffed a plan by local officials to introduce street names.
Sixty percent of the 1,282 voters who took part in Sunday's referendum disagreed with the proposal. Turnout was 69 percent. [...]
Public broadcaster NDR said some residents had noted an "irritable atmosphere" between supporters and opponents of the street name proposal in the lead-up to Sunday's vote.
The result of the referendum is binding on the council for the next two years.
21 January 2019
Deutsche Welle: Trump hasn't been all bad for the EU
Trump's stances have ensured European solidarity and progress in many areas. Permanent Structured Cooperation (PESCO) among EU members in foreign and security policy, for example, would not exist as it does now without Trump.
Ever since Trump's election, the popularity of the bloc has been on the rise — at least on the continent's mainland. In Brussels, some may even say — behind closed doors — that Trump is the best thing that could happen to the EU. [...]
Instead, it is because even within the borders of the EU, Trump is garnering support among the population and politicians. They don't necessarily admire the president for his tantrums, insolence and insults, but they appreciate his disregard for political correctness and that he addresses truths often swept under the rug. [...]
Juncker's experience and cleverness make him one of the few European politicians who seem to have found a successful strategy on how to deal with Trump. In trade policy, he offers simple and clear compromises, the game of simple give and take that the "businessman" Trump can apparently make sense of.
26 November 2018
Deutsche Welle: Opinion: Gibraltar dispute shows the absurdity of Brexit
Sanchez does have a point. The future arrangement for the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland is a prominent issue in ongoing Brexit talks and the deadline for reaching a final agreement has been postponed to 2020.
Yet, the border between the British peninsula of Gibraltar and Spain has not featured in the Brexit talks, and nobody knows what will happen to the 10,000 Spanish workers who commute to Gibraltar every day when Britain leaves the EU. [...]
It is possible that the border between the British peninsula and the Spanish mainland could be temporarily closed, like between 1969 and 1985. It is one of the reasons the vast majority of Gibraltar residents voted in favor of Britain remaining in the EU. [...]
The fight over Gibraltar illustrates the utter madness that is Brexit – irrespective of all the bureaucratic efforts being made to achieve a workable split. Leaders attending the upcoming EU summit on Sunday will wave through a Brexit plan that simply postpones reaching a final agreement on numerous contentious issues.
17 November 2018
Deutsche Welle: Majority of Germans want Chancellor Angela Merkel to complete term
The poll showed that a vast majority of voters want Merkel to complete her tenure, which ends in 2021. More than three-quarters of her party voters feel she should continue. More than half of the supporters of environmentalist Greens, socialist Left Party and center-left SPD also agree. [...]
The voters were not that generous to Merkel's Interior Minister Horst Seehofer, who is stepping down as the head of CDU's Bavarian sister party, the CSU. Nearly three in every four voters feel that Seehofer should also quit his job in the federal government.
The polls put Merkel ally and CDU Secretary General Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer ahead in the race for CDU leadership. Kramp-Karrenbauer has the backing of 46 percent of her party voters. She was followed by Friedrich Merz, a financial manager who has spent the past nine years out of politics, who polled 31 percent. Jens Spahn, the 38-year-old health minister and a Merkel critic, managed just 12 percent. [...]
According to the poll, if federal elections were held this Sunday, 23 percent of Germans would vote for the Greens. More than a quarter said they would vote for CDU/CSU.
9 November 2018
Deutsche Welle: German parliament rows over UN Migration Compact
"Millions of people from crisis-stricken regions around the world are being encouraged to get on the road," said AfD leader Alexander Gauland. "Leftist dreamers and globalist elites want to secretly turn our country from a nation state into a settlement area."
Though the motion was swiftly rejected once the debate was over, the AfD considered it a victory to get it on the agenda at all, since the German government is under no obligation to ask for the parliament's approval to ratify the non-legally binding compact. [...]
"It should have been the task of the government long ago to explain the migration compact factually and publicly. You were silent for too long, and that allowed these conspiracy theories to start in the first place," said Stamp, a member of the opposition Free Democratic Party (FDP).
21 September 2018
Deutsche Welle: Religiosity reigns in US, on the wane in western Europe
Sixty-eight percent of US Christians said religion was important in their lives, as compared with just 14 percent in Western Europe. But even among US adults who identified as religiously unaffiliated, 13 percent considered religion as a significant factor, against just 1 percent of Western Europeans.
In fact, the data shows that US "nones" — people who identify as atheist, agnostic or "nothing in particular" — are in some cases as religious as or more religious than Christians in Western Europe. For example, 20 percent of US adults who are unaffiliated pray daily, while just 6 percent of Christians in the UK do so. And 27 percent of American "nones" believe in God "with absolute certainty," compared with 12 percent of Christians in Germany. [...]
The belief in God as described in the Bible is also much more prevalent in the US: Fifty-six percent of Americans have faith in the biblical depiction of God, almost twice as many as in Western Europe (27 percent).
Deutsche Welle: Lessons from Chemnitz: Eastern Germany's right-wing protesters awash in anxiety
Hardliners within the AfD — to say nothing of the anti-Islam PEGIDA or "Pro Chemnitz" movement, which were also part of the anti-immigrant protest in Chemnitz — frequently accuse state authorities, politicians from the "old parties" and the police of conspiring against them. A few of the most extreme even assert that Chancellor Angela Merkel is secretly scheming to replace the German population with migrants and refugees. It's hard to get more alienated than that.
The vast majority of the people who marched on Saturday are neither bug-eyed conspiracy theorists nor extremists. But they are convinced, official crime statistics to the contrary, that their lives are rapidly becoming more endangered and that the authorities are doing nothing to help. These concerned citizens, too, use the vocabulary of the far right, saying they feel "swamped" by a "flood" of foreigners. And the killing of Daniel H. seems to be further evidence of their dramatic loss of control over their own society. [...]
Instead, one leitmotif of right-wing populism in Germany is envy. Leftist counterdemonstrators are given preferential treatment, the marchers fumed. Refugees are showered with money, designer clothes and state-of-the-art mobile phones while working Germans struggle to get by. And political and media elite line their pockets and have no contact any more with "common people." This is actually one similarity between Marxist and right-wing populist dogma: If you don't like what you read in the papers, it's because the journalists are all bought and paid for. These arguments are repeated over and over by today's German right. [...]
The extreme hostility towards the media is a conspicuous facet of right-wing populism in Germany right now. Whatever the flaws of today's media, without consensus forums in which debates can be held there will be no loosening the loggerheads in places like Chemnitz.
23 August 2018
Deutsche Welle: Inequality - how wealth becomes power | (Poverty Richness Documentary)
Germany is one of the world’s richest countries, but inequality is on the rise. The wealthy are pulling ahead, while the poor are falling behind. [Online until: 17 September 2018]
For the middle classes, work is no longer a means of advancement. Instead, they are struggling to maintain their position and status. Young people today have less disposable income than previous generations. This documentary explores the question of inequality in Germany, providing both background analysis and statistics. The filmmakers interview leading researchers and experts on the topic. And they accompany Christoph Gröner, one of Germany’s biggest real estate developers, as he goes about his work. "If you have great wealth, you can’t fritter it away through consumption. If you throw money out the window, it comes back in through the front door,” Gröner says. The real estate developer builds multi-family residential units in cities across Germany, sells condominium apartments, and is involved in planning projects that span entire districts. "Entrepreneurs are more powerful than politicians, because we’re more independent,” Gröner concludes. Leading researchers and experts on the topic of inequality also weigh in, including Nobel-prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz, economist Thomas Piketty, and Brooke Harrington, who carried out extensive field research among investors from the ranks of the international financial elite. Branko Milanović, a former lead economist at the World Bank, says that globalization is playing a role in rising inequality. The losers of globalization are the lower-middle class of affluent countries like Germany. "These people are earning the same today as 20 years ago," Milanović notes. "Just like a century ago, humankind is standing at a crossroads. Will affluent countries allow rising equality to tear apart the fabric of society? Or will they resist this trend?”
29 July 2018
Deutsche Welle: What Germans think of friendship and sex
And one in three in Germans were revelaed to think it is "okay" to have friends with benefits, a friendship which includes a sexual component without being a full-blown relationship.
"Friends with benefits are now apparently accepted by a large section of the general public," said sociologist Janosch Schobin from the University of Kassel.
Also, 69 percent believe that a good romantic relationship can grow out of friendship. [...]
Germans today report having an average of 3.7 close friends among an average of around 11 friends. Friends and acquaintances make up a social circle of 42.5 people per individual, the survey found.
However, only two-thirds of participants say they have a best friend. Also, compared to a similar survey five years ago, the average number of friends is slightly smaller. [...]
On an international level, 42 percent of Germans believe strongest in the friendship between their country and France, putting it way ahead of runner-up Austria with 26 percent and another neighboring country, the Netherlands, with 23. Only 9 percent favored the relationship between Berlin and Washington, although that number is likely negatively affected by the controversial American president, Donald Trump.
24 July 2018
Deutsche Welle: Britain's overseas territories brace for Brexit
Anguilla, one of Britain's six territories in the Caribbean, is located some 6,500 kilometers (4,039 miles) from Britain and relies heavily on imports — even for its drinking water.
Most of the goods come in through the EU, via a port just 15 minutes away on the French island of Saint Martin. [...]
If London fails to secure a good Brexit deal, Anguilla's residents are worried they will be among the biggest losers. The territory's dependency on its ties with the EU means most residents would have chosen to stay in the bloc. [...]
The EU plays a significant role in Anguilla. Hurricane Irma devastated the tiny territory last September and many homes still lie in ruins, and with the state having no money to spare, the planned reconstruction is funded by the EU.
The EU is also Anguilla's largest provider of development aid, with much of the money earmarked for education. But for the moment it is unclear whether London will step in to help after Brexit.
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