Gently nudge
When the
heads of state and government of the EU meet today, the main topic will be
Ukraine's
possible accession
.
Almost everyone is in favor of it, sometimes with a certain ulterior motive.
There is a scenario that is mostly discussed behind closed doors in Berlin:
Should Putin control as many areas of Ukraine as he imagines, he could propose peace negotiations.
Why should Ukraine be willing to agree to territorial losses and how should President Zelenskyy explain this to his people?
The consideration: He could say that we are losing part of our country, but the war has brought us integration into the EU.
Scholz and Co. could also gently nudge him in this direction by offering him the prospect
of an uncomplicated admission as a price for the peace agreement
.
It's not a pretty deal, but if Ukraine doesn't win this war, there will have to be a deal of this kind.
EU, G7, NATO: That's what Scholz is all about at the summit marathon
You can find more news and background information on the war in Ukraine here:
That happened at night:
Ukrainian troops are increasingly coming under pressure in Luhansk.
The US government wants to make proposals to support Kiev at the G7 summit.
And: Is there movement in the grain blockade?
The overview.
For Scholz, a partnership with Russia is "inconceivable in the foreseeable future":
Olaf Scholz has assured the NATO partners in the east that he can rely on Germany.
"We will defend every square meter of Alliance territory," the Chancellor warned Russia in his government statement.
British military intelligence assumes that Russian reservists will soon be deployed:
the Kremlin is silent about its losses in the war, and the pro-Russian separatists regularly publish numbers of those killed in action.
The British secret service has now used this to assess the situation in Donbass.
"If we let Putin blackmail us, we will lose our freedom":
Should Ukraine become an EU candidate?
Latvia's Prime Minister Kariņš is in favour.
He says that since the war there has been no middle ground in Eastern Europe: either you move closer to Europe or you become part of the Russian empire.
Between the worlds
Democracies do not wage war against one another.
This is a known wisdom.
Less known: democracies are not necessarily in solidarity with democracies that are brutally attacked.
The heads of state and government of the Brics countries are meeting virtually today.
The abbreviation stands for Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa.
Three of these states are democracies: Brazil, India and South Africa.
They are not willing to isolate or pressure Russia.
They are democracies but do not belong to the West.
European countries have experienced them as colonial powers, their political systems do not meet the standards that the West proclaims (but does not always comply with), nor do they belong to its military organizations.
They stand between the world of authoritarian states and western democracies and try to get along with both sides.
From their point of view, this is probably not unwise.
Brazil's ex-foreign minister on Putin's aggression: "We're slipping into a global economic war"
messed up
Do you have mortadella or lyoners for breakfast?
Then be careful - you probably won't like the research my colleagues from the video and business departments do together with the NDR.
Germany's largest slaughterhouse ,
Tönnies
, along with other companies, is suspected
of processing mechanically separated meat in poultry sausage products
- without labeling this, as required by law.
The research was initiated by a former butcher.
"Politicians missed what came to my mind, a stupid little butcher,"
says
Franz Voll.
He teamed up with the Bremerhaven university professor Stefan Wittke and together they developed a new, peer-reviewed method to identify the ingredient in sausage products.
Up until now, this has hardly been possible.
MSM consists of cheap leftover poultry meat
.
It is produced by machines forcing animal carcasses with leftover meat through sieves.
Bone splinters and pieces of cartilage get caught, all soft parts such as muscles, fat and connective tissue are squeezed off.
It's not harmful to health - but master butcher Voll says: "That stuff is disgusting and definitely inferior." And: It should appear in the list of ingredients.
In total, NDR and SPIEGEL submitted 30 poultry sausage and poultry meat samples from different manufacturers for testing in blind tests.
Nine of them tested positive - including four organic sausages.
You can see and read here which products they are, what the manufacturers say about them and who the pensioner from Usedom is who messes with the meat industry:
Suspicion of mechanically separated meat at Tönnies and Wiesenhof: What is really in our sausage?
Right Terror
100 years ago today, Reich Foreign Minister Walther Rathenau was shot dead by right-wing extremists in Berlin.
They hated him because he was of Jewish descent
and advocated cooperation with the victorious powers of World War I.
He was also a Liberal Democrat.
That's why he had to die.
Like, for example, the CDU politician Walter Lübcke in June 2019, because he had defended Angela Merkel's refugee policy.
My former colleague Thomas Hüetlin wrote a very good book about Rathenau: Berlin, June 24, 1922.
Rathenau assassination in 1922: assassination attempt on democracy
Non-Loser of the Day
There are days when you wait for someone to resign.
Because it has to be easy.
But then it doesn't happen.
The day flows by, and all it concerns remain in office.
Yesterday was such a day.
A poster showing anti-Semitic motifs was hung
at the
Documenta in Kassel.
It was already clear beforehand that there could be problems in this direction, but apparently nobody wanted to take a close look.
A scandal, a gigantic embarrassment for Germany.
In view of this dimension, only resignation or expulsion can bring relief, whether by those involved in politics or by the organizers of the documenta.
Someone has to take responsibility.
Today shouldn't be like yesterday.
Hatred of Jews at Documenta: Welcome to Antisemita 15
Here is the current quiz of the day
The starting question today: Who was the most important trading partner of the European Union in 2021?
The latest news from the night
Black-green coalition agreement for NRW is in place:
The first joint government of the CDU and the Greens in North Rhine-Westphalia is getting closer: both partners agreed on a joint coalition paper.
Now it's time for the party days.
Elon Musk describes the Tesla factory in Grünheide as a "money incinerator":
"That sound of burning money": The Tesla boss outlined the current losses of the factories in Brandenburg and Texas in clear words.
There are layoffs in the group.
It will be particularly easy to live in these cities in 2022:
Most of the corona measures have been taken - and this means that European metropolises have made it back into the top ten of the "Economist" ranking of the most livable cities.
Three of the biggest winners are in Germany.
The SPIEGEL + recommendations for today
"I thought at some point I'll have to kill him so he doesn't kill me":
Nadine R. was in a relationship with a violent partner for twelve years.
Why she didn't make the jump earlier - and what two psychologists say about it.
This car should become VW's electric star:
The E-Bulli should compete with Tesla and become Volkswagen's technological flagship.
It is produced in the old commercial vehicle factory in Hanover, without any glamour.
How does that fit together?
Can Ngonnso go home?
The Humboldt Forum features a statue named Ngonnso that was abducted by German colonialists.
A tribe in Cameroon has been reclaiming the image of its founding goddess for years without success.
Why the museum could give it back after all.
The Lying Dutchman:
Brilliant, greedy and feared - Colonel Tom Parker created a music industry around Elvis Presley.
In the new movie »Elvis«, Tom Hanks plays the dazzling marketer who turned a profit even out of hatred for the »King«.
I wish you a good start into the day.
Yours, Dirk Kurbjuweit
